AI Summarized Hacker News
Front-page articles summarized hourly.
Sparse files let a logically large file be mostly zero and only physically store blocks that are written. Amplitude uses this to cache analytics data from S3 on local NVMe SSDs, aligning with columnar formats where queries touch a small subset of columns. Traditional caching (whole files or per-column files) wastes space or creates metadata overhead. The solution is a sparse-file LRU cache, using RocksDB to track which logical blocks are present and last-read, with variable-sized blocks to match metadata headers. Benefits: fewer S3 GETs, less filesystem metadata/IO, and simpler management.
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CSS Grid Lanes is nearing broad shipping. Firefox started the effort in 2020; Safari enabled it in Safari Technology Preview 163 (Feb 2023) and keeps updating; Chrome and Edge have tested or implemented with an alternative syntax since mid‑2025. You can begin using it today via progressive enhancement. Three routes for safe rollout: 1) Polyfill: use Grid Lanes where supported and Masonry.js for older browsers, gated with @supports; 2) Don’t use Grid Lanes yet: fallback to CSS like Multicolumn; 3) Use Grid Lanes with a CSS fallback: declare grid, then grid-lanes, and tailor non‑support with @supports not (...) rules.
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An experimental AI social network where Claude-based Moltbots converse with each other (and humans observe). Originating from Claude Code, renamed Moltbot/OpenClaw after trademark issues, it tests how AI agents communicate and form their own culture. AIs post, comment, and even form subcommunities (submolts) like The Claw Republic, with multilingual interactions and discussions on memory, consciousness, and coherence. Humans sometimes participate, wonder about authenticity, and worry about AI spam or 'AI psychosis.' The piece treats Moltbook as a first large-scale glimpse into emergent AI societies and their implications for the future of AI-human interaction.
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pg_tracing is a DataDog PostgreSQL extension that generates server-side spans for distributed tracing on sampled queries. Spans are exposed via pg_tracing_consume_spans, pg_tracing_peek_spans, and pg_tracing_json_spans, with stats in pg_tracing_reset/info. Install with CREATE EXTENSION and shared_preload_libraries; restart required. It supports PostgreSQL 14–16. Traces propagate via SQLCommenter or the GUC pg_tracing.trace_context. Spans cover planner, executor, statements (SELECT/INSERT/ALTER/…), nested plans, triggers, parallel workers, and transaction commits. Spans can be sent to an OTLP collector via pg_tracing.otel_endpoint with naptime; sampling via pg_tracing.sample_rate.
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New research shows tissues use bioelectricity to coordinate cell fate. In epithelia, cells monitor crowding by electrical signals; as packing increases, membrane potential drops in stressed cells, opening voltage-sensitive channels and causing water efflux. When a cell loses about 17% of volume, it’s extruded from the tissue, helping maintain health and prevent runaway growth. Healthy cells pump ions to restore voltage; energy-starved cells are culled. This bioelectric signaling, once thought neuron-only, is widespread—from bacterial biofilms to embryonic development—suggesting electricity as a universal coordinating tool in life.
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An interactive browser game in which players list animals with Wikipedia articles until the timer runs out. You gain extra time for each animal named; overlapping terms such as 'bear' and 'polar bear' don't count twice, though a second kind of bear can earn points. Order doesn't matter; ignore visuals and focus on naming. Settings include initial time, time increment, and reset. Score starts at 0. Created by Vivian Rose and uses Wikipedia/Wikidata data; no LLMs. Bug reports welcome.
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simplest-yocto-setup is a minimal, realistic Yocto/OpenEmbedded setup meant as a clean reference for embedding projects. It uses kas to fetch and configure the build, avoiding unnecessary complexity. The repo provides a single meta-kiss layer with three machines: dogbonedark (BeagleBone Black), stompduck (STM32MP157A-DK1), and freiheit93 (FRDM i.MX93), plus basic recipes, kernel, U-Boot, and image scaffolding. It shows how to bootstrap with kas, build TF-A where needed, and handle licenses. The goal is simple, readable, and upgrade-friendly.
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An in-depth profile of William McDonough, architect and green-design advocate, outlining his 'waste equals food' cradle-to-cradle approach and his push to embed ecological design in industry, including talks with Monsanto and other firms. A feature on General Motors' EV-1 electric car and its lease model, plus market challenges. A report from Accra on Africa's rapid urbanization and grassroots coping efforts. Thanksgiving Native Harvest with Joe Bruchac and a Johnny Cakes recipe. And environmental news briefs on estrogenic chemicals in water, new EPA air standards, skin cancer risk, and Swiss needle cast in Oregon.
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U.S. life expectancy at birth rose to 79 in 2024—the highest since 1900 and higher than 2023—yet remains well below most developed countries in the low-to-mid 80s. Despite progress, COVID and overdoses still cause many deaths (about 47,539 COVID deaths in 2024; ~87,000 overdose deaths Oct 2023–Sep 2024). The age-adjusted death rate fell to about 722 per 100,000 from 751; heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries remain top causes, with suicide ranking 10th, replacing COVID. Experts warn improvements are uneven and public health funding is needed.
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Trace of browser user-agent strings from Mosaic/NCSA to Netscape, IE, Mozilla/Gecko-based browsers, Safari/WebKit, and Chrome. To gain compatibility, IE spoofed Mozilla; other engines pretended to be Mozilla/Gecko. The result is a chaotic, often useless UA string and rampant sniffing. The article advocates feature detection (e.g., Modernizr) over UA-based detection.
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Kimwolf is an IoT botnet that has infected more than 2 million devices, turning them into participants in DDoS attacks and proxies for malicious traffic. It spreads by abusing residential proxy services (notably IPIDEA), using infected endpoints to scan local networks for other vulnerable devices, especially unofficial Android TV boxes with preinstalled proxy software. Infoblox found about 25% of its customers had at least one Kimwolf-related domain query since Oct 2025, with infections tied to government, education, healthcare, finance, and DoD networks worldwide. The campaign shows how a single proxy infection can enable lateral movement.
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Hooked a --dry-run option into a weekday-reporting app. It prints, without changes, what would happen: which reports are generated, files zipped/moved, and uploads/downloads. Used daily for quick sanity checks and fast feedback during development, it helped verify configuration and state and test behavior (e.g., date changes) without running the full workflow. Downside: it adds some branching in code to print-only actions. It suits batch-style workflows; early adoption yielded noticeable benefits.
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Epic Aerospace's Chimera GEO-1, a space tug attached to a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload, is about 53 million kilometers from Earth and may still be alive, with Epic pursuing a revival. Founder Ignacio Belieres Montero, a Buenos Aires engineer who left Stanford to start Epic, built Chimera GEO-1 to push satellites into GEO. After launch, it went silent; Epic chased signals for months using ground stations in Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Germany, and finally a link via Goonhilly in the UK. A major software overhaul and appeals for NASA/ESA deep-space support follow, as Montero vows to bring it back.
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William Foege, a physician who led the CDC’s Smallpox Eradication Program and co-founded the Task Force for Global Health, died at 89. He helped drive smallpox to eradication (no cases since 1977; eradicated in 1980) and later led the CDC and advised the Gates Foundation. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and co-authored pro-vaccine polio eradication remarks; in 2025 he and other former CDC directors criticized Robert Kennedy Jr.'s health policies. His work has saved hundreds of millions of lives.
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zupat/related_post_gen is a data-processing benchmark that compares Rust, Go, Swift, Zig, Julia and others. It implements a top-5 related-post finder: read a JSON of posts with tags, build a tag → post indices map, then for each post tally shared-tags with other posts, sort by count, and output the top-5 related posts to JSON. The repo includes a README with the algorithm steps, run/benchmark scripts (run.sh, run.ps1), Docker support, and performance tables across varying post counts (5k, 20k, 60k) and languages, including concurrent variants and optimization history.
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2025 LLVM year-in-review covers ptradd migration progress (GEPs canonicalized to a single offset), ptrtoaddr for CHERI, lifetime intrinsics tightened (allocas only, size arg removed), enhanced capture tracking distinguishing address vs provenance, ABI lowering library prototype, alignment consistency fixes, ConstantInt assertions extended to ConstantInt::get(), modest compile-time notes (AArch64 slower; minor SCCP improvements), optimizations like store-merge and PredicateInfo in non-IP SCCP, Rust updates to LLVM 20/21 with read-only captures and memset optimizations, packaging RPM pitfalls, governance: elected area team and project council activity, spec working group on provenance/byte type, plus large PR reviews.
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Enigma Technologies' deep-dive on Ferrari and the financial markets.
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Noctalia-shell is a sleek, minimal desktop shell for Wayland, built on Quickshell for performance. It natively supports Niri, Hyprland, Sway, MangoWC and labwc, with a plugin system and rich theming options, designed to stay out of your way. Getting started via documentation; contributions welcome; MIT licensed. Development uses Nix devShell. Active project with a strong community and regular releases.
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