| 1. | Astra for Law(openai.com) |
| 578 points by vertigoruntime 26 days ago | 678 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
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| 2. | Bonsai 2 27B: Near-Lossless Compression in a 9x Smaller Footprint(prismml.com) |
| 576 points by JonSchneider 26 days ago | 197 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: PrismML released Ternary Bonsai 2 27B, a compressed version of Qwen3.8 27B using ternary {−1, 0, +1} weights with FP16 scaling (1.76 bits/weight), shrinking the model to 5.9GB while retaining 98.2% of full-precision benchmark performance. It hits 143 tokens/sec on an RTX 5090 and 46.8 tokens/sec on M5 Max, supports 262K context and multimodal input, and runs via CUDA or MLX under Apache 2.0. | |
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| 3. | Bend – A language that blocks AI mistakes via proof, on CPU and GPU(bend-lang.com) |
| 591 points by nicolas-siplis 26 days ago | 302 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Bend is a programming language with Python-like syntax that compiles to fast native code, runs in parallel across CPU cores and GPUs, and includes a Lean/Rocq-style proof checker fast enough to run on every AI code change. Its key pitch is a `LAWS.bend` file where developers declare invariants that AI-generated code must mathematically prove it doesn't violate before committing, aimed at making "vibe-coded" apps trustworthy without human code review. It's early-stage, back-end focused, and works on Linux/macOS. | |
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| 4. | Qwen 3.8 Omni Flash(qwen.ai) |
| 327 points by jjcm 26 days ago | 127 comments | permalink | |
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| 5. | Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep(github.com) |
| 696 points by bookofjoe 26 days ago | 191 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Hister is a self-hosted, private search engine that full-text indexes web pages you visit (via a Firefox/Chrome extension) and local files, letting you search them from a web UI, terminal, or AI assistant via MCP. It runs locally with no telemetry or mandatory cloud, supports field filters, wildcards, and optional semantic search through a configurable embeddings endpoint. Written in Go and licensed AGPLv3, it's installable via binary, Homebrew, Docker, or Nix. | |
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| 6. | Wax motor(en.wikipedia.org) |
| 504 points by mhb 27 days ago | 106 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Wax motors are linear actuators that exploit the 5-20% volume expansion of wax during melting to convert thermal energy into mechanical force, capable of producing up to 4000 N. Compared to solenoids, they offer smooth actuation, resistive (non-inductive) electrical behavior, and can operate passively from ambient heat sources. Common applications include front-load washing machine door locks, dishwasher detergent dispensers, thermostatic mixing valves, hydronic zone valves, greenhouse vent controls, and aerospace fluid systems. | |
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| 7. | Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA(global.fujitsu) |
| 626 points by my123 28 days ago | 246 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
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| 8. | A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos(hacktron.ai) |
| 484 points by Handy-Man 26 days ago | 206 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Researchers at Hacktron chained a heap overflow in libheif (exploitable via image uploads to Discourse, which OpenAI's community forum runs on) with an OpenAI SSO misconfiguration to take over employee ChatGPT/Codex accounts and open a PR in OpenAI's internal monorepo—all within 72 hours, earning a $6,500 bounty. They leaned heavily on Claude Opus 5, which produced a reliable ASLR-enabled exploit within hours of release after Opus 4.8 had failed. The authors argue AI is collapsing the cost of weaponizing known memory-corruption bugs, eroding the "security through complexity" that previously protected typical targets. | |
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| 9. | Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter(gowers.wordpress.com) |
| 274 points by simianwords 27 days ago | 400 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Timothy Gowers explains why he declined to sign a letter from 25 Fields medallists warning that AI's rapid problem-solving threatens mathematical understanding. He argues the letter overweights conceptual understanding relative to problem-solving, and that a flood of AI-generated results, while imperfectly digested, would likely increase both the volume of properly digested mathematics and the choice of results to study. His real concern is social: that young people will lose motivation to pursue math PhDs, funding will dry up, and the human mathematical tradition may not be transmitted to future generations. | |
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| 10. | The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities(newyorker.com) |
| 257 points by pseudolus 26 days ago | 442 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: The US dominates global self-storage with ~90% of capacity, and there are more facilities domestically than Starbucks, McDonald's, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino's, Dunkin', and Costco combined, generating over $40 billion annually. The industry, which took off in the 1970s and evolved into an institutional asset class, is driven by "the four D's": death, displacement, divorce, and downsizing. Texas leads all states in facility count, while Wichita was once dubbed the Self-Storage Capital of the US. | |
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| 11. | Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws them as 1800s illustrations(github.com) |
| 2389 points by arnemunthekaas 28 days ago | 267 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A Raspberry Pi project that uses BirdNET-Go to detect birds by audio in real time and displays the matched species on an Inky Impression e-ink panel (or web kiosk) as hand-curated 1800s natural-history illustrations. The library includes 800+ public-domain cutouts covering 400+ species, arranged on a textured page with larger birds centered and sized by body mass. Currently biased toward Scandinavian/British/Central European species, with a live demo running from the author's kitchen in Bergen, Norway. | |
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| 12. | Show HN: Share your AI Setup, Learn from others(mysetup.ai) |
| 231 points by steveybrown 26 days ago | 135 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: mysetup.ai is a new community site for sharing AI tooling setups—agents, workflows, skills, and systems—created by someone who felt overwhelmed trying to piece together how others are actually working with AI from scattered Twitter posts. The creator admits it may end up being a community of one, but hopes others will contribute their own configurations. | |
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| 13. | Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust(developer.nvidia.com) |
| 957 points by nonmaskable 27 days ago | 402 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: NVIDIA is officially supporting native Rust for CUDA GPU kernel programming via two projects: cuda-oxide (a SIMT-style rustc codegen backend targeting PTX, requiring nightly) and cutile-rs (a higher-level tile-based model on stable Rust that JIT-compiles through CUDA Tile IR). Both leverage Rust's ownership model to catch aliasing bugs and data races at compile time, though cuda-oxide is early alpha while cutile-rs is already used in HuggingFace's Grout and mistral.rs. NVIDIA plans to mature these toolchains through 2027 alongside CUDA C++ and Python. | |
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| 14. | How GLM built its own inference infrastructure(z.ai) |
| 401 points by whiteros_e 27 days ago | 279 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
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| 15. | CCC invites all model citizens to 40C3(events.ccc.de) |
| 370 points by antonly 27 days ago | 223 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: The Chaos Computer Club has announced 40C3, taking place December 27-30, 2026 at the Hamburg Exhibition halls under the motto "Model Citizens" — a call to develop new societal models amid rising authoritarianism. Calls for Participation are now open for talks, art, music, DJs, and punk performances at what remains Europe's largest non-commercial hacker conference, organized by volunteers and drawing over 16,000 attendees. | |
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| 16. | Cloudflare/Security-Audit-Skill(github.com) |
| 208 points by donk8r 27 days ago | 38 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Cloudflare open-sourced a "skill" for coding agents that runs a structured six-phase security audit: reconnaissance, coverage-led hunting, adversarial validation by separate agents, schema-validated findings output, independent verification, and target-neutral reporting. It enforces principles like separating hunters from validators, requiring source-grounded confirmation, and treating defense-in-depth gaps as hardening notes rather than vulnerabilities. This is the single-repo precursor to Cloudflare's internal vulnerability discovery harness, installable via the Skills CLI and requiring Node.js plus a sandboxed environment for executing target code. | |
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| 17. | One year of sponsored Servo development(servo.org) |
| 354 points by AshleysBrain 27 days ago | 144 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Servo maintainer Josh Bowman-Matthews (@jdm) recaps his first year in a part-time role funded entirely by OpenCollective/GitHub donations, during which he reviewed 1,150 PRs, filed 114 newcomer-friendly issues (92% fixed), nominated 8 new maintainers, and wrote onboarding documentation. Notable work included supporting a large rewrite of Servo's JS engine integration to fix GC-related panics and stabilizing flaky tests to smooth the contribution process. | |
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| 18. | Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres(rohanbansal.com) |
| 689 points by polyphilz 27 days ago | 143 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A developer post-trained a 4B parameter model (Qwen3.8-4B-Distill) using supervised fine-tuning on GPT-6 Astra trajectories plus custom GRPO reinforcement learning to generate Postgres query hints via the pg_hint_plan extension. The resulting agent achieved a 44.7% latency reduction across 113 join-heavy JOB benchmark queries, up from a baseline where the untrained model couldn't even produce valid plans for 99 of them. Key engineering work included building a low-noise Postgres measurement rig (tuning shared_buffers was critical) and designing reward signals robust to execution-time variance. | |
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| 19. | Reversing Factorio's RNG(gegell.github.io) |
| 251 points by jheitmann 31 days ago | 48 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Factorio uses the taus88 PRNG (three XORed LFSRs), which is linear over GF(2) and therefore trivially breakable—observing enough output bits lets you reconstruct the internal state via matrix inversion and predict all future "random" rolls. The author built an in-game implementation using repair pack recyclers as entropy sources (each craft leaks ~2 bits via 50/50 output splits), needing 44 recycling operations to recover the full 88-bit state and predict quality upgrade outcomes. Note: this works in Factorio 2.0 but was broken by RNG changes in 2.1. | |
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| 20. | My temporary PHP fix from 2014 has nearly 20M installs. Today I'm deprecating it(jakeasmith.com) |
| 337 points by jakeasmith 28 days ago | 104 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A developer's 174-line PHP polyfill for `http_build_url()`, written in 2014 as a temporary shim during an AOL CMS upgrade, has been installed nearly 20 million times via Packagist and bundled into widely-used projects like WPML and Debian packages. After rediscovering the package (which contains an amusing bug that strips the letter "a" from paths with trailing slashes), the author is deprecating it rather than handing it off, citing supply-chain risks à la the xz backdoor and pointing users to PHP League's URI library or PHP 8.5's native URI API. | |
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