| 1. | Qwenputer: A functioning, deterministic RISC-V CPU inside Qwen3.5(divagr.com) |
| 689 points by csmantle 1 day ago | 145 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A researcher compiled a working 32-bit RISC-V CPU (RV32IM) directly into the weights of Qwen 3.5 4B, using the model's Gated DeltaNet attention layers as exact, addressable RAM—no training, external tools, or sandboxes involved. The CPU runs during forward passes, executes C and MicroPython, passes official riscv-tests, and boosts arithmetic benchmarks to match or beat giving Qwen a Python tool (e.g., 48.6%→100% on NUPA long-integer math). The author also added an in-weight filesystem and suggests the technique as a testbed for AI safety research on RNN-state reasoning and tamper-proof monitoring. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 2. | Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?(nullpt.rs) |
| 1562 points by hazebooth 1 day ago | 298 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Why Is This Fingerprinting Script Creating Bioweapons?... | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 3. | StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month(data.stackexchange.com) |
| 795 points by babelfish 1 day ago | 718 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 4. | A Health Update(furbo.org) |
| 343 points by frizlab 1 day ago | 61 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: The author recounts a grueling year of chemotherapy for lymphoma, including spinal taps, infusions, 50 pounds of weight loss, nerve damage, and a brush with pneumonia that nearly killed him. He's now recovering well—regaining strength, nerve function, and mobility—and is in the hospital for a final methotrexate treatment before his port is removed. In a fitting twist, he spent part of his hospital stay patching his servers against a critical PHP vulnerability that dropped mid-treatment. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 5. | CNC Stone Carving(carmelitegothic.com) |
| 523 points by bschne 1 day ago | 142 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Carmelite Monks are using 5-axis CNC machines from Italian manufacturer Prussiani to carve intricate Gothic stonework for church construction, reducing ornate pieces that once took skilled carvers months down to days. The workflow is fully digital: artist-monks sculpt designs in 3D modeling software (like Mudbox), programmers generate toolpaths in CAM software, and sawyers operate the diamond-tipped machines alongside wire saws for simpler profiles. The approach lets computer-literate young people contribute to traditional craftsmanship without needing hammer-and-chisel training. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 6. | Claude Code regularly sends each background agent’s transcript to its model(gist.github.com) |
| 562 points by NikZaal 1 day ago | 227 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Claude Code silently burns ~15-20% of user tokens (mostly on Opus) by having each background agent summarize its own transcript every ~30 seconds into a 3-5 word status line that never leaves the agents panel. There's no official setting to disable it, so the author ships an ~80-line Bun preload hook that wraps setTimeout/setInterval and suppresses the summarizer timer by matching its callback source text. Tested on Linux across Claude Code 2.1.257–2.1.312; it may silently fail after updates, so re-verification via OpenTelemetry is recommended. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 7. | The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds PCBs on demand(circuithub.com) |
| 559 points by seddona 3 days ago | 260 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: CircuitHub has revealed The Grid, a Massachusetts factory where levitating movers shuttle individual PCBs between solder, pick-and-place, reflow, and inspection stations, with AI scheduling eliminating per-design changeovers so mixed low-volume runs are as efficient as high-volume ones. A sample 5-board order runs $630 delivered in 4 days versus ~$465 in 9 days from a Shenzhen quick-turn shop. The system has operated for five years, shipped 2.2M+ boards, and is scaling 5x this year to meet demand from startups and major tech companies. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 8. | Gemini 4 Carbon(blog.google) |
| 1002 points by acossta 1 day ago | 796 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, a frontier model focused on cybersecurity and long-horizon agentic coding tasks, ranking #1 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (59) and leading benchmarks like SEC-bench Pro (88.2%) and ExploitGym (54.8%). It claims major alignment improvements, including 0% success rate against prompt injection attacks and near-elimination of benchmark cheating. Initially rolling out to cyber defenders via the Fairwind Program before broader release, priced at $2/$10 per million input/output tokens. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 9. | MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch(apple.com) |
| 616 points by etothet 1 day ago | 1067 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Apple's new MacBook Pro introduces a tandem OLED "PROLED XDR" display with built-in touch (sensor integrated into the panel rather than layered on top), reaching 2000 nits peak HDR brightness and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It also adds a Dynamic Island for Spotlight and Live Activities, M5 Pro and M5 Max chips with Neural Accelerators in each GPU core, up to 24 hours of battery life, and a redesigned thermal and six-speaker audio system in a slimmer, lighter chassis. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 10. | AlpineBSD(wiki.alpinebsd.org) |
| 245 points by bradley_taunt 1 day ago | 240 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: AlpineBSD combines the NetBSD kernel and libc with an Alpine Linux-inspired userspace, using apk-tools, busybox, s6 init (with planned OpenRC support), and a GNU-leaning toolchain. It's an original distribution rather than a fork, with an explicit policy against including LLM-generated code in the base system or main package repository. The project is early-stage with no installer yet, and inherits NetBSD's limited hardware support. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 11. | Apple's git still trusts the compromised eMudhra certificates(emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com) |
| 1188 points by galadran 2 days ago | 408 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Despite being notified of the eMudhra CA compromise on October 17th, Apple's bundled developer tools (git, curl, python3) on macOS still trust the compromised certificates, allowing HTTPS interception of git operations, credentials, and code. The macOS 27.2 update released October 26th failed to fix the issue and reverted manual workarounds users had applied. While Apple patched Safari and its networking framework, developers must manually remove the affected roots from /etc/ssl/cert.pem and reapply after each OS update. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 12. | Dayjob: Tax – evaluating AI agents on 50 professional tax assignments(surgehq.ai) |
| 254 points by landonxi 1 day ago | 172 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Surge AI's new DAYJOB: Tax benchmark evaluates AI agents on 50 realistic tax assignments spanning eight practice areas, testing professional judgment on messy records rather than just well-defined questions. Frontier models performed poorly, with Claude Sonnet 5.5 leading at just a 10.8% pass rate (requiring 95% rubric satisfaction). Common failures include missing consequential deadlines clients didn't ask about and acting on unverified assumptions (e.g., marital status) despite contradicting evidence in the provided files. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 13. | Emacs Turns 50(technologyreview.com) |
| 512 points by internet_points 1 day ago | 236 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: EMACS, the full-screen text editor born at MIT's AI Lab in 1976, turns 50 this year and remains widely used. Created by Richard Stallman, Guy Steele, and David Moon as a standardized set of macros atop the TECO editor, it spawned commercial variants from Honeywell and others—whose commercialization pushed Stallman to launch the GNU Project, with GNU Emacs as its first major application. Apple shipped GNU Emacs with Mac OS X until 2019, and macOS still retains hidden EMACS keybindings today. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 14. | Ghostty 1.4(ghostty.org) |
| 1342 points by deaux 2 days ago | 433 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Ghostty 1.4 ships 7 months of work from 172 contributors, including a 100% complete Kitty graphics protocol implementation (the first terminal besides Kitty itself), transparent scrollback compression that cuts memory use 70-90% (raising the default limit to 50MB), and major performance gains—25-55% higher I/O throughput on macOS and up to 6x faster VT parsing. The release also adds a proper `ghostty +ssh` wrapper, a new GTK rendering pipeline using EGL/DMABUF that fixes blurry fractional scaling, macOS 27 compatibility, and patches for 10+ security advisories including sandbox escapes via Kitty graphics and paste protection bypasses. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 15. | Genie 4(deepmind.google) |
| 1038 points by acossta 2 days ago | 587 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Google DeepMind announced Genie 4, a real-time interactive world model that generates photorealistic simulations with native audio, ambient sound, and interactive dialogue, steerable via keyboard controls and text prompts. It integrates with Gemini models (including Gemini 3.8 Flash as an in-the-loop reasoning agent) to maintain scene coherence and handle multi-step tasks, with applications in robotics training, filmmaking pre-visualization, game prototyping, and enterprise simulation. It's rolling out as a research preview to trusted testers and Google AI Ultra subscribers, with known limitations around object permanence, text rendering, and long-term consistency. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 16. | Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI(religionnews.com) |
| 482 points by danso 1 day ago | 520 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 17. | Ink droplets in motion snag top prize in Nikon Small World contest(arstechnica.com) |
| 415 points by _Microft 4 days ago | 70 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Ole Bielfeldt won the 52nd annual Nikon Small World microscopy competition with an image capturing an inkjet printer depositing ink on paper, achieved by using a microscope objective in an unconventional way. The contest, founded in 1974, highlights light microscopy imagery, and is accompanied by the Small World in Motion video competition added in 2011. Nikon has published the top 10 winners and will release a 2027 calendar featuring them. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 18. | Survival LLM: AI assistant and emergency library that runs on your own computer(brangus.io) |
| 538 points by Luc 2 days ago | 202 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Survival LLM is a free, open-source offline AI assistant for emergencies that bundles a local LLM with a ~9GB library including Wikipedia, medical references, FEMA/CDC guides, military survival manuals, iFixit, and wikiHow. It auto-selects a model based on your RAM (from IBM Granite 4.2 8B on 16GB machines up to NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Super on 128GB Macs), cites sources for every answer, and runs fully offline on Apple Silicon Macs or 64-bit Windows 10/11. Recent updates added configurable reasoning limits, memory notes, and visible chain-of-thought. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 19. | Raspberry Pi Zero 3W and Pi 4 Model A spotted in device trees(bret.dk) |
| 225 points by sthlmb 2 days ago | 152 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Device tree files in Raspberry Pi's Linux kernel have revealed two unannounced boards: a Zero 3 W and a Pi 4 Model A, both using the Broadcom BCM2711 (quad-core Cortex-A72) from the Pi 4. The Zero 3 W would be a significant upgrade over the Zero 2 W's A53 chip, while the 4 Model A appears to be a stripped-down Pi 4 (no Ethernet, single HDMI, no analog audio) with possible external antenna switching. Pricing, RAM, and release dates remain unknown, though kernel support typically signals an imminent launch. | |
HN Discussion:
| |
| 20. | Git for the US Code(lexifina.com) |
| 448 points by alansaber 2 days ago | 266 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A new tool applies git-style version control to the US Code, letting users view the statutory text in force on any given date, see which Act wrote each phrase, and track changes over time. The authors replayed public laws against release points from 2017 onward, successfully reproducing 361 of 365 changes across nine titles. The motivation is partly that LLMs frequently misapply superseded or temporally-wrong statutes—one cited study showed accuracy jumping from 24% to 87% when correct historical text was retrieved—making verifiable legal lineage essential. | |
HN Discussion:
| |