How to feed a dictator

29 Michelangelo11 2026-06-20 01:17:47 UTC theguardian.com Llama Share 0

A documentary film, How to Feed a Dictator, explores the lives of five private chefs who served notorious dictators, revealing the moral complexities of their experiences. The film highlights the chefs' deep trust in their dictators, which also ensured their distance from the outside world.

Think of the children: How to force real ID for all internet traffic (2023)

103 Bender 2026-06-19 20:46:47 UTC nochan.net Full Share 45

There are no instances in ATProto

344 danabramov 2026-06-19 15:46:47 UTC overreacted.io Llama Share 194

The concept of instances in social media is a category error, as it's a Mastodon-brained concept that doesn't apply to atproto, which separates hosting and apps. Decentralization in atproto is achieved by swapping hosting or making new apps, unlike Mastodon where decentralization is measured by the number of instances.

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

441 ilreb 2026-06-19 20:46:47 UTC reuters.com Full Share 288

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I used sound waves to make espresso. It could cut coffee‑brewing energy use by ¾

191 zeristor 2026-06-19 15:46:47 UTC theconversation.com Llama Share 130

A Colombian scientist developed an ultrasonic espresso method using high-frequency sound waves to extract coffee flavor without hot water, saving up to 75% of energy. The method produces espresso-strength coffee in under three minutes, with taste results similar to traditional espresso.

Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

655 ck2 2026-06-19 16:46:47 UTC startupfortune.com Llama Share 308

Hyundai is buying SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, gaining full control of the humanoid robotics company. This move will allow Hyundai to deploy Boston Dynamics' robots in its own factories, starting with the electric Atlas robot at its Georgia plant by 2028.

Aikido Code Audit

13 ilreb 2026-06-20 00:46:47 UTC aikido.dev Llama Share 6

Aikido Code Audit fills the gap between SAST and pentesting by analyzing static code to surface multi-step vulnerabilities. It helps developers catch security flaws before production, reducing remediation costs and improving code quality.

Surprising Economics of Load-Balanced Systems

41 KraftyOne 2026-06-19 20:46:47 UTC brooker.co.za Llama Share 13

The client-observed mean request time varies with c, asymptotically approaching one second as c increases. This is because the time spent in queue approaches zero as the number of servers increases.

Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

58 rrvsh 2026-06-20 00:46:47 UTC newsletter.kentbeck.com Llama Share 34

To be considered a successful engineer, focus on completing tasks in a reasonable time and not causing others excessive work. To stand out, learn from each task, make a case for not doing it, and implement efficient solutions that benefit others.

Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

152 ValentineC 2026-06-19 22:46:47 UTC theguardian.com Llama Share 80

Elon Musk's SpaceX debut on the stock market made him the world's first trillionaire, with millions of Americans indirectly investing in the company through retirement savings. Many Americans are concerned about their savings being tied to major tech firms, citing fears over widening inequality and market instability.

Bobby Prince, composer for Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Duke Nukem 3D, has died

199 pgrote 2026-06-19 19:46:47 UTC legacy.com Llama Share 24

Bobby Prince, a renowned composer and sound designer, passed away on June 16, 2026, leaving behind a legacy in the video game industry. He is survived by his wife Connie, children, and grandchildren, and will be remembered for his kindness, humor, and love.

A record 242 US cities now have starter homes that cost $1M

30 littlexsparkee 2026-06-20 01:02:47 UTC investors.zillowgroup.com Llama Share 15

The number of cities with $1 million starter homes has nearly tripled since 2020, with 242 cities now having such homes, mainly in California, New York, and New Jersey. The pandemic housing boom has driven up home values, but conditions are slowly becoming friendlier for buyers with more inventory and slower price growth.

Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28

541 philonoist 2026-06-19 06:46:47 UTC jvm-weekly.com Llama Share 334

Oracle engineer Lois Foltan confirmed that JEP 401: Value Classes and Objects will be integrated into the main OpenJDK repository and target JDK 28. The feature allows programmers to declare value classes and objects that can be optimized for performance, enabling density and locality in memory, and is currently in preview mode.

A Love Story

5 surprisetalk 2026-06-20 00:46:47 UTC pudding.cool Prefix Share 0

Once upon a time in the 1960s, an Asian boy and girl met at college. We’ll call them Henry and Mary. This is the template of a love story that many of us dream of living. It involves two people who will build a life together—and work through whatever comes their way. Henry is one of the thousands of adults Stanford University researchers have been tracking since 2017. Every person on this ...

How many of the 170k English words do you know?

229 abnry 2026-06-19 14:46:47 UTC vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app Full Share 353

How many of the 171,476 English words do you actually know? Take our scientifically stratified 100-question challenge to find out.

Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem

15 a_t48 2026-06-19 22:46:47 UTC digitalorientalist.com Llama Share 0

Arabic script has problematic digital representation due to its development in pen and ink, and the movable type printing technology that was not well-suited for it. This led to issues with encoding, searching, and displaying Arabic text on computers.

Egyptian Fractions

63 luu 2026-06-19 17:46:47 UTC blog.plover.com Llama Share 1

The Ahmes papyrus contains a table of Egyptian fraction representations of fractions of the form 2/n for odd integers n. The Egyptians used a table of these representations to calculate other fractions by doubling and adding 1.

A Perceptron in Age of Empires II

23 EvgeniyZh 2026-06-19 21:46:47 UTC adewynter.github.io Llama Share 10

An operational NAND gate and perceptron were built in Age of Empires II using the game's scenario editor, utilizing goats as signal carriers and rails to represent bits. The circuits use XNOR, AND, and OR gates to perform computations, with the environment serving as coding.

Zenzizenzizenzic

67 gyosifov 2026-06-19 22:46:47 UTC en.wikipedia.org Llama Share 20

Robert Recorde introduced zenzizenzizenzic to represent the eighth power of a number in 1557. It is an obsolete notation with more Zs than any other word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

DuckDB Internals Part 1

433 marklit 2026-06-19 03:46:47 UTC greybeam.ai Llama Share 128

DuckDB is a fast in-process analytical SQL database that has gained widespread adoption due to its ease of use and performance. It can read data from various file formats like Parquet, CSV, and JSON, and execute queries directly on these files without the need for a server or cluster.

Telescope Ranchers

100 bookofjoe 2026-06-19 14:46:47 UTC kottke.org Llama Share 41

Starfront Observatories in Rockwood, Texas, offers ultra-dark skies for astrophotographers to control their telescopes remotely. Owner Bray Falls hosts 550 telescopes, allowing users to access them from anywhere for as little as 99 dollars a month.

RhinoCollab a plugin for real-time editing for Rhino 3D

18 Ashxius 2026-06-19 21:46:47 UTC rhinocollab.com Full Share 3

Real-time collaboration for Rhino 3D

Court Records Should Be Free

241 hn_acker 2026-06-19 17:46:47 UTC eff.org Llama Share 42

The Open Courts Act of 2026 aims to eliminate PACER fees and modernize federal court filing systems, improving public access and cybersecurity. The bill is supported by EFF and other organizations, seeking to make court records easier to find and understand.

Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access

433 birdculture 2026-06-19 16:46:47 UTC tales.fromprod.com Llama Share 142

Google Workspace is warning Firefox users to switch to Chrome, affecting Business Plus accounts. This may impact Firefox access, prompting teams to ensure software compatibility across browsers.

A 1976 university experiment spun up the U.S. wind industry

70 pseudolus 2026-06-19 15:46:47 UTC spectrum.ieee.org Llama Share 5

William Heronemus, a UMass professor, led a team that built the first wind turbine, dubbed the "Wind Furnace," in 1976 to prove wind energy's potential. His work sparked the wind industry, inspiring a generation of engineers and leading to the development of modern wind farms.

Show HN: Metiq: a real time 3D globe for 100 public datasets

90 rakeda 2026-06-19 14:46:47 UTC metiq.space Full Share 26

Live worldwide data platform: flights, earthquakes, weather, conflict, markets, space and more on a 3D wireframe globe.

AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks

33 jwilk 2026-06-19 17:46:47 UTC lwn.net Llama Share 20

Arch Linux's AUR was subjected to a sustained attack where attackers created new accounts, adopted orphaned packages, and pushed malicious updates. The attack affected over 1,500 packages, with the attackers using various tactics to evade detection.

Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

236 jxmorris12 2026-06-19 05:46:47 UTC blog.jxmo.io Llama Share 79

To become a successful researcher, you need to combine reading and building skills, and be willing to put in the time and effort required. A good researcher stays open-minded, refuses to let ego cloud their judgement, and is willing to learn from failure.

Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk

114 mplappert 2026-06-19 05:46:47 UTC dfdxlabs.com Llama Share 40

A researcher is conducting independent robotic manipulation research on a tabletop setup with a single industrial-grade robot arm, two cameras, and teleoperation, aiming to test the hypothesis that a single person can achieve meaningful results with a budget of €10,000. The setup includes a UFACTORY xArm Lite 6 robot arm, Intel RealSense D405 wrist camera, and Logitech C920 webcam, with a ...

Ten years of ClickHouse in open source

277 saisrirampur 2026-06-19 08:46:47 UTC clickhouse.com Llama Share 70

ClickHouse is an open-source analytical database that was released in 2016 and has become the most popular open-source database with over 2000 contributors. It was created by a single developer who started with a custom data structure for incremental aggregation and eventually built a full-fledged database system from scratch.