The New Skill in AI Is Not Prompting, It's Context Engineering

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Context Engineering is the discipline of designing dynamic systems that provide the right information and tools to LLMs for task accomplishment. It involves structuring necessary information to ensure LLMs have everything needed to succeed.

Price of rice in Japan falls below ¥4k per 5 kilograms

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Rice prices in Japan fell to ¥3,920 per 5 kilograms, down ¥256 from the previous week, for the 4th straight week. The drop is attributed to government stockpiled rice released under discretionary contracts.

I write type-safe generic data structures in C

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The user describes a type-safe generic data structure technique in C using unions and typeof, allowing for error checking when adding wrong types to a list. This technique can be used for various data structures, including linked lists, arrays, and hash maps, and is compatible with C23 and modern compilers.

The hidden JTAG in a Qualcomm/Snapdragon device’s USB port

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Qualcomm published EUD source code for Embedded USB Debug, a debug interface in Qualcomm SoCs since 2018. This allows for SWD debugging over USB without external tools, greatly improving low-level debugging on Qualcomm boards.

There are no new ideas in AI only new datasets

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AI progress is steady and continuous, with researchers making incremental improvements to existing ideas. The next breakthrough may not come from a new concept, but from accessing new data sources like video or robots.

Bell Labs DSP Pioneer Jim Boddie Leaves Lasting Legacy

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James R. “Jim” Boddie, a pioneer of the programmable, single-chip digital signal processor, died on 2 December at his home in Canton, Ga., following a long illness. The IEEE senior member was 74. While working as an architect and designer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., Boddie applied his expertise in signal processing algorithms to develop a new type of semiconductor: the ...

Entropy of a Mixture

The entropy H(pλ) of a mixture of two probability density functions p0 and p1 varies as a function of λ, with its derivative at λ=0 being H(p1,p0)−H(p0), which measures the proclivity of p1 to p0.

The Original LZEXE (A.K.A. Kosinski) Compressor Source Code Has Been Released

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LZEXE's source code has been released under the MIT license, allowing it to be used in other projects. The source code may not be for the exact compressor used in Sonic games, but it can be modified to function identically.

End of an Era

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The author spent decades trying to create interactive storytelling technology but failed to gain interest from others. His only success was in creating Le Morte d'Arthur, an interactive game that he designed for himself.

Show HN: TokenDagger – A tokenizer faster than OpenAI's Tiktoken

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/5466e55ec9fef19d6bc5c0522127f9cf605f4b73d7e00ee5bbd409f9af9fd91d/M4THYOU/TokenDagger
TikToken is a fast implementation for large-scale text processing, offering 2x throughput and 4x faster tokenization. It outperforms other tokenizers like Llama and Mistral in various benchmarks.

Creating fair dice from random objects

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Researchers created 3D-printed dice with exotic shapes like a kitten and dragon, and they are fair dice with results matching predicted random outcomes. A new tool estimates the probability distribution of resting configurations using geometry, making it possible to design dice with desired properties.

Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

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A new version of Ensō is available for public testing with a simplified UI and 6 predefined themes for accessibility. The developer is focusing on polishing the app and removing distractions to create a high-quality typing experience.

Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

Find more information on using WiFi Motion in the Xfinity app.

The provenance memory model for C

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A provenance model for C pointers was developed to track the origins of pointer values, providing a precise mathematical specification and stimulating discussion in the C, C++, Rust, and compiler communities. The model defines storage instances, abstract addresses, and exposure/synthesis of pointer values to ensure sound aliasing analysis and prevent optimization complications.

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

User is a developer working on various projects including TickerFeed, a stock market discussion forum, Fro, a self-insurance app, and WhereToDrink, a craft beer venue catalog. They also share their experiences with other projects such as Lunova, a QuickBooks app, Lång, a daily spending guide, and OnlineOrNot, an uptime monitoring solution.

Ask HN: What's the 2025 stack for a self-hosted photo library with local AI?

You're building a personal photo management system with natural language search, focusing on local hardware and privacy. You're looking for advice on tools, models, and best practices to combine EXIF, face recognition, and semantic vector search.

Show HN: We're two coffee nerds who built an AI app to track beans and recipes

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BeanBook is an AI-powered coffee tracker and notebook that helps you explore, track, and ask questions about your coffee beans.

14.ai (YC W24) hiring founding engineers in SF to build a Zendesk alternative

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We're a San Francisco-based team serving startups and enterprises with secure, reliable, and high-performance solutions. As a founding engineer, you'll work with our stack and engage with customers on topics like concurrent systems and LLM engineering.

They don't make 'em like that any more: Sony DTC-700 audio DAT player/recorder

https://kevinboone.me/img/dtc-700.jpg
DAT players offered high-quality digital recording, but were expensive and had reliability issues. They failed to gain popularity in the domestic market due to a combination of factors, including high cost, lack of original material, and market saturation.

Jacobi Ellipsoid

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Haumea_Rotation.gif/250px-Haumea_Rotation.gif
The Jacobi ellipsoid is a triaxial ellipsoid in hydrostatic equilibrium formed by a rotating fluid body of uniform density. It was discovered by Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, who showed that ellipsoids with three unequal axes can be figures of equilibrium.

CertMate – SSL Certificate Management System

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Certmate is a powerful ssl certificate management system designed for modern infrastructure. it supports 19 dns providers (cloudflare, microsoft, godaddy, etc.) detailed setup instructions: see dns_providers.md for provider-specific configuration. - easily manage certificates across multiple datacenters and multiple servers. works with ssl certificates from dozens of vendors, including escrow.com and

The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish

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User finished a text adventure game they started as a teenager, recreating it with Inform 7 after 40 years. The game, The Plot of the Phantom, is now playable in a web browser.

Donkey Kong Country 2 and Open Bus

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A bug in Donkey Kong Country 2's spinning barrels was caused by a typo in the game code. The game reads from an invalid memory address, which triggers open bus behavior, making the barrels spin forever in ZSNES emulator.

My Database Is My Application: Rethinking Webhook Logic with DuckDB and SQL

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Imagine you need to build a system for processing incoming webhooks. You're probably picturing a familiar setup: a lightweight web server (FastAPI, Flask, Express.js, etc.), some Python (or Node.js, or Go) handlers to parse JSON, a sprinkle of business logic, and then maybe persisting data to a traditional database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. Perhaps you'd toss events onto a message ...

Researching LED Displays for the Time Circuits

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The user is researching specifications for LED displays to replicate the time circuits from the Back to the Future films. They have determined the desired display specifications as 0.6" digit height, 0.5" display width, hard-edged digits, and a black face.

Making a $20 smart boombox [video]

Datadog's $65M/year customer mystery solved

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Coinbase spent $65M on Datadog in 2021 for their due bill that year, and they settled it in Q1 2022. The company later moved to an in-house observability stack with Grafana, Prometheus, and Clickhouse, but stayed with Datadog after a deal was made that made it a more appealing option.

Cloud-forming isoprene and terpenes from crops may drastically improve climate

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Scientists are learning how living beings contribute to Earth's clouds, with gases from plants and plankton playing a significant role in cloud formation. This knowledge can help improve climate predictions and potentially lead to new geoengineering solutions.

AI is Anti-Human (and assorted qualifications)

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The author is cautioning against the over-reliance on AI, arguing that it can lead to dependence, detachment, and a loss of human agency. They propose setting limits on AI use to prevent its negative effects and promote a more balanced approach to technology.

Brazil's Supreme Court clears way to hold social media liable for user content