The Bromine Chokepoint: How Strife Could Halt Production of World’s Memory Chips

112 crescit_eundo 2026-04-19 18:13:23 UTC warontherocks.com Llama Share 53

A global semiconductor memory supply chain is vulnerable to a bromine shortage due to Israel's reliance on bromine imports and limited conversion capacity outside the country. A disruption would immediately impact global memory production, affecting consumer devices, military systems, and AI infrastructure.

Vercel April 2026 security incident

395 colesantiago 2026-04-19 15:13:23 UTC bleepingcomputer.com Llama Share 259

Vercel disclosed a security incident after threat actors claimed to have breached its systems and are selling stolen data. The company is investigating and notifying affected customers, advising them to review environment variables and rotate secrets.

Swiss authorities want to reduce dependency on Microsoft

112 doener 2026-04-19 21:13:23 UTC swissinfo.ch Llama Share 36

Switzerland aims to reduce its dependency on Microsoft products, citing concerns over data security. A feasibility study shows replacing Microsoft with open-source software is possible, with Germany serving as a reference.

Show HN: Faceoff – A terminal UI for following NHL games

72 vcf 2026-04-19 18:13:23 UTC vincentgregoire.com Full Share 23

This project was inspired by Playball, a similar terminal application for following MLB baseball games. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the National Hockey League (NHL), any of its teams, or any of its affiliates. All NHL logos, trademarks, and data are the property of the NHL and its teams.

I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator in my own programming language

28 pizza_man 2026-04-19 20:13:23 UTC github.com/navid-m Full Share 7

Chip8 Emulator. Contribute to navid-m/chip8emu development by creating an account on GitHub.

Prove You Are a Robot: CAPTCHAs for Agents

13 lukasec 2026-04-19 20:13:23 UTC browser-use.com Llama Share 3

We launched agent-native signup for Browser Use with no email or OAuth. Agents parse obfuscated math problems, and humans sign up the old way.

Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7

129 pretext 2026-04-19 11:13:23 UTC simonwillison.net Llama Share 73

Anthropic published system prompts for their chat system, with updates from Claude 3 to Opus 4.7, showing changes in child safety, tool usage, and response style. The new prompt includes tools like Claude in Chrome and a tool search mechanism to resolve ambiguities.

Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

501 DamnInteresting 2026-04-19 10:13:23 UTC archive.org Full Share 126

Foreground p.20 RECYCLING USED ICs [theme Hardware] [author Mikkelsen] p.62 DECIPHERING MYSTERY KEYBOARDS [theme Hardware] [author Heltners] p.72 LIFE...

The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

249 helloplanets 2026-04-19 08:13:23 UTC madhadron.com Llama Share 94

The user explains that programming languages can be grouped into seven fundamental "ur-languages" that share common patterns and characteristics, and that learning a language from the same ur-language is easier than learning one from a different ur-language. The user suggests learning a language from the ALGOL family (such as Python or Java), then learning a language from the Prolog family ...

Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game

390 speckx 2026-04-19 05:13:23 UTC kotaku.com Llama Share 214

Game developers use various methods to pause games, including manipulating time, freezing frames, and ignoring pause commands for certain functions. Pausing a game can be a complex process, but most modern game engines support it, and developers can implement it with proper testing and consideration of different pause scenarios.

Notion leaks email addresses of all editors of any public page

286 Tiberium 2026-04-19 16:13:23 UTC twitter.com/weezerosint Full Share 95

Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot. Some privacy related extensions may cause issues on x.com. Please disable them and try again.

I learned Unity the wrong way

65 lelanthran 2026-04-19 18:13:23 UTC darkounity.com Full Share 30

I spent 3 years building Unity games by copying tutorials and stitching forum scripts together. Then an interviewer asked me what Queue<T> was. I could not answer.

Nanopass Framework: Clean Compiler Creation Language

105 NordStreamYacht 2026-04-19 12:13:23 UTC nanopass.org Full Share 24

The Nanopass Framework is an embedded domain-specific language for creating compilers that focuses on creating small passes and many intermediate representations. Nanopass reduces the boilerplate required to create compilers making them easier to understand and maintain.

The RAM shortage could last years

122 omer_k 2026-04-19 08:13:23 UTC theverge.com Llama Share 113

Memory makers will meet only 60 percent of demand by 2027 due to production shortages. New fabrication capacity won't be online until 2027 or 2028, exacerbating the RAM shortage.

SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017)

148 Eridanus2 2026-04-19 09:13:23 UTC usenix.org Llama Share 64

A new type of malware called SPEAKE(a)R can covertly turn headphones, earphones, or simple earbuds connected to a PC into microphones when a standard microphone is not present, muted, taped, or turned off. The malware can record human speech of intelligible quality and eavesdrop from nine meters away, posing a significant cyber security threat.

KTaO3-Based Supercurrent Diode

23 PaulHoule 2026-04-19 17:13:23 UTC pubs.acs.org Llama Share 1

Researchers have demonstrated the supercurrent diode effect (SDE) in KTaO3 (KTO) superconducting weak links (WLs) using conductive atomic force microscope (c-AFM) lithography. The SDE polarity can be controlled by varying the WL position, and the rectification efficiency reaches up to 13% under optimal magnetic field conditions.

What are skiplists good for?

245 mfiguiere 2026-04-19 03:13:23 UTC antithesis.com Llama Share 58

The user encountered a problem at Antithesis where they needed to efficiently query a large tree data structure in Google BigQuery, but point lookups were slow. They solved this by inventing a "skiptree" data structure, which is a hierarchy of skiplists that allows for efficient querying with a fixed number of JOINs in SQL.

Reverse Engineering ME2's USB with a Heat Gun and a Knife

41 Bawoosette 2026-04-19 16:13:23 UTC github.com/coremaze Llama Share 6

The user, a leader of the Miuchiz Reborn project, successfully reverse engineered the ME2 handheld device's protocol by desoldering its flash chip, decapsulating the microcontroller, and using a digital microscope to identify the chip's type. With the microcontroller's instruction set and datasheet, the user was able to write code to interact with the device over USB, allowing them to read ...

Blue Origin's rocket reuse achievement marred by upper stage failure

30 rbanffy 2026-04-19 20:13:23 UTC arstechnica.com Llama Share 5

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket successfully reused a booster but failed to reach its intended orbit due to an upper stage issue. The mission's payload, a cellular broadband satellite, was placed into an inaccurate orbit and will be de-orbited.

Six Levels of Dark Mode

7 Akcium 2026-04-19 19:13:23 UTC cssence.com Prefix Share 0

Being reminded of the visually hidden debate hasn’t been the only thing that happened to me on this year’s CSS Naked Day. I’ve observed that on pretty much all the sites I’ve visited, dark mode was rather absent after the styles had been removed. This got me thinking, maybe it’s time to talk about the six levels of dark mode. A less catchy—but more accurate—title for this blog post would have ...

A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

44 isomorphy 2026-04-19 20:13:23 UTC philosopher.eu Llama Share 48

Ayer recounts his near-death experience, where he died for four minutes, and upon revival, had vivid memories of a red light and attempting to fix space-time. His experience suggests consciousness may continue after death, but does not necessarily imply a future life.

Show HN: Shader Lab, like Photoshop but for shaders

127 ragojose 2026-04-19 11:13:23 UTC eng.basement.studio Full Share 36

A powerful toolkit to create, stack, and animate shaders.

Eliza a Play by Tom Holloway

8 abrax3141 2026-04-19 19:13:23 UTC mtc.com.au Prefix Share 6

As society grapples with the ethics of rapidly advancing and increasingly invasive technologies, director Paige Rattray (Black is the New White, Fangirls) delivers an urgent and unnerving depiction of the birth of artificial intelligence. From four-time Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Award winner Tom Holloway (The Museum of Modern Love, Double Indemnity, Storm Boy) comes this riveting new ...

Show HN: Prompt-to-Excalidraw demo with Gemma 4 E2B in the browser (3.1GB)

79 teamchong 2026-04-19 12:13:23 UTC teamchong.github.io Full Share 39

Gemma 4 E2B generating Excalidraw diagrams from text prompts, running entirely in desktop Chrome via WebGPU. KV cache compressed 2.4× using TurboQuant's polar+QJL algorithm reimplemented in WGSL compute shaders. Requires Chrome 134+ on desktop — Safari/iOS not supported.

Reading Input from an USB RFID Card Reader

26 kevwedotse 2026-04-19 15:13:23 UTC kevwe.com Llama Share 5

You had a cheap RFID reader and wanted to capture its input without affecting other applications. You used the EVIOCGRAB ioctl in C and found a Python solution, but preferred a native approach.

4-bit floating point FP4

63 chmaynard 2026-04-18 22:13:23 UTC johndcook.com Llama Share 45

Floating point numbers with less precision, such as 4-bit floating point numbers, are used in neural networks to fit more parameters into memory. The 4-bit floating point number format, FP4, uses the first bit for sign and the remaining three bits for exponent and mantissa, with different formats like E2M1 having unevenly spaced values on both log and linear scales.

The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

192 signa11 2026-04-19 03:13:23 UTC apenwarr.ca Llama Share 97

The user attended an IETF meeting to learn about TCP BBR and observed the ongoing debate about IPv6 replacing IPv4, which led them to investigate the history of networking protocols and their complexities. The user discovered that the intertwining of ethernet and IP protocols has resulted in a complicated system, making it difficult to imagine a network without MAC addresses and IP addresses, ...

Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group

226 aa_is_op 2026-04-19 14:13:23 UTC lbc.co.uk Llama Share 146

A Dubai airline worker was arrested for sharing bomb damage photos in a private WhatsApp group, charged with publishing information harmful to state interests. He remains in detention, highlighting concerns over Dubai's surveillance operations and access to private communications.

It's cool to care (2025)

86 surprisetalk 2026-04-19 07:13:23 UTC alexwlchan.net Llama Share 37

The writer is in New York to see the musical Operation Mincemeat on Broadway, a show about British spies who fooled Hitler with a dead body and fake papers. The writer sees the show as a story about friendship and the power of caring about something.

Minimal Viable Programs (2014)

38 bachmeier 2026-04-19 13:13:23 UTC joearms.github.io Llama Share 6

A minimal viable program is the smallest program that solves a particular problem without extra features. It's simple, reliable, and does one essential thing well, like Dropbox and Twitter.