Size of Life

https://neal.fun/size-of-life/animals/stickers/corpse-flower.webp
Explore the scale of living things, from an amoeba to a blue whale.

Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

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Super Mario 64 for the PS1

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/203fd0d8338156629a235847b91b7e46a297df66da1d649877fef8353784dbcd/malucard/sm64-psx
The Super Mario 64 PSX port is a heavily modified version that only supports PSX and PC for debugging. It requires an original game copy for asset extraction and has various optimizations for PSX performance.

Auto-grading decade-old Hacker News discussions with hindsight

https://bear-images.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/karpathy/hnhero.webp
User created a project to analyze Hacker News front pages from 10 years ago using LLM ChatGPT 5.1 Thinking, grading comments for prescience and accuracy. The project aims to train forward future predictors and raise awareness about the potential for future LLMs to scrutinize current actions.

Terrain Diffusion: A Diffusion-Based Successor to Perlin Noise

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
Researchers introduced Terrain Diffusion, an AI-era successor to Perlin noise, for procedural world generation. It uses InfiniteDiffusion and diffusion models for seamless, real-time synthesis of boundless landscapes.

Qwen3-Omni-Flash-2025-12-01:a next-generation native multimodal large model

https://qianwen-res.oss-accelerate-overseas.aliyuncs.com/Qwen3-Omni-Flash-2025-12-01/q3o251201.png#center
Qwen3-Omni is a next-generation AI model that processes multiple inputs and generates text and speech outputs. It has been enhanced for improved performance, efficiency, and natural interactions in 119 languages.

Scientists create ultra fast memory using light

https://viterbischool.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Untitled-design-2025-12-04T011055.831.png
Scientists at USC ISI and UW-Madison developed the world's first regenerative photonic memory on a commercial foundry platform, a major step toward practical light-based computing. This breakthrough addresses interconnect delay and enables faster, more energy-efficient systems by transmitting data with minimal electrical resistance or heat.

DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

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DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, used smuggled Nvidia chips to develop an AI model. Nvidia denies any involvement in the smuggling operation, but is investigating the claims.

Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

You like Gundam and Jane Austen because they both explore tensions between personal desires and institutional logic. Both often feature characters with privilege but limited power, navigating rigid social structures and making choices between duty and personal feelings.

Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux

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Valve's Steam Machine supports HDMI 2.0 due to software limitations, not hardware. HDMI 2.1 support is still a work-in-progress due to the HDMI Forum's unwillingness to disclose the 2.1 specification.

Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

This data shows how many homes cross ALPR cameras on their way to nearest amenities like hospitals and supermarkets. It uses OpenStreetMap data and shortest-path algorithms to calculate this.

Why the Sanitizer API is just `setHTML()`

Sanitizing HTML involves removing unwanted elements and attributes to prevent XSS bugs, but traditional methods can cause Mutated XSS (mXSS) due to context sensitivity. A better approach is to use a context-sensitive sanitizer with a method like Sanitizer.sanitize(input, context) to ensure safe HTML parsing.

Factor 0.101 now available

Developers made UI changes and fixed scaling issues on Linux and Windows. They also updated Factor, a stack-based programming language, with new features and tools.

9 Mothers (YC X26) Is Hiring

Typewriter Plotters (2022)

https://biosrhythm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1482114631913115650-FJGHZcTXsAIsyUQ-600x800.jpg
Typewriter plotters used ballpoint pens to draw text and graphics, with some models connecting to computers for custom printing. Panasonic, Brother, and other brands produced these pen typewriters in the 1980s, with prices ranging up to $350 for the Panasonic RK-P400C.

Show HN: A 2-row, 16-key keyboard designed for smartphones

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/16fYBMZ7fcok8idXqOPVYxfmHCf4OnxiE5hImXZjoewyXvZC2FNwbVFAdCtfA2kCt7zjOee3MY9QwJYmYsSYBZll9AiKZxswmzli3Ym8q6gT5uU3Jy_lxA=s0
Keys become up to 66% larger and vowels remain standalone in QWERTY positions. Consonants are integrated based on frequency, using simultaneous taps with four triggers to increase speed.

RoboCrop: Teaching robots how to pick tomatoes

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Super-Flat ASTs

https://jhwlr.io/super-flat-ast/0_loc.png
The user is optimizing the memory usage of a recursive descent parser by implementing string interning, bump allocation, and a super flat representation of the abstract syntax tree (AST) to reduce memory usage and page faults. The optimizations result in a 20% reduction in memory usage and a significant decrease in page faults, making the parser more efficient and scalable.

Launch HN: InspectMind (YC W24) – AI agent for reviewing construction drawings

InspectMind is an AI plan checker that finds errors in construction drawings, details, and specs to prevent delays and rework. It reviews full drawing sets in minutes, catching issues that cause rework before construction begins.

Intermittent hypoxia increases blood flow and benefits executive function

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Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

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Israel used Palantir's AI software in attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing 37 and injuring 3,400. Palantir's involvement in these attacks raises concerns about its role in Israel's use of force and potential war crimes.

COM Like a Bomb: Rust Outlook Add-in

https://tritium.legal/static/images/open-with-tritium.png
The user is implementing a Tritium add-in for Outlook using Rust and the windows-rs crate, which provides a COM interface to interact with Outlook's attachment context menu. They encountered memory corruption issues due to incorrect COM interface signatures and had to use an LLM to generate the correct signatures, highlighting the importance of careful interface implementation when working with COM.

Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems

https://s7d1.scene7.com/is/image/dmqualcommprod/engineering-human-progress
Qualcomm acquired Ventana Micro Systems to enhance its RISC-V capabilities and leadership. The move strengthens Qualcomm's CPU engineering and advances its custom Oryon CPU development.

Volcanic eruptions set off a chain of events that brought Black Death to Europe

https://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/shorthand/251968/RecB8QP39p/assets/n0KQyiu8tA/eastern-mediterranean-atlas-catalan-1375-ls.jpg
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Leibniz Institute found a link between a 1345 volcanic eruption and the Black Death. The eruption led to crop failures, famine, and the introduction of the deadly bacterium Yersinia pestis to Europe via trade routes.

Kernel Float: Unlocking Mixed-Precision GPU Programming

Revisiting "Let's Build a Compiler"

A programmer translated a 35-year-old compiler tutorial from Pascal to Python, emitting WebAssembly code. The tutorial's effectiveness lies in its step-by-step recursive-descent parser and direct code generation approach.

Deprecations via warnings don't work for Python libraries

https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/18519037?v=4
urllib3 removed deprecated APIs in v2.6.0 but users were still caught off guard. DeprecationWarning may not be effective for deprecating APIs in Python libraries.

England Historic Aerial Photo Explorer

https://historicengland.org.uk/media/ecupcxgw/houses-of-parliament-eaw001431_1940.jpg?width=1000&height=500&format=webp&quality=90&upscale=true&v=1db6740e645e5f0
Historic aerial photos show England's landscape changes and hidden archaeology. They can be viewed and analyzed with various tools and base maps.

The future of Terraform CDK

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hashicorp/terraform-cdk/main/docs/terraform-platform.png
Terraform CDK will be archived on December 10, 2025, and no longer maintained. Users can continue to use it at their own risk.

Map of all the buildings in the world

https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2025/12/gizmodo-scrnshot-globalbuildingatlas-1280x824.jpg
Researchers at TUM created a high-resolution 3D map of all buildings worldwide, called the GlobalBuildingAtlas, with 2.75 billion models. The map offers detailed information on urbanization, poverty, and climate studies, and can be accessed interactively.