Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

https://images.digitalfoundry.net/19e3ca4a25c2c/steam-controller-engineering-diagram.970x.jpg
Valve released CAD files for the Steam Controller and Puck, allowing modders to create custom accessories. The files are under a Creative Commons license for non-commercial use, with commercial entities needing to contact Valve directly.

Appearing productive in the workplace

Generative AI is creating a new form of "slop" in workplaces, where workers rely on tools to produce work without understanding its quality. This leads to a loss of judgment and expertise, as humans become conduits for AI-generated output rather than evaluators of its quality.

Permacomputing Principles

Permacomputing promotes sustainable digital practices through 10 principles, including resilience, hardware care, and simplicity, to reduce environmental and socio-economic impact. It encourages users to observe, question, and reimagine technology to create a more just and regenerative digital culture.

Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE

https://aniket.foo/photos/iscsi/1-netboot-menu.jpg
The user set up a Debian 13 server for Netboot.xyz and used it to remotely boot a Debian installation on a network drive via iSCSI, avoiding the need to repartition their local NVMe drives. They configured the setup to use a custom menu, iSCSI targets, and ZFS volumes, and successfully installed Debian on a remote drive using the Proxmox host as the iSCSI target.
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The US Library of Congress recommends SQLite, XML, JSON, and CSV as storage formats for datasets due to their high chance of survival and accessibility. These formats are chosen based on disclosure, adoption, transparency, external dependencies, patent impact, and technical protection mechanisms.

Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like

The author discussed the convergence of vibe coding and agentic engineering, realizing that relying on AI tools for coding can blur the lines between responsible and irresponsible use. They value proven solutions over perfect documentation and tests.

ProgramBench: Can Language Models Rebuild Programs from Scratch?

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
Researchers created ProgramBench to evaluate software engineering agents' ability to develop software holistically. Agents struggled to fully resolve tasks, favoring monolithic implementations that differ from human-written code.

Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)

https://www.chevrolet.com/content/dam/chevrolet/na/us/english/index/performance/new/ecrate/01-images/cpp-ecrate-masthead-l.jpg?imwidth=1200
Chevrolet Performance's eCrate system is a 50-state emissions street legal kit for electric vehicle conversions. It includes a 66 kWh lithium-ion pack and 400-volt electric drive motor for most conventional combustion engine vehicles.

Show HN: Agent-skills-eval – Test whether Agent Skills improve outputs

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agent-skills-eval is a test framework for Agent Skills that runs skills against the same prompts twice, once with and once without the skill, to measure its impact. It produces a side-by-side report with a judge model's grades and can be used with various agents and models, including OpenAI, Together, and Anthropic.

RSS Feeds Send Me More Traffic Than Google

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/page-views.webp
User's blog traffic comes from various sources, with 25% from subscribers and the rest from search engines, link aggregators, and other online platforms. They track traffic from RSS, email, and other sources to understand where people find their blog.

From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth

https://imagedelivery.net/iHX6Ovru0O7AjmyT5yZRoA/d58722e1-ec33-4417-59a9-e63119bd6d00/public
The user's company Val Town switched from Clerk to Better Auth for authentication due to reliability and rate limiting issues with Clerk, which caused site outages and complexity. Better Auth provided a more reliable and customizable solution, allowing Val Town to regain control over user sessions and data.

The Mathematical Dance Inside Plant Cells

https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Nico-Schramma-co.Nico-Schramma.webp
Plants adapt to changing light conditions by reorienting leaves and stems, and chloroplasts within cells move to seek shade or sunbeams. Chloroplasts self-organize into a mathematical optimum to balance light absorption and protection from excessive light.

The Vatican's Website in Latin

https://www.vatican.va/latin/immagini/latin_index_13.jpg

Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA

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Google Cloud launched Google Cloud Fraud Defense, a platform to verify bots, humans, and AI agents, securing digital interactions and commerce. It measures and controls agentic activity, preventing evolving threats and securing customer journeys to accelerate business growth.

What I Learned Making an App for My Family

The user built an app called OurCar to help their family share a car, solving issues like gas bill splitting and car location tracking. The app was built using Flutter and Pocketbase, and while it was a successful prototype, it never reached a 1.0 release due to the family's relocation and lack of interest from other users.

Pen pal programs endure in a digital age

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A 13-year-old girl in New Zealand and a girl in New Hampshire became pen pals in 1985 through International Youth Service, and after 40 years, they finally met in person. Despite the decline of traditional mail, pen pal programs are experiencing a resurgence, especially among younger generations who value tactile, slower forms of communication.

Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2

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The user is extremely dissatisfied with the new "modern user interface" in Photoshop 2026, citing numerous usability issues and design problems that make the software feel unstable and deteriorate on its own. The user believes the changes are a result of carelessness and laziness, rather than a genuine effort to improve the software, and that the team failed to consider the needs of long-time users.

Show HN: Hallucinopedia

Hallucinopedia is an encyclopedia covering unusual topics with equal seriousness. It features articles on obscure events, scientific disciplines, and cultural phenomena.

Programming Still Sucks

The author describes the tech industry as a burning ship with no clear direction, where employees are struggling to keep up with the demands of their jobs and the constant introduction of new technologies. The author argues that the real problem is not AI, but rather the greed of corporate leaders who prioritize profits over people and the well-being of their employees.

Community firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper reader

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader/master/docs/images/cover.jpg
CrossPoint Reader is an open-source firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper display reader, offering EPUB reading with multi-language support. It's built using PlatformIO and targets the ESP32-C3 microcontroller, aiming to unlock the device's potential.

Show HN: Tilde.run – Agent sandbox with a transactional, versioned filesystem

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Tilde provides a versioned filesystem for autonomous AI agents, ensuring safe use with real data and logging every action. It's built on lakeFS, a battle-tested data versioning layer for managing billions of objects.

Building the TD4 4-Bit CPU

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The TD4 is a 4-bit CPU built from 74-series TTL logic ICs, featuring 12 instructions and a 16-byte ROM. It's a simple, educational tool for understanding computer architecture, with a straightforward build process and no firmware or calibration required.

Building my own Vi text editor in BASIC

https://leetusman.com/nosebook/images/yvi.webp
The user likes reinventing wheels, especially in art, craft, food, and code, to learn and shape tools to fit their mind. They built a BASIC-based text editor, yvi, with Vi-like commands, which they use for coding and writing.

Learning the Integral of a Diffusion Model

https://sander.ai/images/flow_maps_diagram001.png
Flow maps are a way to speed up sampling from diffusion models by predicting any point on a path from any other point on that same path, rather than just the tangent direction at each point. They can be used for faster sampling, more efficient reward-based learning, and improved sampling steerability, but training a flow map is significantly more involved than training a diffusion model.

Finding the differences in a series of power supplies

Manufacturers produce power supply series to share infrastructure and optimize components for each output rating. Models within a series typically share similarities in performance, but may have differences in cable selection and minor component changes.

Ads on Apple Maps

https://ads.apple.com/adsdam/homepage/us/en_us/images/maps/2026-03-24/hero.jpg
Apple Maps allows users to explore new places without requiring sign-in or storing personal data. Ads on Apple Maps are private, using random identifiers and not associated with user accounts.

SoundOff: Low-Cost Passive Ultrasound Tags

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Researchers developed SoundOff, a low-cost, passive ultrasound system for smart home sensing. It uses wearable devices to detect unique ultrasonic emissions from tags on furniture, enabling non-intrusive monitoring.

Perturb-MARS: Reading mouse experiments through a human lens

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Researchers developed a system called Perturb-MARS that combines mouse experiments with machine learning to predict human cancer biology. This system allows for more accurate and scalable cancer research, enabling the discovery of new cancer targets and combination therapies.

A Theory of Deep Learning

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Deep learning works by memorizing noise and signal, with the signal channel allowing generalization and the reservoir containing memorized noise. A new theory explains generalization and provides a way to train directly on population risk, eliminating overfitting and suggesting more efficient model architectures.

Ted Turner has died

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Ted Turner, a media mogul and philanthropist, died at 87 after a life of revolutionizing television news and building a media empire. He founded CNN, a pioneering 24-hour news network, and was a devoted philanthropist, conservationist, and activist.