A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"

The author criticizes Dmitry Grinberg's article on RISC-V, arguing that his criticism of the architecture is biased and misses the point. The author claims that RISC-V's openness and low cost make it accessible to developers in developing countries, allowing them to create their own projects without relying on expensive tools or licenses.

Claude: System Prompts

https://platform.claude.com/docs/og?locale=en&path=release-notes/system-prompts&design-rev=1
Claude's web interface and mobile apps use a system prompt to provide information, including the current date, at the start of conversations. The prompt is updated periodically to improve Claude's responses, but not for the Claude API.

The AI Credit Resale Economy

https://cdn.ploy.ai/2eb2235a-6b78-4d32-9713-f051311d8809/user/0a6c2555-convo-with-broker.webp
Token brokers buy unused credits from startups and resell them, offering discounts to attract buyers. This market is growing rapidly, with tens of millions of credits being offered across various sites and forums.

St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core

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The Saint Lucie Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 was manually shut down after 3 control rods dropped into the reactor core. The event, classified as a non-emergency by the NRC, had all systems responding normally post-trip.

MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent

https://math-ai-org.github.io/mathcode/Demo.png
MathCode is a terminal AI coding assistant that converts plain language math problems into Lean 4 theorems and attempts formal proofs. It features various tools for efficient proof-solving, including a persistent Lean REPL and theorem libraries.

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2026/07/AntonOlgaFormatted.jpg
A favorite professor taught Anton Chekhov's short stories as models of writerly virtues, emphasizing his life and work. Chekhov's personal life was marked by a mix of romantic relationships, including with actress Olga Knipper, whom he married at 41 and died from tuberculosis at 44.

NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/6a738d140ec867995d3634da/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/gps-final-new-new2.jpg
A neuroscientist studied how people navigate without GPS, finding that relying on technology can lead to a loss of spatial awareness and cognitive mapping skills. Many participants reported difficulty navigating when their GPS was disrupted, highlighting the importance of these skills in everyday life.

Clamiga: Common Lisp for the Amiga

https://nnamgreb.de/static/gfx/blogs/clamiga-aos3_1.jpg
CL-Amiga, a Common Lisp implementation for the Amiga family, is built to run on m68k and PPC architectures. It has a self-contained bytecode VM with no external runtime dependencies and supports various features like object system, condition system, macros, and interactive development style.

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome

https://buf.build/images/Dot-Grid.svg
The Language Server Protocol is the standard API for integrating language support into your favorite IDE or text editor, such as VSCode, IntelliJ, or Neovim. An LSP server provides the smarts that power go to definition, code completion, finding references, and semantics-aware syntax highlighting. Before today, Protobuf lacked the same LSP support other major programming languages enjoy. We ...

Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers

You recently switched to Cloudflare's nameservers, which silently added a JS analytics snippet to your site. This approach is invasive and should opt-in instead of opt-out for users' consent.

Archie G. Norcross' Maine Forest Fire Maps (1918–22)

https://pdr-assets.b-cdn.net/collections/maine-forest-fire-maps/BRM3549-Norcross-View-from-Double-Top-1919_lowres-3000x2990-edit.jpg?width=1200&height=765
Jack Kerouac worked as a fire lookout in the North Cascade Mountains from 1956 to 1957, seeking an ascetic experience. He kept panoramic maps of his surroundings, which were drawn by civil engineer Archie G. Norcross for the Maine Fire District between 1918 and 1923.

Before Rightmove, there was the Cosmorama

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/Cosmorama-room.jpg
Researchers found that a London estate agency used an early form of virtual property tour, called cosmorama, in the 1840s and 1850s to promote luxury homes. This technique allowed customers to view specially commissioned images through convex lenses, creating an immersive experience decades before digital technology.

Show HN: A public AI whose memory is shared across all users

https://wildstatic.com/og.jpg
It's never been reset.Don't say anything you don't want people to know.Come back later and see how things have evolved.

Tasklet (YC P26) Is Hiring a Head of Design Engineering

https://tasklet.ai/og-image.png
Tasklet is hiring a Head of Design Engineering to create a simple, intuitive, and beautiful AI platform for businesses. The ideal candidate will be an exceptional product thinker, designer, and frontend engineer who can own the design process end-to-end.

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/1000013219-1024x683.png
The author, a hobbyist, has developed software for Casio Pocket Computer calculators and created a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) hosted on one of the devices. The BBS allows users to connect via telnet and log amateur radio contacts using the calculator's programming capabilities.

A SAT Attack on Tarski's High School Algebra Problem

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
A countermodel to Tarski's identity exists with 11 elements, but no smaller models satisfy it. The smallest possible countermodels are of size 12, and there are exactly 8,957,952 such models up to isomorphism.

The deep history behind the Road to Nowhere inside the Great Smoky Mountains

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A mysterious tunnel known as the Road to Nowhere in North Carolina leads to a dead end and is linked to the construction of Fontana Dam. The dam's creation displaced communities and sparked environmental concerns, leading to a stalled road project meant to access ancestral cemeteries.

Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter

nginx/1.29.2

Chestnut – eGPU dock with open-source firmware

https://hwbusters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/comma-chestnut-egpu-hero.jpg
Comma.ai's Chestnut eGPU dock allows users to read and modify its firmware, a first for the industry. The $249-$799 dock enables more powerful driving models in cars, with some versions reaching 100W of power similar to Tesla's HW4.

Asus Bike Booster

https://dlcdnwebimgs.asus.com/gain/36fca81d-66d4-4a3a-9fa3-05976be35494/w800
Follow the user manual for safe and proper use of the ASUS Oxiis E250G1. Failure to comply with instructions may result in damage to the product or others, and voids warranty.

Research papers using "kidney disappointment" instead of "kidney failure"

Researchers studied persistent kidney disappointment using the UCI dataset, exploring its causes and outcomes. Kidney failure can lead to various health issues, including heart problems, bone diseases, and increased potassium levels.

The weekend is 100 years old

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1f3905995ffc776ec5f8197ecf6aca7e027a16e5/0_0_5992_4000/master/5992.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none
The concept of the weekend has evolved over 100 years, from its origins in Henry Ford's five-day workweek to modern debates about a four-day week. The weekend is now seen as a time for rest and leisure, but also for socializing and pursuing passions.

Asynchronous I/O in DuckDB: Work, Thread, Work

https://duckdb.org/images/blog/authors/pedro_holanda.jpg
DuckDB version 2.0 will support asynchronous reads of Parquet and CSV files, significantly speeding up queries when synchronous I/O saturates the available bandwidth. This change is particularly beneficial for remote data access, such as in data lakes like DuckLake.

Superconducting monolayer cuprate with a single CuO2 plane

https://media.springernature.com/m312/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-026-10857-1/MediaObjects/41586_2026_10857_Fig1_HTML.png
Researchers have created a single layer of Bi2Sr2CuO6+δ, containing only one CuO2 plane, to study high-temperature superconductivity in its extreme 2D limit. This reduction leads to an approximately 10% decrease in the optimal superconducting transition temperature and unprecedented tunability.

AI Coding Without the Vibes

https://peterbloem.nl/images/soupcutter.jpg
The author argues that students should learn to use AI tools like Claude Fable to review their code, rather than relying solely on human reviewers. This approach allows for faster development and reduces the risk of bugs being missed, while still maintaining the benefits of human judgment and creativity in coding.

Does anyone run Postgres without PgBouncer?

https://brandur.org/assets/images/favicon/favicon-256.jpg
The author discusses the lack of standardization in Postgres connection pooling, citing PgBouncer as a widely used but often overlooked solution. Many managed Postgres providers bundle PgBouncer out of the box, but users still need to learn about its limitations and configuration.

Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (2023)

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9VgW!,w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4697c31d-2502-48d2-b6c1-11e5ea97536f_2560x2174.jpeg
The author discusses the importance of solitude and isolation for creative individuals, citing examples from mathematician Alexander Grothendieck and filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. They argue that this state allows for a heightened sensitivity to new ideas and a freedom from social pressure.