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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

Jacobi Ellipsoid

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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.

Entropy of a Mixture

Proclivity arises when differentiating cross-entropy with respect to temperature. the main value of such a test is in detecting the unexpected event that a=1.a = 1.a=1 - q=q0.q = p_0 p ). if x=y, then y=z, i=x, and b=c=f, we get c(x)

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.

Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ask HN: 80s electronics book club; anyone remember this illustrator?

A US DIY electronics magazine had a book of the month club in the early 80's with topics like robots, computer vision, and hydrophones. The books featured illustrations of complex robots and machines, possibly by an unknown illustrator.

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.

Printegrated Circuits: Merging 3D Printing and Electronics

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Oliver Child created "printegrated circuits" allowing 3D printed objects to be embedded with microcontrollers. This technology enables low-volume production of smart objects at an affordable cost.

Reverse Engineering Vercel's BotID

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Vercel's BotID Basic mode is a simple anti-bot system that collects client-side signals to detect bots, but it can be easily bypassed. Vercel recommends using Deep Analysis mode, which uses Kasada's anti-bot script to actively block more advanced bots.

Asynchronous Error Handling Is Hard

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The article discusses three error handling options for API designers: exceptions, immediate error returns, and get-last-error idioms, and concludes that immediate error returns are the best choice for CUDA due to their simplicity and performance. CUDA's immediate error return approach requires developers to check every return value, but this can be mitigated by preallocating resources and ...

Auth for B2B SaaS: it's not like auth for consumer software

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Business software authentication differs from consumer software due to varying user control and scale. Business software requires features like user impersonation, SAML support, and role-based access control to accommodate enterprise needs.

New proof dramatically compresses space needed for computation

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Computer scientists have found that some problems can be solved with much less memory than previously thought, specifically about √t bits instead of t bits. This breakthrough relies on transforming problems into equivalent ones that can be solved with less space, allowing for more efficient use of memory.