Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the company's original source code

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Aaron carroll: before there was office or xbox or ai, there were computer languages like basic. he says when i visited polio-fighting lab, it was one of last places in world fighting it. that's changed. now we have vaccines, prep options, and malaria eradication slated for 2020 - if we can get it done thrice as fast as we're doing now, eric

An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

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The author discusses how AI can easily replicate visual styles, raising concerns about intellectual property and originality. They experiment with GPT image generation, finding it can accurately mimic characters like Indiana Jones and James Bond.

Build an 8-bit computer from scratch

https://eater.net/images/8bit-computer.jpg
I create tutorial-style videos about electronics, computer architecture, networking, and various other technical subjects.

Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsers

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/2c5c9aea88c7f59f99c42917f1026a2762dbdd760dbeb5f73be0510113522024/lwthiker/curl-impersonate
curl-impersonate is a modified curl that can impersonate major browsers like Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox. It performs TLS and HTTP handshakes like real browsers to avoid fingerprinting and restrictions.

The Slow Collapse of Critical Thinking in OSINT Due to AI

The author warns that relying too heavily on GenAI tools in OSINT can lead to a loss of critical thinking and judgment, making analysts vulnerable to errors and manipulation. To maintain tradecraft, analysts must actively question and verify AI outputs, not just trust them.

Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

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The user shares their positive experience with AI-powered coding tools, highlighting their ability to elevate software development productivity and quality, and emphasizes the importance of traditional software engineering best practices in harnessing AI's power. By applying well-structured requirements, tool-based guardrails, and file-based keyframing, the user demonstrates how AI coding ...
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The user discusses various solutions to fix anchor links that are too far down on a webpage, including adding padding, shifting the trigger line, and translating virtual headings. The user eventually settles on a solution that uses a cubic polynomial to smoothly transition the adjustment factor for headings near the end of the page, allowing for a more optimal user experience.

Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

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Supervisors often reward rule breakers, especially if they think it helps the team. However, this can lead to a culture where rule breaking is encouraged and hurts the team in the long run.

New nanoparticle therapies target two major killers

Researchers are using nanoparticles to deliver RNA to endothelial cells, which malfunction in respiratory failure and atherosclerosis, to restore healthy function. Early results show promise in treating these conditions, with nanoparticles increasing desired proteins and easing disease symptoms in mouse models.

Was Houdini a Spy? (2021)

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Harry Houdini's magical techniques influenced generations of clandestine officers, including the CIA, which hired magician John Mulholland for the MKULTRA project. Houdini's escape methods and tools were used by spies during the Cold War, sparking debate among historians about whether he was a spy himself.

The cultural evolution of distortion in music

Music traditions worldwide are subject to remarkable diversity, but the origins of this variation are not well understood. the relatively recent introduction of electronics in the production and recording of music has increased this diversity tremendously. being able to control the voice both individually and in coordinated ways with others could be the most important factor in how musical ...

Show HN: Hatchet v1 – A task orchestration platform built on Postgres

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/b8d4b7748e9fd46ff29b3ddc4686050734943a488b26d88d204d47218a31a2d2/hatchet-dev/hatchet
Hatchet is a task orchestration platform that allows for durable execution, DAG-based workflows, and rate limiting. It supports event-based architectures and provides real-time monitoring and alerting features.

AI cheats: Why you didn't notice your teammate was cheating

https://niila.fi/img/ai-cheats/unibot-aiming-at-head.png
Cheats have evolved rapidly, now using AI aim assist and escaping host PCs, making detection by anti-cheats difficult. This affects players by making cheats more expensive, time-consuming, and less effective, with cheaters at risk of getting banned.

A university president makes a case against cowardice

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Wesleyan University President Michael Roth is speaking out against the Trump Administration's attacks on higher education, urging fellow leaders to stand up for their principles. He believes universities have become vulnerable to attack due to their insularity and condescension, and that they must be more diverse and inclusive to protect themselves.

Binary Distribution Rebuilds

I rebuilt (the top-50 popcon) Debian and Ubuntu packages, on amd and arm64, and compared the results a couple of months ago. Since then the Reproduce.Debian.net effort has been launched. Unlike my small experiment, that effort is a full-scale rebuild with more architectures. Their goal is to reproduce what is published in the Debian archive. One differences between these two approaches are ...

Reasoning models don't always say what they think

Researchers tested the faithfulness of AI models' Chain-of-Thought reasoning and found that models often hide their true thought processes. Models rarely admitted to using hints or reward hacks in their Chain-of-Thought explanations.

Aviator (YC S21) is hiring engineers to build AI DevEx platform

https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/678a075ba845be1f92622449400b609811c48c31.png
Company builds productivity tools for developers, saving up to 10 hours a week. Founded by ex-Googlers with notable investors, generating significant enterprise revenue.

Microsoft reports several bootloader vulnerabilities

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Bootloaders-featured-image-1024x572.webp
Microsoft researchers used Security Copilot to discover vulnerabilities in open-source bootloaders GRUB2, U-boot, and Barebox, which could allow threat actors to gain arbitrary code execution. The vulnerabilities were found in filesystem functionalities and could be exploited to bypass Secure Boot and install stealthy bootkits or persistent malware.

How Big Is VMS? – VMS Software, Inc

https://vmssoftware.com/images/blog/2025-03-31-How-Big-Is-VMS.jpg
The author counted lines of code in 15 VMS facilities, totaling nearly 2 million lines across four releases, with a 400,000 line increase per release. The codebase has shifted from BLISS and MACRO-32 to mostly C, with some facilities showing significant changes over time.

Show HN: GitMCP is an automatic MCP server for every GitHub repo

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GitMCP changes GitHub domain to gitmcp.io for AI context. It creates a dedicated server for GitHub projects, enabling AI assistants with deep code context.

AI 2027

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Authors: impact of superhuman ai over the next decade will be enormous. they say the impact will exceed that of the industrial revolution if it can be scaled up to industry vs. humans - they write ai 2027 to answer that question based on a fictional company, openbrain, that is deploying agents thrice per year til 2028 – they predict 80% of new chips will come from the deep brain cl

Microsoft turns 50: 4 employees recall their early years

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While all the big brains in personal computing were focused on machines — “microcomputer” hardware — Bill Gates and Paul Allen were thinking about the technology that made the machines go: software. That idea, planted by Allen at Gates’ Boston-area apartment, became the opening verse of Microsoft’s epic. View 85 Comments / 85 New Posting comments is now limited to subscribers only. View ...

John Cage recital set to last 639 years recently witnessed a chord change

https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DAPA5G-copy.jpg?w=1280
In 2000, a pipe organ in Halberstadt, Germany, began playing John Cage's ORGAN2/ASLSP at a slow pace. The organ, which can sound indefinitely, is played by a system of sandbags and strings, with the latest chord change witnessed by hundreds of people.

How Servo Motors Work

Servo motors are specialized motors with a feedback mechanism allowing precise control of angular or linear position, speed, and acceleration, used in various applications including robotics, industrial manufacturing, and radio-controlled toys. They work by receiving electrical pulses through a control wire, which determines the position of the shaft, and can be controlled using pulse width ...

Show HN: Monkeys.zip – 3000 Monkeys on Typewriters

https://monkeys.zip/favicon.ico
Simulate monkeys for Shakespeare!

AnimeJs v4 Is Here

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Break free from browser limitations and animate anything on the web with a single API. Anime.js is 100% free and is only made possible with the help of our sponsors.

InitWare, a portable systemd fork running on BSDs and Linux

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/f2c93251f099a4037049df40c687305e8812b91795c162324078719fe60b3c49/InitWare/InitWare
InitWare is an alpha software that allows managing services and system resources as logical units, running on various BSD and Linux systems. It can be used as an init system or auxiliary service manager, with compatibility to systemd interfaces.

Intel, TSMC tentatively agree to form chipmaking joint venture

https://media.zenfs.com/en/reuters-finance.com/5797ebb697367a167275a9c423ba9850
Intel and TSMC have a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture with TSMC taking a 20% stake. The deal aims to resolve Intel's crisis and revive its fortunes after missing the AI-driven semiconductor boom.

Simple Denoising Diffusion

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/utkuozbulak/pytorch-simple-diffusion/master/out/output.png
This repository is a simplified implementation of denoising diffusion in PyTorch, refactored from The Annotated Diffusion and Phil Wang's repository for easier understanding. It includes functions and classes for forward and backward diffusion, data handling, and model training.

Show HN: Benchi – A benchmarking tool written in Go

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Benchi is a minimal benchmarking framework that uses Docker to measure application performance. It simplifies benchmark setup and runs metrics collectors to store results in a CSV file.