Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

Social media companies manipulate users with algorithmic tweaks to keep them engaged and increase ad revenue. We must take back control by being mindful of engagement traps and using platforms that let us control our experience.

Volkswagen reintroducing physical controls for vital functions

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Join Autocar's WhatsApp community for latest car news and reviews. Associate editor James leads features and interviews industry leaders with over 20 years of experience.

The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

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The US Department of Justice wants Google to sell its Chrome browser and stop paying partners for preferential search engine treatment as part of a final remedy proposal. Google must also give prior notification of new partnerships with competing companies and cannot divest its artificial intelligence investments.
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US federal agents confirm that a $150 million cryptocurrency heist was linked to a 2022 LastPass breach. The attackers cracked master passwords stolen from LastPass to access victims' cryptocurrency wallets.

Undocumented backdoor found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices

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Spanish researchers discovered an undocumented backdoor in the ESP32 microchip allowing spoofing, data access, and persistence. The backdoor, found in 29 hidden commands, poses significant risks for IoT devices with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Kagi Is Bringing Orion Web Browser to Linux

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Kagi is developing its Orion web browser for Linux, aiming for feature-parity with the macOS version by next year. Orion is a zero-telemetry browser with ad and tracking blocking, lower memory usage, and faster speeds.
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User is upset about Honey's rewards program and affiliate scam, warning others not to use it. They're disappointed in PayPal and hope Google removes the extension from their store.

Presenterm: Markdown Slideshows in the Terminal

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presenterm is a terminal-based presentation tool with customizable themes, image support, and code highlighting. It allows exporting presentations to PDF and has various built-in themes for different looks.

Show HN: Open-Source DocumentAI with Ollama

A powerful document question-answering tool that connects to your local Ollama models. Create, manage, and interact with RAG systems for all your document needs.

Discworld Rules

The Contraptions Book club March pick is Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates. Chat thread here. We will discuss this the week of March 24th. I’ll be co-hosting an online salon Silicon Archipelago: A Salon On Open Distributed Southeast Asian Tech Futures on Friday, March 14 (Southeast Asia time). This is a prequel for an in-person workshop on the same themes in Bangkok ...

The Einstein AI Model

The user disagrees with the idea of AI achieving a "compressed 21st century" where all scientific discoveries happen in 5-10 years, instead predicting a future where AI models are "yes-men on servers" due to their inability to challenge the status quo. The user argues that true scientific breakthroughs require AI models to ask non-obvious questions and question common conceptions, rather than ...

You might not need Redis

The author argues that despite Redis's technical merits, it may not be necessary in every situation. They share three personal anecdotes where Redis was introduced but ultimately didn't improve performance or solve underlying problems.

An epic treatise on error models for systems programming languages

Target audience: Practitioners interested in programming language design and familiar with representations of errors in at least a few different languages such as error codes, checked/unchecked exceptions, tagged unions, polymorphic variants etc. In research papers on programming languages, there is often a focus on sophisticated type system features to rule out certain classes of errors, ...

Falkon: A KDE Web Browser

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Falkon is a secure browser with an ads blocker and password manager, offering customization options and open-source code. It is developed by KDE and receives regular updates with new features and bug fixes.

Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

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The program is the database is the interface

The user is weighing the pros and cons of using a simple script versus a custom app to manage financial data, considering factors like effort, quality, and ease of use. They are also exploring the idea of using a notebook environment like Preimp, which allows for simple CRUD apps with minimal effort, but requires a rich data model and specific constraints.

Google will still have to break up its business, the Justice Department said

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The Justice Department is requiring Google to break up its business and sell the Chrome browser due to its alleged monopoly over the search industry. Google will also be restricted from paying companies to make its search engine the default on their phones and browsers.

Sam Bankman-Fried thrown into solitary over Tucker Carlson interview: report

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Sam Bankman-Fried was put in solitary confinement for an unauthorized interview with Tucker Carlson, which may be a ploy to get a pardon from President Trump. The interview's timing and Carlson's involvement suggest Bankman-Fried is angling for a pardon, but it may be an uphill climb.

MCP vs. API Explained

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MCP is a standardized protocol connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources, simplifying interactions like a USB-C port. It offers dynamic discovery, two-way communication, and unified access to multiple tools and services.

Asking LLMs to create my game Shepard's Dog

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Create a game called Shepherd's Dog where a player controls a dog to herd sheep into a pen with realistic flocking behavior. The game increases in difficulty with obstacles and wolves, and features a timer, score, and levels with stored game progress.

Long Read: Lessons from Building Semantic Search for GitHub and Why I Failed

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The user built a free semantic search tool for GitHub called SemHub, which enables semantic issue searches across multiple GitHub repos. They documented their learnings, including optimizing vector search latency and overcoming the "vector search filtering" problem using pgvector and Matryoshka embedding models.

Deploy from local to production (self-hosted)

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Airo automates container deployment to self-hosted servers without complex pipelines or services. It builds and pushes Docker images directly to a registry from a local machine.

NASA to launch space observatory that will map 450M galaxies

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NASA's SPHEREx mission will map 450 million galaxies over two years to study galaxy formation and evolution. The mission aims to answer fundamental questions about the universe's origins and the Big Bang.

Improving on std:count_if()'s auto-vectorization

The author optimizes a function to count even numbers in an array by exploiting the constraint that the total number of even values is between 0 and 255, allowing the use of a uint8_t accumulator instead of a 64-bit integer. This optimization results in a significant performance improvement, with the optimized function being up to 9.5 times faster than the original function.

Take It Down Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That'll Lead to Censorship

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The TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146) aims to remove non-consensual intimate imagery but its notice-and-takedown system threatens free expression and user privacy. The bill lacks safeguards and could lead to censorship of lawful speech.

An election forecast that’s 50-50 is not “giving up”

tl;dr. In 2024, pre-election polls were off by about 2 percentage points. Election forecasters were aware of this and incorporated this into their uncertainties. But if you were not following the forecasts carefully, you might’ve not realized this. You might have mistakenly thought that, when predictions happened to be close to 50-50, the forecasters “gave up.” You might have mistakenly ...

Learn Arabic

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I created Learn Arabic to help people overcome Arabic alphabet obstacles and learn words and sentences easily. The website provides split letters, word meanings, and links to each letter for 8261 words and 2625 sentences.

How much are LLMs boosting real-world programmer productivity?

LLM-based coding-assistance tools have been out for ~2 years now. Many developers have been reporting that this is dramatically increasing their productivity, up to 5x'ing/10x'ing it. It seems clear that this multiplier isn't field-wide, at least. There's no corresponding increase in output, after all. This would make sense. If you're doing anything nontrivial (i. e., ...

Stuff a Pi-hole in your router because your browser is about to betray you

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A new version of Pi-Hole, 6.0.5, is now available, offering a lightweight ad-blocker that can run on a Raspberry Pi or other Linux devices. It blocks ads by redirecting requests to a DNS sinkhole, requiring a static IP address and router settings adjustments.

Auntie PDF – an open source app built using Mistral OCR

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You extract text from PDFs using OCR technology, keeping it organized like family recipes. I'm best with clear text PDFs, no passwords needed for optimal results.

Kissing moons may explain why Earth's moon is so large

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Scientists found that Pluto and Earth's moon formed through a "kiss and capture" process, where large objects collided and merged, retaining their size. This process may have also occurred with other moons in the solar system, explaining their large size relative to their parent planets.

What We Lose When Our Memories Exist in Our Phones

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Matt bought a commemorative Peach Bowl ticket memento with his seat assignment. He found the offer in an email from the event organizers after their digital tickets expired.

Ask HN: Is Cursor deleting working code for you too or is it just me?

Users are experiencing issues with Sonnet 3.7 in Cursor, causing it to go on tangents and delete code, and are questioning the reliability of AI integrations in editors. They prefer to copy-paste code into external LLM tools like ChatGPT for more accurate results.

Most Americans just don't matter to the economy like they once did

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US support to maintain UK's nuclear arsenal is in doubt

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Britain's reliance on the US for nuclear arsenal is in doubt due to Trump's presidency, experts warn. Britain may need to work with European states like France to replace Trident, but this would be costly and take time.

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch that activated when fired

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A 55-year-old former software developer, Davis Lu, was found guilty of sabotaging his employer's systems with malware, causing thousands of dollars in damage. He faces up to 10 years in prison for intentionally damaging a protected computer.

Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste

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Scientists have developed a genetically engineered non-browning banana with a longer shelf life to reduce food waste. The banana remains fresh for 12 hours after peeling and is less susceptible to turning brown during harvesting and transportation.
User needs to register or sign in with developer credentials and ensure a unique User-Agent string to access the application. Alternatively, try resetting to default User-Agent or file a ticket for assistance.

Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

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The author believes AI is overhyped and lacks true thinking, being just a pattern recognition engine based on math and probability theory. AI will automate some jobs but not all, and change is inevitable, freeing up time for more meaningful pursuits.

Svelte5: A Less Favorable Vue3

Show HN: TypeLeap: LLM Powered Reactive Intent UI/UX

TypeLeap UI/UX is a concept that uses Large Language Models to analyze partial input and predict user intent, dynamically adapting the interface in real-time to offer context-aware actions and streamline workflows. The goal is to create interfaces that feel genuinely responsive and anticipatory, moving beyond static input fields to proactive, intent-driven UIs that anticipate user needs.

Accessibility: Don't Use Fake Bold or Italic in Social Media

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You're concerned about fake bold and italic text created with Unicode math symbols causing issues for screen reader users. This is a responsibility of authors, not screen readers, and can be avoided by using HTML tags instead.

Hackintoshing as a sustainable environmental practice

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Hackintoshing is a sustainable practice that extends hardware lifespan, reducing electronic waste and environmental impact. By reusing existing hardware, hackintoshing promotes a circular economy and minimizes resource extraction and carbon emissions.

AI Thinks It Cracked Kryptos. The Artist Behind It Says No Chance

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Kryptos, a CIA sculpture, remains unsolved despite thousands of attempts, including those using AI. Artist Jim Sanborn is frustrated with the influx of unqualified submissions and the misuse of AI in solving the code.

SpaceX teams up with Thiel's Palantir, Anduril on American Golden Dome

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Venture-backed companies see an opening to take business from traditional defense contractors.

Leave It to Manus

Cat-Eared Robots Are Waiting Tables in Japan's Restaurants

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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world

Show HN: Can I run this LLM? (locally)

Mac RAM (Apple Silicon / M-series only) LLM Model

Maybe coders should learn to love analog? (2024)

AI 'wingmen' bots to write profiles and flirt on dating apps

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Dating apps are increasing investment in AI to help users, but experts warn this could erode human authenticity and worsen social problems. Academics are calling for regulatory protections against AI on dating apps to prevent further erosion of trust and social skills.

Superintelligence startup Reflection AI launches with $130M in funding

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Reflection AI Inc, a startup led by former Google DeepMind researchers, launched with $130 million in funding and a $555 million valuation. The company aims to develop superintelligence through an autonomous programming tool and AI agents that automate programming tasks.

Take a Cold Bath

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Diarmaid MacCulloch's book "Lower than the Angels" explores the complex and often contradictory history of Christianity's views on sex and relationships. The book highlights the struggles of reconciling human desire with religious aspiration, and the ongoing challenges of promoting love and forgiveness in a world often defined by prejudice and intolerance.

It is hard to recommend Python in production

Python's large image size and memory usage hinder auto-scaling and performance, leading to significant cost savings by switching to languages like Go. Python's ecosystem and tooling issues, such as GIL limitations and frequent breakages, make it a challenging language to work with.

Feds arrest man for sharing DVD rip of Spider-Man movie with millions online

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A 37-year-old Tennessee man, Steven Hale, was arrested for stealing pre-release DVDs and Blu-rays, including Spider-Man: No Way Home, and sharing them online. He faces up to 15 years in prison for two counts of copyright infringement and interstate transportation of stolen goods.

A TV with Contrast You Haven't Seen for Years

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A CRT TV can display vibrant colors and deep black levels, comparable to modern OLED TVs. A DIY LCD screen modification uses a projector to achieve high contrast images by projecting a luminance map onto the screen.

Show HN: I built a tool to detect scams

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Upload suspicious images for AI analysis to detect phishing, scams, and online fraud. Verify suspicious communications through official channels after AI detection.

Toward a Passwordless Future

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Passwords are outdated and vulnerable to attacks, leading to millions of dollars in losses and forcing band-aid solutions. Passkeys, tied to a specific app or website, offer a more secure alternative using biometrics or a PIN.

Stanford scientists discover new Ozempic alternative with RegEx

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Separation of Concerns in a Bug Tracker

I write software, both professionally and on a ‘serious’ basis in my free time. So I interact with bug trackers. That means I form opinions about them. Over the last few years I’ve had some recurring reasons to complain about various bug trackers, and gradually come to the conclusion that what I’m really annoyed by is a fundamental wrongness in the data representation, more than the user ...

Microsoft Windows 1.0 with Steve Ballmer (1986)

A unified acoustic-to-speech-to-language embedding space

This study introduces a unified computational framework connecting acoustic, speech and word-level linguistic structures to study the neural basis of everyday conversations in the human brain. We used electrocorticography to record neural signals across 100 h of speech production and comprehension as participants engaged in open-ended real-life conversations. We extracted low-level acoustic, ...

Backdoor detected in ESP32 Espressif IoT chip

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Tarlogic Innovation team discovered a backdoor in the ESP32 microchip used in millions of smart devices with Bluetooth. They presented a tool called BluetoothUSB to perform security audits of Bluetooth devices on any operating system.

Smaller but Better: Unifying Layout Generation with Smaller LLMs

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We propose LGGPT, a unified layout generation model using LLMs, with Arbitrary Layout Instruction and Universal Layout Response templates. LGGPT achieves superior performance with a compact 1.5B parameter LLM, beating larger models in challenging scenarios.

Choosing death penalty by firing squad because it's safer

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A South Carolina man, Brad Sigmon, was executed by firing squad for a 2001 double homicide, marking the first US use of this method since 2010. The execution comes as the Trump administration works to expand capital punishment.

Sex Traffickers in Colombia Using Facebook, Tinder and Airbnb to Exploit Minors

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Unpopular Defaults for High-Performing Tech Organizations

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Tech leaders should avoid common playbooks that lead to mediocre teams, instead adopting unconventional defaults like reducing managerial overhead and embracing intermissions for innovation. These changes can help build resilient, innovative, and impactful teams by focusing on quality over speed and encouraging learning and adaptability.

Ask HN: How do you handle VAT / Sales Tax accounting as B2C SaaS?

You have a B2C SaaS on Stripe with subscribers across multiple countries and need help with reliable accounting companies to register and file Sales Tax in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. You're looking for solutions that handle registration and filing, not just data collection.

New MacBook Air Fixes This Decades-Long Design Oversight

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Apple has corrected a 26-year-old design inconsistency on Mac keyboards by redesigning the Mute key to display a speaker with a strike through it. This change is now available on the new MacBook Air with M4 chip and the iPad Air's Magic Keyboard.

Linear Pluggable Optics Save Energy in Data Centers

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Linear pluggable optics (LPO) is a technology that reduces power consumption in data centers by moving DSP functionality to a top-of-rack switch. However, LPO's adoption is slowed by a lack of standards for connecting optical modules, which the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is working to address.

Smart researchers pioneer nanosensor for real-time iron detection in plants

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Researchers from SMART and MIT developed a near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor to track iron in living plants, enabling nondestructive monitoring and precise fertilization strategies. The sensor can detect and differentiate between iron forms, improving crop health, reducing fertilizer waste, and supporting sustainable agriculture.