I Stored a Website in a Favicon

A favicon can be used for steganography by hiding data in its pixels, which the browser interprets as colors. This allows storing small amounts of data, like HTML, in a tiny image.

Data Compression Explained (2012)

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Data compression is the art of reducing the number of bits needed to store or transmit data, and it can be either lossless or lossy, with lossless compression being reversible and lossy compression discarding unimportant data. The best compression ratio is achieved by understanding the data to be compressed and using a model to estimate its probability distribution, with the goal of assigning ...

There are no instances in ATProto

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The concept of instances in social media is a category error, as it's a Mastodon-brained concept that doesn't apply to atproto, which separates hosting and apps. Decentralization in atproto is achieved by swapping hosting or making new apps, unlike Mastodon where decentralization is measured by the number of instances.

Snap Smart Glasses

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You can sign up for Snap Inc's Specs product updates and receive promotional communications. Specs augmented reality glasses offer a 51° field of view display with 16 million colors and customizable prescription lenses.

The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory – IBM

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Neuroscientist Oswald Steward won the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for discovering that neurons manufacture proteins near synapses, reshaping neuroscience and potentially leading to new treatments for neurological disorders. This discovery, made over four decades ago, has established the importance of local protein synthesis within neurons and is fundamental to learning, memory, and brain ...

Surprising economics of load-balanced systems

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The client-observed mean request time varies with c, asymptotically approaching one second as c increases. This is because the time spent in queue approaches zero as the number of servers increases.

Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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Hyundai is buying SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, gaining full control of the humanoid robotics company. This move will allow Hyundai to deploy Boston Dynamics' robots in its own factories, starting with the electric Atlas robot at its Georgia plant by 2028.

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

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Can you see three trees?

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The 3-30-300 test measures a city's tree cover by ensuring every home has a view of at least three trees, 30% tree cover in the neighbourhood, and a park within 300 meters. The test is simple but hard to achieve, with only 14% of Europeans living in areas meeting all three criteria and most cities failing to meet the 30% tree cover requirement.

Bobby Prince, composer for Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Duke Nukem 3D, has died

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Bobby Prince, a renowned composer and sound designer, passed away on June 16, 2026, leaving behind a legacy in the video game industry. He is survived by his wife Connie, children, and grandchildren, and will be remembered for his kindness, humor, and love.

Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28

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Oracle engineer Lois Foltan confirmed that JEP 401: Value Classes and Objects will be integrated into the main OpenJDK repository and target JDK 28. The feature allows programmers to declare value classes and objects that can be optimized for performance, enabling density and locality in memory, and is currently in preview mode.

How many of the 170k English words do you know?

How many of the 171,476 English words do you actually know? Take our scientifically stratified 100-question challenge to find out.

A Perceptron in Age of Empires II

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An operational NAND gate and perceptron were built in Age of Empires II using the game's scenario editor, utilizing goats as signal carriers and rails to represent bits. The circuits use XNOR, AND, and OR gates to perform computations, with the environment serving as coding.

Egyptian Fractions

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The Ahmes papyrus contains a table of Egyptian fraction representations of fractions of the form 2/n for odd integers n. The Egyptians used a table of these representations to calculate other fractions by doubling and adding 1.

How to feed a dictator

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A documentary film, How to Feed a Dictator, explores the lives of five private chefs who served notorious dictators, revealing the moral complexities of their experiences. The film highlights the chefs' deep trust in their dictators, which also ensured their distance from the outside world.

Satellite reveals immense scale of GPS signal tampering

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An experimental satellite has mapped GPS jamming across Europe and the Middle East from space, revealing widespread signal degradation. The data suggests that satellites in low Earth orbit are vulnerable to jamming, affecting their performance and safety.

Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

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To be considered a successful engineer, focus on completing tasks in a reasonable time and not causing others excessive work. To stand out, learn from each task, make a case for not doing it, and implement efficient solutions that benefit others.

Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

Software efficiency is not a priority due to abundance of resources and other business demands. Memory usage has not significantly changed in 20 years, with most users not noticing or complaining about it.

Telescope Ranchers

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Starfront Observatories in Rockwood, Texas, offers ultra-dark skies for astrophotographers to control their telescopes remotely. Owner Bray Falls hosts 550 telescopes, allowing users to access them from anywhere for as little as 99 dollars a month.

John Jumper to join Anthropic

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A researcher left Google DeepMind after nearly 9 years to join Anthropic, thanking the team for their support and learning experience. They expressed gratitude for the opportunity to lead the AlphaFold team and look forward to future discoveries at Google DeepMind.

Court Records Should Be Free

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The Open Courts Act of 2026 aims to eliminate PACER fees and modernize federal court filing systems, improving public access and cybersecurity. The bill is supported by EFF and other organizations, seeking to make court records easier to find and understand.

Big Banana Car

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The plan is to drive a huge motorized banana car around the world, meeting people and selling merchandise to fund the trip. A partner is needed for filming, editing, and uploading videos, with a 50/50 split on resulting income.

Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

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To become a successful researcher, you need to combine reading and building skills, and be willing to put in the time and effort required. A good researcher stays open-minded, refuses to let ego cloud their judgement, and is willing to learn from failure.

Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk

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A researcher is conducting independent robotic manipulation research on a tabletop setup with a single industrial-grade robot arm, two cameras, and teleoperation, aiming to test the hypothesis that a single person can achieve meaningful results with a budget of €10,000. The setup includes a UFACTORY xArm Lite 6 robot arm, Intel RealSense D405 wrist camera, and Logitech C920 webcam, with a ...

Show HN: Metiq: a real time 3D globe for 100 public datasets

Live worldwide data platform: flights, earthquakes, weather, conflict, markets, space and more on a 3D wireframe globe.

Think of the children: How to force real ID for all internet traffic (2023)

Ten years of ClickHouse in open source

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ClickHouse is an open-source analytical database that was released in 2016 and has become the most popular open-source database with over 2000 contributors. It was created by a single developer who started with a custom data structure for incremental aggregation and eventually built a full-fledged database system from scratch.

AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks

Arch Linux's AUR was subjected to a sustained attack where attackers created new accounts, adopted orphaned packages, and pushed malicious updates. The attack affected over 1,500 packages, with the attackers using various tactics to evade detection.

The AirPods Effect

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The author noticed a significant increase in people wearing AirPods during a trip to the US, feeling isolated and disconnected from others. Regular human contact is essential for our well-being, but earbuds can hinder this by creating a "Do Not Disturb" sign and reducing opportunities for casual interactions.

Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem

Arabic script has problematic digital representation due to its development in pen and ink, and the movable type printing technology that was not well-suited for it. This led to issues with encoding, searching, and displaying Arabic text on computers.