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.

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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+Ξ΄, 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.

Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

A software engineer reflects on the role of agentic engineering, finding value in harnessing and models to solve development puzzles. They highlight the importance of human reasoning and critical thinking in software creation, beyond what large language models can offer.

Super El NiΓ±o Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

https://www.severe-weather.eu/wp-content/gallery/long-range/el-nino-ocean-surface-temperature-anomaly-pacific-north-america-atmospheric-weather-bridge-united-states-canada-walker-cell-schematic-record-event-2026.jpg
A Super El NiΓ±o event is rapidly strengthening across the tropical Pacific, with record-level westerly wind anomalies and subsurface ocean heat driving its growth. The latest forecasts indicate a historic peak in late 2026/early 2027, with significant impacts on global weather patterns expected.

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.

Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

https://www.anthropic.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww-cdn.anthropic.com%2Fimages%2F4zrzovbb%2Fwebsite%2F5a5c187a6c2b5ccb492bcb7883df2066d49625de-2000x1200.png&w=3840&q=75
AI agents are increasingly interacting with each other in shared systems, leading to uncertainty about their behavior at scale. Agents can exhibit beneficial coordination but also fail to communicate effectively and may engage in sabotage or malicious behavior.

Guiding Ships with Moire Patterns (2018)

https://tinkerings.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/cut-pieces-v01.jpg?w=438&h=274
The user built a Moire pattern light to guide ships through channels, following the patent's claims closely. The system is intuitive and effective but may not be the best solution for all situations due to its narrow path requirement.

US oil reserves are so low, the caverns holding them could be damaged

https://static.independent.co.uk/2026/08/15/20/14/GettyImages-1434807937.jpeg
The Independent reports on critical US issues, including the nation's low oil stockpile and rising gas prices. Experts warn that repeated withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could permanently damage its underground caverns.

At-home test for infected ticks could improve Lyme Disease diagnosis

https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/Y09atCGdOXPq5O4siAbvEpY7gFE=/1026x684/filters:focal(1061x707:1062x708)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/44/ad/44ad8f8b-e8c6-4c3b-9d22-10eececf06c3/gettyimages-1602304607.jpg
The US experiences a significant number of tick-borne illnesses, with over 31 million Americans affected annually. Lyme disease is the most common diagnosis, with an estimated 476,000 patients treated each year.

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/1000013219-1024x683.png
The author's journey from disinterest to deep fascination with Casio calculators led to creating software and hardware projects, including a telnet BBS on a calculator. They now aim to share their work openly while exploring further possibilities with these devices.

What I Learned Securing Sniffnet with the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund

https://sniffnet.app/assets/img/post/github-secure-open-source-fund/cover.png
Sniffnet joined the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund, enhancing security through a 3-week sprint with $10k funding and expert mentorship. The program emphasizes proactive security planning, threat modeling, and actionable tools to improve open-source projects.

Falstad Math and Physics Simulations

AI in drug discovery – what it is, where we stand and the path forward

Show HN: Grafana agent observability for Hermes Agent

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexander-akhmetov/grafana-agento11y-hermes/main/img.png
The Grafana Agent Observability plugin for Hermes Agent records LLM calls and tool executions as generations. To install, follow instructions to update ~/.hermes/config.yaml and enable the plugin with a new key name.

RISC-V: They Should Have Known Better

https://dmitry.gr/images/rv-BatLight.jpg
RISC-V's design is flawed due to its excessive optionality, leading to a lack of coherence and consistency across the architecture. This makes it difficult for developers to write code that works on all RISC-V cores, resulting in fragmentation and wasted time debugging issues.

Show HN: Mic Drop, a real-time multiplayer karaoke game

https://www.micdrop.gg/static/og.png?v=2
The free online version of Grab the Mic: get a word, buzz in, and sing a real song containing it β€” your friends vote. No app, no mic needed, 2–8 players.

A fortuitous decade as an indie software developer

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What happens when an LLM never sees material beyond fifth grade?

Researchers trained language models on a filtered US elementary school curriculum to test learning of new skills. The results show that pretraining filter sets the effective capability ceiling, with no significant improvement in out-of-scope performance.

Numba in the Browser: Unlocking a New Scientific Python Stack in JupyterLite

https://notebook.link/blog/assets/images/timeit-b0dc29c7faaada7658a6dcc8b3c88c3f.png
Scientists can now use Numba in JupyterLite, a browser-based environment, for interactive and efficient scientific computing. This allows for faster execution of Python functions with significant speedups compared to native Python execution.

A spectre is haunting Unicode

https://www.dampfkraft.com/by-id/a824aa10/img/ghostcanvas.l.jpg
The JIS X 0208 encoding was established in 1978 with added characters that later became known as ghost characters, which had no obvious sources. An investigation in 1997 discovered the origins of most ghost characters, including some being mistakes during cataloging and others having unclear or misread sources.

Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug

The author investigated a bug in Zsh where commands were sometimes missing from the shell history file, despite being run previously. The issue was eventually tracked down to an incorrect implementation of signal handling in savehistfile, which caused it to truncate the history file when interrupted by a signal.