The Life and Death of Direct File [pdf]

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Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to overthinking things

https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/qwen-thinking-bicycle-27b.jpg
The author has been testing Qwen 3.8 27B, a large language model from Alibaba's research lab, on various machines and found it to be highly capable but slow due to its dense architecture requiring significant memory bandwidth.

Rhombus 1.1 is now available

The Racket team is adding annot and annot.def to define annotations without macro code, as well as a binding form for more readable naming.

A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"

The author criticizes Dmitry Grinberg's article on RISC-V, arguing that his criticism of the architecture is biased and misses the point. The author claims that RISC-V's openness and low cost make it accessible to developers in developing countries, allowing them to create their own projects without relying on expensive tools or licenses.

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.

SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX

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Intel's MMX technology was introduced in 1997, allowing for single instruction, multiple data processing on x86 CPUs. It enabled significant speedups in multimedia software and paved the way for modern SIMD architectures like AVX-512 and GPUs with thousands of cores.

Reticulum – Decentralized Mesh Network

https://reticulum.network/gfx/reticulum_logo_512.png
Reticulum is a cryptography-based networking stack for building decentralized, sovereign networks without control or censorship. It enables secure digital communication and end-to-end connectivity with self-sovereign addresses that can be moved freely within the network.

Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter

The ceramic water filter, developed in 1981 by Dr. Fernando Mazariegos, uses clay and combustible materials to remove pathogens and contaminants from water, with colloidal silver added for antibacterial properties. The filter can be produced locally using a hydraulic press and finishing process, requiring training and equipment to manufacture at scale.

AGI-64 Brings Sierra Adventures to the Commodore 64

https://meanhamster.com/games/agi-64/space-quest-2.png
← All news We are happy to announce AGI-64, a long-awaited AGI interpreter for the Commodore 64. It is currently around 75% complete for Space Quest 1, which is completely playable now, and the engine aims to support most AGI games of the era. AGI-64 will be a free download when it is ready. It includes a tool that takes the .vol and .obj files you supply from your own library and compiles ...

Interview with Amit Patel, Creator of "Solar Realms Elite"

https://breakintochat.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/amit-patel.jpg
Amit Patel created the BBS door game Solar Realms Elite in 1990 and has worked on various programming projects, including scientific equipment, data analysis, and artificial intelligence. He is now working on interactive reference materials for game developers.

Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome

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Buf releases the Buf LSP server, providing modern IDE support for Protobuf development. The new implementation is faster and more flexible than protoc, enabling incremental compilation and better diagnostics.

The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding

https://d1b6lhn2ymmy1x.cloudfront.net/journalist-headshots/highered/spitalniak-laura-circle-150x150.png
Researchers received surprise termination notices for federal grant funding after projects were deemed to express viewpoints disfavored by the Trump administration. The terminations targeted diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, green energy, and other subjects at odds with conservative opposition.

The AI Credit Resale Economy

https://cdn.ploy.ai/2eb2235a-6b78-4d32-9713-f051311d8809/user/0a6c2555-convo-with-broker.webp
Token brokers buy unused credits from startups and resell them, offering discounts to attract buyers. This market is growing rapidly, with tens of millions of credits being offered across various sites and forums.

Dancing with friends and enemies: boids' swarm intelligence

https://community.wolfram.com/c/portal/getImageAttachment?filename=OPTfnlfrnds.gif&userId=11733
The user created a simulation of animal swarms using Mathematica, injecting randomness to create a "dance" pattern. The system follows simple rules: move towards friends and away from enemies, with contraction to prevent dispersal.

MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent

https://math-ai-org.github.io/mathcode/Demo.png
MathCode is a terminal AI coding assistant that converts plain language math problems into Lean 4 theorems and attempts formal proofs. It features various tools for efficient proof-solving, including a persistent Lean REPL and theorem libraries.

Clamiga: Common Lisp for the Amiga

https://nnamgreb.de/static/gfx/blogs/clamiga-aos3_1.jpg
CL-Amiga, a Common Lisp implementation for the Amiga family, is built to run on m68k and PPC architectures. It has a self-contained bytecode VM with no external runtime dependencies and supports various features like object system, condition system, macros, and interactive development style.

Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee

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Models Are Getting Dumber on Purpose

Large language models are getting smarter per parameter, but this comes at the cost of factual knowledge, which is often outdated and prone to hallucination. By decoupling reasoning from knowledge, frontier models can provide high-quality answers without relying on stale facts.

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2026/07/AntonOlgaFormatted.jpg
A favorite professor taught Anton Chekhov's short stories as models of writerly virtues, emphasizing his life and work. Chekhov's personal life was marked by a mix of romantic relationships, including with actress Olga Knipper, whom he married at 41 and died from tuberculosis at 44.

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

A quick look at zero-knowledge proofs

The user is exploring zero-knowledge proofs, specifically the 3-coloring problem in graph theory, and implementing a Python code to demonstrate how it works. They discuss its potential applications beyond cryptography.

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

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Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter

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Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers

You recently switched to Cloudflare's nameservers, which silently added a JS analytics snippet to your site. This approach is invasive and should opt-in instead of opt-out for users' consent.

Red queen hypothesis – a new way forward for self-improving AI

https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/files/the-red-queen-adobe-square-image-250.jpg
Researchers have developed a new method for recursive self-improving AI agents to continue improving themselves without hitting an evaluation ceiling. This approach allows the agent and evaluator to evolve together, creating a self-improving loop that can lead to more capable and efficient AI systems.

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.

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/1000013219-1024x683.png
The author, a hobbyist, has developed software for Casio Pocket Computer calculators and created a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) hosted on one of the devices. The BBS allows users to connect via telnet and log amateur radio contacts using the calculator's programming capabilities.

St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core

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The Saint Lucie Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 was manually shut down after 3 control rods dropped into the reactor core. The event, classified as a non-emergency by the NRC, had all systems responding normally post-trip.

Before Rightmove, there was the Cosmorama

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/Cosmorama-room.jpg
Researchers found that a London estate agency used an early form of virtual property tour, called cosmorama, in the 1840s and 1850s to promote luxury homes. This technique allowed customers to view specially commissioned images through convex lenses, creating an immersive experience decades before digital technology.

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.