GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

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Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol on an NP-Hard Problem: Does /goal help?

https://charlesazam.com/_astro/fig3_clean_distributions.9rT8GKlq_Z1OX1ru.webp
Fable 5 outperformed GPT-5.6 Sol on an NP-hard optimization problem, producing the best solution with high consistency. The /goal feature, which changes the control loop and search path, sometimes improved and sometimes worsened performance, highlighting its complexity.

Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

https://amateurphotographer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/02/GoPro-HERO-2.jpg?w=900
GoPro is struggling financially with a 26% revenue drop in the first quarter of 2026 and may not survive the year without a new owner or fresh cash. Founder Nicholas Woodman is propping up the company with a $20 million loan, but a buyer is being sought to take over the brand.

Tech note: making your own V-I plots at home

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The author of "The Secret Life of Circuits" created 290 original illustrations by gathering real data for electronics components, including quartz crystals, batteries, and vacuum tubes. To measure semiconductor devices, the author used a benchtop multimeter and pulsed power from a lab supply, interfacing them to a computer using the SCPI protocol to capture accurate V-I curves.
https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2026/07/LG-MONITORS-MCAFFE-1200x675.jpg
LG monitors may automatically install software promoting McAfee subscriptions without user consent. Users can block this behavior by enabling a Windows Group Policy setting to prevent automatic downloads of device-associated applications.

Regressive JPEGs

https://maurycyz.com/projects/bad_jpeg/cats.jpg
The post explains how JPEG progressive scans can be used to progressively display low‑frequency data, and how the author exploits this by concatenating multiple scans (mostly DC‑only) to create a pseudo‑animation that works in browsers up to about 90 frames. Although this trick bypasses the usual 9‑scan limit and avoids ghosting, it has no real practical use because timing must rely on ...

What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph

The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal

https://negroniventurestudios.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/01-hero-canal-labelled-master-1024x574.png
The Rekursiv, a custom silicon chip designed in the 1980s, was right about many things, including memory safety, garbage collection, and persistence, but was ahead of its time and failed due to economics. Now, with the commodity curve dead and new technologies emerging, the Rekursiv's ideas are being rediscovered and implemented in modern silicon, making it a relevant case study for ...

AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

AWS users reported massive unexpected billing estimates (up to $595B) due to a billing console bug, causing panic and infrastructure shutdowns. The incident highlights urgent need for AWS to improve error communication and billing accuracy.

Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

https://parksb.github.io/images/b02b09c6-db90-4570-a7f0-aafa29bc3ae9.webp
I revived an ASUS Eee PC 1000HE, noting its weak Atom N280 CPU and 1 GB DDR2 RAM, and installed Arch Linux 32 to run a lightweight LXQt desktop, detailing partitioning, networking, and swap setup. After upgrading RAM to 2 GB, I still faced performance limits due to the aging HDD and CPU, but the machine now serves as a modest server or media device.

Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work

Celebrating 15 years, Recurse Center began as a YC 2010 startup, pivoting from failed ventures to a self-directed programming retreat, driven by Hacker News (HN) for growth. Though not a billion-dollar venture, it's impacted over 3,000 programmers, with HN as a key applicant source and catalyst for the founder's work—thanking HN!

Qubes OS Security in the Public Record

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
Researchers analyzed 109 Qubes Security Bulletins from 2011-2025 and found persistent upstream dependence in Qubes security issues. The study shows a stable but not quiet Qubes public advisory record, with most issues attributed to upstream components like Xen and CPU architecture.

First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

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Researchers discovered the first atmosphere on an Earth-like rocky planet, LHS 1140b, in a star's habitable zone, detecting helium but noting other gases might exist, marking progress in the search for extraterrestrial life. While not confirming life, this finding, alongside studies of planets like K2-18b and TRAPPIST-1, highlights ongoing efforts to identify habitable worlds beyond our solar system.

Funny item co-occurrences in 3.2M Instacart orders

https://rogerdickey.com/content/images/2026/07/screenshot---instacart-data.jpg
The author analyzed Instacart's open-sourced data to find unusual grocery combinations. They used a product classification system to reduce complexity and ranked combinations by "lift" and humor score.

Steam Machine: Between 12k and 15k Units Sold per week

Valve's Steam Machine is selling around 12k to 15k units per week, with estimated 12-month sales of 600k to 750k units. This suggests a niche device with demand likely to slow down naturally after the initial launch period.

The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

https://goliath32.com/img/prev/blog/z80/0.jpg
The Zilog Z80, launched 50 years ago in 1976, became a foundational 8-bit processor for early computers and embedded systems, influencing CP/M and spawning clones like the GameBoy’s LR35902, while its industrial use persisted until 2024. The author’s DIY Z80 projects and exploration of its evolution from the 8080 highlight its technical legacy, from simplified interfacing to advanced features ...
https://opengraph.githubassets.com/63ec4fff05ee92a1d4733de2887deade89b947002f3285034e38f78eb2005c54/BadChemical/IoT-Vulnerability-Research-Public
TP-Link Kasa Spot EC71 indoor cameras have multiple vulnerabilities, including fleet-wide RSA key exposure, unsalted MD5 credential storage, and unauthenticated GPS exposure.

Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

"ease rating" = average ease-of-assembly rating (1–5, higher = easier) left by reviewers on ikea.com. "~" ratings are averaged across combo products.

Learning a few things about running SQLite

Using SQLite with Django revealed performance issues resolved by `ANALYZE`, but concurrency challenges during deletions caused crashes, prompting consideration of Postgres for scalability. Despite backup efforts and small-scale success, SQLite's limitations highlight the need for better database management as projects grow.

Waldi: A quiet place to write, and to be read

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/waaldev/waldi/main/docs/screenshot.jpg
Waldi is a multi-tenant blogging platform that guarantees readers for new writers and prioritizes private, unhurried writing. It's built on Go and Postgres, with a single editor and server-rendered pages.

In-toto: A framework to secure the integrity of software supply chains

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in-toto is designed to ensure the integrity of a software product from initiation to end-user installation. It does so by making it transparent to the user what steps were performed, by whom and in what order. An open metadata standard that you can implement in your software’s supply chain.

EU ban on destruction of unsold clothes and shoes enters into application

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/styles/oe_theme_medium_no_crop/public/2026-02/GettyImages-528424832.jpg?itok=HDpHhSBz
From 19 July, large companies across the EU are prohibited from destroying unsold clothes, clothing accessories and footwear. Medium-sized companies will be subject to the same rules from 2030. The measure, introduced under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), aims to prevent the waste of valuable products and the resources used to make them. When new, usable goods are ...

Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark

https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/kimi-3-pelican.jpg
Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter model, claims top performance in benchmarks, open weights by July 2026, and high pricing ($3/$15 per million tokens), outperforming peers in code tasks but costing 25 cents for a complex SVG generation test.

Engineering Peace

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Global development has a war problem. The world overall is seeing more conflict every year, and the majority of the damage is in developing countries. And while war in industrialized societies can even support economic growth, at least in the short term, developing countries can take decades to recover the growth that violence wipes away. Yet there is a belief in the development sector that ...

I started a “dirt notebook”

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User has a habit of over-organizing notebooks, making it hard to take new notes. To break this cycle, they started a "dirt notebook" with poor paper quality and cheap pens to write down random thoughts without structure.

LG ThinQ Terms of Use

Some of my kitchen appliances are LG and I installed the LG ThinQ app on my phone. Sometimes I like to leave a cold dish in the oven before I go out then remotely start it when I’m on my way back home, so I arrive to a nice hot dinner. After a recent HN post about LG malware and further research, I decided to kick my appliances out of the network. I also tried to remove my user account just ...

Stenchill: 3D Printable Solder Paste Stencil Generator

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M8u--M0dwfc/maxresdefault.jpg
Barbatronic is a French robotics creator who shares hardware tutorials on YouTube and Twitch, and has a community of makers and hackers. He integrates Stenchill, a stencil for precise solder paste deposits, into his fabrication workflow.

Static search trees: 40x faster than binary search (2024)

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The post discusses implementing a static search tree (S+ tree) for high-throughput searching of sorted data, optimizing it to its limits, and adding batching to improve throughput. The S+ tree is a data structure that supports queries returning the smallest element of vals that is at least q, or u32::MAX if no such element exists, and is optimized for throughput, with the goal of making ...

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (2025)

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A FastCompany article noticed a trend in AI company logos resembling swirling hexagons or circular shapes with central openings, often compared to anatomical features. This conformity in design may be due to risk aversion and the pressure to look legitimate, stifling innovation and visual creativity in the tech industry.

Revisiting Yliluoma's ordered dither algorithm

https://30fps.net/pages/revisiting-yliluoma-2/results/bigbuckbunny_bird_K16_N16_ema-constant_km5.png
The article discusses various ordered dithering algorithms, including Joel Yliluoma's 2011 algorithm, and presents new simplified variants, comparing their results to a state-of-the-art algorithm. The article also introduces the "EMA" color selection algorithms, which are faster and comparable in quality to the original Yliluoma-2 algorithm and Thomas Knoll's algorithm.