How to feed a dictator

73 Michelangelo11 2026-06-20 02:10:16 UTC theguardian.com Llama Share 24

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.

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

132 Bender 2026-06-19 21:10:16 UTC nochan.net Full Share 77

There are no instances in ATProto

357 danabramov 2026-06-19 16:10:16 UTC overreacted.io Llama Share 198

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.

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

479 ilreb 2026-06-19 20:10:16 UTC reuters.com Full Share 334

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Surprising Economics of Load-Balanced Systems

53 KraftyOne 2026-06-19 21:10:16 UTC brooker.co.za Llama Share 15

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

686 ck2 2026-06-19 17:10:16 UTC startupfortune.com Llama Share 318

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.

Aikido Code Audit

21 ilreb 2026-06-20 00:10:16 UTC aikido.dev Llama Share 8

Aikido Code Audit fills the gap between SAST and pentesting by analyzing static code to surface multi-step vulnerabilities. It helps developers catch security flaws before production, reducing remediation costs and improving code quality.

I used sound waves to make espresso

207 zeristor 2026-06-19 15:10:16 UTC theconversation.com Llama Share 141

A Colombian scientist developed an ultrasonic espresso method using high-frequency sound waves to extract coffee flavor without hot water, saving up to 75% of energy. The method produces espresso-strength coffee in under three minutes, with taste results similar to traditional espresso.

Data Compression Explained

6 mtdewcmu 2026-06-20 01:10:16 UTC mattmahoney.net Prefix Share 0

Copyright (C) 2010-2012, Dell, Inc. You are permitted to copy and distribute material from this book provided (1) any material you distribute includes this license, (2) the material is not modified, and (3) you do not charge a fee or require any other considerations for copies or for any works that incorporate material from this book. These restrictions do not apply to normal "fair ...

Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem

26 a_t48 2026-06-19 22:10:16 UTC digitalorientalist.com Llama Share 2

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.

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

231 pgrote 2026-06-19 20:10:16 UTC legacy.com Llama Share 27

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

546 philonoist 2026-06-19 07:10:16 UTC jvm-weekly.com Llama Share 336

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.

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

88 rrvsh 2026-06-20 01:10:16 UTC newsletter.kentbeck.com Llama Share 47

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.

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

247 abnry 2026-06-19 14:10:16 UTC vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app Full Share 364

Egyptian Fractions

69 luu 2026-06-19 18:10:16 UTC blog.plover.com Llama Share 2

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.

DuckDB Internals Part 1

440 marklit 2026-06-19 03:10:16 UTC greybeam.ai Llama Share 130

DuckDB is a fast in-process analytical SQL database that has gained widespread adoption due to its ease of use and performance. It can read data from various file formats like Parquet, CSV, and JSON, and execute queries directly on these files without the need for a server or cluster.

John Jumper to join Anthropic

79 artninja1988 2026-06-19 18:10:16 UTC twitter.com/johnjumpersci Llama Share 58

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.

RhinoCollab a plugin for real-time editing for Rhino 3D

21 Ashxius 2026-06-19 21:10:16 UTC rhinocollab.com Full Share 4

Real-time collaboration for Rhino 3D

Telescope Ranchers

107 bookofjoe 2026-06-19 14:10:16 UTC kottke.org Llama Share 42

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.

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

41 amichail 2026-06-19 23:10:16 UTC news.ycombinator.com Llama Share 61

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.

Big Banana Car

120 Bender 2026-06-19 19:10:16 UTC bigbananacar.com Llama Share 71

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.

Court Records Should Be Free

265 hn_acker 2026-06-19 18:10:16 UTC eff.org Llama Share 53

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.

A Perceptron in Age of Empires II

30 EvgeniyZh 2026-06-19 22:10:16 UTC adewynter.github.io Llama Share 11

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.

Zenzizenzizenzic

78 gyosifov 2026-06-19 22:10:16 UTC en.wikipedia.org Llama Share 22

Robert Recorde introduced zenzizenzizenzic to represent the eighth power of a number in 1557. It is an obsolete notation with more Zs than any other word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A 1976 university experiment spun up the U.S. wind industry

73 pseudolus 2026-06-19 16:10:16 UTC spectrum.ieee.org Llama Share 7

William Heronemus, a UMass professor, led a team that built the first wind turbine, dubbed the "Wind Furnace," in 1976 to prove wind energy's potential. His work sparked the wind industry, inspiring a generation of engineers and leading to the development of modern wind farms.

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

94 rakeda 2026-06-19 15:10:16 UTC metiq.space Full Share 28

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

Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research

238 jxmorris12 2026-06-19 05:10:16 UTC blog.jxmo.io Llama Share 81

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

121 mplappert 2026-06-19 05:10:16 UTC dfdxlabs.com Llama Share 40

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 ...

Ten years of ClickHouse in open source

281 saisrirampur 2026-06-19 08:10:16 UTC clickhouse.com Llama Share 72

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.

To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

356 speckx 2026-06-19 03:10:16 UTC news.mit.edu Llama Share 54

Researchers at MIT developed Fractal, a new kernel that gives a cleaner view of processor behavior, and has already found previously unknown behavior in Apple's M1. Fractal treats hardware as the object of study, allowing researchers to run experiments with minimal background noise and gain a deeper understanding of processor behavior.