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Linux drops strncpy, Windows 11 bloats, AI hallucinates.

20 Jun 2026
DOS Game "F-15 Strike Eagle II" reversing project needs DOS test pilots

A hobbyist developer is reverse engineering the original binaries of the 1989 DOS game F-15 Strike Eagle II to recreate its C source code. The project creator is currently seeking volunteer DOS test pilots to help playtest and verify the reconstructed software.

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SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible
SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible

SMPTE has announced that its entire catalog of media technology standards is now freely available to the global community. This initiative provides media professionals, technologists, and engineers with unrestricted access to essential industry guidelines. Removing financial barriers to these resources is expected to foster greater collaboration and innovation across the sector.

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UHF X11: X11 Built for VisionOS and Apple Vision Pro

UHF X11 is a new native X11 server designed specifically for the Apple Vision Pro and visionOS. It enables users to run classic Unix and traditional workstation software seamlessly within spatial windows. This integration brings legacy computing environments directly into Apple's mixed-reality ecosystem.

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CSSQuake
CSSQuake

CSSQuake is a browser port of the classic game Quake that renders 3D geometry entirely through inspectable HTML and CSS. Powered by the PolyCSS framework, this innovative project delivers the gameplay experience without relying on traditional WebGL or canvas renderers.

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Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil
Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil

Hackers are suspected of sending unauthorized cell phone alerts with a mysterious message to multiple states across Brazil on Saturday morning. The Brazilian government is investigating the incident to determine how the unauthorized broadcast was executed.

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Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You
Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You

A comprehensive atlas maps the vibrant colors of the natural world that standard digital screens are physically incapable of reproducing. By cataloging this vast spectrum of natural hues, the project highlights the limitations of current display technology and the persistent gap between digital reproduction and physical vibrance.

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GPT-5.5 hallucinates 3x more than MIT-licensed GLM-5.2

Recent evaluations reveal that GPT-5.5 hallucinates three times more frequently than the MIT-licensed GLM-5.2 model. This significant accuracy gap highlights a major reliability advantage for GLM-5.2, making it a compelling choice for developers prioritizing factual precision.

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Can you see three trees?
Can you see three trees?

A simple three-part test evaluates whether cities provide residents with adequate access to nature and green space. According to the assessment, the vast majority of urban areas currently fall short of these basic environmental standards.

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I Stored a Website in a Favicon

A developer has successfully stored and rendered an entire website within the tiny image file of a browser favicon by leveraging data URIs and creative encoding techniques. This technical stunt bypasses traditional web hosting methods, highlighting the creative extremes of web development and the hidden capabilities of modern browsers.

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Temporary Cloudflare accounts for AI agents
Temporary Cloudflare accounts for AI agents

Cloudflare has introduced Temporary Accounts on Cloudflare Workers to help AI agents bypass human-centric setup barriers and deploy live applications in seconds. By using a simple deployment command, automated agents can now provision infrastructure instantly without manual account creation.

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Surprising economics of load-balanced systems

Although simplified mathematical models assume idealized traffic patterns, real-world load-balanced systems must account for correlated bursts that require costly over-provisioning to ensure peak reliability. To avoid reliance on expensive cloud auto-scaling, engineers recommend adopting asynchronous architectures or intentionally shedding non-essential features during traffic spikes. The discussion also highlights the organizational dangers of management pushing for near-perfect server utilization, which mathematically guarantees system failure and degraded user experiences.

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Linux eliminates the strncpy API after six years of work, 360 patches
Linux eliminates the strncpy API after six years of work, 360 patches

After six years of effort and 360 patches, the Linux kernel has officially eliminated the strncpy API in the Linux 7.2 release. This deprecated function has long been considered error-prone and a potential source of security vulnerabilities. Its removal marks a significant milestone in improving overall code reliability and system safety.

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Show HN: StartupWiki – A Free Alternative to Crunchbase

StartupWiki has launched as a free, AI-powered alternative to Crunchbase for tracking global startup ventures. The community-driven research directory covers diverse sectors including artificial intelligence, biotech, clean tech, and fintech to provide accessible data on emerging companies worldwide.

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Alice is impatient

Traditional per-request latency metrics like averages and p99 often fail to capture the true user experience because they can mask severe performance issues affecting specific individuals. To ensure high reliability, developers are encouraged to shift toward measuring the percentage of unique users who encounter unacceptable delays. This user-centric perspective provides a much more accurate reflection of actual service quality than optimizing overall request times alone.

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The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows
The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

A marketing agency plagiarized John Koenig's Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by republishing the entire book without permission, replacing the original artwork with AI-generated images, and adding fabricated definitions. The unauthorized website now outranks the official project in search engine results, highlighting the ongoing threat of AI-driven content scraping.

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Egyptian Fractions (2006)
Egyptian Fractions (2006)

This retrospective piece from Mark Dominus's eclectic blog revisits a 2006 exploration of the algorithmic computation and mathematical history of Egyptian fractions. The article details how these ancient numerical systems, which express values as sums of distinct unit fractions, continue to offer valuable insights for modern computational problem-solving.

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Data Compression Explained (2012)

Community discussions revisiting Matt Mahoney's 2012 article explore the theoretical links between traditional data compression and modern artificial intelligence. Commenters debate Mahoney's premise that AI is necessary to model human data since universal compression is mathematically impossible, analyzing whether LLM training functions as lossy compression or mere memorization. The discussion ultimately highlights how the next-token prediction used in LLMs mirrors compression algorithms, despite modern AI being optimized for generating novelty rather than strict data reduction.

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A Perceptron in Age of Empires II

Readers are debating a research paper's claim that studies asking whether large language models possess anthropomorphic traits inherently assume those traits exist. The discussion centers on the semantic distinction between questioning a possibility and making a logical assumption, highlighting the difficulty of evaluating AI without falling into logical fallacies. Ultimately, participants note that the lack of precise terminology for AI behavior forces researchers to rely on misleading human analogies that can confuse the public.

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The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

South Korea's defense industry is rapidly capturing global market share by offering highly effective weapon systems at nearly half the cost of American and European alternatives. A primary driver of this success is Seoul's willingness to transfer intellectual property, allowing client nations to establish domestic manufacturing and avoid the political restrictions often attached to US military exports. As a result, countries are increasingly turning to South Korean contractors to secure reliable, sovereign supply chains amid shifting geopolitical alliances.

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AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks

The Arch User Repository recently endured a sustained cyberattack that disrupted services across the Linux ecosystem. This incident, dubbed the AURpocalypse, has prompted maintainers to investigate the attacker. The community is now actively working to restore full platform stability and prevent future disruptions.

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The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory
The discovery that changed how scientists think about memory

UC Irvine neuroscientist Oswald Steward has been awarded the 2026 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for his groundbreaking research on memory formation. His pioneering discoveries have fundamentally shifted the scientific understanding of how the brain processes and stores information.

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

In response to a proposed mandate requiring real ID for all internet traffic, readers are discussing extreme technical countermeasures to avoid future censorship and surveillance. Suggested tactics include building decentralized underground radio mesh networks, using cash-purchased hardware with immutable operating systems, and relying on specific end-to-end encrypted protocols to defeat metadata tracking. The discussion highlights a growing desperation within the hacker community, framing the fight against internet identification as a critical battle for fundamental civil rights.

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PostgresBench: A Reproducible Benchmark for Postgres Services
PostgresBench: A Reproducible Benchmark for Postgres Services

ClickHouse has launched PostgresBench, an open and reproducible benchmark designed to evaluate and compare various managed Postgres database services. The new tool provides transparent performance metrics, specifically highlighting how ClickHouse's managed Postgres offering stacks up against its industry peers.

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Bun has an open PR adding shared-memory threads to JavaScriptCore
Bun has an open PR adding shared-memory threads to JavaScriptCore

Bun has opened a pull request on the oven-sh/WebKit GitHub repository to add shared memory thread support to the JavaScriptCore engine. This proposed enhancement aims to improve the JavaScript runtime's multithreading performance and overall concurrency capabilities.

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Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs
Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs

Microsoft's new Windows 11 Media Player replaces Groove Music and the classic Windows Media Player, but it comes with significant drawbacks. The redesigned application consumes 3.5 times more RAM than its predecessors and now charges users for popular video codecs.

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Satellite reveals immense scale of GPS signal tampering
Satellite reveals immense scale of GPS signal tampering

An experimental satellite has successfully mapped the unprecedented scale of GPS signal jamming across Europe and the Middle East from space. This first-of-its-kind orbital observation highlights the immense and previously unquantified extent of GPS signal tampering in these regions.

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Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)
Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

A new open-source project called make-look-scanned transforms digital PDF files to resemble physical document scans. The tool is available for local use via a command-line interface or directly within the browser using WebAssembly.

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Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)
Digital Printing of Arabic: explaining the problem (2017)

The digital representation of Arabic script has faced persistent technical challenges since the early days of computing due to the language's complex historical development. This article series explores the root causes of these rendering issues and examines the various technological solutions developed to accurately display the text.

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

This brief tech culture piece challenges new industry entrants to look beyond merely completing assigned tasks. It serves as a provocative welcome, suggesting that new hires are expected to think critically and contribute to broader problem-solving rather than just acting as ticket-closers.

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Bootimus – A Self-Contained PXE and HTTP Boot Server

Bootimus is a self-contained PXE and HTTP boot server designed to streamline network deployment processes. Delivered as a single binary requiring zero configuration, the tool supports over 50 distributions out of the box.

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