Supply chain compromises, AI cybercrime, and Oxide Computer funding
libexpat now funded by the City of Munich for up to 6 months
Through its Open Source Sabbatical program, the City of Munich is providing up to six months of funding for the development of the open-source XML parsing library libexpat. The initiative allows professional developers, including the project's maintainer Sebastian, to dedicate time to improving critical software infrastructure. While supporters praise the move as a positive continuation of the city's historical commitment to open-source software, critics argue that municipal funds should be reserved for traditional public services.
CommentsEight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
A recent article examining myths in software engineering and generative AI has sparked debate over the fallacy of delaying current work in anticipation of future, fully autonomous AI models. Commenters emphasize that human cognition and creative reasoning remain essential for complex tasks, while also questioning whether the abductive reasoning behind historical scientific breakthroughs will eventually be replicated by large language models.
CommentsPi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage
Pi's minimalist harness design is significantly improving the cost and performance of modern coding agents. By focusing strictly on essential functionality, the streamlined approach eliminates unnecessary overhead. Real-world applications from Databricks and Shopify's pi-autoresearch extension demonstrate the practical advantages of this highly efficient system.
CommentsMistral's Shieldstral: 3B open-weights model for multimodal moderation
Mistral has released Shieldstral, a new 3B open-weights multimodal safety classifier designed for content moderation. The model is specifically built to evaluate and filter multimodal content for safety. Despite its compact size, Shieldstral outperforms competing moderation models that are up to seven times larger.
CommentsIP and DNS Leaks in WebKit Affecting Proxy Browsers and iCloud Private Relay
Researchers have discovered three WebKit features that bypass proxy configurations on iOS and macOS, resulting in IP and DNS leaks. These vulnerabilities expose users' real network addresses and compromise the privacy of proxy-based browsers like Tor and Apple's iCloud Private Relay. Patches for these issues have already been implemented in the Psylo browser.
CommentsAfter Losses, Retail Investors Flock to 3x Leverage as 2x Product Are Restricted
Following recent market losses and the restriction of 2x leverage products, retail investors are increasingly turning to high-risk 3x leverage in a desperate bid for outsized returns. This surge in leveraged trading reflects a broader trend of financial nihilism and gambling behavior, especially as US household wealth becomes heavily concentrated in highly valued tech giants. Ultimately, the shift underscores growing economic frustration among everyday investors who view the stock market as their only viable path to financial security.
CommentsDuckDB – Data power tools for your laptop, now in Clojure (2023)
DuckDB, a high-performance data science database designed to run locally on your laptop, is now available in Clojure. This update enables Clojure developers to leverage the fast analytical engine for their local data processing workflows.
CommentsBugtraq Is Back
The legendary Bugtraq security mailing list has reportedly returned, though readers are skeptical of its relevance in an era dominated by social media and closed security groups. Critics point out the irony of its AI-generated announcement and argue that the original list only succeeded due to a lack of modern alternatives. Consequently, many believe that open vulnerability disclosures have simply moved underground to private channels, rendering a mailing list revival largely unnecessary.
CommentsShow HN: Simple algorithm and color space to generate diverse skin tones
A new tool introduces a simple algorithm and custom color space designed to help digital artists and game developers generate diverse skin tones. It features an intuitive color picker that uses basic equations to make selecting inclusive and varied skin tones easier for creative projects.
CommentsIn Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley, with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years
Stephen Wolfram published a heartfelt tribute to his late wife, Elise Cawley, celebrating their 36 years of marriage. The article reflects on their family life and highlights her significant accomplishments and contributions to mathematics.
CommentsShow HN: Maple-Preview – ternary 20B MoE running at 120 tok/s on a iPhone
Maple-Preview is a 20-billion parameter Mixture of Experts model trained from scratch in a ternary format, achieving speeds of 120 tokens per second directly on an iPhone. While the project demonstrates impressive mobile efficiency, community testing reveals the model still struggles with confident hallucinations on niche topics compared to larger alternatives.
CommentsZigbee vs. Matter over Thread:Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice
A newly published arXiv paper evaluates the real-world performance of Zigbee compared to the emerging Matter over Thread protocol for Internet of Things networks. The study provides practical insights into how these competing smart home standards operate in everyday environments to help guide future IoT infrastructure decisions.
CommentsI am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel
A prominent tech writer is retiring from full-time publishing and abandoning their pseudonymous identity. They are stepping away from regular content creation to launch a new venture called Guardian Angel.
CommentsWe finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars
Web developers have long joked about the difficulty of centering a div, but new browser sidebars are introducing a fresh layout complication. Instead of simply centering content within the traditional webview, developers must now center the page within the entire browser window to maintain proper alignment. This ongoing shift in browser user interfaces continues to challenge standard web design practices.
CommentsAI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol
INTERPOL's African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 reveals that artificial intelligence now fuels more than half of all cybercrime across the continent. This rapid adoption of AI by cybercriminals has led to a surge in scams that are faster, more convincing, and larger in scale than previous threats.
CommentsPass the Passkey: A Novel Attack Surface in Passwordless Authentication
A newly identified vulnerability in passwordless authentication occurs when relying parties fail to properly validate the User Verified flag during login. This implementation gap effectively reduces multi-factor authentication to a single factor, significantly undermining the core security benefits of passkey systems.
CommentsVideo2NAND – Abusing video codecs for great computational power
The Video2NAND project demonstrates how the VP8 video codec can be theoretically abused to construct NAND logic gates by exploiting its maximum resolution and minimum block size parameters. While some commenters speculate this technique could eventually be scaled to build a small CPU, others argue the project's title overstates its current computational capabilities. The discussion highlights the creative potential of repurposing media formats for unconventional computing, even if achieving true Turing completeness in practice remains a challenge.
CommentsFlowise Is Shutting Down
The team behind Flowise has announced that the popular open-source visual builder for LLM applications is officially shutting down. In a message regarding the project's future, the developers detailed the end of the platform's lifecycle and what users can expect moving forward.
CommentsWaymo in Dallas
Waymo has officially launched its fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Dallas, allowing anyone in the city to hail a driverless vehicle. Starting today, users can download the Waymo app to book a ride as the company continues to expand its robotaxi footprint.
CommentsStateless MCP has recaptured my interest
The Model Context Protocol 2.0 specification was officially released this Tuesday, introducing a highly significant shift to a stateless architecture. This major update has successfully recaptured developer interest in the protocol and marks a pivotal moment for its future development.
CommentsShow HN: SIMD Viterbi Decoder in Rust
A developer has shared a new open-source Rust crate that implements a SIMD-optimized Viterbi decoder for forward error correction. The project offers high-performance error correction capabilities and is now available for community contribution on GitHub.
CommentsFIPS 140-3 is not a security guarantee, and auditors know it
Despite its industry reputation, FIPS 140-3 certification does not guarantee security, as validated modules have historically shipped with critical vulnerabilities like ROCA and Dual_EC_DRBG. A new analysis examines what the certificate actually attests to, the performance costs of FIPS mode, its disruptive impact on Bitcoin tooling, and where security auditors truly focus their efforts.
CommentsKeyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack
The Keyv npm package and eight related dependencies were compromised in an active supply chain attack on August 4, 2026. An attacker injected Mini Shai-Hulud malware into the packages after gaining unauthorized access to the maintainer's GitHub account.
CommentsFrom boiling lead and black art: The history of mathematical typography (2017)
This article explores the evolution of mathematical typography, tracing its complex history from early lead casting methods to modern digital typesetting. The piece highlights the visual progression of math fonts by showcasing examples from six distinct type systems.
CommentsCloudflare Wallets: the programmable wallet for the agentic Internet
Cloudflare is introducing Cloudflare Wallets to equip AI agents with native web payments and verifiable digital identities. Powered by the x402 protocol, this programmable wallet enables agents to autonomously purchase APIs and content while operating within strict safety guardrails.
CommentsTruemetrics (YC S23) Is Hiring in Berlin – GTM Lead
YC-backed startup truemetrics, which uses smartphone technology to optimize last-mile delivery routing, is hiring a Go-To-Market Lead in Berlin to help scale its core enterprise business and discover new product opportunities. The profitable company is seeking an autonomous commercial leader to work directly with the founders as it aims to grow its annual recurring revenue from €1.5M to over €10M.
CommentsDon't stop early: Case-folding source code at memory speed
GitHub has dramatically improved its code search performance by case-folding source code at memory speed using branch-free loops and byte-space arithmetic. This technique allows the platform to process every byte of code at rates exceeding 45 GiB/s on just a single core.
CommentsThere Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]
Readers discussing Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" reflect on how mid-century fiction's pervasive fear of nuclear annihilation shaped public opinion and potentially hindered nuclear power adoption. The conversation highlights a generational shift, noting that while Cold War anxieties have faded from daily public consciousness, the underlying existential threats remain. Commentators warn that this modern complacency is dangerous, especially as global military spending rises and geopolitical tensions echo the fears of the past.
CommentsGodox Transparent Viewfinder Camera C100
Godox has introduced the C100, a new transparent viewfinder camera featuring a screen with over 50% light transmittance and a built-in TF card slot supporting up to 128GB of storage. The device offers a continuous battery life of over 1.5 hours and utilizes USB 2.0 for both data transfer and charging.
CommentsOxide Computer raises $445M (SEC Form D)
Hardware startup Oxide Computer has raised $445 million in a Series D funding round, marking its fourth major capital raise in recent years. Although the company states this influx of capital ensures its long-term independence, community discussions reflect skepticism about whether massive funding guarantees actual business success. Commenters also note that Oxide targets specialized markets like high-frequency trading firms using advanced networking technologies, rather than pursuing traditional enterprise software customers.
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