Tech News

Libghostty 1.0 has been released, with users praising the project for making it easy to embed a high-quality terminal emulator in other applications. The library already powers tools such as Ghostel for Emacs and the embedded terminal in JetBrains IDEs, and developers report it saves substantial work compared with older terminal implementations. It is written in Zig with a C ABI.

Sodium-ion batteries are approaching cell-level cost parity with LFP technology, with global supply agreements exceeding 70 GWh. Despite higher upfront costs, Wood Mackenzie estimates they could offer a 21% lower total cost of ownership over 20 years.

GitHub has introduced a new Git storage architecture built to support thousands of agents pushing to a single repository at once. The company detailed how the system enables this high-concurrency workflow.

All organizations can now use outbound SIP calling to connect phone calls directly to OpenAI via SIP. The feature expands access to voice-enabled OpenAI integrations for everyday phone calls.

A new optimization makes Pivot significantly faster on GROUP BY queries with a Top-K operator above them, showing that a long-standing database operation can still be improved. The article also walks through how analytical databases execute GROUP BY in the first place.

A new collection offers 30 classic 88x31 GIF web buttons for 2026, free for anyone to take and use. The retro-style stickers are aimed at adding old-school web flair to sites or projects.

A tour of Unitree’s factory challenges the assumption that China’s robot production is highly automated, with much of the assembly still relying on manual labor. The author remains bullish on the West, arguing that while Chinese firms may lead in robots, Western companies will dominate the automation used to make them.

The Thera volcano on modern-day Santorini buried the ancient settlement of Akrotiri in ash during the 17th or 16th century BCE, earning it comparisons to Pompeii. The eruption was one of the largest in recorded history.

A federal court approved a nearly $360 million settlement in the RealPage rent-pricing case, with the funds going to renters. One legal expert said the deal is “not the final word necessarily” in ongoing litigation over algorithmic pricing.

Ampere has released Panthera, a CPU performance model, as a GitHub project. The repository is open for developers to use and contribute to for modeling Ampere CPU performance.

Kagi is a paid search engine that promises better, ad-free search results. Pronounced “kah-gee,” it aims to give power back to users instead of relying on ad-driven search models.

Electronics 101 is a free set of interactive 3D lessons that teaches electronics from scratch, covering batteries, resistors, LEDs, capacitors, switches, transistors and sensors. Learners can switch each circuit on, change its parts and watch the current flow. Made by Dilum Sanjaya

Rune is a native UI framework written in Rust that uses GPU rendering and targets macOS, Windows, Linux, and the web. Development is hosted on GitHub under anomalyco/rune.

The US FAA has announced plans to phase out floppy disks from air traffic control by 2028. The move signals a shift away from legacy technology in the agency’s systems.

A discussion around Deus Ex highlights skepticism over a planned remaster, which was delayed after poor fan reception and is seen by some as inferior to existing free mods. Commenters also debate the myth of the solo game creator and how AI tools can now produce enhanced, multiplayer-capable versions of old games in just a few prompts, raising questions for remaster-focused studios even as testing and refinement remain the hard part.

AI is dramatically accelerating AI research, creating a feedback loop that could compound over time. The piece notes that a naive extrapolation of this acceleration implies superintelligence within a year.

Mark Cuban accused Facebook of knowingly running AI-generated deepfake scam ads, saying he has seen his own face used to promote nonexistent diabetes cures. He cited documents indicating the platform earns $16 billion in fraud revenue.

Commenters in an Ask HN thread attribute Ubuntu’s slow progress to Canonical’s mismanagement, especially a cumbersome hiring process that demands high school grades and lengthy essays, plus pay that struggles to retain senior talent. They argue these practices damage the brand and narrow the candidate pool, though some note salaries remain competitive in parts of Europe and Latin America.

Anthropic IPO buyers are reportedly valuing the company as low as $1.1 trillion, amid reader debate over whether capable local models like Qwen3.8-Flash-Next threaten its subscription business. Some developers say local/open models are now good enough to cut Claude usage or cancel Pro subscriptions, while others argue Claude remains much stronger for coding and that compute scale still provides a moat.

Ubuntu 26.04’s Rust-based sudo is reported to be incompatible with standard sudo, sparking reader discussion about Ubuntu’s direction and prompting some users to cite it as further reason to move to Debian. The conversation also highlights concerns over compatibility, Ubuntu’s kernel and snap policies, and replacing GPL-licensed components with non-GPL alternatives.

Academic libraries are being overwhelmed by AI data-scraping bots that slow or crash sites meant for students, researchers, and the public. The surge comes as AI companies continue hunting for content to train large language models, putting public access at risk.

Researchers have identified 15,579 websites infected with malicious JavaScript, conservatively estimating they receive more than 135 million visits per month. Although they have evidence of the infections, the key challenge is how to notify the affected site owners.

Dutch bank ASN, known for its idealist positioning, has blocked its Android app from running on non-Google Android systems, including GrapheneOS. The restriction affects users of privacy-focused or de-Googled devices, according to a report citing app version 2.40.2 in the Netherlands. The move highlights growing friction between banking apps and custom Android ROMs.

The FAA is retiring decades-old floppy disks used in air traffic control that hold critical weather and other information. The agency is replacing them with a streamlined, modern system as part of a broader effort to upgrade U.S. air traffic control infrastructure.

Democrats are laying the groundwork for congressional investigations into SpaceXAI, Meta, and Apple, prompting executives who had courted the president to scramble. The move signals that major tech companies face renewed political scrutiny as Democrats prepare to use oversight powers.

The company announced Inkling 2 Small, the first release in its second-generation Inkling model lineup. The launch marks the debut of the next generation of Inkling models.

An analysis of 207,000 research sessions examined how scientists use Claude, revealing that some research tasks see far more AI use than others. The findings suggest targeted AI adoption could help speed up scientific discovery.

Arjun Panickssery argues he is skeptical that autonomous AI R&D is as ingenious as claimed, citing side projects where models missed key papers, ran uninformative experiments, pursued trivial philosophy work, and failed to recognize a highly relevant blog post. He also found AI-related hackathon papers were often similar and methodologically incomplete. The notable exception, he suggests, is certain hill-climbing tasks with fast feedback loops, where iterative prompting can yield major improvements.

Volunteer-driven peer production underpins some of the internet’s most valuable resources, from Linux to Wikipedia. These collaborative communities show how openly organized contributors can rival firms, markets, and government bureaucracies in building and maintaining key digital infrastructure.

Britain will require employers to disclose salary information in job advertisements, a move supporters say will save applicants time and help reduce pay discrimination, especially gender pay gaps. Commenters cautioned that overly broad salary ranges could weaken the policy and that transparency may slightly lower average pay, though many saw the trade-off as acceptable. Details remain pending after the consultation stage.