Hacker News Highlights

AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985489

What is HDR, anyway?
https://www.lux.camera/what-is-hdr/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43983871

A server that wasn't meant to exist
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/05/13/the_server_that_wasnt_meant_to_exist/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985971

Databricks acquires Neon
https://www.databricks.com/blog/databricks-neon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43982777

Changes since congestion pricing started in New York
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/11/upshot/congestion-pricing.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971515

Human
https://quarter--mile.com/Human
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43991396

How to Build a Smartwatch: Picking a Chip
https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-picking-a-chip/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43981680

LLMs get lost in multi-turn conversation
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06120
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43991256

Git Bug: Distributed, Offline-First Bug Tracker Embedded in Git, with Bridges
https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971620

Interferometer Device Sees Text from a Mile Away
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/99
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945733

The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1922100771392520710
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971464

Multiple security issues in GNU Screen
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/05/12/1
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43971716

Branch Privilege Injection: Exploiting branch predictor race conditions
https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/microarch/branch-privilege-injection/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43974891

The great displacement is already well underway?
https://shawnfromportland.substack.com/p/the-great-displacement-is-already
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43963434

Google is building its own DeX: First look at Android's Desktop Mode
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43973395

PDF to Text, a challenging problem
https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_119_pdf/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43973721

Flattening Rust’s learning curve
https://corrode.dev/blog/flattening-rusts-learning-curve/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43978435

Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1017072
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43980845

Type-constrained code generation with language models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09246
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43978357

Launch HN: Miyagi (YC W25) turns YouTube videos into online, interactive courses
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972425

The Barbican
https://arslan.io/2025/05/12/barbican-estate/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43964136

Firefox moves to GitHub
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43969827

A community-led fork of Organic Maps
https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-05-12/3/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43961908

Can you trust that permission pop-up on macOS?
https://wts.dev/posts/tcc-who/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43966089

FastVLM: Efficient vision encoding for vision language models
https://github.com/apple/ml-fastvlm
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43968897

University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy
https://news.utexas.edu/2025/05/05/university-of-texas-led-team-solves-a-big-problem-for-fusion-energy/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43962148

Ruby 3.5 Feature: Namespace on read
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21311
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43962770

Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s
https://www.core77.com/posts/136773/Reviving-a-Modular-Cargo-Bike-Design-from-the-1930s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43963397

Air Traffic Control
https://computer.rip/2025-05-11-air-traffic-control.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43958562

RIP Usenix ATC
https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025/05/11/rip-usenix-atc/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43964827

Plain Vanilla Web
https://plainvanillaweb.com/index.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43954896

One-Click RCE in Asus's Preinstalled Driver Software
https://mrbruh.com/asusdriverhub/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43951588

A simple 16x16 dot animation from simple math rules
https://tixy.land
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942881

Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
https://insideevs.com/features/759153/car-companies-software-companies/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43955525

Writing an LLM from scratch, part 13 – attention heads are dumb
https://www.gilesthomas.com/2025/05/llm-from-scratch-13-taking-stock-part-1-attention-heads-are-dumb
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43931366

Lazarus Release 4.0
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=71050.0
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43913414

Title of work deciphered in sealed Herculaneum scroll via digital unwrapping
https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/title-work-deciphered-sealed-herculaneum-scroll-digital-unwrapping
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43953883

The most valuable commodity in the world is friction
https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-most-valuable-commodity-in-the
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933091

Why Bell Labs Worked
https://1517.substack.com/p/why-bell-labs-worked
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957010

High-school shop students attract skilled-trades job offers
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/skilled-trades-high-school-recruitment-fd9f8257
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43954488

ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
https://www.home.cern/news/news/physics/alice-detects-conversion-lead-gold-lhc
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43937214

Sofie: open-source web based system for automating live TV news production
https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43936408

Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools
https://theorthagonist.substack.com/p/why-reading-business-books-is-a-waste
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43940747

Show HN: Hyvector – A fast and modern SVG editor
https://www.hyvector.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43935394

21 GB/s CSV Parsing Using SIMD on AMD 9950X
https://nietras.com/2025/05/09/sep-0-10-0/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43936592

Itter.sh – Micro-Blogging via Terminal
https://www.itter.sh/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43936884

Vision Now Available in Llama.cpp
https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/blob/master/docs/multimodal.md
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43943047

What’s new in Swift 6.2
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/277/whats-new-in-swift-6-2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43940539

WebGL Water (2010)
https://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942149

From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
https://blog.hayman.net/2025/05/06/from-steve-jobs-great-idea.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43929724

Void: Open-source Cursor alternative
https://github.com/voideditor/void
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927926

First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/new-pope-conclave-day-two-05-08-25
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927856

Reservoir Sampling
https://samwho.dev/reservoir-sampling/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928315

LegoGPT: Generating Physically Stable and Buildable Lego
https://avalovelace1.github.io/LegoGPT/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933891

Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
https://www.fusionenergybase.com/articles/continuing-progress-toward-fusion-energy-breakeven-and-gain-as-measured-against-the-lawson-criteria
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927337

When Abandoned Mines Collapse
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/5/6/when-abandoned-mines-collapse
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43908261

A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code
https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11145838-using-claude-code-with-your-max-plan
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43931409

Starlink User Terminal Teardown
https://www.darknavy.org/blog/a_first_glimpse_of_the_starlink_user_ternimal/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933452

How to start a school with your friends
https://prigoose.substack.com/p/how-to-start-a-university
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43930397

Ty: A fast Python type checker and language server
https://github.com/astral-sh/ty
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43918484

Waiting for Postgres 18: Accelerating Disk Reads with Asynchronous I/O
https://pganalyze.com/blog/postgres-18-async-io
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43916577

Mistral ships Le Chat – enterprise AI assistant that can run on prem
https://mistral.ai/news/le-chat-enterprise
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43916098

So Much Blood
https://dynomight.net/blood/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43913751

Open source Google Analytics replacement
https://github.com/rybbit-io/rybbit
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43918620

My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
https://gill.net.in/posts/my-quest-to-make-motorcycle-riding-safer/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43914235

Web search on the Anthropic API
https://www.anthropic.com/news/web-search-api
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43920188

Show HN: eInk optimized manga with Kindle Comic Converter (+Kobo/ReMarkable)
https://github.com/ciromattia/kcc
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43916956

Create and edit images with Gemini 2.0 in preview
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/generate-images-gemini-2-0-flash-preview/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43917461

Mac Themes Garden
https://damien.zone/introducing-mac-themes-garden/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919868

Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs
https://felixrieseberg.github.io/clippy/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905942

Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/gemini-2-5-pro-io-improved-coding-performance/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43906018

OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/openai-reaches-agreement-to-buy-startup-windsurf-for-3-billion
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43900877

Matt Godbolt sold me on Rust by showing me C++
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/05/06/matt-godbolt-sold-me-on-rust-by-showing-me-c-plus-plus/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43907820

Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43906841

India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-launches-attack-9-sites-pakistan-pakistan-occupied-jammu-kashmir-2025-05-06/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43909430

Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools
https://github.com/asgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks/blob/main/claude.txt
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43909409

VVVVVV Source Code
https://github.com/TerryCavanagh/VVVVVV
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43910681

Nnd – a TUI debugger alternative to GDB, LLDB
https://github.com/al13n321/nnd
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905185

Accents in latent spaces: How AI hears accent strength in English
https://accent-strength.boldvoice.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905299

Evolving OpenAI's Structure
https://openai.com/index/evolving-our-structure/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43897772

The vocal effects of Daft Punk
https://bjango.com/articles/daftpunkvocaleffects/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43893601

Show HN: Real-time AI Voice Chat at ~500ms Latency
https://github.com/KoljaB/RealtimeVoiceChat
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43899028

I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/utah-school-lunch-debt-relief-free-student-meals_n_681258fbe4b03207b5ba49fa
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43885101

As an experienced LLM user, I don't use generative LLMs often
https://minimaxir.com/2025/05/llm-use/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43897320

Replacing Kubernetes with systemd (2024)
https://blog.yaakov.online/replacing-kubernetes-with-systemd/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43899236

The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)
https://den.dev/blog/pihole/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894175

Show HN: VectorVFS, your filesystem as a vector database
https://vectorvfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43896011

How are cyber criminals rolling in 2025?
https://vin01.github.io/piptagole/cybcecrime/security/cybersecurity/2025/05/05/state-cyber-security.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43896188

Possibly a Serious Possibility
https://kucharski.substack.com/p/possibly-a-serious-possibility
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43898380

I'd rather read the prompt
https://claytonwramsey.com/blog/prompt/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888803

Design for 3D-Printing
https://blog.rahix.de/design-for-3d-printing/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888117

An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/the-alabama-landline-that-keeps-ringing
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43886243

Why Archers Didn't Volley Fire
https://acoup.blog/2025/05/02/collections-why-archers-didnt-volley-fire/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43877644

Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart
https://www.space.com/astronomy/solar-system/evidence-of-controversial-planet-9-uncovered-in-sky-surveys-taken-23-years-apart
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874641

Technical analysis of TM SGNL, the unofficial Signal app Trump officials used
https://micahflee.com/tm-sgnl-the-obscure-unofficial-signal-app-mike-waltz-uses-to-text-with-trump-officials/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43875476

Dummy's Guide to Modern LLM Sampling
https://rentry.co/samplers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887637

Oberon Pi
http://pascal.hansotten.com/niklaus-wirth/project-oberon/oberon-pi/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43885478

Graceful Shutdown in Go: Practical Patterns
https://victoriametrics.com/blog/go-graceful-shutdown/index.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43889610

On Not Carrying a Camera – Cultivating memories instead of snapshots
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/after-neoliberalism/articles/on-not-carrying-a-camera
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890525