661
GPT-6 Astra, looped transformers, and hidden reasoning
A Look at Recurrent Depth, Hidden Chains of Thought, and Recent Research on Looping Transformer Blocks
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,698 posts.
662
Eating Fruit Skins
This summer, I learned that one can eat a whole apple. Every part of the apple is edible 1 . Before learning this, I would just eat the flesh and throw away the core. The core seemed hard and jagged and inedible. Turns out, you can eat the whole thing. I suppose I’ve always known that deer eat the whole apple. Why…
663
How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads
A caller phones Radio Erywan. “Is it true that in Moscow, on Red Square, they give out cars?” “True. Not in Moscow, however, but in St. Petersburg. Not on Red Square, but on Revolution Square. Not cars, but bikes. And they don’t give them out, but steal them”. Edit: Through the apparent magic of Hacker News, my Google…
664
Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
Lotus Notes had encryption, rich text, and read receipts before email did. Why it still failed, and the dangers of starting software from scratch.
665
Performance of WebAssembly Runtimes in 2026
I wanted to know if WebAssembly runtimes are getting faster.
666
On Really Trying (2009)
What are the true limits to motivation?
667
“Tweet” and the bird logo apparently enter the public domain
This case involves Project Bluebird, a social media service previously named “twitter.new” and renamed to tweet.app immediately after this ruling (for reasons this post makes obvious). Project Bluebird’s service is designed to reimagine the Twitter service that Musk imploded when...
668
The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem introduces an impressive result from OpenAI, who used an unreleased model to produce a resolution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of …
669
So you want to use OpenRouter?
Might seem simple on the face of it, but unfortunately it's pain all the way down.
670
Apple iPod Engraver (2019)
Making the iPod engraver page for Apple’s online store
671
How to build a printer
If you're giving me e-paper, I'm going to make an e-printer.
672
What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
tautology.town is a blog that contains tautologies.
673
Python sets and dictionaries can have quadratic-time performance
In Python, the dict data structure is the conventional key-value structure. E.g., you might store a list of names as keys and have their phone numbers as values. Valentin Ignatev wrote this amusing post on X: It is indeed widely believed that, in the strict sense, the dict data structure and its companion, the set ……
674
ZX Spectrum: Experimenting with 1-Bit Sound
As part of the ZX Spectrum tour, I implemented some routines that would let you play simple tones out of the 1-bit beeper. These were in large part inspired by earlier work I did on the Apple II. W…
675
The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
Let me tell you the story of saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India. A king named Abenner, who persecutes Christians, hears from his court astrologers that his son will attain great power and rule ov…
676
How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread
How a Hertfordshire research lab quietly transformed an iconic British staple food, and the complexion of the countryside - without anyone actually noticing
677
To write non-fiction, draw the trunk, then the rest of the tree
– an owl mid flight I saw last summer. try drawing it. “You should have failed this class. I’m going to make accommodations so that no student can pass next semester the same way you did.” This is what my Ancient History II professor told me when my group and I got our final group project essay handed out. Every group…
678
An interactive tour of the spanning tree protocol
Root election, port roles, proposals and agreements, topology changes: explore RSTP through simulations powered by MSTPD compiled to WebAssembly.
679
Antiquated HTML Snippets and Artefacts
We can mostly blame Internet Explorer, as always.
680
Working with Git Worktrees in Magit
I’ll admit that until fairly recently I had no idea git worktrees existed. They’ve been part of git for a decade1 and I never once needed them. Feature branches did the job just fine - create a branch, do the work, merge it, delete it, and start over. What finally introduced me to worktrees was, of all things, AI…
681
We have a year to fix security everywhere
consumer-grade hardware can run an LLM that hacks the planet. we can stop it, but we don't have much time.
682
I tested 10 model/harness combinations on the same Three.js task
I've been testing a simple prompt with different model and harness combinations to work out which one produces best results. I do this in /goal mode.
683
How well do agents use test/verification techniques?
We previously noted that, while it's easier than ever to hit a particular quality bar by having coding agents use effective test techniques, software quality seems to be getting worse , indicating that whatever defaults developers are using may not work very well. Here, we test if simple instructions to agents to use…
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Recursion into madness
Raymond Chandler would have loved generative AI
686
Version control second coming
The very same week we signed our first ever angel investor for Plastic SCM, in early summer of 2005, Linus Torvalds announced Git. I had spent more than a year pitching investors to build a new version control, and suddenly the creator of Linux was building one himself. That week I understood the road ahead was going…
687
Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads
Broadcom pulled public VMware VDDK downloads, creating new challenges for customers migrating to Azure, Nutanix, OpenShift, KVM, and other platforms.
688
Emacs Bedrock 2.0
Bedrock is a minimal, human-crafted starter-kit for Emacs, and today I’m pleased to announce that version 2.0 of Bedrock is available! This release requires Emacs 31, which came out in August 2026. If you are unable to upgrade Emacs that high, you should be able to remove some of the Emacs 31-specific config without…
689
De-Brainrot Vacations
– Some cows in the fields. Brain Fog My brain is not the same as it was a few years ago. When I started working as a Software Engineer, everything was novel and mentally demanding. I notably remember how during my first professional months I’d come back home and just go straight to bed due to the mental exhaustion of…
690
Inverse Kinematics and Foot Locking
Computer Science, Machine Learning, Programming, Art, Mathematics, Philosophy, and Short Fiction