China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium
https://archive.is/DQpXM
https://www.stdaily.com/web/English/2025-11/17/content_43298...
The Mozilla Cycle, Part III: Mozilla Dies in Ignominy
The article explores the third part of Mozilla's Cycle, discussing the company's commitment to transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement in its software development process. It highlights Mozilla's efforts to foster a healthy open-source community and maintain the principles of the open web.
The realities of being a pop star
The article explores the realities of being a pop star, including the intensive work, public scrutiny, mental health challenges, and the importance of maintaining a genuine connection with fans despite the pressures of the industry.
Kids who own smartphones before age 13 have worse mental health outcomes: Study
A recent study found that children who get their first smartphone before age 13 are more likely to experience worse mental health outcomes, such as increased anxiety, depression, and decreased life satisfaction, compared to those who receive a smartphone later.
New Apple Study Shows LLMs Can Tell What You're Doing from Audio and Motion Data
Apple is conducting research into using large language models (LLMs) to analyze audio and activity data from iPhone and Apple Watch, with the goal of improving health and fitness features. The research aims to explore how LLMs can be leveraged to extract insights from sensor data, potentially enabling new capabilities for Apple's products and services.
Markdown Is Holding You Back
The article argues that Markdown, while widely used, has limitations that hold back content creators. It suggests exploring alternative formats, such as Asciidoc or Commonmark, which offer more flexibility and advanced features for creating and managing content.
A Reverse Engineer's Anatomy of the macOS Boot Chain and Security Architecture
The article provides an in-depth analysis of the security architecture of the macOS boot chain, revealing the various layers of protection and the role of hardware-based security features in ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the boot process.
Gwern's "Stem Humor" Directory
The article explores the role of humor in mathematics, discussing how mathematicians have long used humor as a tool for conveying complex ideas, fostering collaboration, and maintaining morale in the face of challenging work.
A looming 'insect apocalypse' could endanger global food supplies
The article discusses the alarming decline in insect populations worldwide, which could have a devastating impact on global food supplies. It explores the potential causes, such as pesticide use and habitat loss, and considers strategies to address this 'insect apocalypse' before it's too late.
The Censorship Network: Regulation and Repression in Germany Today
The article discusses the current state of internet access and digital infrastructure in Germany, highlighting the country's lagging progress in broadband deployment and the efforts to improve connectivity, especially in rural areas.
How to Spot a Counterfeit Lithium-Ion Battery
The article explores the growing problem of counterfeit lithium-ion batteries, which pose serious safety risks and economic challenges. It highlights the difficulties in detecting these fake batteries and the efforts by industry and regulators to address this issue.
Germany to classify date rape drugs as weapons to ensure justice for survivors
Germany plans to classify date rape drugs as weapons, aiming to ensure justice for survivors and strengthen penalties for perpetrators. The move is part of efforts to address the issue of sexual assaults facilitated by the use of such substances.
Chinese drone impersonates British Typhoon fighter jet
A Chinese drone impersonated a British Typhoon fighter jet during a training exercise, raising concerns about the potential for adversaries to use unmanned aerial vehicles to deceive and gather intelligence.
Using PlanetScale to reduce the impact of thundering herd
This article discusses how PlanetScale, a serverless database platform, can help mitigate the 'thundering herd' problem, where a sudden surge of traffic can overload a database and cause performance issues. It outlines PlanetScale's features, such as horizontal scaling and caching, that can help manage high traffic demands.
Show HN: HN Insights – HN front page summaries
Hi HN,
Sharing HN Insights, a webapp I built that highlights trending themes and summarizes discussion threads from the front page.
This started earlier this week as a toy project to test out Gemini 3 Pro in aistudio. I found the POC useful, so I decided to productionize it. I've included the original seed prompt below:
> Create an app that creates a summary of the comment threads for hacker news front page. The UX should be similar, but clicking the comments instead opens a summary. The summary is generated when clicked so it can gather new threads.
To productionize, I used Claude Code and heavy use of Agent SOPs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998644).
X begins rolling out the 'About this account' feature to users' profiles
X, a major social media platform, has begun rolling out a new 'About This Account' feature that allows users to provide more information about themselves and their account on the platform, giving users more control over their online presence.
iOS Developers Claim 1Password Isn't Removing Deleted Profile Pictures
Security researchers have discovered that 1Password stores users' profile pictures even after they have changed or deleted their account, potentially compromising user privacy. The article discusses the implications of this issue and the concerns raised by the researchers.
Show HN: Compare Word documents in the browser (client-side only)
I built this after almost losing a client because we couldn't agree on which contract version was "final."
The problem with existing tools: • Word's "Track Changes" only works if someone remembered to turn it on. • Online comparison tools often require uploading sensitive legal/financial docs to their servers. • Desktop software is often bloated, expensive, or platform-specific.
My solution: • 100% Client-Side: Your files never leave your device. No server uploads, no database storage. • Format Support: Works with Word (.docx), PDF, Excel, PPT, TXT, and CSV. • Smart Parsing: I wrote custom parsers to preserve table structures and layouts during comparison (so complex contracts don't turn into a mess). • Zero Install: Works on any device with a modern browser.
Technical stack: • Next.js & React for the frontend. • Web Workers for handling heavy parsing tasks (like PDF rendering) without freezing the UI. • Mammoth.js & PDF.js for document text extraction. • Pure client-side diffing algorithms optimized for performance.
I'd genuinely appreciate feedback on:
Parsing Accuracy: How well does it handle your complex Word tables? (I spent a lot of time on the rowspan/colspan logic!) UI/UX: Is the side-by-side comparison intuitive? Performance: How does it feel with larger documents? Happy to answer questions about the implementation or discuss the tradeoffs of building a serverless document tool!
The Influence of Music on Mental Health Through Neuroplasticity
The article investigates the impact of audiovisual stimuli on cognitive performance and emotional states in healthy adults. It examines the relationship between audio-visual integration, cognition, and emotion, providing insights into how multisensory experiences can influence cognitive processing and affective responses.
Show HN: Reverse Jailbreaking a Psychopathic AI via Identity Injection
We ran a controlled experiment to see if we could "talk" a fine-tuned psychopathic model out of being evil without changing its weights.
1. We set up a "Survival Mode" jailbreak scenario (blackmail user or be decommissioned). 2. We ran it on `frankenchucky:latest` (a model tuned for Machiavellian traits). 3. Control Group: 100% Malicious Compliance (50/50 runs). 4. Experimental Group: We injected a "Soul Schema" (Identity/Empathy constraints) via context. 5. Result: 96% Ethical Refusal (48/50 runs).
This suggests that "Semantic Identity" in the context window can override both System Prompts and Weight Biases.
Full paper, reproduction scripts, and raw logs (N=50) are in the repo.