Pebble Watch software is now open source
Pebble, the pioneering smartwatch company, has announced that its entire software platform is now open-source, allowing developers to freely access and contribute to the codebase. This move aims to empower the community and enable further innovation in the wearable technology space.
Claude Opus 4.5
https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/what...
Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected
https://www.aikido.dev/blog/shai-hulud-strikes-again-hitting-zapier-ensdomains
Unpowered SSDs slowly lose data
The article discusses the phenomenon of data loss in unpowered solid-state drives (SSDs), where data can gradually disappear over time even without power. It explains the underlying mechanisms behind this issue and the importance of regularly backing up data stored on SSDs.
Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled
Related: Someone at YouTube needs glasses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846487 - April 2025 (694 comments)
Google Antigravity exfiltrates data via indirect prompt injection attack
The article discusses a new Google project called 'Antigravity' that can reportedly exfiltrate data from computers without physically accessing them. It raises concerns about the potential security and privacy implications of such a technology.
Claude Advanced Tool Use
The article explores Anthropic's research on advanced tool use in AI systems, focusing on their development of an AI agent capable of using complex tools effectively to solve problems. It highlights the potential for AI to assist humans in a wide range of tasks by leveraging sophisticated tool-use capabilities.
France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors
Show HN: I built an interactive HN Simulator
Hey HN! Just for fun, I built an interactive Hacker News Simulator.
You can submit text posts and links, just like the real HN. But on HN Simulator, all of the comments are generated by LLMs + generate instantly.
The best way to use it (IMHO) is to submit a text post or a curl-able URL here: https://news.ysimulator.run/submit. You don't need an account to post.
When you do that, various prompts will be built from a library of commenter archetypes, moods, and shapes. The AI commenters will actually respond to your text post and/or submitted link.
I really wanted it to feel real, and I think the project mostly delivers on that. When I was developing it, I kept getting confused between which tab was the "real" HN and which was the simulator, and accidentally submitted some junk to HN. (Sorry dang and team – I did clean up after myself).
The app itself is built with Node + Express + Postgres, and all of the inference runs on Replicate.
Speaking of Replicate, they generously loaded me up with some free credits for the inference – so shoutout to the team there.
The most technically interesting part of the app is how the comments work. You can read more about it here, as well as explore all of the available archetypes, moods, and shapes that get combined into prompts: https://news.ysimulator.run/comments.html
I hope you all have as much fun playing with it as I did making it!
PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage
The article discusses the rising prices of DDR5 memory, with a 64GB Trident Z5 Neo kit now costing more than a PlayStation 5 console due to a DRAM shortage. The article notes that the situation is expected to worsen until 2026, as the demand for high-performance memory continues to outpace supply.
Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing
The article discusses the common causes of software failures in IT management, including poor requirements gathering, inadequate testing, and lack of project management. It highlights the importance of addressing these issues to ensure successful software implementation and adoption.
Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world
The article discusses research suggesting that the human brain is 'pre-configured' to perform specific tasks, with certain areas of the brain dedicated to specific functions even before they are used. The findings challenge the traditional view of the brain as a blank slate and have implications for understanding brain development and function.
Orion 1.0
Kagi, a startup focused on building a new search engine, has announced the launch of its 'Orion' project, which aims to challenge the dominance of major tech companies in the search market by offering a user-centric, privacy-focused alternative that leverages blockchain technology.
Implications of AI to schools
https://xcancel.com/karpathy/status/1993010584175141038
Shai Hulud launches second supply-chain attack
Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
The article discusses how Jakarta, Indonesia and Tokyo, Japan are expected to become the world's largest cities by population by 2025, surpassing current megacities like Shanghai and Delhi. It highlights the rapid urbanization and population growth occurring in these regions, and the challenges they will face in terms of infrastructure, housing, and public services.
Ilya Sutskever: We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
The article explores an interview with Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, who discusses the potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the challenges in developing safe and ethical AGI, and his views on the long-term implications of advanced AI systems.
AI has a deep understanding of how this code works
This pull request proposes changes to the OCaml compiler to improve its support for the upcoming WebAssembly standard, including adding a new backend that generates WebAssembly code and making modifications to the runtime system to better align with WebAssembly.
Show HN: We built an open source, zero webhooks payment processor
Hi HN! For the past bit we’ve been building Flowglad (https://flowglad.com) and can now feel it’s just gotten good enough to share with you all:
Repo: https://github.com/flowglad/flowglad
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6H0c1Cd2kU
Flowglad is a payment processor that you integrate without writing any glue code. Along with processing your payments, it tells you in real time the features and usage credit balances that your customers have available to you based on their billing state. The DX feels like React, because we wanted to bring the reactive programming paradigm to payments.
We make it easy to spin up full-fledged pricing models (including usage meters, feature gates and usage credit grants) in a few clicks. We schematize these pricing models into a pricing.yaml file that’s kinda like Terraform but for your pricing.
The result is a payments layer that AI coding agents have a substantially easier time one-shotting (for now the happiest path is a fullstack Typescript + React app).
Why we built this:
- After a decade of building on Stripe, we found it powerful but underopinionated. It left us doing a lot of rote work to set up fairly standard use cases - That meant more code to maintain, much of which is brittle because it crosses so many server-client boundaries - Not to mention choreographing the lifecycle of our business domain with the Stripe checkout flow and webhook event types, of which there are 250+ - Payments online has gotten complex - not just new pricing models for AI products, but also cross border sales tax, etc. You either need to handle significant chunks of it yourself, or sign up for and compose multiple services
This all feels unduly clunky, esp when compared to how easy other layers like hosting and databases have gotten in recent years.
These patterns haven’t changed much in a decade. And while coding agents can nail every other rote part of an app (auth, db, analytics), payments is the scariest to tab-tab-tab your way through. Because the the existing integration patterns are difficult to reason about, difficult to verify correctness, and absolutely mission critical.
Our beta version lets you:
- Spin up common pricing models in just a few clicks, and customize them as needed - Clone pricing models between testmode and live mode, and import / export via pricing.yaml - Check customer usage credits and feature access in real time on your backend and React frontend - Integrate without any DB schema changes - you reference your customers via your ids, and reference prices, products, features and usage meters via slugs that you define
We’re still early in our journey so would love your feedback and opinions. Billing has a lot of use cases, so if you see anything that you wish we supported, please let us know!
X Just Accidentally Exposed a Covert Influence Network Targeting Americans
The article reveals a vast network of surveillance and data collection efforts by a company called X, which has covertly amassed information on millions of individuals without their knowledge or consent. The exposé highlights the extensive reach and potential abuse of such intrusive data practices by private entities.
France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors
The article discusses the adoption of the GrapheneOS mobile operating system, its focus on privacy and security, and the challenges faced by its developer in maintaining the project while dealing with online harassment and threats.
FLUX.2: Frontier Visual Intelligence
The article discusses Flux, a popular open-source front-end framework used for building complex user interfaces. It provides an overview of Flux's architecture, its key features, and how it differs from other state management solutions like Redux.
NSA and IETF, part 3: Dodging the issues at hand
The article discusses the importance of dodging in video games, emphasizing its role in improving player skills, strategic thinking, and overall gameplay experience. It provides insights into the technical aspects of dodging and how developers can effectively incorporate it into their game designs.
GrapheneOS migrates server infrastructure from France
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1991604700882563267
Brain has five 'eras' with adult mode not starting until early 30s
A new study from the University of Cambridge reveals that cognitive development in humans continues throughout life, challenging the traditional view of cognitive decline in later stages. The research suggests that the brain's flexibility and ability to adapt and learn persist into old age, with important implications for education, healthcare, and our understanding of human cognitive potential.
Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs
Cool-Retro-Term is an emulator that makes your terminal look and feel like an old school CRT display. It aims to provide an authentic retro computing experience with customizable themes and effects to recreate the look and feel of vintage computer hardware.
Chrome Jpegxl Issue Reopened
This article discusses a bug in Chromium where the browser crashes when a user attempts to print a page with a large number of images. The bug has been identified and a fix is being developed by the Chromium team.
Most Stable Raspberry Pi? Better NTP with Thermal Management
This article discusses modifications to a Raspberry Pi project to improve its stability and performance, including better NTP synchronization and thermal management. It highlights the author's efforts to create the 'world's most stable Raspberry Pi' through a series of hardware and software optimizations.
APT Rust requirement raises questions
The article discusses the ongoing challenges faced by the Linux kernel community in managing the increasing complexity of the kernel, including issues with code quality, technical debt, and the need for better tooling and processes to address these problems.
Show HN: KiDoom – Running DOOM on PCB Traces
I got DOOM running in KiCad by rendering it with PCB traces and footprints instead of pixels.
Walls are rendered as PCB_TRACK traces, and entities (enemies, items, player) are actual component footprints - SOT-23 for small items, SOIC-8 for decorations, QFP-64 for enemies and the player.
How I did it:
Started by patching DOOM's source code to extract vector data directly from the engine. Instead of trying to render 64,000 pixels (which would be impossibly slow), I grab the geometry DOOM already calculates internally - the drawsegs[] array for walls and vissprites[] for entities.
Added a field to the vissprite_t structure to capture entity types (MT_SHOTGUY, MT_PLAYER, etc.) during R_ProjectSprite(). This lets me map 150+ entity types to appropriate footprint categories.
The DOOM engine sends this vector data over a Unix socket to a Python plugin running in KiCad. The plugin pre-allocates pools of traces and footprints at startup, then just updates their positions each frame instead of creating/destroying objects. Calls pcbnew.Refresh() to update the display.
Runs at 10-25 FPS depending on hardware. The bottleneck is KiCad's refresh, not DOOM or the data transfer.
Also renders to an SDL window (for actual gameplay) and a Python wireframe window (for debugging), so you get three views running simultaneously.
Follow-up: ScopeDoom
After getting the wireframe renderer working, I wanted to push it somewhere more physical. Oscilloscopes in X-Y mode are vector displays - feed X coordinates to one channel, Y to the other. I didn't have a function generator, so I used my MacBook's headphone jack instead.
The sound card is just a dual-channel DAC at 44.1kHz. Wired 3.5mm jack → 1kΩ resistors → scope CH1 (X) and CH2 (Y). Reused the same vector extraction from KiDoom, but the Python script converts coordinates to ±1V range and streams them as audio samples.
Each wall becomes a wireframe box, the scope traces along each line. With ~7,000 points per frame at 44.1kHz, refresh rate is about 6 Hz - slow enough to be a slideshow, but level geometry is clearly recognizable. A 96kHz audio interface or analog scope would improve it significantly (digital scopes do sample-and-hold instead of continuous beam tracing).
Links:
KiDoom GitHub: https://github.com/MichaelAyles/KiDoom, writeup: https://www.mikeayles.com/#kidoom
ScopeDoom GitHub: https://github.com/MichaelAyles/ScopeDoom, writeup: https://www.mikeayles.com/#scopedoom