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The article discusses a new blood test that can help diagnose Alzheimer's disease with greater accuracy. The test measures levels of specific proteins in the blood, providing a reliable and non-invasive way to identify the early stages of Alzheimer's.

The article discusses the process of porting a motherboard to the open-source BIOS firmware, Coreboot. It covers the technical challenges, the benefits of using Coreboot, and the author's experience in undertaking this project.

The article discusses the challenges and implications of age verification on the internet, particularly for online content and services that are restricted to adults. It explores the various methods and technologies used for age verification, as well as the privacy and security concerns associated with these approaches.

Anthropic has released Steerling, an 8-billion parameter language model, aimed at providing a more aligned and truthful AI assistant that can engage in open-ended dialogue and assist with a variety of tasks while adhering to Anthropic's principles of ethical AI development.

The article discusses the development of UNIX99, a Unix-like operating system designed for the TI-99/4A home computer. It explores the motivations, features, and technical details behind this project aimed at bringing a more advanced computing experience to the TI-99/4A platform.

The article discusses the availability of Wolfram technology as a foundation tool for large language model (LLM) systems, highlighting its potential to enhance the capabilities and performance of these AI systems.

A study finds that baby chicks can perceive the Bouba-Kiki effect, a phenomenon where certain sounds are associated with certain shapes, challenging the theory that this effect is a uniquely human trait linked to language development.

The article provides information on how to download and install the Intel Arc graphics driver for Windows, a new line of discrete GPUs aimed at improving graphics performance and gaming experiences.

"I Want to Wash My Car. The Car Wash Is 50 Meters Away. Should I Walk or Drive?" This question has been making the rounds as a simple AI logic test so I wanted to see how it holds up across a broad set of models. Ran 53 models (leading open-source, open-weight, proprietary) with no system prompt, forced choice between drive and walk, with a reasoning field.

On a single run, only 11 out of 53 got it right (42 said walk). But a single run doesn't prove much, so I reran every model 10 times. Same prompt, no cache, clean slate.

The results got worse. Of the 11 that passed the single run, only 5 could do it consistently. GPT-5 managed 7/10. GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4.5, every Llama and Mistral model scored 0/10 across all 10 runs.

People kept saying humans would fail this too, so I got a human baseline through Rapidata (10k people, same forced choice): 71.5% said drive. Most models perform below that.

All reasoning traces (ran via Opper, my startup), full model breakdown, human baseline data, and raw JSON files are in the writeup for anyone who wants to dig in or run their own analysis.

William Shatner, the legendary actor best known for portraying Captain Kirk on Star Trek, has announced the release of an all-star metal album featuring collaborations with several prominent metal musicians. The album aims to showcase Shatner's unique spoken-word style combined with the power of heavy metal music.

The article discusses the concept of a 'simple web we own', emphasizing the importance of individuals taking control of their online presence and creating their own personal websites rather than relying solely on social media platforms. It encourages readers to reclaim the internet and assert their digital independence.

The article discusses the process of getting the Broadcom brcmfmac wireless driver working with FreeBSD, including steps to install the necessary packages, configure the driver, and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Hey HN! Lev and Justin here, authors of PgDog (https://pgdog.dev/), a connection pooler, load balancer and database sharder for PostgreSQL. If you build apps with a lot of traffic, you know the first thing to break is the database. We are solving this with a network proxy that works without requiring application code changes or database migrations.

Our post from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44099187

The most important update: we are in production. Sharding is used a lot, with direct-to-shard queries (one shard per query) working pretty much all the time. Cross-shard (or multi-database) queries are still a work in progress, but we are making headway.

Aggregate functions like count(), min(), max(), avg(), stddev() and variance() are working, without refactoring the app. PgDog calculates the aggregate in-transit, while transparently rewriting queries to fetch any missing info. For example, multi-database average calculation requires a total count of rows to calculate the original sum. PgDog will add count() to the query, if it’s not there already, and remove it from the rows sent to the app.

Sorting and grouping works, including DISTINCT, if the columns(s) are referenced in the result. Over 10 data types are supported, like, timestamp(tz), all integers, varchar, etc.

Cross-shard writes, including schema changes (CREATE/DROP/ALTER), are now atomic and synchronized between all shards with two-phase commit. PgDog keeps track of the transaction state internally and will rollback the transaction if the first phase fails. You don’t need to monkeypatch your ORM to use this: PgDog will intercept the COMMIT statement and execute PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT PREPARED instead.

Omnisharded tables, a.k.a replicated or mirrored (identical on all shards), support atomic reads and writes. That’s important because most databases can’t be completely sharded and will have some common data on all databases that has to be kept in-sync.

Multi-tuple inserts, e.g., INSERT INTO table_x VALUES ($1, $2), ($3, $4), are split by our query rewriter and distributed to their respective shards automatically. They are used by ORMs like Prisma, Sequelize, and others, so those now work without code changes too.

Sharding keys can be mutated. PgDog will intercept and rewrite the update statement into 3 queries, SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE, moving the row between shards. If you’re using Citus (for everyone else, Citus is a Postgres extension for sharding databases), this might be worth a look.

If you’re like us and prefer integers to UUIDs for your primary keys, we built a cross-shard unique sequence, directly inside PgDog. It uses the system clock (and a couple other inputs), can be called like a Postgres function, and will automatically inject values into queries, so ORMs like ActiveRecord will continue to work out of the box. It’s monotonically increasing, just like a real Postgres sequence, and can generate up to 4 million numbers per second with a range of 69.73 years, so no need to migrate to UUIDv7 just yet.

    INSERT INTO my_table (id, created_at) VALUES (pgdog.unique_id(), now());

Sharding hardly works without a good load balancer. PgDog can monitor replicas and move write traffic to a promoted primary during a failover. This works with managed Postgres, like RDS (incl. Aurora), Azure Pg, GCP Cloud SQL, etc., because it just polls each instance with “SELECT pg_is_in_recovery()”. Primary election is not supported yet, so if you’re self-hosting with Patroni, you should keep it around for now, but you don’t need to run HAProxy in front of the DBs anymore.

The load balancer is getting pretty smart and can handle edge cases like SELECT FOR UPDATE and CTEs with INSERT/UPDATE statements, but if you still prefer to handle your read/write separation in code, you can do that too with manual routing. This works by giving PgDog a hint at runtime: a connection parameter (-c pgdog.role=primary), SET statement, or a query comment. If you have multiple connection pools in your app, you can replace them with just one connection to PgDog instead. For multi-threaded Python/Ruby/Go apps, this helps by reducing memory usage, I/O and context switching overhead.

Speaking of connection pooling, PgDog can automatically rollback unfinished transactions and drain and re-sync partially sent queries, all in an effort to preserve connections to the database. If you’ve seen Postgres go to 100% CPU because of a connection storm caused by an application crash, this might be for you. Draining connections works by receiving and discarding rows from abandoned queries and sending the Sync message via the Postgres wire protocol, which clears the query context and returns the connection to a normal state.

PgDog is open source and welcomes contributions and feedback in any form. As always, all features are configurable and can be turned off/on, so should you choose to give it a try, you can do so at your own pace. Our docs (https://docs.pgdog.dev) should help too.

Thanks for reading and happy hacking!

The article explores the advantages of adopting the Rust programming language, highlighting its focus on safety, concurrency, and performance, making it a suitable choice for systems programming and building secure and reliable software.

https://archive.ph/drNhb

The article discusses the adoption of Rust programming language by Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution. It highlights Ubuntu's decision to make Rust a first-class language, alongside C and C++, and the potential benefits this move could bring to the Linux ecosystem.

The article discusses the technical challenges faced by the author in porting the game Shufflepuck Café to the Apple II, an 8-bit computer, including issues with memory limitations, graphics and sound limitations, and the need for optimization and creative programming techniques to overcome these constraints.

The article discusses the TALC (Thoughts and Language Comprehension) project at Cornell University, which aims to develop computational models of how humans understand and produce language. The research explores the cognitive and neural processes involved in language processing.

Sim, a YC-backed company, is seeking a Software Engineer to join their platform team and help build tools and infrastructure that power their growing business. The role involves working on a variety of projects, from building internal tools to developing new features for their platform.

The article discusses the increasing financial burden of raising a family in the United States, highlighting how a two-child household must now earn a combined annual income of $106,000 to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, up from $72,000 two decades ago due to rising costs of housing, childcare, and other expenses.

Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot designed to close the "prototype gap" that kills most agri-robotics startups and research projects — the 18+ months spent on drivers, networking, safety watchdogs, and UI before you can even start on the thing you actually care about.

The hardware is built around a stackable 10×10cm compute module with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs — one for ROS 2 navigation/EKF localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO inference — connected via a single ethernet cable.

Centimetre-level positioning via dual RTK GNSS, CAN bus for field comms, and real-time motor control via ESP32 running Lizard firmware.

Everything — schematics, PCB layouts, firmware — is under open licences. The software stack runs on RoSys/Field Friend (for teams who want fast iteration) or DevKit ROS (for teams already in the ROS ecosystem). The idea is that a lab in one country can reproduce another lab's experiment by sharing a Docker image.

Current status: the Open Core brain is largely fabricated, the full-size Sowbot body has a detailed BOM but isn't yet assembled, and we have two smaller dev platforms (Mini and Pico) in various stages of testing.

We're a small volunteer team and we're looking for contributors — hardware, ROS, firmware, docs, whatever you can offer.

The best place to start is our Discord: https://discord.gg/SvztEBr4KZ — we have a weekly call if you'd prefer to just show up and chat.

GitHub: https://github.com/Agroecology-Lab/feldfreund_devkit_ros/tre...

The article discusses the differences between client-side and server-side health checks in load balancing. It explores the pros and cons of each approach, emphasizing the importance of selecting the appropriate method based on the specific requirements of the application and infrastructure.

Iowa farmers are at the forefront of the 'right to repair' movement, advocating for legislation that would grant them the freedom to repair their own farm equipment without relying on manufacturers' authorized services, which can be costly and time-consuming.

Hey all, I built babyshark, a terminal UI for PCAPs aimed at people who find Wireshark powerful but overwhelming.

The goal is “PCAPs for humans”: Overview dashboard answers what’s happening + what to click next

Domains view (hostnames first) → select a domain → jump straight to relevant flows (works even when DNS is encrypted/cached by using observed IPs from flows)

Weird stuff view surfaces common failure/latency signals (retransmits/out-of-order hints, resets, handshake issues, DNS failures when visible)

From there you can drill down: Flows → Packets → Explain (plain-English hints) / follow stream

Commands: Offline: babyshark --pcap capture.pcap

Live (requires tshark): babyshark --list-ifaces then babyshark --live en0

Repo + v0.1.0 release: https://github.com/vignesh07/babyshark

Would love feedback on UX + what “weird detectors” you’d want next.

The article explores the cultural politics of sumo wrestling in Japan, examining the sport's history, traditions, and the power dynamics within its governing body, the Japan Sumo Association. It discusses the challenges facing the sport in the modern era and the efforts to maintain its cultural relevance and integrity.

The article discusses the concept of 'code is cheap' in software development, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the overall system design and architecture rather than solely on writing code. It argues that the true cost of software lies in the long-term maintenance and evolution of the system, and that good design practices can significantly reduce these costs.

This article explores the concept of Big O notation, a fundamental tool in computer science that helps analyze the efficiency of algorithms. It delves into the origins of Big O, its applications, and how it can be used to compare the performance of different algorithms.

ASML, a leading semiconductor equipment maker, has unveiled an EUV light source advance that could yield up to 50% more chips by 2030. This innovation is expected to boost the production capacity and efficiency of the semiconductor industry.