The Bromine Chokepoint: How Strife Could Halt Production of World’s Memory Chips

78 crescit_eundo 2026-04-19 18:11:38 UTC warontherocks.com Llama Share 33

A global semiconductor memory supply chain is vulnerable to a bromine shortage due to Israel's reliance on bromine imports and limited conversion capacity outside the country. A disruption would immediately impact global memory production, affecting consumer devices, military systems, and AI infrastructure.

Vercel April 2026 security incident

350 colesantiago 2026-04-19 15:11:38 UTC bleepingcomputer.com Llama Share 247

Vercel disclosed a security incident after threat actors claimed to have breached its systems and are selling stolen data. The company is investigating and notifying affected customers, advising them to review environment variables and rotate secrets.

A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

26 isomorphy 2026-04-19 20:11:38 UTC philosopher.eu Llama Share 10

Ayer recounts his near-death experience, where he died for four minutes, and upon revival, had vivid memories of a red light and attempting to fix space-time. His experience suggests consciousness may continue after death, but does not necessarily imply a future life.

Show HN: Faceoff – A terminal UI for following NHL games

57 vcf 2026-04-19 18:11:38 UTC vincentgregoire.com Full Share 21

This project was inspired by Playball, a similar terminal application for following MLB baseball games. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the National Hockey League (NHL), any of its teams, or any of its affiliates. All NHL logos, trademarks, and data are the property of the NHL and its teams.

Swiss authorities want to reduce dependency on Microsoft

47 doener 2026-04-19 20:27:38 UTC swissinfo.ch Llama Share 5

Switzerland aims to reduce its dependency on Microsoft products, citing concerns over data security. A feasibility study shows replacing Microsoft with open-source software is possible, with Germany serving as a reference.

I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator in my own programming language

24 pizza_man 2026-04-19 20:11:38 UTC github.com/navid-m Full Share 5

Chip8 Emulator. Contribute to navid-m/chip8emu development by creating an account on GitHub.

I learned Unity the wrong way

43 lelanthran 2026-04-19 18:11:38 UTC darkounity.com Full Share 20

I spent 3 years building Unity games by copying tutorials and stitching forum scripts together. Then an interviewer asked me what Queue<T> was. I could not answer.

Islamic Medicine (2018)

4 debo_ 2026-04-19 20:34:38 UTC hekint.org Prefix Share 0

During the expansion of the Empire of Islam and its ensuing Golden Age, physicians from Spain to Samarkand advanced the medical sciences by reviving existing Greek medicine and adding their own innovations.1 There were many prominent physicians, dating back to the days of the Prophet himself. Often associated with hospitals or schools of pharmacy, some were members of the important Academy of ...

Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7

103 pretext 2026-04-19 11:11:38 UTC simonwillison.net Llama Share 59

Anthropic published system prompts for their chat system, with updates from Claude 3 to Opus 4.7, showing changes in child safety, tool usage, and response style. The new prompt includes tools like Claude in Chrome and a tool search mechanism to resolve ambiguities.

Archive of BYTE magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975

489 DamnInteresting 2026-04-19 10:11:38 UTC archive.org Full Share 123

Foreground p.20 RECYCLING USED ICs [theme Hardware] [author Mikkelsen] p.62 DECIPHERING MYSTERY KEYBOARDS [theme Hardware] [author Heltners] p.72 LIFE...

Notion leaks email addresses of all editors of any public page

258 Tiberium 2026-04-19 16:11:38 UTC twitter.com/weezerosint Full Share 81

Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot. Some privacy related extensions may cause issues on x.com. Please disable them and try again.

Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game

375 speckx 2026-04-19 05:11:38 UTC kotaku.com Llama Share 207

Game developers use various methods to pause games, including manipulating time, freezing frames, and ignoring pause commands for certain functions. Pausing a game can be a complex process, but most modern game engines support it, and developers can implement it with proper testing and consideration of different pause scenarios.

The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

232 helloplanets 2026-04-19 08:11:38 UTC madhadron.com Llama Share 91

The user explains that programming languages can be grouped into seven fundamental "ur-languages" that share common patterns and characteristics, and that learning a language from the same ur-language is easier than learning one from a different ur-language. The user suggests learning a language from the ALGOL family (such as Python or Java), then learning a language from the Prolog family ...

Nanopass Framework: Clean Compiler Creation Language

99 NordStreamYacht 2026-04-19 12:11:38 UTC nanopass.org Full Share 24

The Nanopass Framework is an embedded domain-specific language for creating compilers that focuses on creating small passes and many intermediate representations. Nanopass reduces the boilerplate required to create compilers making them easier to understand and maintain.

SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017)

144 Eridanus2 2026-04-19 09:11:38 UTC usenix.org Llama Share 64

A new type of malware called SPEAKE(a)R can covertly turn headphones, earphones, or simple earbuds connected to a PC into microphones when a standard microphone is not present, muted, taped, or turned off. The malware can record human speech of intelligible quality and eavesdrop from nine meters away, posing a significant cyber security threat.

KTaO3-Based Supercurrent Diode

21 PaulHoule 2026-04-19 17:11:38 UTC pubs.acs.org Llama Share 1

Researchers have demonstrated the supercurrent diode effect (SDE) in KTaO3 (KTO) superconducting weak links (WLs) using conductive atomic force microscope (c-AFM) lithography. The SDE polarity can be controlled by varying the WL position, and the rectification efficiency reaches up to 13% under optimal magnetic field conditions.

Eliza a Play by Tom Holloway

5 abrax3141 2026-04-19 19:11:38 UTC mtc.com.au Prefix Share 2

As society grapples with the ethics of rapidly advancing and increasingly invasive technologies, director Paige Rattray (Black is the New White, Fangirls) delivers an urgent and unnerving depiction of the birth of artificial intelligence. From four-time Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Award winner Tom Holloway (The Museum of Modern Love, Double Indemnity, Storm Boy) comes this riveting new ...

The RAM shortage could last years

97 omer_k 2026-04-19 08:11:38 UTC theverge.com Llama Share 89

Memory makers will meet only 60 percent of demand by 2027 due to production shortages. New fabrication capacity won't be online until 2027 or 2028, exacerbating the RAM shortage.

Show HN: Shader Lab, like Photoshop but for shaders

123 ragojose 2026-04-19 11:11:38 UTC eng.basement.studio Full Share 34

A powerful toolkit to create, stack, and animate shaders.

College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

445 gnabgib 2026-04-18 21:11:38 UTC sentinelcolorado.com Llama Share 403

Grit Matthias Phelps, a Cornell University instructor, introduced manual typewriters to her German language class to prevent AI use and teach students the value of writing without digital assistance. The "analog" assignment allowed students to experience the raw feeling of typing without screens, online dictionaries, or delete keys.

What are skiplists good for?

240 mfiguiere 2026-04-19 03:11:38 UTC antithesis.com Llama Share 54

The user encountered a problem at Antithesis where they needed to efficiently query a large tree data structure in Google BigQuery, but point lookups were slow. They solved this by inventing a "skiptree" data structure, which is a hierarchy of skiplists that allows for efficient querying with a fixed number of JOINs in SQL.

NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

401 rbanffy 2026-04-18 21:11:38 UTC nist.gov Llama Share 183

Scientists at NIST have developed a way to make integrated circuits for light, which could power emerging technologies like AI, quantum computers, and optical atomic clocks. The new technique allows for the creation of complex circuits that can manipulate light in various ways, potentially making these technologies more powerful and portable.

Reverse Engineering ME2's USB with a Heat Gun and a Knife

37 Bawoosette 2026-04-19 16:11:38 UTC github.com/coremaze Llama Share 3

The user, a leader of the Miuchiz Reborn project, successfully reverse engineered the ME2 handheld device's protocol by desoldering its flash chip, decapsulating the microcontroller, and using a digital microscope to identify the chip's type. With the microcontroller's instruction set and datasheet, the user was able to write code to interact with the device over USB, allowing them to read ...

Blue Origin's rocket reuse achievement marred by upper stage failure

21 rbanffy 2026-04-19 20:11:38 UTC arstechnica.com Llama Share 1

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket successfully reused a booster but failed to reach its intended orbit due to an upper stage issue. The mission's payload, a cellular broadband satellite, was placed into an inaccurate orbit and will be de-orbited.

Show HN: Prompt-to-Excalidraw demo with Gemma 4 E2B in the browser (3.1GB)

72 teamchong 2026-04-19 12:11:38 UTC teamchong.github.io Full Share 37

Gemma 4 E2B generating Excalidraw diagrams from text prompts, running entirely in desktop Chrome via WebGPU. KV cache compressed 2.4× using TurboQuant's polar+QJL algorithm reimplemented in WGSL compute shaders. Requires Chrome 134+ on desktop — Safari/iOS not supported.

Anonymous request-token comparisons from Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7

596 anabranch 2026-04-18 21:11:38 UTC tokens.billchambers.me Full Share 561

Anonymous request-token comparisons from the community, showing how Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7 differ on real inputs Open source · stored rows contain anonymous submission IDs onlyNot affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star tracker

408 NelsonMinar 2026-04-18 21:11:38 UTC righto.com Llama Share 103

Before GPS, aircraft navigated using celestial navigation, which was automated in the 1960s with the development of the Astro Compass system that used an electromechanical analog computer called the Angle Computer. The Angle Computer physically modeled the celestial sphere to solve the navigational triangle and provide accurate heading and position information to the aircraft navigator.

Reading Input from an USB RFID Card Reader

23 kevwedotse 2026-04-19 15:11:38 UTC kevwe.com Llama Share 4

You had a cheap RFID reader and wanted to capture its input without affecting other applications. You used the EVIOCGRAB ioctl in C and found a Python solution, but preferred a native approach.

4-bit floating point FP4

61 chmaynard 2026-04-18 22:11:38 UTC johndcook.com Llama Share 44

Floating point numbers with less precision, such as 4-bit floating point numbers, are used in neural networks to fit more parameters into memory. The 4-bit floating point number format, FP4, uses the first bit for sign and the remaining three bits for exponent and mantissa, with different formats like E2M1 having unevenly spaced values on both log and linear scales.

Why Japan has such good railways

536 RickJWagner 2026-04-18 21:11:38 UTC worksinprogress.co Llama Share 503

Japan's railway system excels due to good public policy, business structure, and land use rules, not cultural factors. Its unique model of private companies building cities and capturing value from real estate and commercial side businesses has contributed to its success.