Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban

https://www.sambent.com/content/images/size/w160/2025/07/370-----Photos-1.png
The US government's mobile apps, including the White House app, request excessive permissions and embed trackers, violating users' privacy. These apps, part of a surveillance apparatus, collect sensitive data that feeds into ICE raids and warrantless location tracking.

Do your own writing

LLMs can undermine authenticity and credibility by generating writing that lacks thought and understanding. Effective writing requires human thoughtfulness and effort to establish credibility and increase understanding.

How to turn anything into a router

https://nbailey.ca/images/router.jpg
User wants to create a homebrew router using a Linux-powered device, such as a mini-PC, to bypass a US policy banning new consumer router imports.

Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)

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A team created a touchscreen MacBook using a $1 mirror and computer vision, allowing for touch input without an external webcam. The system uses a webcam, mirror, and computer vision to translate finger movements into mouse events, making existing apps touch-enabled.

Bird brains (2023)

https://www.dhanishsemar.com/writing/bird-brains/opengraph-image?065a48ba6584b675
A flock of New Zealand kea parrots was found to be cleverly moving traffic cones to stop cars and get food from humans. Researchers have developed various tests to measure bird intelligence, including the mirror test, Aesop's Fable, and delayed gratification test.

Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct

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Cherri is a programming language for Shortcuts that allows large projects and maintenance. It has a package manager, type checking, and a GUI IDE for macOS.

William Blake, Remote by the Sea

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sites/default/files/images/roundtable/n05058_10.jpg
William Blake moved to Felpham in 1800 with his wife Catherine, seeking a change from London. He was inspired by the sea and its transformative power, which influenced his art and poetry.

CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font

Browse Studio

Seeing Like a Spreadsheet

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The electronic spreadsheet, pioneered by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, revolutionized business by making calculation and analysis faster and more accessible. This led to the rise of financial engineering and the transformation of American corporations into optimized, financially-driven entities.

OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

https://anchorgrid-public.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/doors_floor_plan-1.png
Anchorgrid.ai's door detection service processes PDFs in 2-4 minutes per job, scaling with page count and complexity. Upgrading to Pro or Enterprise plans uses dedicated GPU infrastructure for faster detection.

Vulnerability Research Is Cooked

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AI coding agents will drastically alter exploit development, making it easier to find vulnerabilities in software. This shift will profoundly impact information security and the Internet, potentially rendering traditional countermeasures ineffective.

Build123d: A Python CAD programming library

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gumyr/build123d/dev/docs/assets/build123d_logo/logo-banner.svg
build123d is a Python-based CAD framework for 2D and 3D modeling, built on Open Cascade. It offers algebraic modeling and a clean, Pythonic interface for precise models.

A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity

https://maurycyz.com/projects/spinthariscope/setup.jpg
Seeing individual atoms is impossible with light, but nuclear reactions like alpha particle emission from heavy elements like uranium can produce a visible flash. A scintillation screen coated with zinc sulfide can convert alpha particles' energy into light, allowing us to see thousands of momentary points of light around the source.

In math, rigor is vital, but are digitized proofs taking it too far?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FormalMess-crKristinaArmitage-Lede-scaled.webp
Mathematicians have long sought to formalize their proofs to ensure rigor and accuracy. They've developed systems like Lean, a computer language that can automatically verify proofs, but its adoption comes with risks of homogenizing math and shifting focus away from the problem domain.

What Construction at a Train Station Taught Me About Software Engineering

https://engineering.leanix.net/img/blog/2026-03-24-engineering/construction.jpg
Today I found myself observing the construction site at Ljubljana's central train station. I've always taken their work for granted, but today I looked deeper. The station can't close, since it would severely affect tourism, transportation of people and goods, and much more. The work is carefully broken down, workarounds are implemented, and trains are logistically shuffled to ...

Take better notes, by hand

https://brianschrader.com/images/blog/galileo-note-bookstrack.jpg
The author uses a four-part note-taking system, with the most useful method being writing by hand in paper notebooks. They date every page and use an index to organize their notes, allowing them to easily find information later.

Recover Apple Keychain

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User relied on Touch ID and muscle memory, leading to password reset issues. Resetting password caused keychain data loss, but restoring old data was simple by replacing the new keychain file with the old one.

Mathematical methods and human thought in the age of AI

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
AI is a natural evolution of human tools, facilitating idea creation and dissemination. Its development should remain human-centered to enhance quality of life and expand human thought.

FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/styles/crop_thumbnail/public/ftc_gov/images/gaming-controller-hero.jpg?itok=9PjrGCSl
The FTC took action against OkCupid and Match Group for sharing users' personal info with an unrelated third party despite promises to protect it. OkCupid and Match are now prohibited from misrepresenting their privacy policies.

Roulette Computers: Hidden Devices That Predict Spins

https://www.roulette-computers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/group.jpg
Roulette computers are still legal in around half of casinos. The only limit is what you can win without being detected. Every imaginable variable is calculated to produce the most accurate predictions possible. This includes proper learning of ball deceleration rate (including changes), dynamic modelling of ball bounce on different rotor speeds, targeting predictions only when the ball is ...

The curious case of retro demo scene graphics

https://www.datagubbe.se/aipixels/g/lazur_l.jpg
The demo scene initially tolerated copying due to technical limitations, but as it evolved, artists began to value originality and craft over plagiarism. Today, many sceners reject AI-generated art and plagiarism, valuing the creative process and technical limitations that define the scene.

Show HN: Coasts – Containerized Hosts for Agents

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Coasts is a CLI tool for running isolated dev environments on a single machine with a local UI. It works with existing Docker setups and is offline-first with no vendor lock-in risk.

I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

The user's writing skills have deteriorated due to over-reliance on AI tools for grammar and vocabulary checks, causing them to lose their unique voice and creative expression. They are seeking advice on how to regain their writing skills and focus on their own voice, rather than relying on AI assistance.

Proactively Parasocial

Posting on a blog can build parasocial relationships by giving readers an illusion of face-to-face connection with the writer. This can be a positive way to form connections with others, such as authors or inspiring heroes, but can also be negative if it replaces real social relationships.

I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

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User created an Excalidraw extension to generate SVGs for light and dark mode, but it caused frustration due to dependency on text changes. They then created a new extension that automatically exports frames as SVGs in both modes, allowing for local review and reference.

Fibonacci's Composed Fractions

https://ztoz.blog/posts/fibonacci-fractions/liber-abaci-2v.png
Leonardo of Pisa (c1170-1241+), better known as Fibonacci, wrote Liber Abaci to introduce and advocate the adoption of “Indian figures” (Hindu-Arabic numerals) to Italy. The book explains how to perform arithmetic and common business problems using the digits and a positional number system. Leonardo uses a composed fractions (aka composite fractions, aka linked fractions) notation to express ...

New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements

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Washington state law signed by Rep Liz Berry outlaws noncompete agreements, effective June 30, 2027. Employers must notify workers about voided agreements by October 1, 2027.
The author built an NSFW filter for a search engine using a single hidden layer neural network, trained on a dataset of labeled search results. The filter was implemented from scratch and performed well, with a 20-30% agreement with a classifier using open-source models.

Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Equation: Reinforcement Learning and Diffusion Models

https://dani2442.github.io/posts/continuous-rl/continuous_rl.drawio.svg
A seminal 1952 paper lays the foundation for optimal control and reinforcement learning. bellman extended his work to continuous-time systems, turning the optimal condition into the pde. he estimates $v_kapprox valpha_j$ by monte carlo rollouts of the closed-loop sde and fits $v_theta$ via regression. $$ learned value function matches the exact power-law $

The ladder is missing rungs – Engineering Progression When AI Ate the Middle

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AI tools are changing the landscape of software engineering, but the conversation is focused on code generation rather than the skills and judgment required to supervise AI. The structural problem is that AI handles tasks that used to train engineers, leaving a gap in the career ladder and raising questions about where the next generation of engineers will come from.