Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

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Gemini 3.8 introduces two variants, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, offering significant improvements in software engineering, agentic tasks, and critical reasoning at the same speed and low cost as version 3.7 Flash.

A Note from LWN

LWN is increasing subscription prices by 20% due to rising costs and inflation, effective September 15. The price increase will help maintain the site's independence from advertising and support its continued growth.

Mistral now trains on user input by default, except on enterprise tier

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Users can opt out of Mistral's model training programs at any time, with Vibe users opting in by default and Enterprise customers opted out by default. Users can disable the toggle to prevent data sharing for both Vibe and API services.

GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all

We have good news about the Pixel 11. It still has at least bare minimum support for MTE at a hardware level. We think they removed most of the hardware acceleration from the CPU cache to save money. They ruined the performance so it ended up being fully disabled in firmware. It may still be usable.

Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle

Exit the Cave

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The author reflects on the "Cave" of private training and how it can lead to a false sense of progress, while missing out on real-world competition and growth. They share their personal experience as a wrestler, where they learned that true victory comes from embracing challenges and risks in public, rather than hiding in solitude.

Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them

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Two web-grounded models were asked to provide recommendations in 380 software categories, with 7,534 citations retrieved from their URLs. The majority of these citations point at domains ranked lower than #100,000 or not in the top million.

A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

Poisson Disk Sampling

A mathematician discusses Bridson's algorithm for generating Poisson disk distributions, which efficiently places points in a grid with a minimum distance between them. The algorithm has been improved upon by adding parental optimization and changing the distribution of distances to generate more random configurations.

Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

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The Commodore 64, launched in September 1982, was the best-selling computer of all time with over 12 million units sold. It had a significant impact on its users' lives and careers, including the author's own experience with programming and IT.

Aging Brains Blend Memories Together Instead of Just Forgetting Them

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Older adults' brains may blend memories together, causing mix-up errors, rather than simply losing memory accuracy. This blending effect is linked to stronger similarity in brain patterns between learning and recall phases.

WebLLM: high-performance in-browser LLM inference engine

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WebLLM is a high-performance in-browser LLM inference engine that leverages WebGPU for hardware acceleration, enabling powerful LLM operations directly within web browsers. It supports OpenAI API and various models, including custom models in MLC format.

A third of Perplexity's citations don't contain the number they're cited for

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Perplexity's search models failed to verify 34.7% of citations, with 14.4% failing due to claims not being scored per citation rather than per claim. The models cited a significant number of gated URLs that could not be verified by readers without an account.

Show HN: FrontierHarness Eval – 9 harness, same model, cost per pass varies 17x

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FrontierHarness v1.0 is a software engineering context harness that excludes failures and covers 15 passes, costing $3.24 per task. It offers $100 in credits for testing on Runta with identical environment settings for each run.

Six curl CVEs after OpenAI and Anthropic came back with zero

Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

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A user can set up a free photo server using Immich, a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos or iCloud. This setup allows for local storage and backup of photos without relying on cloud services.

AI Policy

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The writer objects to using Artificial Intelligence in their professional work due to concerns over its impact on creativity, ethics, and job security. They believe AI's potential for misinformation, data breaches, and environmental harm outweighs any benefits it may offer.

Check if a file was made with Claude

This tool checks files for signs of Claude's involvement in creating or editing them, providing a C2PA content credential to verify its origin. A result indicates whether the content was processed by Claude, without revealing its substance or authenticity.

Discontinuation of third level domain registrations for the .name TLD [pdf]

Verisign seeks to discontinue third-level domain registrations in .name due to low usage. ICANN requires RSEP review, with 90-day notice to registrars before termination.

LLMs: Intelligence vs. Cost

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ArtificialAnalysis benchmarks LLM models' intelligence and costs, providing a useful Intelligence Index and cost comparison plots. The plots show diminishing returns on performance as cost increases, with cheaper models often sufficient for most users' needs.

SteamdDB Joins Nexus Mods

The Emergent Symbolic Structure of Artificial Neural Networks

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Modern AI systems excel in domains they seem poorly suited for, despite being based on continuous vector representations. Researchers propose that these vectors implicitly realize symbolic structure, allowing them to achieve impressive performance in cognitive domains.

Telli (YC F24) is hiring engineers and designers [Berlin, on-site]

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Tellie is building AI to run customer-facing operations with agents that act, understand, and improve. The company prioritizes ownership, shared responsibility, conviction over compromise and agency over complacency in a merit-driven environment.

How to debloat your Xiaomi 15 Ultra without root access

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Please look through guide full from the top to the bottom before beginning to do anything. Beware! This guide is intended for experienced users and not half-baked newbies. Initially, I planned to stop updating Android at the end of 2026, following the [KeepAndroidOpen] initiative. However, once I found out that Android 17 would be released for the Xiaomi 15 Ultra on August 27, I immediately ...

The Cables That Connect the World

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The internet infrastructure is a network of fibre-optic cables laid across the ocean floor, owned by various companies including Google and Meta. These cables carry data between continents and are often buried beneath the seabed to protect them from damage.

9000 RPM is faster than your screen refreshes

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The user discusses the high speed of a car's crankshaft, comparing it to display frame rates and suggesting that capturing its motion at 150fps would reveal its true movement. The post also mentions Oh Dear, a monitoring platform for tracking system uptime and issues.

The race to engineer new knobs for the human brain

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I almost dropped my phone when I saw the news that chemogenetics was in human clinical trials. Chemogenetics is a powerful technique that modifies specific neurons so they can be controlled remotely by normally inert drugs. Bryan Roth, one of the technique’s inventors, told the BRAIN Initiative conference audience on August 13th1 that he had found seven ongoing clinical trials of ...

Ending my elixir exploratory writing

The author started a blog 3.5 years ago to share Elixir experiments and optics knowledge, which helped them attend conferences and meet friends. They now question the value of human creativity in programming communities dominated by LLMs.

Banca Etica Suspends A/I's Account While Condemning the Sanctions Behind It

Quasar 438B: Europe's Leading AI Model

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Quasar 438B is a flagship reasoning model that scores 43 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, outperforming other European models. It returns 500 tokens in 15.3 seconds and supports multi-step tasks with planning, tool use, code execution, and large context.