How we decreased GitLab repo backup times from 48 hours to 41 minutes
gitlab.com — Learn how GitLab tracked a performance bottleneck to a 15-year-old Git function and fixed it, leading to enhanced efficiency that supports more robust backup strategies and can reduce risk. DECREASED, 1
A year of funded FreeBSD development
daemonology.net — For several years leading up to this point I had been talking to Amazonians on and off about the possibility of Amazon sponsoring my FreeBSD/EC2 work; rather predictably, most of those conversation ended up with my contacts at Amazon rhyming with "Amazon should definitely sponsor the work you're doing... but I don't have any money available in my budget for this". Finally in April 2024 I found someone with a budget, and after some discussions around timeline, scope, and process, it was determined that Amazon would support me for a year via GitHub Sponsors. I'm not entirely sure if the year in question was June through May or July through June — money had to move within Amazon, from Amazon to GitHub, from GitHub to Stripe, and finally from Stripe into my bank account, so when I received mo... YEAR, 2
4-7-8 Breathing
breathbelly.com — The 4-7-8 technique involves inhaling for 4 counts, holding for 7, and exhaling for 8. This pattern is repeated several times. Developed by Dr. Andrew Weil, it helps reduce anxiety, manage stress, and promote better sleep by triggering your body's natural relaxation response and slowing your heart rate. 4-7-8, 3
Sandia turns on brain-like storage-free supercomputer
blocksandfiles.com — Sandia National Labs has flipped the switch on its SpiNNaker 2 “brain-inspired” supercomputer that eschews both GPUs and internal storage. SANDIA, 4
Odyc.js – A tiny JavaScript library for narrative games
odyc.dev — A small javascript library that lets you code video games even without programming experience. ODYC.JS, 5
United States Digital Service Origins
usdigitalserviceorigins.org — An oral history documenting how the United States Digital Service came to exist, and the initial days of building its foundation. UNITED, 6
Show HN: AI game animation sprite generator
news.ycombinator.com — I tried to build AI game animation generator last year ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40395221), a lot of people were interested, but it failed, mainly because the technology was not good enough. GAME, 7
A masochist's guide to web development
tronto.net — I have recently worked on making a web application out of my latest Rubik’s cube optimal solver. This involved building a rather complex C code base (with multithreading, SIMD, callback functions and whatnot) to WebAssembly via Emscripten, and writing a minimal amount of JavaScript and HTML for the frontend. MASOCHIST, 8
Too Many Open Files
mattrighetti.com — Recently I’ve been working on a pretty big rust project and to my surprise I couldn’t get tests to work properly. TOO, 9
Meta: Shut down your invasive AI Discover feed
mozillafoundation.org — Meta is quietly turning private AI chats into public content — and too many people don’t realize it’s happening. META, 10
Online Sports Betting Is for Losers
searls.com — A few decades back my teenage son and I approached Las Vegas at night while traveling south on Interstate 15. When the skyline of the city began sparkling into view, the kid said, “Wow. Think of all the money people have made there!” This was a perfect tease for my response: “Dude, everything you see there was paid for by losers.” ONLINE, 11
SaaS is just vendor lock-in with better branding
rwsdk.com — Developers are told "to focus on the product" and let SaaS vendors handle the rest, but integrating third-party services, whether it's auth, queuing, file storage, or image optimization, comes at a cost. Not just in dollars but in time, friction, and mental overhead. SAAS, 12
Researchers find a way to make the HIV virus visible within white blood cells
theguardian.com — Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body RESEARCHERS, 13
Curate your shell history
esham.io — Simon Tatham wrote an article recently called “Policy of transience”, explaining (among other things) why you might want to disable your shell history file. Simon writes: CURATE, 14
The time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs
qz.com — For the past two years, it’s been a ghost in the machine of American tech. TIME, 15
Series C and Scale (Cursor)
cursor.com — We've raised $900m to push the frontier of AI coding research. SERIES, 16
An Interactive Guide to Rate Limiting
sagyamthapa.com.np — Photo by Makarios Tang on Unsplash GUIDE, 17
Free Gaussian Primitives at Anytime Anywhere for Dynamic Scene Reconstruction
zju3dv.github.io — 1Zhejiang University 2Geely Automobile Research Institute *Equal Contribution xCorresponding Author FREE, 18
Swift and the Cute 2d game framework: Setting up a project with CMake
layer22.com — Cute Framework is a simple, yet powerful C/C++ framework for building 2D games using the modern GPU pipeline. While C or C++ is fine, Swift is a modern language that many developers prefer for its safety and expressiveness. In this post, we will explore how to set up a project using Cute Framework with CMake, enabling you to write your game logic in Swift while leveraging the performance of C/C++ for rendering and other performance-critical tasks. SWIFT, 19
Wendelstein 7-X sets new fusion record
heise.de — A record has been set at the Wendelstein 7-X research facility. The researchers see this as progress towards the commercial use of nuclear fusion. WENDELSTEIN, 20
What you need to know about EMP weapons
aardvark.co.nz — As we sit, possible poised on the verge of a nuclear conflict in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe it's time to look at the damaging effects of the electromagnetic pulse that follows a nuclear detonation. WHAT, 21
Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube
jeffgeerling.com — I just received my second community guidelines violation for my video demonstrating the use of LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi 5, for 4K video playback. SELF-HOSTING, 22
Weaponizing Dependabot: Pwn Request at its finest
boostsecurity.io — TL;DR: Your trusty Dependabot (and other GitHub bots) might be an unwitting accomplice. Through "Confused Deputy" attacks, they can be tricked into merging malicious code. This doesn’t stop here. It can escalate to full command injection via crafted branch names and even bypass branch protection rules. Plus, we disclose two new TTPs to build upon previously known techniques. WEAPONIZING, 23
Small Programs and Languages
ratfactor.com — My Implementing a Forth article got some great feedback, particularly around the subject of tiny Forth implementations. (And it was an excuse to list some of the tiniest Forths I’ve seen.) SMALL, 24
A Rippling Townhouse Facade by Alex Chinneck Takes a Seat in a London Square
thisiscolossal.com — It takes a real knack for design to make something as hefty and industrial as steel and bricks appear weightless or even playful. But British artist Alex Chinneck (previously) is no stranger to monumental projects that reimagine urban infrastructure and buildings into striking public installations. RIPPLING, 25
Defending adverbs exuberantly if conditionally
substack.com — Recently, I’ve been thinking about adverbs. Everyone hates adverbs. But I say they hate them foolishly and incorrectly. I called this newsletter Counter Craft because I wanted to offer counterintuitive craft advice. One of my earliest Counter Craft articles was titled “A Defense of Adverbs,” and I thought about that old post again when I saw some recent adverb discourse. I try not to repeat topics in this newsletter. However, since the initial adverb article is paywalled—I post all articles for free and then paywall older pieces for my lovely subscribers—and since it was literally posted my first week on Substack back in 2021 when I had very few followers, well, I hope you won’t mind me repeating myself. DEFENDING, 26
Ask HN: Any good tools for viewing congressional bills?
news.ycombinator.com — I was interested in skimming through the "Big Beautiful Bill" and I found the contents of it on congress.gov[1]. ANY, 27
How to (actually) send DTMF on Android without being the default call app
edm115.dev — ACTUALLY, 28
Workhorse LLMs: Why Open Source Models Dominate Closed Source for Batch Tasks
sutro.sh — As LLMs become more prolific, we’ve noticed that teams still reach for closed sourced models like GPT, Claude, and Gemini for nearly every task. While this may have been the right call a year ago, teams today are unknowingly missing out on huge cost savings and performance gains by not considering open source alternatives. WORKHORSE, 29
Great Question (YC W21) Is Hiring a Director of Customer Success ycombinator.com
Deepnote (YC S19) is hiring engineers to build an AI-powered data notebook deepnote.com
Converge (YC S23) Well-capitalized New York startup seeks product developers runconverge.com