Jun 24Thursday, June 25, 2026 · all days
1.Half-Life 2 in a Browser(hl2.slqnt.dev)
447 points by panza 8 hours ago | 183 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Summary not available
HN Discussion:
  • ~Other classic games are also playable in browsers, with some noting better implementations exist
  • Browser port enables playing HL2 on platforms where native versions no longer work (macOS)
  • Demonstrates the power of WASM for distributing complex software via the web
  • Concerns about the legality of redistributing copyrighted game assets
  • Excitement and nostalgia about being able to replay HL2 in browser
2.Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities(reuters.com)
599 points by htrp 19 hours ago | 967 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Summary not available
HN Discussion:
  • Anthropic is hypocritical for complaining about copying after training on pirated/copyrighted content
  • Distillation from model outputs is common industry practice and likely legal
  • Explains the technical mechanism of how Chinese labs obtain Claude outputs via resellers
  • All AI labs borrow from each other; this is unavoidable without heavy surveillance
  • Speculates about future implications like weight theft enabling easier distillation
3.OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom(techcrunch.com)
758 points by jamdesk 21 hours ago | 437 comments | permalink
tl;dr: OpenAI announced "Jalapeño," its first custom inference chip, developed with Broadcom and reportedly designed with help from OpenAI's own AI models. The chip targets inference workloads (not training) and claims significantly better performance-per-watt than current alternatives, following a similar custom-silicon path taken by Google and Amazon to reduce Nvidia dependence. Training-heavy workloads will likely remain on Nvidia GPUs, but cutting inference costs could meaningfully improve OpenAI's economics.
HN Discussion:
  • Skeptical that AI-assisted chip design claim is more than marketing fluff
  • Validates the custom silicon trend, noting Google's TPU lead and inference focus
  • Cost savings (~50%) confirm major economic upside for OpenAI
  • Skeptical of pre-IPO announcement timing and 2026 deployment promises
  • ~Questions whether hardware will be obsolete or who handles deployment infrastructure
4.Blogging can just be stating the obvious(blog.jim-nielsen.com)
337 points by Curiositry 15 hours ago | 105 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Riffing on a John Gruber post about user-hostile popups, the author argues that good blogging often just means stating what seems obvious but goes unsaid. Writers frequently dismiss their own posts as too self-evident to publish, but those "emperor has no clothes" observations—backed with real examples—are often the most valuable. The takeaway: be willing to say the obvious thing, or just link to someone else saying it.
HN Discussion:
  • ~Loss of enthusiasm to share basic knowledge comes with expertise and age
  • Blogging takes bravery against self-censorship and the chilling effect
  • New audiences always exist who don't know what you know (Curse of Knowledge)
  • Stating the obvious counters the abundance of bad advice and SEO spam online
  • Blogging serves social/relational and self-expression purposes beyond information transfer
5.45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero(blogs.nvidia.com)
409 points by nitin_flanker 1 day ago | 327 comments | permalink
tl;dr: NVIDIA's Rubin AI infrastructure uses 100% liquid cooling with coolant running up to 45°C, enabling closed-loop systems that can operate without chillers or evaporative cooling in favorable climates—cutting water use from ~2.6M gallons/MW/year to near zero. The higher operating temperature allows outdoor dry coolers to reject heat efficiently year-round, eliminates fans entirely, and triples rack density (6U servers fit in 2U). Since cooling accounts for up to 40% of data center power, a 50MW facility could save over $4M annually.
HN Discussion:
  • Skepticism about environmental benefit since waste heat still pollutes cold climates
  • ~Waste heat could be repurposed for district heating to benefit communities
  • Questioning what's actually novel since high-temp liquid cooling already exists elsewhere
  • Article lacks technical detail on climate requirements and efficiency tradeoffs
  • Sharing related implementations or creative uses confirming the approach works
6.GLM-5.2 is a step change for open agents(interconnects.ai)
297 points by vantareed 2 days ago | 180 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Z.ai's GLM-5.2, released under MIT license, is the first open-weight model that credibly competes with Claude Opus 4.5 in coding agent workflows, landing roughly 6.8 months behind the closed frontier and drawing comparisons to the DeepSeek R1 moment. Its arrival pressures Anthropic's pricing and revenue (especially with Claude Fable 5 export-banned) and boosts open inference providers like Fireworks and Together. The release also sharpens looming policy questions about whether the US government will eventually move to restrict Chinese open-weight models as capabilities approach "Mythos-class" thresholds.
HN Discussion:
  • Open Chinese models are essential for affordability and closing the haves/have-nots gap in AI access
  • ~Z.ai's pricing plans and rate limits are scammy despite the model itself being capable
  • ~Other Chinese models like DeepSeek V4 Flash already reached agentic coding parity before GLM-5.2
  • GLM 5.2 genuinely closes the intelligence gap with Opus in real-world coding tasks
  • Questions about practical setup, providers, and trust for running open models
7.RubyLLM: A Ruby framework for all major AI providers(rubyllm.com)
416 points by doener 1 day ago | 70 comments | permalink
tl;dr: RubyLLM is a unified Ruby framework that provides a single interface for working with major AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Bedrock, Ollama, etc.), with only three dependencies (Faraday, Zeitwerk, Marcel). It supports chat, vision, audio transcription, document analysis, image generation, embeddings, tool calling, agents, structured output, and streaming. The framework includes Rails integration via `acts_as_chat`, generators for chat UIs, and a registry of 800+ models with capability and pricing detection.
HN Discussion:
  • Enthusiastic users praise the elegant API design and production usability
  • ~Users appreciate the framework but cite specific shortcomings like observability, caching, or retry history
  • Concerns about maintainer engagement and quality of merged vibe-coded PRs
  • Questions about whether RubyLLM adds value for single-provider use cases or how capabilities are negotiated
  • Developers building on or inspired by RubyLLM's design abstractions
8.PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s(greptile.com)
246 points by dakshgupta 1 day ago | 143 comments | permalink
tl;dr: After OpenClaw went viral, weekly PRs jumped from 2 to 3,400 while merge rates collapsed from 48% to 9.3%, with much of the influx being AI-generated slop (one user submitted 106 PRs in a day). The author argues this mirrors early-2000s email spam and will require sender-reputation systems like Mitchell Hashimoto's Vouch, and notes that AI homogenizes contributions—multiple users independently submitted identical PRs. Refactors that require deep codebase understanding merge at 35% vs. 9% for features, suggesting human judgment still beats agent-generated novelty.
HN Discussion:
  • Maintainers increasingly ignore or auto-close legitimate contributions, frustrating genuine OSS contributors.
  • Sender-reputation analogy is flawed because email reputation is org-based, not individual-based.
  • Practical mitigations like GitHub PR limits or requiring non-textual contributor meetings can help.
  • The article is ironic/self-serving since OpenClaw itself is the AI tool generating the slop being complained about.
  • Reputation infrastructure and unsubscribe-style blocklists would be valuable additions for PRs.
9.Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash(blog.google)
232 points by swolpers 21 hours ago | 154 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Google has integrated computer use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, allowing developers to build agents that interact with browsers, mobile, and desktop environments without relying on the previous standalone Gemini 2.5 computer use model. To address prompt injection risks, Google added adversarial training plus optional enterprise safeguards like requiring user confirmation for sensitive actions and auto-stopping tasks on detected injections. It's available now via the Gemini API and Enterprise Agent Platform.
HN Discussion:
  • Gemini models are unreliable and prone to hallucination or giving up on tasks
  • Computer use approaches are fundamentally flawed - slow, insecure, and inferior to API/accessibility tree methods
  • Google lacks a competitive Codex/Claude Code equivalent and proper MCP support
  • Gemini's guardrails are overtuned, refusing benign requests
  • Google's own benchmarks show Gemini 3.5 Flash losing to competitors despite framing
10.The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader(blog.omgmog.net)
288 points by felixdoerp 22 hours ago | 167 comments | permalink
tl;dr: The Xteink X4 is a £40 pocket-sized e-ink reader with a crisp display, instant page turns, and a MagSafe mount, though its stock firmware is bare-bones. Custom firmwares forked from CrossPoint (Papyrix, Inx, MicroSlate, TernOS) unlock the device's potential, adding features like Knuth-Plass typography, Calibre/KOReader sync, reading statistics, and even writing or PalmOS-style modes. The author concludes that for pure reading, the X4's extreme portability beats larger or colour e-readers like the Kobo Clara Colour or Bigme B6.
HN Discussion:
  • Owners confirm the X4/X3 with custom firmware is an excellent dedicated reader
  • ~Screen is too small or fades in sunlight, limiting usability
  • Skeptical of the hype and can't see appeal of such a small reading device
  • Users sharing complementary tools and hacks built for the device ecosystem
  • ~Wishlist for future hardware improvements like backlight, higher DPI, better display
11.Show HN: Nub – A Bun-like all-in-one toolkit for Node.js(github.com)
257 points by colinmcd 1 day ago | 73 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Nub is a Rust-written, Bun-like toolkit that augments stock Node.js rather than replacing it, bundling a TypeScript-capable file runner, script runner, package runner (nubx), package manager, watch mode, and Node version manager into one CLI. It claims significant speedups over existing JS-based tooling (e.g., ~24× faster than `pnpm run`, ~19× faster than `npx`, 2.5× faster installs than pnpm) while maintaining flag compatibility with npm/pnpm and reading incumbent package managers' config files. Distributed via curl, Homebrew, or npm, with a GitHub Actions integration drop-in for `actions/setup-node`.
HN Discussion:
  • Enthusiastic praise for the project's approach and execution
  • Confirms speed claims through real-world migration experience
  • Questions technical accuracy of Websockets native support claim
  • ~Questions necessity of bundled transpiler given Node's native TypeScript support
  • ~Suggests wrapping pnpm rather than replacing it for package management
12.A Practical Guide to SSH Tunnels: Local and Remote Port Forwarding(labs.iximiuz.com)
360 points by signa11 5 days ago | 67 comments | permalink
tl;dr: A hands-on guide to SSH port forwarding covering four modes: local (`-L`) exposes a remote service on a local port, remote (`-R`) exposes a local service on a remote port, and dynamic (`-D` or `-R` without destination) turns either side into a SOCKS proxy for accessing entire networks through one tunnel. Each mode is demonstrated with lab examples using a bastion/jump host setup, and the author offers a mnemonic: `-L local:remote`, `-R remote:local`, with the left side always being the port that opens.
HN Discussion:
  • Sharing creative practical use cases like Docker image transfer and NAT traversal that extend the article's concepts
  • ~Adding complementary SSH features the article omitted, like ~C escape commands and jumphosting (-J)
  • Recommending alternative resources or tools like sshuttle and Cyber Plumber's Handbook for deeper learning
  • Endorsing SSH port forwarding as a powerful pseudo-VPN and privacy tool
  • Snarky remark that this knowledge is just in the manual
13.Krea 2: SOTA open-weights 12B image model(krea.ai)
399 points by mattnewton 1 day ago | 44 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Krea released Krea 2, a 12B open-weights diffusion transformer for text-to-image generation that ranks in the top 10 on Artificial Analysis's leaderboard and 2nd among independent labs. The model uses a multi-stage pipeline (pretraining, midtraining, SFT, preference optimization, and RL with multiple reward models) on a curated dataset that explicitly excludes AI-generated images, paired with Qwen3-VL as text encoder, GQA with gated sigmoid attention, and a custom STPO variant of DPO. It ships with a prompt expander and style-reference system aimed at creative exploration rather than a single default aesthetic.
HN Discussion:
  • Authors introducing the model and technical report, inviting questions
  • Benchmark results confirm strong performance, especially for a locally hostable model
  • License restrictions mean it isn't truly open source despite the claim
  • Model targets outdated text-to-image paradigm while competitors moved to agentic image-to-image
  • ~Technical concerns about specific components like the Qwen VAE choice
14.There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days(twitter.com)
544 points by shadowtree 22 hours ago | 268 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Carmack reflects on id Software mistakes: Quake was technically over-ambitious (Doom++ would've sufficed for multiplayer/modding before pursuing full 6DOF), he pushed the team too hard at unsustainable startup intensity, and the founders' stock buy/sell arrangement created bad incentives versus standard vesting. He also acknowledges that requiring level designers to have both gameplay and strong visual design skills was reasonable, but the company should have paired artists with designers sooner instead of letting infighting fester.
HN Discussion:
  • Quake's ambition was worth it despite the cost to id Software, disagreeing with Carmack's regret
  • Carmack's lesson about not running people at startup intensity is valuable wisdom
  • Agrees Quake was over-ambitious and bottlenecked on Carmack, supporting the Doom++ alternative
  • ~id's decline was more about losing creative/artistic talent than Carmack's technical choices
  • Young intense energy shouldn't be apologized for as it drives civilizational progress
15.We’re making Bunny DNS free(bunny.net)
887 points by dabinat 1 day ago | 264 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Bunny.net has eliminated DNS query fees for Bunny DNS, offering free hosting for up to 500 domains per account with no query limits or paywalled features (subject to their standard $1/month minimum account spend). The service includes smart routing, health checks, JavaScript-based logic, DNSSEC with NSEC Black Lies, IPv6, and modern record types like HTTPS/SVCB and TLSA. They've also added automatic zone scanning for migrations and 1-click integration with their CDN and Shield products.
HN Discussion:
  • Praise for Bunny as a competitive EU-based alternative to US cloud providers
  • ~Concern about lack of spending caps on non-CDN products causing surprise bills
  • Appreciation for Bunny's organic growth approach versus investor-funded competitors
  • Article fails to explain why the announcement matters or the service's nature
  • Positive experience with other Bunny products encourages adoption of their DNS
16.Stealing Is a Skill(ben-mini.com)
240 points by bewal416 1 day ago | 141 comments | permalink
tl;dr: The author advocates for "stealing" as a deliberate creative skill, drawing on Virgil Abloh's "3% approach"—rebuilding an admired work almost exactly, then changing only ~3%. To redesign their startup Kibu's marketing site, they cloned Mintlify's site pixel-by-pixel, which forced them to understand every design decision and ultimately led their own instincts to drift toward ~50% original work. The takeaway: originality is overrated; efficient problem-solving means finding who's done it well before you, copying it deeply, and letting your meaningful deviations emerge naturally.
HN Discussion:
  • Pixel-by-pixel copying of a competitor's commercial site is plagiarism/theft, not legitimate creative stealing
  • Recreating others' work doesn't actually convey the underlying design decisions or struggles
  • Copywork is a legitimate learning technique used in writing and other arts, validating the approach
  • Learning through mimesis/copying is fundamental to how humans think and create
  • Copying a bland generic design just produces more bland generic output, missing the point of creative work
17."Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds(gist.github.com)
219 points by retroplasma 1 day ago | 102 comments | permalink
tl;dr: A workaround for cursor lag on the new MacBook (likely related to ProMotion/variable refresh behavior) by running a tiny background app that continuously captures a 1x1 pixel region of the screen every 10 seconds via ScreenCaptureKit, forcing the display into a higher refresh state. The provided bash script compiles a Swift menu bar app ("Unlag Neo") that handles permissions, login-at-startup, and optional pausing during fullscreen apps. Frames are immediately discarded; the capture exists solely as a side effect to keep the cursor responsive.
HN Discussion:
  • Technical speculation about the underlying cause involving hardware/software cursor transitions
  • ~Simpler alternative fixes exist, like changing cursor size
  • The fix is bad because it forces compositor to handle cursor instead of hardware overlay
  • ~Hacky workarounds tend to persist long after the bug is fixed, creating cruft
  • Broader lament about laggy cursors and degraded software quality in modern OSes
18.Slate EV truck starts at $24,950(slate.auto)
280 points by cobri 1 day ago | 433 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Slate's new EV pickup starts at $24,950 and ships as a bare-bones "Blank Slate" two-seater that buyers can customize with 200+ accessories (80% under $500), wraps, and conversion kits to turn it into a 5-seat SUV or fastback. It's designed for DIY ownership with swappable panels, accessible parts, and free manuals, and charges via standard 120V outlets, 240V dryer outlets, or Tesla Superchargers.
HN Discussion:
  • Customization options like color and modularity are valuable differentiators that excite buyers
  • ~Price creeps up significantly once options are added, reducing the value proposition
  • Excitement about a small, simple, no-touchscreen truck reminiscent of older compact pickups
  • Concerns about build quality, panel alignment, and design choices like the oversized grill
  • Article misses key information like range and buries the EV nature of the vehicle
19.NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute(nytimes.com)
254 points by thm 1 day ago | 268 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Summary not available
HN Discussion:
  • ~Both government and Anthropic are hypocritical in their contradictory framing of the model
  • Mythos's capabilities are genuinely alarming for cybersecurity given its rapid system penetration
  • Glad NSA lost access; hope they never regain it
  • This is overblown AI marketing hype to position Anthropic favorably
  • NSA hasn't really lost access; they have plants or could take weights
20.Millimeter wave technology drills 100 meters into granite(thinkgeoenergy.com)
216 points by Jimmc414 4 days ago | 119 comments | permalink
tl;dr: Summary not available
HN Discussion:
  • Enthusiasm about the technology and its potential applications like deep geothermal or fission reactors
  • Skepticism that the company is more focused on hype/press than actual progress or viable products
  • Sharing supplementary technical resources and references about the technology
  • Impressed by the technical achievement of using millimeter waves at 300GHz to cut rock
  • Questioning the lack of near-term commercial products despite the demonstrated capability