| 1. | Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin(shopify.engineering) |
| 1090 points by fnthawar2 21 hours ago | 785 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Shopify is migrating its mobile apps (Shop, Shopify, POS, Inbox) from React Native back to native Swift and Kotlin, reversing its 2020 decision because LLMs have made maintaining two native codebases far less costly. They're doing greenfield rebuilds using an internal agentic system called Helix that works in reviewed checkpoints, plus a CLI-driven architecture that decouples business logic from UI for fast agent iteration. Shopify will wind down support for its React Native libraries (Skia, FlashList, Restyle) through 2026, seeking new stewards where possible. | |
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| 2. | Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables(blog.jim-nielsen.com) |
| 566 points by Brajeshwar 20 hours ago | 365 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Inspired by a Bluesky post from Tyler Gaw about digging out decade-old cables that finally proved useful, the author printed the post, taped it to their family's "big box of cables," and vowed never to let anyone throw it out. The piece is a short humorous ode to hoarding cables and the vindication of finally needing one. | |
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| 3. | OpenAI Agents API(developers.openai.com) |
| 273 points by aquir 16 hours ago | 152 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: OpenAI's new Agents API exposes the Codex harness as a managed service, handling sessions, orchestration, context compaction, and recovery while apps supply tools and pick an execution environment (OpenAI-hosted or self-hosted sandbox). Agents can run code, edit files, connect to MCP servers, use web search, and delegate to subagents, with persistent session state across turns. Billing follows standard model, tool, and container rates; currently US-only data residency with no ZDR support. | |
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| 4. | Technique for Manipulating Satellite Photos Now Reveals Ancient Images (2025)(spinoff.nasa.gov) |
| 343 points by gumby 20 hours ago | 56 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Decorrelation stretch, a NASA JPL technique originally developed to enhance satellite imagery by mapping colors to an expanded range, has been repurposed via Jon Harman's Dstretch plug-in (built on ImageJ) to reveal faded ancient rock art invisible to the naked eye. It has uncovered hundreds of previously unseen paintings at sites like Angkor Wat, Norway's Årsand 1, and Egypt's Beni Hassan, and has expanded into other uses including aerial archaeological surveys in Greece and imaging tattoos on mummified remains. | |
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| 5. | Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds(upsocl.com) |
| 241 points by rguiscard 10 hours ago | 83 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: A 16-year-old student in Tamaulipas, Mexico built an acoustic fire extinguisher using a 12-volt battery, frequency generator, and speaker emitting 30 pulses per second, which displaces oxygen and extinguishes flames in 5-8 seconds. Named "Vortex Tech," the device reportedly works on wood, flammable liquids, grease, and electronics without leaving residue, and will be presented at an international science fair. | |
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| 6. | Cognition launches new SWE-2 model, Rivaling Fable 5.1 and GPT-Astra(cognition.com) |
| 421 points by seelos 20 hours ago | 176 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Cognition released SWE-2, a coding model post-trained via RL from Kimi K3 (2.8T params) that hits 50% on FrontierCode 1.1 Main—matching Fable 5.1 at 64% lower cost and approaching GPT-6 Astra at a quarter of the price. Key technical contributions include a principled linear cost penalty tuned to the Pareto frontier's slope (allowing all reasoning-effort levels to be trained in a single RL run), a length-weighted reward baseline that stabilizes training, and improved rollout infrastructure using NVFP4/FP8 kernels with an online-trained draft model for speculative decoding. | |
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| 7. | More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math(mathstodon.xyz) |
| 823 points by pred_ 1 day ago | 754 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Summary not available | |
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| 8. | Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom(musictheory.pugetsound.edu) |
| 239 points by aanet 18 hours ago | 102 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: "Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom" is a free, open-access textbook covering music theory from fundamentals (pitch, scales, intervals, triads) through advanced topics like chromatic harmony, sonata form, counterpoint, jazz theory, set theory, serialism, and minimalism. It incorporates popular music examples alongside classical repertoire and includes practice exercises with answers, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. | |
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| 9. | Neki – Sharded Postgres(planetscale.com) |
| 251 points by simon_weber 20 hours ago | 132 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: PlanetScale has launched Neki, a sharded Postgres offering now in platform preview, applying lessons from years of running large-scale sharded MySQL clusters. Unlike Postgres-compatible distributed databases, Neki runs real Postgres on every shard (each with a primary and two replicas across AZs) behind a router that speaks the Postgres wire protocol, preserving extensions and SQL behavior. It supports online workflows for schema changes, upgrades, failovers, and resharding, and can run unsharded initially, letting users reshard later as a workflow against the existing cluster. | |
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| 10. | Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft(rustfoundation.org) |
| 685 points by mmastrac 22 hours ago | 439 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Microsoft has elevated Rust to "Tier-1 language" status internally, alongside C++, C#, and TypeScript, with full support for secure toolchains, tooling, and SDL compliance. To unify Rust and C++ development on Windows, Microsoft built rustc_codegen_utc, an alternative rustc backend that plugs into the MSVC compiler ("UTC") for shared ABI, security features, debugging, and cross-language optimization. It's been production-ready since early 2026, self-hosted since Rust 1.90, and is used by over 100 internal Microsoft repositories. | |
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| 11. | Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?(lucumr.pocoo.org) |
| 358 points by manojbajaj95 5 hours ago | 256 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Armin Ronacher ran GPT-6 "Astra" as an unsupervised "software factory" for 35 hours, burning ~1B tokens and $1,200 to produce 75k lines of largely unusable code, including bizarrely code-golfed Python for tool calls, unreadable C with hardcoded magic constants, and tests with mangled whitespace. He argues Astra is optimized for token efficiency and long-horizon task completion rather than human-readable code, making it worse for real software engineering despite being impressive at 3D games, computer use, and reverse engineering. The trajectory of frontier models, he suggests, is diverging from the needs of working programmers. | |
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| 12. | List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games(consumerrights.wiki) |
| 399 points by haunter 23 hours ago | 137 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Four California PlayStation buyers are suing Sony under a new state law (AB 2426) alleging the PlayStation Store's "Buy Now"/"Confirm Purchase" language misleads consumers into thinking they own digital games when they only receive a revocable license. Sony's motion to compel arbitration argues "reasonable consumers would not be misled" into believing they own digital games—yet the wiki compiles extensive examples of Sony's own support pages, storefronts, and marketing materials repeatedly using ownership language like "games you already own" and "owners can upgrade." A hearing is scheduled for October 1, 2026. | |
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| 13. | DeepSeek v4.1 Flash(twitter.com) |
| 972 points by Liwink 1 day ago | 550 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: DeepSeek announced DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, the smallest model in a new architecture family featuring native visual understanding. The release emphasizes faster inference, higher throughput, and improved efficiency, and is positioned as a foundation for scaling to larger models. | |
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| 14. | Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants(bbc.com) |
| 215 points by lukaspetersson 11 hours ago | 216 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Google is investing €13bn in Finland—its largest single European investment—to build three new data centres, expand its Hamina site, and power growing AI demand. As part of the deal, Google signed a 22-year contract with utility Fortum to purchase up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear plant, which supplies about 10% of Finland's electricity. Finland's cool climate, low-carbon power, and uncongested grid have made it a magnet for data centre investment, with TikTok also announcing a $1bn facility there this week. | |
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| 15. | iPhone Duo(apple.com) |
| 1451 points by thecosmicfrog 1 day ago | 2490 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Apple's iPhone Duo is its first foldable iPhone, featuring a 7.6-inch inner Super Retina XDR display (50% larger than iPhone 18 Pro Max), a 5.4-inch outer display, an under-display FaceTime camera, and a titanium frame with IP68 rating. It's powered by the A20 Pro chip, uses Touch ID in the side button, is eSIM-only, offers up to 31 hours of video playback, and supports Apple Pencil. Launching October 23, 2026, with new foldable-specific features like Duo Preview, Smart Take, and Duo FaceTime. | |
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| 16. | Hitachi launches CO2 heat pump water heaters with solar-friendly tariff controls(pv-magazine.com) |
| 311 points by thelastgallon 1 day ago | 267 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Hitachi is launching its Y-series EcoCute CO2 heat pump water heaters in Japan starting November 2026, in 370L and 460L configurations with a five-year warranty. The main upgrade is expanded support for daytime electricity tariffs aimed at households with solar PV, selectable via the remote controller, rather than changes to the underlying heat pump hardware or HEMS connectivity, which was already present in prior models. | |
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| 17. | Shopify acquires Tailwind(tailwindcss.com) |
| 1126 points by EdwinHoksberg 1 day ago | 440 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Tailwind CSS is being acquired by Shopify, which has been a heavy user of the framework and will provide long-term maintenance and a real-world product surface to develop against. Tailwind CSS and other open-source projects will remain MIT-licensed and continue to be maintained by the same team, but the commercial side is winding down—existing Tailwind Plus and ui.sh customers keep access, but new signups are closed. | |
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| 18. | What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?(devblogs.microsoft.com) |
| 352 points by soheilpro 1 day ago | 176 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Windows XP picked your initial user picture using reservoir sampling (k=1) over the Default Pictures directory, seeded by GetTickCount() via RtlRandomEx. This one-pass approach avoids a second file-system enumeration and handles directory changes mid-iteration gracefully. A safety cap stops sampling after 100 files to prevent pathological slowdowns. | |
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| 19. | Stockfish 19(stockfishchess.org) |
| 275 points by atiedebee 3 days ago | 162 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: Stockfish 19 delivers up to 44 Elo gain over version 18, winning 3x as many game pairs as it loses. Key changes include a new SFNNv16 NNUE architecture (with pawn-pair features and retirement of the secondary small net), Quantization-Aware Training, and universal binaries that auto-detect CPU features. It also adds native support for RISC-V, LoongArch, WebAssembly, and 1GB Linux huge pages, plus stricter FEN/UCI validation that terminates the process on invalid input. | |
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| 20. | Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?(rivendell.dmitrybrant.com) |
| 586 points by dmitrybrant 1 day ago | 266 comments | permalink | |
tl;dr: An interactive browser demo that simulates a park where the speed of light is 5 km/h, letting you walk around and experience relativistic effects firsthand. As you accelerate (via arrow keys or WASD), you can observe length contraction, time dilation, Terrell rotation, and Doppler shifts (blueshift ahead, redshift behind), with toggles to isolate individual effects. | |
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