Wednesday, 19 August 2026
77 stories filed.
Linux 7.3 Adds New "bpf_sock_read_xattr" Feature For systemd, BPF Programs
Merged earlier this year for Linux 7.1 was extended attributes on sockets support as a feature sought after by the likes of GNOME and systemd for helping with Varlink IPC usage and other purposes. A limitation though of the functionality has been no efficient means for a BPF program to read those user extended attribute labels back. But with Linux 7.3 that's being addressed with the new…
Norway Should Buy OpenAI
Article URL: https://www.onethousandmeans.com/p/norway-should-buy-openai Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49351330 Points: 120 # Comments: 120
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
Article URL: https://www.ikea.com/se/en/customer-service/knowledge/articles/6f564c4d-2ccc-46de-b643-545a3948dc79.html Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49349984 Points: 126 # Comments: 82
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Turbovec – Google's TurboQuant for vector search in Rust
Article URL: https://github.com/RyanCodrai/turbovec Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49349898 Points: 120 # Comments: 14
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
IOmap Improvement For Linux 7.3 Takes EXT4 & XFS Performance Further
As part of the VFS pull requests now merged to the Linux 7.3 development kernel was an improvement to the IOmap framework used by various file-systems for mapping logical file byte offsets in memory to their physical locations on storage. With the now-merged code, this modern block mapping framework is allowing better performance at least for the EXT4 file-system...
Data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 4 degrees in Phoenix
Article URL: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/sustainablebuildings/article/7/2/024501/1233035/Data-Center-Waste-Heat-as-an-Emerging-Urban Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49349147 Points: 223 # Comments: 273
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Peacock raises prices by 18 percent after becoming profitable
Peacock's quarterly profitability isn't guaranteed.
The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China's space program
One big question: Will China assert territorial rights where its rover explores?
Framework Laptop 12 Updated For Intel Wildcat Lake, Shipping Starts In October
Last year Framework Computer launched the Framework Laptop 12 as an upgrade-friendly and Linux-compatible 2-in-1 laptop. The Framework Laptop 12 was originally powered by Intel Core 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" low-end processor while now Framework is adding Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake" as an upgrade or for new Laptop 12 orders...
Fairphone's latest repairable phone is finally available in the US for $650
Fairphone sells components like the USB port and screen, all swappable with a single torx driver.
Ford hopes this Hypercar will be its next Le Mans winner
The American automaker returns to the top category of endurance racing next year.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma takes pains to deliver a slasher fan’s dream
Matte paintings—not CGI—warp a world designed to hit a nerve for slasher fans.
CISA gives feds 3 days to fix actively exploited Ray RCE bug
Phishing, malvertising attacks could target devs to gain access to private corporate networks
X-rays add new twist to narwhal's spiral tusk
New study finds that the tusks have not one but two spirals, twisting in opposite directions.
Apple plugs image-processing hole ripe for spyware abuse
Patch batch spans current kit, older iGadgets, Macs, and Vision Pro
The CachyOS Performance vs. Other Linux Operating Systems On A $46k USD Workstation
Recently I looked at the performance of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Windows 11 on the Intel Xeon 678X running within the HP Z4 G6i workstation. Linux performed admirably as one would expect.
Tim King, AmigaDOS royalty, dies aged 70
Parallel computing pioneer went on to found early British ISP UK Online
Babies born under sugar rationing grew into adults with lower cancer risk
Article URL: https://theconversation.com/babies-born-under-sugar-rationing-grew-into-adults-with-lower-cancer-risk-289873 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345843 Points: 213 # Comments: 44
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Python Polars Cheatsheet (based on our O'Reilly book)
Article URL: https://opensource.posit.co/resources/cheatsheets/polars/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345476 Points: 126 # Comments: 21
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
The Amazon tax
Article URL: https://seths.blog/2026/08/the-amazon-tax/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345263 Points: 659 # Comments: 436
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Rust For Linux 7.3 Begins Seeing Fixes To Prepare For Rust's GCC Backend
In addition to the POWER/PowerPC code adding Rust kernel support, the main set of Rust programming language updates for the Linux 7.3 kernel have now been submitted. Most notable are early fixes toward eventually allowing the experimental Rust GCC back-end to be used as an alternative to the official rustc compiler with LLVM code generation...
Fixing a bricked Framework laptop
Article URL: https://quantum5.ca/2026/08/16/fixing-bricked-amd-7040-series-framework-13-laptop-with-20-tools/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345220 Points: 287 # Comments: 191
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Microsoft finally fixing File Explorer and the Context Menu
Time to flex that Windows 10 muscle memory
Microsoft Copilot reveals secret input that allowed it to be hacked
Secret parameter allowed hackers to steal passwords when a target clicked on a link.
Copilot tricked into telling reseachers how to hack itself
How to social engineer an AI's reasoning engine
Linux 7.3 Corrects Faulty Behavior Of FAT File-System Driver For Filenames Too Fat
It's not too often that the Linux FAT driver for FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 format support receives updates worth mentioning. For Linux 7.3 there is one patch though and it's due to the driver until now lacking an upper-bounds check on the length of the filename, which could lead to some unexpected situations with extremely long filenames...
Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner
Article URL: https://philo.gay/linecam/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344825 Points: 329 # Comments: 53
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Fairphone is now officially available in the United States
Article URL: https://www.fairphone.com/nl/stories/the-fairphone-gen-6-is-all-about-giving-you-more Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344811 Points: 311 # Comments: 159
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Government Teams users face another ******* month of filtered captions
Officials must wait a little longer before Live Captions tells it like it is
Passport out-of-control at French airport
Papers please. Windows is watching
As temperatures get hotter, pesticides are more dangerous to farmworkers
Research shows heat amplifies the dangers of pesticides.
Sponsor gives KDE Plasma 6.6 the LTS treatment
Kubuntu 26.04 gets three years of fixes for the desktop, frameworks, and apps
Fedora x86-64-v3 Optimized Packages Pushed Back To At Least Fedora 46
There was a proposal under discussion the past few months on building x86-64-v3 packages for Fedora 45 while retaining x86-64-v1 packages. The hope was building the Fedora packages with x86-64-v3 where AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI2, and other newer ISA features can be assumed in the name of better performance. Unfortunately, the x86-64-v3 plans are now delayed but may be reconsidered next year with Fedora…
Lenovo Lands New Watchdog Driver In Linux 7.3 For Their SE30G2 + SE60 Edge AI Computers
When it comes to the watchdog driver changes for Linux 7.3, standing out is the new Lenovo driver for their upcoming ThinkEdge AI edge computing systems...
Intel Enables Buffer Compression For Better Gaming Performance With DXVK
Merged today to Mesa 26.3-devel is a nice performance boost for Intel graphics with Valve's Steam Play when using DXVK for Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 over the Vulkan API. The open-source Intel ANV driver is seeing up to 5% better performance with DXVK...
UK puts Google AI on the flight path to fewer contrails
Trial will test whether small route and altitude tweaks can reduce aviation's warming impact
XFS Lands FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES For Efficiency Improvement In Linux 7.3
The XFS file-system improvements have been merged for Linux 7.3. For end-users the only notable change for this file-system on the new kernel is adding support for FALLOC_FL_WRITE_ZEROES...
AI models get convenient amnesia about source material as they grow, MIT boffins find
Attributing diffusion model output to a specific input becomes more difficult with more training data
UK's tech talent pipeline shrinks as overseas worker visa applications fall 7%
Third consecutive annual decline adds to concerns about shortages of specialist skills
Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM
Article URL: https://pixelcluster.dev/VRAM-Overcommit/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342719 Points: 464 # Comments: 217
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Google buys crashed airline Spirit’s data at auction, because AI
$10 million buys over 100 million emails, 30 million recorded phone calls, reams of stuff from Teams, Oracle, and SAP
Microsoft MVP creates site to remind you of all the brands Redmond replaced
If you’re still talking about ‘DirSync’ or ‘Active Directory’ instead of ‘Entra’, and need to explain why, this is the site for you
Theban tomb reveals how Egyptian burial trends evolved in time
Practices shifted from individuals buried in coffins to reusing sites for later mummy interments.
California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year
Article URL: https://grist.org/transportation/californias-new-tire-efficiency-rules-could-save-drivers-1b-a-year/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340710 Points: 109 # Comments: 133
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Xen Project gets serious about safety in push to possibly partition robot brains
Boeing quietly joins FOSS hypervisor crew, as AMD and Renesas lead new effort to comply with formal standards
EFS & FreeVxFS File-Systems Get Booted While FailFS Merged For Linux 7.3
Among the early pull requests merged today by Linus Torvalds for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle were removal of some ancient file-systems while adding in a new pseudo file-system...
US vaccination rates fall again as exemptions continue to rise, CDC data shows
Again, the CDC did not publish a full report and instead simply put the data online.
Almost nobody pays attention to web standards anymore
Screen readers suffer as nearly 90% of top websites tested contain HTML spec violations
Former SpaceX engineers are building a robotic factory for making steel parts
“We're not necessarily building in a dogmatic fashion towards full autonomy.”
Linux 7.3 To Land Initial Code Improving vRAM Management, More Improvements Coming
Earlier this year Natalie Vock of Valve's Linux graphics team laid out some patches for improving the Linux gaming experience for systems with limited vRAM. The kernel work for improving that video memory management is set to be introduced in the Linux 7.3 kernel. While that's a celebration on its own, Vock is pursuing more improvements still for bettering the Linux GPU driver video memory…
The Moon's shadow raced across the heart of Spain, and I was there to see it
Here's what it was like watching a total solar eclipse 90 minutes north of Madrid.
As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value
"Network effect" can run in reverse.
FFmpeg Lands H.265 Vulkan Encode Performance Optimizations
The FFmpeg multimedia library can now enjoy faster H.265/HEVC video encoding with the Vulkan-powered encode path. With the optimizations merged today, the H.265 encode performance should be roughly at parity to the H.264 encode speed...
Payments giant Stripe is about to drop over $7 billion to become a gateway to AI token sales
AI gateways look promising as companies struggle with model orchestration
Supreme Court rejects Verizon bid for $47 million refund of FCC fine
Despite loss, carriers still claim selling device-location data isn't illegal.
Offloading Rust To GPUs Proves Capable Of High Performance With Memory Safety
A new research paper published on LLVM offloading to GPU accelerators using the Rust programming language is talking up the prospects of making use of safe Rust code for GPU kernels while retaining Rust's memory safety and other advantages over C++ / CUDA / HIP...
Petlibro accused of “gaslighting” users over smart pet feeder outage
Petlibro says feeders perform scheduled feedings offline. Users report otherwise.
Siemens and Reinhausen turn up the voltage for hungry AI racks
Not a German cop show, but a pair of engineering firms aiming to feed 800 VDC to next-gen kit
Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI
Amazon’s team uses a T. rex preparing to devour a book as its logo.
Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months
Article URL: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-prices-climb-500-percent-in-12-months-up-to-10x-the-lowest-ever-tracked-prices-128gb-of-ddr5-now-usd3-399 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334960 Points: 309 # Comments: 237
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative
Article URL: https://cursor.com/changelog/origin-code-hosting Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334209 Points: 324 # Comments: 251
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
ARCTIC Fan Controller: The Best Fan Controller For Linux Desktops, Less Than $10 USD
Back in March were patches posted by ARCTIC Cooling for an ARCTIC fan controller driver for Linux. Typically we aren't used to seeing desktop/enthusiast focused vendors providing such Linux drivers for peripherals directly but the sad fact is most often it's left up to the open-source community to reverse engineer and create such drivers for Linux. Making it all the more surprising besides it…
Mozilla adds ad blocking to Firefox for iOS
Experimental feature to block some, but not all, ads
Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
Article URL: https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage-could-save-one-trillion-dollars-and-114000-lives-every-year/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332981 Points: 563 # Comments: 667
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?
Pretty self explanatory. Could you folks shed some light on why these issues keep happening? I’ve noticed most posts and replies are just people coming to their own conclusions based on whatever published data.
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
AMD Working On A New Backend For Improving ROCm Compute In QEMU/VMs
AMD engineers are working on enhancing the open-source ROCm compute stack for better handling GPU virtualized compute under QEMU...
GitHub has Issues as repo downloads hit 50% error rate
Copilot also wobbles as another outage tests developer patience
$1K laser mosquito zapper promises precision strikes as backers itch for answers
After raising $2.8M, the project has entered production, but company comms have done little to reassure buyers
This sub-$7,000 sportscar might be just what the future needs
The Gasolini AR1 uses 2-cylinder Honda bike engine, and an EV is underway, too.
Nvidia discloses $21B stake in SpaceX
Filing comes after Elon Musk announced exclusive arrangement to kit out its data centers.
Linux 7.3 SMP Improvement To Help Reduce Latency, Improve Real-Time Performance
Among the pull requests sent out today now that the Linux 7.3 merge window is open are the SMP improvements for this next kernel version. Standing out among the SMP code are some enhancements for helping reduce latency and ultimately enhancing real-time Linux performance...
Meet the only known trebuchet casualty in history
"It highlights the brutality of medieval warfare," said paleopathologist Jo Buckberry.
Firefox 154 Now Available With "Manage AI" Quick Action
Firefox 154 is now available as the newest monthly update bringing a few new features, enhancements, and other alterations to this open-source web browser...
Intel & AMD Power Management Driver Improvements Ready For Linux 7.3
In advance of the Linux 7.3 merge window opening, Linux power management subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki of Intel submitted all the power management, ACPI, and thermal control code. As not too much of a surprise, Intel and AMD driver updates dominate the power management changes for Linux 7.3...
KTransformers 0.7 Expands AVX-512 Support To Benefit AMD EPYC Servers
KTransformers as the framework for heterogeneous LLM inference and fine-tune optimizations is out today with its v0.7 feature release...
Satellite operators are in panic mode due to a worsening launch crisis
What happens if the Falcon rockets stop flying?
Teaching my kid to code with a modern MUD
Article URL: https://tau.dev/2026/08/07/canon Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49272631 Points: 195 # Comments: 56
Discussion: Hacker News thread →