Wednesday, 26 August 2026
73 stories filed.
LLVM/Clang 23.1 Released With AMD Zen 6 & NVIDIA Rigel Support, Partial C++26 Support
LLVM 23.1 was released today on-schedule as the first stable release of the LLVM 23 series as the H2'2026 update to this open-source compiler stack...
Preserving glow-in-the-dark art and fashion for future generations
Understanding unique photochemistry of such materials will help in conservation, storage, and exhibition.
Google's anti-nausea Motion Assist dots finally rolling out on Android
It's currently only appearing on Pixels running Android 17.
Dolly Parton has died
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/entertainment/dolly-parton-de... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/music/dolly-parton-d... , https://archive.ph/w4vsE https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/dolly-par...
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms
Article URL: https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/3YMV4MS34KA?pli=1 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437946 Points: 130 # Comments: 16
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Two unvaccinated people die from measles in Pennsylvania, officials confirm
"[P]eople are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity."
Wayland Found To Be "Intrinsically Faster Than X11, But Not Necessarily More Efficient"
The PorteuX Linux distribution focused on being a high performance, modular, and minimalist distro took to forking Xfce's xfwm4 window manager into "xfwm4-gl" for OpenGL compositing support. As part of that they developed a window manager / compositor benchmark for evaluating the performance and efficiency of typical operations. Their results are fascinating...
SpaceX intends to invest up to $100 billion in massive Louisiana spaceport
"This will be a project like no other."
Nitter project received cease and desist
Article URL: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1442 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283 Points: 315 # Comments: 218
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Black hole singularity is a surface not a point
Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21590 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437210 Points: 111 # Comments: 58
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
My Friend Aaron
Article URL: https://rorz.io/writing/my-friend-aaron Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437069 Points: 244 # Comments: 59
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
EPA to drop requirement for public notice of polluting datacenters
State and local regulators would decide whether the public gets a say on minor-source permits
Starbase, LA
Article URL: https://www.spacex.com/sites/starbase-la Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436822 Points: 130 # Comments: 160
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
AI/LLM Usage Becoming A "Denial of Service Attack" On Open-Source Project Maintainers
The latest criticism of the increased burden placed on open-source software project maintainers caused by AI / LLM agents is around too many bug reports effectively causing a "denial of service" attack on project maintainers...
Lab supply companies have been selling antibodies using manipulated images
Image changes that would get a paper retracted are widespread among suppliers.
You could've applied all 1,449 Oracle patches and still been hit by this attack
Attackers now ready to exploit how things work, rather than just break them, says Oracle support expert
New bootloader lets you take the "Meta" out of the original Meta Quest
Privilege escalation attack grants "full control" and freedom from Meta's servers/apps.
Microsoft warns that transitioning Excel workbooks to new Exchange connectors might not be smooth sailing
Current Exchange connector is retiring - and new ones won't work if you don't upgrade
Slop factory bans Russians for using slop factory to create slop
OpenAI wants you to thank it for keeping a permanent record of all your discussions with its bots
AI won’t replace radiologists, but it will dramatically change their jobs
A pioneering AI scientist once predicted computers would replace human radiologists. They haven't.
US convicts ex-Philips engineer for exposing X-ray secrets to competitor
Dutch electronics giant saw right through ex-engineer’s plot, albeit over a year after it all unravelled
Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs
Article URL: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/bomb-fishing-coral-reefs Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434820 Points: 194 # Comments: 112
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown
Article URL: https://www.imkylelambert.com/articles/building-a-backyard-office-the-build-and-cost-breakdown Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434645 Points: 181 # Comments: 143
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Benchmarking Some Incredible Performance Gains With Btrfs On Linux 7.3
With the Btrfs pull request for Linux 7.3 having delivered more performance optimizations with some ~3x and ~5x gains mentioned in specific areas, I was eager to test out the new Btrfs performance on the in-development kernel. In today's article are some benchmarks of Btrfs on Linux 7.2 stable compared to Linux 7.3 Git with some very enticing performance gains confirmed in various workloads.
OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-25/openai-cl... , https://archive.ph/yCTrr Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434378 Points: 154 # Comments: 104
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
OpenAI's upcoming Jalapeño chip looks like it'll be an inference beast
128 chips, 1.7 exaFLOPS, and 27 TB of HBM give Altman and crew a leg up over Blackwell, and maybe even Rubin
Apple Launches The M6 2nm 12-core CPU, Quad-Die M5 Ultra
Apple today unveiled the M6 as their first 2nm SoC design while also introducing the M5 Ultra as their first quad-die product...
Windows XP was released to manufacturing a quarter of a century ago
So incredibly stable, govt branches, banks, and dentist offices still haven't figured out how to close it
The Modern NTFS Linux Driver Adds Read Support For Windows System Compression (WOF)
The pull requests for the existing Paragon NTFS3 kernel driver as well as the new modern "NTFS" drivers have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel cycle. Besides bug fixes, most notable among these NTFS file-system drivers are Windows System Compression "WOF" read support for the modern NTFS driver...
New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro
Article URL: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-mac-mini-featuring-the-all-new-m6-and-m5-pro/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433450 Points: 356 # Comments: 192
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
Article URL: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433316 Points: 625 # Comments: 376
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/apple-debuts-its-most-powe... https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/25/m6-mac-mini-vs-m4-mac-mini-he... Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433292 Points: 790 # Comments: 690
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Apple's new desktop computers are designed specifically for local AI development
Folks have been daisy-chaining Macs for AI—this refresh keeps that in mind.
Linux 7.3 Device Mapper Sees Many Fixes, Including Code Cleanups By Claude Opus
The Linux Device Mapper "DKM" framework for mapping block devices to higher-level virtual block devices doesn't see any major new features for Linux 7.3 but there are many bug fixes, including code clean-ups carried out by AI...
SiFive pushes development server to take RISC-V into the datacenter
Rack-mount system intended for software porting, workload optimization, to bring open standard to the bitbarn
Don't Wordle
Article URL: https://dontwordle.com/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432319 Points: 252 # Comments: 109
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Microsoft breaks WPF printing with .NET update
Summer in Redmond, Winter for everyone else
CISA slaps its tightest three-day patching deadline on perfect-10 Oracle flaw
Disclosed in January and honeypots buzzed soon after, CISA says it’s finally time for the USG to plug the gap
DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM Still Being Worked On For Intel Xe3P / Nova Lake
The in-development Linux 7.3 kernel is marking Nova Lake Xe3P graphics as stable in being enabled by default and no longer hidden behind the "force probe" flag. While on-by-default, there still are some features that have yet to land like the DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM functionality...
KDE Remote Desktop Experience Improving For Closing The X11 vs. Wayland Gap
KDE developer David Edmundson is out today with a blog post around improvements that have been ongoing for the Plasma 6.8 release in improving the KDE remote desktop experience. As part of ensuring a good Wayland experience and hitting all the needs fulfilled by X11, Plasma 6.8 is seeing improvements for its remote desktop functionality...
Ukraine unveils native jet-powered drone interceptor
Fast and lightweight unmanned aircraft is designed for easy deployment and fits in a pickup truck
Lots Of New Audio Hardware Support In Linux 7.3
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE submitted all of the sound feature updates last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel. Besides the continued AI/LLM-generated patch churn, the sound code for Linux 7.3 sees a lot of new hardware support...
Crooks push Mac malware through fake OpenAI Codex ads
Sponsored search results lead developers straight into a ClickFix malware trap
HMRC dangles £500M carrot for National Insurance system revamp
Taxman wants to drag creaky NPS into agile era
What is virtualization modernization?
SPONSORED EXPLAINER: Why you should take a long-term approach to rethinking your virtualization portfolio
Australia’s record industry won’t chart tunes recorded in the key of AI
This is basically a riff on ‘You wouldn’t steal a car’ and means only the human league can have a hit
SpaceX claims it will put a Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system into orbit next year
And fly ‘significant scale’ in 2028 – a claim that isn’t entirely bonkers, but needs a solid grain of salt
IBM announces chip that natively executes Arm and Z instructions concurrently
Cunning plan to expand the amount of software that runs on mainframes is also an admission ISVs are focusing their energies elsewhere
Linux 7.3 Merges Initial Kernel Driver Support For The 2026 Steam Controller
The HID subsystem updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel merge window. Among other hardware additions, the 2026 Valve Steam Controller is seeing initial kernel driver support...
Microsoft AI watermarks in Paint and Photos are linked to user IDs, researcher finds
Privacy? Not if you use hosted AI services
AI is hitting entry-level jobs hardest, Stanford study finds
Young employment in AI-impacted fields down 19% compared to more AI-resistant occupations.
You don't want this Sleepwalker backdoor on your Windows machine
Its own command language, 23 instructions - signs point to 'well-resourced operation rather than an opportunistic one'
Data centers become "killer application" for new power transformer tech
Solid-state transformers could also benefit EV charging and, someday, households.
Browser fingerprint tool shows how easy you are to track using the latest sneaky tricks
Glassbox dev admits he had some help from Claude to build locally running tool
RFK Jr. may upend how vaccine recommendations are categorized
There are currently 3 categories. Without reason, RFK Jr. is considering changes.
Ads and tracking infiltrated TVs. Now they're coming for monitors.
Monitor vendors are playing with fire.
GM vehicles under federal scrutiny after hundreds of reports
The eBoost brake-by-wire system is responsible for at least 22 crashes now.
Linux ath11k Driver Improvements For Qualcomm WiFi 6 Hardware Yields 7x Lower Latency
A patch series being worked on for the ath11k mainline wireless networking driver for Qualcomm WiFi 6 / 802.11ax chipsets is yielding 7x lower latency or 2.2x throughput at identical latency...
Inaudible sounds used to fingerprint browsers catch AliExpress red-handed
Is the technique outdated? Yes. Is it still creepy?
New AF_ALG Restrictions With Linux 7.3 Due To The Security & Maintenance Nightmare
The past few Linux kernel cycles have chipped away at AF_ALG functionality for that interface for user-space programs to access the kernel's internal cryptography API. Linux has been dropping AF_ALG features like zero-copy support and offloading. AF_ALG was quickly deprecated in Linux 7.2 while now for Linux 7.3 it's being further restricted...
Buyer beware: Those mummified remains might carry toxic spores
"Mummified remains sold online exhibit signs of biodeterioration, yet sellers provide no safety guidance."
Mozilla Presents Their Plan For Shipping JPEG-XL In Firefox 157
While Firefox 152+ already offers experimental JPEG-XL support, Mozilla formally announced today their plans for officially shipping JPEG-XL image format support in the Firefox web browser...
Nvidia senior manager tied to ex-Supermicro staff's AI smuggling scheme
Nvidia worker indicted after Jensen Huang scolded Supermicro for AI server smuggling.
F1 in the Netherlands: The driver you most want to beat is your teammate
Formula 1 returned from its summer break with this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix.
Trump tried to curb clean energy. It’s booming anyway.
Capacity will rise by a record 45GW this year, according to S&P Global Energy.
Early Linux 7.3 Kernel Benchmarks Show Some Performance Improvements, Some Regressions
Being halfway through the Linux 7.3 kernel merge window and prior to wrapping up and sending back the HP Z4 G6i workstation powered by the Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS processor, I decided to run some benchmarks to see how Linux 7.3 Git is performing relative to the prior stable kernel series. Here are the first benchmarks of this early state of Linux 7.3 with some performance improvements as…
GNU Emacs 31.1 Released With Mouse Control Enabled By Default, Theme For New Users
GNU Emacs 31.1 is out today as the newest feature release to this popular text editor...
Review: Chuwi's $449 Unibook laptop is a funhouse-mirror MacBook Neo
The Unibook is a weird entry-level laptop for people with patience.
VKD3D 2.1 Released With New Features For Direct3D 12 In Upstream Wine
VKD3D 2.1 was released today by CodeWeavers' Henri Verbeet as the upstream Wine project for getting Direct3D 12 implemented over the Vulkan API...
Intel Engineers Propose DRM Fabric For Linux
Coincidentally just days after AMD posted their big UALink patch series for Linux, Intel engineers today announced a proposal called DRM Fabric...
Linux 7.3 Adds Support For Several Newer RISC-V Extensions
With the in-development Linux 7.3 is support for discovering and enumerating support for several newer RISC-V ISA extensions. Plus there are improvements to its control flow integrity Shadow Stack handling, CPU context switch support for QoS tagging, using UEFI runtime services for restart and powering off, and other improvements...
AMD k10temp Driver Adds EPYC Zen 5 Per-CCD Temperature Monitoring With Linux 7.3
Merged last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel were all the hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver updates for Linux 7.3, which included supporting several more ASUS desktop motherboards, a few AIO liquid cooling products, more Lenovo system support, and per-CCD temperature monitoring on AMD EPYC 9005 server processors...
Due to need for "absolute success," China delays critical Moon launch to 2027
"The Chang’e 7 mission does not meet the conditions for launch."