News Nug
AWS suffered ‘at least two outages’ caused by AI tools, and now I’m convinced we’re living inside a ‘Silicon Valley’ episode

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: /r/programming

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“Playmakers,” reviewed: The race to give every child a toy

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

In early 1900s New York, candy stores served as social hubs for immigrant children escaping tough tenement life. At a candy store on Tompkins Avenue in Brooklyn, a stuffed bear became a notable attraction. This bear, created by Morris Michtom, the store's owner, was inspired by President Theodore Roosevelt's hunting trip, during which he refused to shoot a captured bear. The incident was humorously illustrated by cartoonist Clifford Berryman, portraying Roosevelt turning away from the bear

Ggml.ai joins Hugging Face to ensure the long-term progress of Local AI

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the importance of feedback and outlines a technical issue with page loading. It then announces that ggml.ai, the team behind llama.cpp, is joining Hugging Face to promote open development in AI. The partnership aims to support the ggml/llama.cpp community as local AI technology advances. Since its founding in 2023, ggml.ai has focused on developing a machine learning library and fostering an open-source community. The collaboration with Hugging Face has been productive, and both teams

No Skill. No Taste.

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on their experiences and concerns regarding the state of "Show HN" and the broader culture on Hacker News (HN). They note that while they've been coding since they were 11 and have worked on complex systems, there's currently an illusion of lower barriers to entry in software development, which leads to an influx of poorly crafted and derivative applications. This phenomenon, fueled by enthusiasm for technologies like large language models (LLMs), results in applications that lack both skill and taste, contributing to noise

Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot [December outage]

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The Financial Times offers a digital subscription for $75 per month, which includes complete access to exclusive insights and in-depth articles on any device, with the option to cancel anytime during the trial. Subscribers will receive eight curated articles daily and have seamless access through the FT Edit page and newsletter. There are opportunities to save on essential digital access and a recommendation to check existing access through universities or organizations. The subscription is aimed at both individual and organizational readers, with terms and conditions applicable. Over a million readers subscribe

Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

A Japanese city, Osaka, received a notable donation of 21kg of gold bars, valued at approximately 560 million yen ($3.6 million), to help address its aging water system. The anonymous donor previously contributed 500,000 yen in cash for municipal waterworks. Osaka, home to nearly three million residents, faces significant challenges with its water and sewage infrastructure, which is over 40 years old for more than 20% of its pipes, leading to safety concerns and incidents like sink

Consistency diffusion language models: Up to 14x faster, no quality loss

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content outlines various offerings and features of Together AI, primarily focused on serverless inference, model deployment, fine-tuning, evaluations, and tools for working with open-source AI. Key services include: - **Inference Options**: API for open-source model inference, dedicated endpoints for custom hardware, scalable infrastructure for generative media, and performance evaluations. - **Development Tools**: Code execution capabilities, including a sandbox environment and code interpreter, along with resources to determine appropriate models for specific use cases.

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

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Pi for Excel: AI sidebar add-in for Excel, powered by Pi

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content describes an experimental AI sidebar add-in for Microsoft Excel known as Pi for Excel. This open-source, multi-model tool allows users to enhance their Excel experience by integrating AI functionalities. Users can bring their own API keys or OAuth logins to access various AI models like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, and GitHub Copilot. Key features of Pi for Excel include: - **Built-in Tools**: It offers 16 core tools to interact with workbooks. - **Multi-model

An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The author discusses their experience setting up an ARM server in their homelab using the Minisforum MS-R1 Mini PC. Previous options either lacked power or were tied to costly Mac hardware. The MS-R1 offered a powerful, affordable alternative. After installing a 1TB SSD, the author faced issues with the onboard network interface controllers (NICs) not being detected while installing Rocky Linux. They attempted to sideload drivers but found it impractical, leading to a decision to switch to Fedora,

MuMu Player (NetEase) silently runs 17 reconnaissance commands every 30 minutes

Published: 2026-02-20 | Origin: Hacker News

MuMu Player Pro, an Android emulator for macOS developed by NetEase, collects extensive system data every 30 minutes while running, including information about local network devices, running processes, installed applications, and kernel parameters. This data collection is linked to the Mac's serial number through SensorsData analytics and is not disclosed in MuMu's privacy policy. Every collection creates a timestamped directory containing logs of the collected data, including the success or failure of the collection process. The emulator captures detailed command

Turn Your Ruby Code into Desktop Apps Using RubyJS-Vite + Electron

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content appears to be a binary or hexadecimal representation of a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file, which includes encoded image data. PNG files generally contain various chunks, such as the header (IHDR) and image data (IDAT), and are used for lossless image compression. The text includes a sequence of encoded bytes and control characters, indicating that the file is not readable as plain text. The actual visual content of the PNG image is not represented in this textual summary, as it focuses on

Baby chicks pass the bouba-kiki test, challenging a theory of language evolution

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: Hacker News

A recent study published in *Science* reveals that newborn chicks can associate sounds with shapes in a manner similar to humans, particularly in the context of the “bouba-kiki” effect, where "bouba" sounds round and "kiki" sounds spiky. This finding, led by Maria Loconsole and her team at the University of Padua, challenges the long-held belief that such sound-shape associations are unique to humans and may serve as a clue to the origins of language.

Farewell, Rust

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on their journey into programming, which began in 9th grade when a friend encouraged them to join the school's programming club. They learned Pascal using Turbo Pascal, gradually mastering basics until they recreated Conway’s Game of Life. After a summer break, they transitioned to high school, focusing on Software Engineering and learning C. They developed a passion for C due to its control over memory management and other features. Over three years, they enhanced their programming skills, dabbling in languages like PHP and

Justifying Text-Wrap: Pretty

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: Hacker News

In 2025, Safari introduced an improved implementation of the CSS property `text-wrap: pretty`, marking a significant advancement in web typography. This development aims to enhance the aesthetic quality of text layout, striving for the refined formatting reminiscent of 15th-century printing. Traditionally, browsers employed a simplistic greedy algorithm for line breaking, resulting in visually unappealing paragraph structures. Although discrete advancements were made in typesetting by historical figures like Gutenberg, Plass, and Knuth, browsers faced additional challenges due

The Rails developers' guide to mobile app frameworks

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: /r/ruby

Joe Masilotti discusses the advantages and disadvantages of four frameworks for building mobile apps for Rails applications: fully native apps, React Native, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), and Hotwire Native. 1. **Fully Native Apps**: This approach requires developing separate codebases for iOS (in Swift) and Android (in Kotlin), along with a web version. While it offers complete control over design and user experience, it is labor-intensive, as every feature needs to be built three times (

Choosing a Language Based on its Syntax?

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The author expresses confusion over how people often judge programming languages based solely on their declaration syntax, rather than considering other critical aspects like semantics. They assert that a language's character is not defined by its syntax, and that the semantics of a language remain largely unchanged even if its declaration syntax is modified. The author, who has a background in compiler design, emphasizes the importance of denotational semantics over operational semantics, particularly because many inexperienced programmers tend to overlook the deeper distinctions between languages, thinking they are merely

Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: Hacker News

micasa is a terminal-based UI designed for comprehensive tracking of home maintenance and projects, utilizing a single SQLite file—free from cloud storage, accounts, or subscriptions. It helps users manage details such as maintenance schedules, project timelines, costs through vendor quotes, appliance warranties, and incident logs. The tool allows for easy attachment of documents and images, and features a directory for vendor contacts. It is compatible with Linux, macOS, and Windows, and can be installed using Go or by downloading binaries

-fbounds-safety: Enforcing bounds safety for C

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The document outlines the proposed C extension -fbounds-safety, designed to enhance memory safety by enforcing bounds checks to prevent out-of-bounds (OOB) memory accesses, a common cause of security vulnerabilities. Key features include bounds annotations that programmers can apply to pointers, such as __counted_by(N), which indicates the number of valid elements a pointer can access. The compiler then uses this information to implement necessary bounds checks during pointer dereferences, ensuring memory safety. The document details the programming model

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Published: 2026-02-19 | Origin: Hacker News

Gemini 3.1 Pro has been released as an upgrade to support tasks that require more than simple answers, focusing on complex problem-solving. It is available through various platforms like the Gemini API, Vertex AI, the Gemini app, and NotebookLM. This new version builds on the Gemini 3 series and enhances core reasoning capabilities, notably achieving a score of 77.1% on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark for logic pattern solving, which is significantly higher than its predecessor,