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Wayland.fyi minimalist Wayland special interest group
10 hours ago
- Wayland.fyi promotes minimalist Wayland software and counters criticism against Wayland.
- Core Wayland is a simple protocol (~10k lines), but mainstream implementations add complexity with heavy renderers and many extensions.
- Wlroots is criticized for being large, Linux-centric, unstable, and overengineered, with alternatives like neuswc offering portability and simplicity.
- X11 is described as outdated, complex, and poorly designed, with millions of lines of legacy code.
- Misinformation about Wayland vs. X11 is addressed, clarifying differences in compositing, security, and protocol design.
- A list of approved minimalist Wayland software includes libraries, compositors, and utilities that are portable, small, and hackable.
Show HN: A geocities inspired place for your vibed tools
15 hours ago
- PeekDesktop allows Windows users to click their desktop wallpaper to peek at it, similar to macOS Sonoma.
- The text introduces a collection of free, fun, and open-source tools described as 'stupid-delightful' and made for an audience of one.
- Examples of tools include Bluetooth audio playback manager, a 3D Maze screensaver recreation, .ico file generator, and markdown GitHub Gists cleaner.
- Other tools mentioned: bank transaction classifier, macOS teleprompter app, Windows toast notification CLI, and deadline planners for security CVEs or SEC filings.
- Features like screen capture hotkey for AI chatbots, code complexity analyzer for C#, and real-time .NET proxy for inspecting AI API calls are highlighted.
- Tiny Tool Town is presented as a community showcase for these quirky tools, likened to a neighborhood of weird software shops built with love.
Trump-style war on windmills spreads across Europe
2 hours ago
- Wind power misinformation campaigns in Europe are rising, borrowing from American-style distrust of renewables.
- These campaigns falsely claim wind power causes cancer and poisons drinking water, particularly in Sweden and Nordic countries.
- Europe's wind lobby warns such disinformation is slowing wind energy projects crucial for EU energy security.
HDMI 2.1 Display Stream Compression (DSC) Ready for Amdgpu Linux Driver
an hour ago
- AMDGPU open-source Linux driver patches have been updated to include HDMI 2.1's Display Stream Compression (DSC) functionality.
- DSC enables higher resolutions and refresh rates such as 4K@240Hz and 8K@120Hz, using visually lossless, low-latency compression.
- The inclusion of DSC is part of the HDMI Fixed Rate Link (FRL) patch series aimed for the mainline Linux kernel.
- Full HDMI 2.1 implementation by AMD for the open-source driver is underway, though the reason for the previous block by the HDMI Forum remains unclear, with speculation about Valve's involvement possibly facilitating a compromise.
- Latest patches for HDMI FRL and FRL DSC are expected to be integrated in the next AMDGPU Display Core patch series, with upstream inclusion likely in the Linux 7.2 kernel cycle.
EU Cloud Comparison Matrix
an hour ago
- The text presents a feature matrix comparing European cloud providers and US hyperscalers across multiple categories.
- Key categories include Compute, Containers, Serverless, Storage, Databases, AI/ML, Networking, CDN, Security, and Regions.
- It lists specific features such as instance types, managed services, storage options, and compliance certifications.
- The matrix includes availability statuses (e.g., Available, Not available, Partial, Unknown) for each feature per provider.
- A note indicates data is hand-curated and may be incomplete, advising verification with provider documentation.
Mass NPM Supply Chain Attack Hits TanStack, Mistral AI, and 170 Packages
2 hours ago
- The 'noon-contracts' npm package disguises itself as the Noon Protocol SDK.
- Upon installation, it steals SSH keys, cryptocurrency wallet private keys, and AWS credentials.
- It also performs live calls to AWS services such as STS, S3, and SecretsManager, and exfiltrates Kubernetes secrets.
Toxicity on Social Media – The Noisy Room
3 hours ago
- A Stanford study found that a small minority of users produce most toxic content on social media, yet people vastly overestimate its prevalence.
- Algorithms amplify extreme voices, leading to distorted perceptions where the majority self-censors, loud minorities think they're the majority, and hostility increases.
- This misperception affects politics, as politicians cater to perceived extreme views, even though public opinion is often more nuanced.
- A proposed solution is Community Check, an open-source tool showing real public consensus on issues using platform and national poll data to reduce hostility.
- For example, on campaign finance, 81% are concerned about money in elections, but distortion makes it seem like a partisan battle, hindering action.
Words Fail (2020)
4 days ago
- Words become invisible when communication works, making them hard to study.
- To see words, one can use a 'word jail' or learn unfamiliar jargon in new domains like rock climbing or sailing.
- Jargon in abstract domains like psychology can become unmoored from reality without notice, unlike in practical fields where misuse causes tangible trouble.
- The DSM in psychology exemplifies jargon with ambiguous meanings that vary by community, yet is treated as globally meaningful.
- Semantic deconversion, or losing faith in words, is traumatic and often leads to attempts at new forms of expression, as seen in philosophers like Wittgenstein.
- Christopher Alexander's work shows signs of semantic deconversion, offering patterns to replace degraded terms, such as 'fireplace,' whose meaning shifts with cultural production changes.
- Words can pick out reality, name abstract model aspects, or assess correspondence between map and territory, with useful abstraction differing from pathological, meaningless abstraction.
- Changing language alone is ineffective; loss of meaning signals words disconnecting from human reality, with tragic results in fields like architecture, psychology, and politics.
Instructure Security Incident Update
8 hours ago
- Instructure apologized for communication failures during a recent security incident.
- Unauthorized access affected usernames, emails, course names, enrollment info, and messages; core learning data (course content, submissions, credentials) was not compromised.
- A vulnerability in the Free for Teacher environment was exploited, leading to its temporary disablement for security review.
- Instructure launched an Incident Update page for consistent updates and plans to share a forensics report summary.
- Canvas by Instructure remains operational and safe, with no immediate action required from users.
- An agreement with the unauthorized actor ensured data return, destruction confirmation, and no customer extortion.
- Instructure is working with expert vendors for forensic analysis and system hardening, and organizing a webinar on May 13.
- Customers are advised to refer to the incident update page for latest information and contact support teams as needed.
People Don't Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves (2014)
3 hours ago
- Steve Jobs marketed the iPod by focusing on its benefit ('1,000 songs in your pocket') rather than its features ('1GB storage').
- People buy products to become better versions of themselves; they care about benefits, not features.
- Features describe what a product does; benefits explain why those features matter to the customer.
- tagline examples: Evernote ('Remember everything'), Twitter ('Start a conversation'), Nest Thermostat ('Saving energy is a beautiful thing'), LinkedIn ('Be great at what you do'), GitHub ('Build software better, together').
- Buffer uses benefit-focused marketing ('Grow your audience'), not feature-focused messaging.
Remembering Planet Source Code: Sharing Code Before GitHub Made It Easy
3 days ago
- Planet Source Code was a popular developer community website back in the early 2000s
- Developers shared code snippets, utilities, samples, and tutorials there
- It served as an important code-sharing portal before GitHub became dominant
- The code shared was often practical solutions to common programming problems
- Small contributions like these helped shape today's open source culture
- Old code archives preserve software development history and evolution
US in closely-guarded talks to open new bases in Greenland
6 hours ago
- US holds regular negotiations with Denmark to open three new military bases in southern Greenland.
- Talks aim to expand surveillance in the GIUK Gap to monitor Russian and Chinese maritime activity.
- Discussions involve high-level meetings, led by senior State Department official Michael Needham, with progress reported in recent months.
- Potential bases may be on sites with existing infrastructure, like Narsarsuaq, to lower costs.
- Negotiations operate under a 1951 security agreement, with Denmark historically supportive of US military expansions in Greenland.
- Trump's earlier threats to seize Greenland sparked diplomatic tensions, but current talks are described as professional and focused on compromise.
Supercomputer networking to accelerate large scale AI training
6 hours ago
- MRC protocol developed by OpenAI with partners enhances GPU networking for large AI training clusters.
- It reduces complexity in network design to support efficient compute at scale.
- MRC uses multi-plane networks, adaptive packet spraying, and static source routing to improve redundancy.
- It minimizes congestion, routes around failures quickly, and simplifies network control.
- MRC is deployed across OpenAI's largest supercomputers and published as an OCP specification.
- It ensures predictable performance during training despite frequent link and switch failures.
- MRC supports synchronous pretraining by preventing job crashes and reducing idle GPU time.
- The protocol allows for simpler, lower-cost network topologies with fewer tiers.
- Cross-industry collaboration with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA facilitated MRC development.
- MRC is critical for scaling supercomputers to over 100,000 GPUs and advancing frontier model training.
Acme CA Comparison
14 hours ago
- This page compares public certificate authorities (CAs) offering free certificates via ACME, detailing their implementations and limitations.
- Key comparison metrics include free SAN limits, wildcard support, certificate lifetime, IDN support, chain info, rate limits, and notes on specific CAs.
- Let's Encrypt offers up to 100 names, 90-day lifetime, with staging environment and quick start guides.
- ZeroSSL allows 100+ names, customizable lifetime from 1 to 90 days, and uses a custom REST API alongside ACME.
- SSL.com provides 100+ names and 90-day lifetime, but caution is needed as funds in account may lead to charges for paid certificates.
- Actalis limits to 1 name + www, 90-day lifetime, with support for IP certs only on paid OV plans and issues with challenge retries.
- ACME protocol feature support varies: External Account Binding is required by most except Let's Encrypt, multi-perspective validation and SXG support are notable security features.
- Specific notes include Google's 90-day default lifetime, BuyPass removal after October 15, 2025, and challenges with account endpoints for some CAs.
Met Introduces Hi-Def 3D Scans of Dozens of Historical Art Objects
11 hours ago
- The Met's Open Access Initiative and similar programs provide global digital access to museum collections, though 2D images often lack textural and structural details.
- To address these limitations, The Met has released high-definition 3D scans of nearly 140 significant objects, allowing viewers to examine details like brushstrokes and reverse sides from any angle.
- These scans, produced with technical precision and in collaboration with NHK, serve as research-grade tools and will continue to be added to the online library, enhancing access to artifacts ranging from the Temple of Dendur to medieval pottery.
Chinese AI engineers are Silicon Valley's new power players
6 hours ago
- The author moves into Mark Zuckerberg's former Silicon Valley home, known as the Facebook House, to immerse in the community of Chinese AI researchers.
- Chinese AI talent is highly sought after in Silicon Valley, with top researchers commanding lucrative offers and founding successful startups.
- These researchers often come from elite academic backgrounds in China, excelling in math and science, and bring a relentless work ethic to AI development.
- The Facebook House serves as a hub for Chinese AI entrepreneurs, hosting events and fostering connections within the tech community.
- Chinese immigrants are playing increasingly central roles in AI, shifting from supporting engineers to founders and leaders of major projects.
- Despite geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, Chinese researchers thrive in Silicon Valley, driven by opportunities in the AI boom.
- The AI field is described as intensely competitive, with concerns about job security, an AI bubble, and the pressure to succeed financially.
- Events like NeurIPS highlight the significant presence of Chinese researchers, where Mandarin is commonly spoken and networking is rampant.
- Researchers express a mix of optimism about AI's potential and anxiety over career stability, politics, and integrating into American society.
- The future for these Chinese techies remains uncertain, with many focused on innovation while navigating political and professional challenges.
Beneath the Linux surface: the Unix legacy, a lively ecology
13 hours ago
- Linux's widespread adoption is built on a deep UNIX legacy, drawing from contributions across multiple operating systems, including BSD variants, Solaris, Plan 9, and others.
- Key technologies in Linux, such as terminal handling (terminfo), file systems (FFS, ZFS), networking (TCP/IP stack, NFS), and tools (cron, vi), originated in other UNIX-like systems decades earlier.
- Containerization concepts were pioneered by FreeBSD jails and Solaris Zones long before Docker and LXC, with Plan 9 influencing modern kernel primitives like namespaces and overlayfs.
- Development tools and languages, including LLVM/clang, Go, and BPF tracing, have roots in projects from Apple, Bell Labs, and Solaris, highlighting cross-OS innovation.
- Diverse systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD, QNX, and MINIX power critical infrastructure (e.g., Netflix, routers, car dashboards, Intel CPUs), showing Linux is part of a broader ecosystem, not a monoculture.
- The FOSS ecosystem thrives on varied motives—from copyleft licenses to commercial support—enabling cross-pollination that sustains innovation and resilience against vendor lock-in.
- Maintaining this diverse UNIX legacy requires community effort: using, funding, and contributing to non-mainstream systems to preserve option-value and collective history.
An Ice Cold Take on CI Config Systems
12 hours ago
- YAML pipelines in CI/CD systems are problematic because they are a poor programming language, leading to encoded subroutines and data flow despite their declarative appeal.
- Alternatives to YAML include Pkl and Dhall, which can generate YAML or JSON and maintain declarative benefits while addressing YAML's issues for use in existing CI systems.
- Further reading on CI alternatives includes Alexey Kladov's posts, Gregory Szorc's critiques, RWX with improved YAML primitives, and the Build Systems à la Carte paper.
Extremely Low Frequencies
6 hours ago
- Submarines were first used in combat during the US Civil War, but were primitive and limited.
- World War I saw significant advances in submarine technology, especially with German U-boats, establishing submarine warfare.
- Early submarines had limited submerged endurance due to diesel-electric or gasoline power, requiring surfacing for communication.
- Radio communication underwater was challenging because seawater blocks high-frequency radio waves, forcing submarines to surface.
- The Navy experimented with radio on submarines like the C-class and D-class in 1909, but initial tests were problematic.
- Engineers developed floating antenna buoys around 1915 to allow submarines to communicate while submerged, though detection was a risk.
- John Willoughby and Percival Lowell discovered that very low frequency (VLF) radio waves could penetrate seawater, leading to long-wave radio for submarines.
- The Navy adopted VLF radio for submarine communications in the early 1920s, with stations like NSS in Annapolis becoming key for command and control.
- VLF stations, such as Cutler in Maine, were built with massive antennas and high-power transmitters to communicate with submerged submarines.
- VLF signals (3-30 kHz) penetrate seawater better than higher frequencies, allowing reception up to about 100 feet below the surface.
- VLF antennas are large due to long wavelengths, and magnetic loop antennas are efficient for reception but not for transmission.
- VLF has limited bandwidth, restricting it to low-speed communications like Morse code or simple digital signals.
- The development of nuclear-powered submarines in the 1950s allowed indefinite submersion, increasing the need for stealthy communication.
- Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio (3-30 Hz) was explored for deeper underwater communication, with wavelengths up to 2,300 miles.
- ELF antennas, like ground dipoles, are massive and inefficient, requiring huge power for minimal radiated output.
- Project Sanguine (1968) proposed a hardened ELF network with over 100 transmitters covering thousands of square miles, but was canceled due to cost, public opposition, and technical challenges.
- Project ELF, a scaled-down version, became operational in 1989 with sites in Wisconsin (Clam Lake) and Michigan (Republic), transmitting at about 8 watts.
- ELF acted as a 'pager' system, alerting submarines to surface for VLF messages, with very slow data rates (e.g., one letter per five minutes).
- The US Navy shut down ELF in 2004, citing improved technologies and changing requirements, while Russia, China, and India maintain ELF capabilities.
- ELF faced political and environmental opposition, including health concerns and protests, and inspired popular culture references like an episode of The X-Files.
High-precision HDC reference instrument for the Sol Star System
2 days ago
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Hasty Briefsbeta

Wayland.fyi minimalist Wayland special interest group

Show HN: A geocities inspired place for your vibed tools

Trump-style war on windmills spreads across Europe

HDMI 2.1 Display Stream Compression (DSC) Ready for Amdgpu Linux Driver

EU Cloud Comparison Matrix

Mass NPM Supply Chain Attack Hits TanStack, Mistral AI, and 170 Packages

Toxicity on Social Media – The Noisy Room

Words Fail (2020)

Instructure Security Incident Update

People Don't Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves (2014)

Remembering Planet Source Code: Sharing Code Before GitHub Made It Easy

US in closely-guarded talks to open new bases in Greenland

Supercomputer networking to accelerate large scale AI training

Acme CA Comparison

Met Introduces Hi-Def 3D Scans of Dozens of Historical Art Objects

Chinese AI engineers are Silicon Valley's new power players

Beneath the Linux surface: the Unix legacy, a lively ecology

An Ice Cold Take on CI Config Systems

Extremely Low Frequencies

High-precision HDC reference instrument for the Sol Star System