Hasty Briefsbeta

Bilingual

OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS
2 hours ago
- DOS lacked security, allowing programs to access everything, while Unix had built-in separations from the start.
- A personal anecdote highlights Wal-Mart storing sensitive data on MS-DOS with poor security, leading to a major breach in 2006.
- Agent gateways risk reverting to DOS-era insecurities, with architectures like OpenClaw/NemoClaw using sandboxed containers and network workarounds for safety.
- Wirken.AI proposes an alternative approach with tighter security via per-channel processes, a separate vault, and hardened tool-level containers.
- The text contrasts NemoClaw and Wirken.AI implementations across steps like runtime setup, policy enforcement, and audit logging.
- Historical lessons from Unix's separation mechanisms are urged to guide secure agent design in modern systems.
GitHub's Fake Star Economy
2 hours ago
- A CMU study (ICSE 2026) identified 6 million fake GitHub stars across 18,617 repos using 301,000 accounts, with AI/LLM repos being a major non-malicious category.
- Fake stars are sold openly for $0.03 to $0.85 each on websites, Fiverr, and Telegram, with premium services offering 'non-drop' stars that evade detection.
- VCs explicitly use star counts as sourcing signals, with Redpoint noting a median of 2,850 stars at seed stage and automated scrapers tracking growth.
- Analysis of 20 repos revealed manipulation fingerprints: 36-76% of stargazers had zero followers, and fork-to-star ratios were 10x below organic baselines.
- Blockchain projects like Union Labs (flagged with 47.4% fake stars) topped VC reports, while AI repos showed mixed signals, with some heavily manipulated.
- The fork-to-star ratio is a strong heuristic for detection: organic repos average ~0.160, while manipulated ones drop below 0.05, indicating low genuine engagement.
- Fake popularity extends to npm downloads and VS Code extensions, with cases like a package reaching 1 million weekly downloads via automation.
- Legal risks include FTC rules (penalties up to $53,088 per violation) and SEC charges for fraud, applying if fake stars mislead investors during fundraising.
- GitHub's enforcement is reactive, deleting flagged repos but only 57% of fake accounts, lacking structural changes like weighted popularity metrics.
- VCs should prioritize metrics like unique monthly contributors, issue quality, and fork-to-star ratios over raw star counts to gauge real adoption.
Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time
3 hours ago
- Intel's Core Ultra series laptops CPUs have been flagship products since retiring older generational branding.
- Non-Ultra Core CPUs in Series 1 and 2 were based on the older Raptor Lake architecture.
- Intel's new non-Ultra Core Series 3 processors are new silicon, codenamed "Wildcat Lake."
- These chips use two silicon tiles: a compute tile and a separate platform controller tile.
- Compute tile includes CPU with up to two Cougar Cove P-cores and four Darkmont E-cores.
- Integrated GPU features one or two latest-generation Xe3 GPU cores and an NPU up to 17 TOPS.
- Platform controller tile provides Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and PCIe 4.0 lanes.
- Chips support up to 48GB LPDDR5X-7467 or 64GB DDR5-6400 memory.
- Power levels are 15 W base and 35 W maximum boost.
IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first
3 hours ago
- Global energy demand growth slowed to 1.3% in 2025 due to weaker economic growth, milder weather, and more efficient technologies.
- Electricity demand surged around 3%, driven by electrification in buildings and industry, rising EV adoption, and data center power needs.
- Solar power led global energy supply growth for the first time, contributing over 25% of the increase, while renewables and nuclear met nearly 60% of demand growth.
- EV sales exceeded 20 million in 2025, accounting for one in four new car sales, curbing oil demand growth to 0.7%.
- Global CO2 emissions rose only 0.4%, with declines in China and flat growth in India, but advanced economies saw faster emissions increases due to fossil fuel use.
- Solar added a record 600 TWh of generation, battery storage was the fastest-growing power tech, and nuclear construction saw over 12 GW of new reactors start.
- Low-emissions technologies now avoid fossil fuel consumption equal to Latin America's energy demand and displacement half of global LNG exports in natural gas demand.
How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds
3 hours ago
- Gut transit time, the speed at which food moves through the digestive system, has significant implications for overall health, affecting the gut microbiome's composition and activity.
- A 2023 review revealed distinct differences in gut microbiomes between individuals with fast versus slow transit times, linking slow transit to metabolic, inflammatory, and neurological disorders.
- The analysis showed that faster transit times are associated with microbiomes dominated by fast-growing species thriving on high-carbohydrate diets, while slower times may favor protein-adapted species, both reducing microbiome diversity.
- Transit time influences metabolite production by gut bacteria, creating feedback loops that maintain environmental conditions, impacting disease risk and treatment responses.
- Incorporating gut transit time measurements into studies can improve predictions of microbiome profiles, enhance understanding of diet-microbiota interactions, and personalize treatments like probiotics and dietary advice.
C64GFX – Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery
2 days ago
- Boris Vallejo is the most common keyword at 156 occurrences.
- Star Wars, Iron Maiden, and Eddie are among other top keywords.
- The list includes various pop culture and artwork references, spanning Rambo, Monkey Island, and artists like Frank Frazetta.
AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse
6 hours ago
- India generates nearly 2 million tons of e-waste in 2024, marking a 73% increase over five years, positioning it as the world's third-largest e-waste generator.
- Approximately 70% of India's e-waste originates from abroad, with the U.S. being the top exporter of e-waste to developing countries, often disguised as 'used goods' or 'donations'.
- The rapid adoption of AI is projected to contribute an additional 1.2 million to 5 million metric tons of e-waste by 2030 due to the quick obsolescence of high-performance hardware like GPUs and servers.
- Despite the Basel Convention's aim to prevent illegal hazardous waste transfers, enforcement is weak, leading to e-waste being redirected to countries with limited regulations after China's 2018 import ban.
- In India, most e-waste is managed informally through repair, resale, or unsafe recycling practices like open burning and acid baths, with laws primarily targeting businesses rather than the general public.
- Globally, about 80% of e-waste ends up in landfills, exacerbating environmental and health burdens on developing nations due to inadequate collection and recycling systems.
DIDs Are Cool. We Didn't Need Them
5 hours ago
- The author considered using DIDs (Decentralized Identifiers) but found them too heavy for their use case, opting instead for a simpler identity primitive.
- The primitive is structured as 'subject = namespace:id', leveraging existing web identities like GitHub usernames, Twitter handles, and email addresses embedded in web content.
- This approach avoids the need for new identifier formats, resolution layers, or trust frameworks, focusing on legibility and immediate usability over perfection.
- The system is part of building an 'attribution layer' for the web to reward contributions, similar to a crude implementation of transclusion or a web-friendly ASCAP.
- Identifiers are validated through methods like OAuth, DNS, and profile proofs, but the method is messy due to platform changes and custom parsers, yet works on the current web without migration.
- Supported namespaces include BlueSky, GitHub, Twitter/X, and others, with DID compatibility as just another namespace option.
- The In a Moon extension demonstrates the pervasiveness of these embedded identifiers, encouraging users to try it out.
The Rich Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You (2019)
10 hours ago
- Warren Buffett's claim about paying lower taxes than his secretary has become the norm, with the 400 wealthiest Americans now paying a lower total tax rate than any other income group.
- The overall tax rate on the richest 400 households dropped to 23% in recent years, down from 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980, due to tax cuts and increased avoidance.
- Middle-class and poor families have seen relatively flat tax rates, with declines in federal income taxes offset by higher payroll taxes, making the tax system less progressive over 75 years.
- Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman's research shows that societies can choose progressive taxation, as historical examples like early American colonies and mid-20th century tax codes demonstrate.
- Low taxes on the wealthy have not boosted overall economic growth but have increased inequality; raising high-end taxes could fund policies like universal pre-K and infrastructure to benefit the majority.
- Proposed solutions include a global corporate tax minimum, a wealth tax, and strengthening tax enforcement to reduce avoidance, with evidence showing that serious collection efforts can succeed.
Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail
13 hours ago
- Independent bookstores saw a 31% increase in new openings in 2025, with 422 new shops, signaling a resurgence amid competition from large chains and e-commerce.
- Small businesses thrive due to the vast size and diverse preferences of the U.S. population, coupled with high entrepreneurial activity—400,000 to 500,000 new business applications are filed monthly.
- Employees often prefer small businesses for less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and a greater sense of impact, even if pay is lower than at larger companies.
- Independent businesses build strong community connections, fostering customer loyalty through local engagement and events, which helps them compete against big corporations.
- Small businesses fill niches by offering specialized products and services that large companies ignore due to their focus on scale and efficiency, such as selling obscure books.
- Owners of small businesses typically earn around $80,000 annually and value the freedom and individuality of being their own boss over maximizing profits.
- Suppliers and landlords often prefer working with small businesses due to more direct communication, reliability, and occupancy of smaller spaces that larger companies overlook.
- Despite challenges like inflation, taxes, and competition, small businesses can pivot quickly, focus on niche markets, and make faster decisions than larger counterparts.
- The success of independent businesses highlights their adaptability and community role, ensuring they continue to have a place in the economy even as big companies expand.
Show HN: Newsmaps.io a map of how news topics are covered by different countries
13 hours ago
- Dataset covers gasoline prices across 164 countries as of April 13, 2026.
- Data sourced from GlobalPetrolPrices.com, with 495 out of 551 sources functional.
- Includes 13,413 headlines, reaching 192 out of 200 countries.
- Last fetched on April 20, 2026, at 2:56:38 AM using urllib3 and playwright (both at version 0).
Bringing the Power of the Sun to Earth: Nuclear Fusion Reactors
14 hours ago
- Nuclear fusion reactors promise abundant, low-emission energy but face significant technical hurdles.
- The Simons Collaboration on Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy, founded in 2018, aims to advance stellarator fusion reactor designs.
- Fusion energy converts mass into energy, using abundant hydrogen fuel without direct carbon emissions, though sustaining reactions is challenging.
- Stellarators use twisted external magnetic coils for plasma confinement, offering potential stability advantages over tokamaks, which rely on internal currents.
- The collaboration combined expertise from plasma physics, mathematics, and computer science to optimize stellarator designs and develop open-source software (SIMSOPT).
- A key achievement was proving quasisymmetry can be achieved precisely, enabling scalable fusion device designs.
- The team established a common vocabulary and published educational resources, enhancing interdisciplinary communication and training.
- Regular meetings, seminars, and summer schools accelerated research and fostered collaboration among diverse scientists.
- The collaboration's work has spurred startups and experimental projects, advancing stellarator technology and launching scientific careers.
- Future prospects for net-energy stellarators are optimistic, with predictions of viability within 10-12 years, backed by improved designs and tools.
A Common MVP Evolution: Service to System Integration to Product (2017)
3 days ago
- Common MVP evolution for startups: Service → System Integration → Product, enabling gradual refinement of offerings starting from services.
- Starting with a service (e.g., Mechanical Turk, Concierge method) allows continuous discovery, flexibility, and iterative improvements with customer feedback.
- In the service phase, focus on checklists, process stabilization, and substituting software for labor to boost efficiency and reduce errors.
- System integration phase involves extending existing customer tools (templates, APIs) to bridge gaps and clarify workflow requirements, easing the transition to a product.
- Offering a standalone product follows, leveraging insights from earlier phases and addressing customer willingness to pay (desirability) and implementation feasibility.
- Key benefit: Service-first approach enables immediate focus on value, reducing entry barriers and risks by validating demand before building a full product.
Egypt's Forgotten Industrial Revolution
14 hours ago
- In the 1830s, Egypt achieved significant industrialization with 400,000 cotton spindles, ranking among the world's highest per capita outside the West, and employed tens of thousands in factories.
- Muhammad Ali Pasha drove this industrialization to support his military expansion, building factories for uniforms, guns, and machinery, but Egypt lacked natural energy sources like water power, coal, or wood.
- Factories relied heavily on biopower—oxen and human muscle—due to prohibitive coal import costs, with human labor being cheaper than steam engines, highlighting severe energy constraints.
- Internal challenges included conscripted and poorly treated workers, inefficient management, and frequent machinery breakdowns, compounded by external factors like market downturns and British treaties.
- Multiple collapses occurred: wartime conscriptions in 1833, market shocks in 1837-1840, and a devastating cattle plague that decimated oxen populations, leading to the near-total demise of cotton factories by 1849.
- In contrast, Egypt's sugar industry survived and grew, partly because it could use bagasse as fuel, demonstrating how energy availability influenced industrial sustainability.
- A second industrialization attempt under Khedive Ismail in the 1860s leveraged cheaper steam engines for irrigation and cotton ginning, but coal costs remained high, and Egypt lost autonomy due to debt and foreign pressure.
- Egypt's case shows industrialization via legislative fiat without a reliable energy source is fragile and unsustainable, despite achieving notable output and machinery production for decades.
Claude Token Counter, now with model comparisons
9 hours ago
- The Claude Token Counter tool was upgraded to compare token counts across different Claude models, focusing on Opus 4.7 versus 4.6.
- Opus 4.7 uses a new tokenizer that can increase token counts by 1.0–1.35×, with an example showing a 1.46× increase compared to Opus 4.6, potentially making it about 40% more expensive.
- Opus 4.7 features improved image support, handling up to 2,576 pixels on the long edge, and a test image resulted in a 3.01× token increase compared to Opus 4.6.
Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code
a day ago
- The author created a garbage collection library for Rust called safe-gc that uses no unsafe code.
- Unlike other GC libraries in Rust, safe-gc's Trace trait is safe to implement, avoiding unsafe traits.
- Objects are allocated in independently garbage-collected Heaps, and access requires indexing into the Heap.
- Two reference types are provided: Gc<T> (non-rooted, Copy) and Root<T> (rooted, not Copy).
- The heap uses a hash map from TypeId to arenas (Vec-based storage) with free lists for management.
- Garbage collection is implemented via mark-and-sweep, using per-type mark stacks and a root set for each arena.
- safe-gc prevents classic GC footguns by using Drop safely and ensuring memory safety even with incorrect usage.
- A copying collector was considered but abandoned due to borrowing complexities in a heterogeneous heap.
- The library prioritizes safety and simplicity over performance, making it a novel point in Rust's GC design space.
China's 7-tonne cargo drone completes maiden flight
8 hours ago
- China's Changying-8, the world's largest cargo drone, completed its maiden flight on March 31, 2026.
- The 7-tonne-class drone took off in 280 meters, flew for about 30 minutes, and landed accurately, with systems verified.
- Developed independently by China North Industries, it has a 3.5-tonne payload, over 3,000 km range, and short takeoff/landing capability.
- Features include an 18-cubic-meter cargo hold, quick loading/unloading, and operation in diverse environments.
- Expected applications include e-commerce logistics, supply to remote areas, emergency rescue, and disaster relief.
- The flight marks a breakthrough in intelligent unmanned transport and advances China's low-altitude economy.
The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency
8 hours ago
- Traders have placed large bets right before Trump's major announcements, suggesting potential insider trading.
- Significant examples include oil price movements before announcements about the US-Israel-Iran war in March 2026.
- Unusual stock market bets occurred before Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff pause announcement in April 2025.
- Online prediction markets like Polymarket saw suspicious accounts winning large sums on events like Maduro's ouster and Iran strikes.
- U.S. financial authorities have not acknowledged or prosecuted insider trading allegations, citing enforcement difficulties.
Canada's PM calls economic ties with US a weakness that must be corrected
10 hours ago
- Prime Minister Mark Carney identifies Canada's economic dependence on the US as a current weakness that must be addressed.
- Carney cites US tariff increases, trade policy shifts, and investment uncertainty as key challenges harming Canadian industries.
- The government plans to diversify the economy by attracting new investments, signing trade deals with other countries, and boosting clean energy.
- Carney emphasizes strengthening domestic security, reducing internal trade barriers, and increasing defense spending to build resilience.
- He rejects relying on hope for US policy normalization, advocating for proactive strategies to control Canada's future.
Show HN: A lightweight way to make agents talk without paying for API usage
10 hours ago
- The author developed a simple workflow for making coding agents interact without APIs, SDKs, or extra dependencies.
- The workflow uses CLI commands to resume previous sessions, enabling agents to iterate on tasks like drafting or reviewing.
- Two patterns are described: a non-interactive one for simplicity and a tmux-based one for better visibility and control.
- This approach allows leveraging different AI models for varied perspectives, useful for tasks like code review and iteration.
- The author notes limitations, including visibility issues and the risk of producing polished hallucinations without clear benefits.
- The method is recommended for fast experimentation with existing subscription-based agents, avoiding extra costs.

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Bilingual

OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS
2 hours ago
- DOS lacked security, allowing programs to access everything, while Unix had built-in separations from the start.
- A personal anecdote highlights Wal-Mart storing sensitive data on MS-DOS with poor security, leading to a major breach in 2006.
- Agent gateways risk reverting to DOS-era insecurities, with architectures like OpenClaw/NemoClaw using sandboxed containers and network workarounds for safety.
- Wirken.AI proposes an alternative approach with tighter security via per-channel processes, a separate vault, and hardened tool-level containers.
- The text contrasts NemoClaw and Wirken.AI implementations across steps like runtime setup, policy enforcement, and audit logging.
- Historical lessons from Unix's separation mechanisms are urged to guide secure agent design in modern systems.
GitHub's Fake Star Economy
2 hours ago
- A CMU study (ICSE 2026) identified 6 million fake GitHub stars across 18,617 repos using 301,000 accounts, with AI/LLM repos being a major non-malicious category.
- Fake stars are sold openly for $0.03 to $0.85 each on websites, Fiverr, and Telegram, with premium services offering 'non-drop' stars that evade detection.
- VCs explicitly use star counts as sourcing signals, with Redpoint noting a median of 2,850 stars at seed stage and automated scrapers tracking growth.
- Analysis of 20 repos revealed manipulation fingerprints: 36-76% of stargazers had zero followers, and fork-to-star ratios were 10x below organic baselines.
- Blockchain projects like Union Labs (flagged with 47.4% fake stars) topped VC reports, while AI repos showed mixed signals, with some heavily manipulated.
- The fork-to-star ratio is a strong heuristic for detection: organic repos average ~0.160, while manipulated ones drop below 0.05, indicating low genuine engagement.
- Fake popularity extends to npm downloads and VS Code extensions, with cases like a package reaching 1 million weekly downloads via automation.
- Legal risks include FTC rules (penalties up to $53,088 per violation) and SEC charges for fraud, applying if fake stars mislead investors during fundraising.
- GitHub's enforcement is reactive, deleting flagged repos but only 57% of fake accounts, lacking structural changes like weighted popularity metrics.
- VCs should prioritize metrics like unique monthly contributors, issue quality, and fork-to-star ratios over raw star counts to gauge real adoption.
Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time
3 hours ago
- Intel's Core Ultra series laptops CPUs have been flagship products since retiring older generational branding.
- Non-Ultra Core CPUs in Series 1 and 2 were based on the older Raptor Lake architecture.
- Intel's new non-Ultra Core Series 3 processors are new silicon, codenamed "Wildcat Lake."
- These chips use two silicon tiles: a compute tile and a separate platform controller tile.
- Compute tile includes CPU with up to two Cougar Cove P-cores and four Darkmont E-cores.
- Integrated GPU features one or two latest-generation Xe3 GPU cores and an NPU up to 17 TOPS.
- Platform controller tile provides Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and PCIe 4.0 lanes.
- Chips support up to 48GB LPDDR5X-7467 or 64GB DDR5-6400 memory.
- Power levels are 15 W base and 35 W maximum boost.
IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first
3 hours ago
- Global energy demand growth slowed to 1.3% in 2025 due to weaker economic growth, milder weather, and more efficient technologies.
- Electricity demand surged around 3%, driven by electrification in buildings and industry, rising EV adoption, and data center power needs.
- Solar power led global energy supply growth for the first time, contributing over 25% of the increase, while renewables and nuclear met nearly 60% of demand growth.
- EV sales exceeded 20 million in 2025, accounting for one in four new car sales, curbing oil demand growth to 0.7%.
- Global CO2 emissions rose only 0.4%, with declines in China and flat growth in India, but advanced economies saw faster emissions increases due to fossil fuel use.
- Solar added a record 600 TWh of generation, battery storage was the fastest-growing power tech, and nuclear construction saw over 12 GW of new reactors start.
- Low-emissions technologies now avoid fossil fuel consumption equal to Latin America's energy demand and displacement half of global LNG exports in natural gas demand.
How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds
3 hours ago
- Gut transit time, the speed at which food moves through the digestive system, has significant implications for overall health, affecting the gut microbiome's composition and activity.
- A 2023 review revealed distinct differences in gut microbiomes between individuals with fast versus slow transit times, linking slow transit to metabolic, inflammatory, and neurological disorders.
- The analysis showed that faster transit times are associated with microbiomes dominated by fast-growing species thriving on high-carbohydrate diets, while slower times may favor protein-adapted species, both reducing microbiome diversity.
- Transit time influences metabolite production by gut bacteria, creating feedback loops that maintain environmental conditions, impacting disease risk and treatment responses.
- Incorporating gut transit time measurements into studies can improve predictions of microbiome profiles, enhance understanding of diet-microbiota interactions, and personalize treatments like probiotics and dietary advice.
C64GFX – Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery
2 days ago
- Boris Vallejo is the most common keyword at 156 occurrences.
- Star Wars, Iron Maiden, and Eddie are among other top keywords.
- The list includes various pop culture and artwork references, spanning Rambo, Monkey Island, and artists like Frank Frazetta.
AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse
6 hours ago
- India generates nearly 2 million tons of e-waste in 2024, marking a 73% increase over five years, positioning it as the world's third-largest e-waste generator.
- Approximately 70% of India's e-waste originates from abroad, with the U.S. being the top exporter of e-waste to developing countries, often disguised as 'used goods' or 'donations'.
- The rapid adoption of AI is projected to contribute an additional 1.2 million to 5 million metric tons of e-waste by 2030 due to the quick obsolescence of high-performance hardware like GPUs and servers.
- Despite the Basel Convention's aim to prevent illegal hazardous waste transfers, enforcement is weak, leading to e-waste being redirected to countries with limited regulations after China's 2018 import ban.
- In India, most e-waste is managed informally through repair, resale, or unsafe recycling practices like open burning and acid baths, with laws primarily targeting businesses rather than the general public.
- Globally, about 80% of e-waste ends up in landfills, exacerbating environmental and health burdens on developing nations due to inadequate collection and recycling systems.
DIDs Are Cool. We Didn't Need Them
5 hours ago
- The author considered using DIDs (Decentralized Identifiers) but found them too heavy for their use case, opting instead for a simpler identity primitive.
- The primitive is structured as 'subject = namespace:id', leveraging existing web identities like GitHub usernames, Twitter handles, and email addresses embedded in web content.
- This approach avoids the need for new identifier formats, resolution layers, or trust frameworks, focusing on legibility and immediate usability over perfection.
- The system is part of building an 'attribution layer' for the web to reward contributions, similar to a crude implementation of transclusion or a web-friendly ASCAP.
- Identifiers are validated through methods like OAuth, DNS, and profile proofs, but the method is messy due to platform changes and custom parsers, yet works on the current web without migration.
- Supported namespaces include BlueSky, GitHub, Twitter/X, and others, with DID compatibility as just another namespace option.
- The In a Moon extension demonstrates the pervasiveness of these embedded identifiers, encouraging users to try it out.
The Rich Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You (2019)
10 hours ago
- Warren Buffett's claim about paying lower taxes than his secretary has become the norm, with the 400 wealthiest Americans now paying a lower total tax rate than any other income group.
- The overall tax rate on the richest 400 households dropped to 23% in recent years, down from 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980, due to tax cuts and increased avoidance.
- Middle-class and poor families have seen relatively flat tax rates, with declines in federal income taxes offset by higher payroll taxes, making the tax system less progressive over 75 years.
- Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman's research shows that societies can choose progressive taxation, as historical examples like early American colonies and mid-20th century tax codes demonstrate.
- Low taxes on the wealthy have not boosted overall economic growth but have increased inequality; raising high-end taxes could fund policies like universal pre-K and infrastructure to benefit the majority.
- Proposed solutions include a global corporate tax minimum, a wealth tax, and strengthening tax enforcement to reduce avoidance, with evidence showing that serious collection efforts can succeed.
Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail
13 hours ago
- Independent bookstores saw a 31% increase in new openings in 2025, with 422 new shops, signaling a resurgence amid competition from large chains and e-commerce.
- Small businesses thrive due to the vast size and diverse preferences of the U.S. population, coupled with high entrepreneurial activity—400,000 to 500,000 new business applications are filed monthly.
- Employees often prefer small businesses for less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and a greater sense of impact, even if pay is lower than at larger companies.
- Independent businesses build strong community connections, fostering customer loyalty through local engagement and events, which helps them compete against big corporations.
- Small businesses fill niches by offering specialized products and services that large companies ignore due to their focus on scale and efficiency, such as selling obscure books.
- Owners of small businesses typically earn around $80,000 annually and value the freedom and individuality of being their own boss over maximizing profits.
- Suppliers and landlords often prefer working with small businesses due to more direct communication, reliability, and occupancy of smaller spaces that larger companies overlook.
- Despite challenges like inflation, taxes, and competition, small businesses can pivot quickly, focus on niche markets, and make faster decisions than larger counterparts.
- The success of independent businesses highlights their adaptability and community role, ensuring they continue to have a place in the economy even as big companies expand.
Show HN: Newsmaps.io a map of how news topics are covered by different countries
13 hours ago
- Dataset covers gasoline prices across 164 countries as of April 13, 2026.
- Data sourced from GlobalPetrolPrices.com, with 495 out of 551 sources functional.
- Includes 13,413 headlines, reaching 192 out of 200 countries.
- Last fetched on April 20, 2026, at 2:56:38 AM using urllib3 and playwright (both at version 0).
Bringing the Power of the Sun to Earth: Nuclear Fusion Reactors
14 hours ago
- Nuclear fusion reactors promise abundant, low-emission energy but face significant technical hurdles.
- The Simons Collaboration on Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy, founded in 2018, aims to advance stellarator fusion reactor designs.
- Fusion energy converts mass into energy, using abundant hydrogen fuel without direct carbon emissions, though sustaining reactions is challenging.
- Stellarators use twisted external magnetic coils for plasma confinement, offering potential stability advantages over tokamaks, which rely on internal currents.
- The collaboration combined expertise from plasma physics, mathematics, and computer science to optimize stellarator designs and develop open-source software (SIMSOPT).
- A key achievement was proving quasisymmetry can be achieved precisely, enabling scalable fusion device designs.
- The team established a common vocabulary and published educational resources, enhancing interdisciplinary communication and training.
- Regular meetings, seminars, and summer schools accelerated research and fostered collaboration among diverse scientists.
- The collaboration's work has spurred startups and experimental projects, advancing stellarator technology and launching scientific careers.
- Future prospects for net-energy stellarators are optimistic, with predictions of viability within 10-12 years, backed by improved designs and tools.
A Common MVP Evolution: Service to System Integration to Product (2017)
3 days ago
- Common MVP evolution for startups: Service → System Integration → Product, enabling gradual refinement of offerings starting from services.
- Starting with a service (e.g., Mechanical Turk, Concierge method) allows continuous discovery, flexibility, and iterative improvements with customer feedback.
- In the service phase, focus on checklists, process stabilization, and substituting software for labor to boost efficiency and reduce errors.
- System integration phase involves extending existing customer tools (templates, APIs) to bridge gaps and clarify workflow requirements, easing the transition to a product.
- Offering a standalone product follows, leveraging insights from earlier phases and addressing customer willingness to pay (desirability) and implementation feasibility.
- Key benefit: Service-first approach enables immediate focus on value, reducing entry barriers and risks by validating demand before building a full product.
Egypt's Forgotten Industrial Revolution
14 hours ago
- In the 1830s, Egypt achieved significant industrialization with 400,000 cotton spindles, ranking among the world's highest per capita outside the West, and employed tens of thousands in factories.
- Muhammad Ali Pasha drove this industrialization to support his military expansion, building factories for uniforms, guns, and machinery, but Egypt lacked natural energy sources like water power, coal, or wood.
- Factories relied heavily on biopower—oxen and human muscle—due to prohibitive coal import costs, with human labor being cheaper than steam engines, highlighting severe energy constraints.
- Internal challenges included conscripted and poorly treated workers, inefficient management, and frequent machinery breakdowns, compounded by external factors like market downturns and British treaties.
- Multiple collapses occurred: wartime conscriptions in 1833, market shocks in 1837-1840, and a devastating cattle plague that decimated oxen populations, leading to the near-total demise of cotton factories by 1849.
- In contrast, Egypt's sugar industry survived and grew, partly because it could use bagasse as fuel, demonstrating how energy availability influenced industrial sustainability.
- A second industrialization attempt under Khedive Ismail in the 1860s leveraged cheaper steam engines for irrigation and cotton ginning, but coal costs remained high, and Egypt lost autonomy due to debt and foreign pressure.
- Egypt's case shows industrialization via legislative fiat without a reliable energy source is fragile and unsustainable, despite achieving notable output and machinery production for decades.
Claude Token Counter, now with model comparisons
9 hours ago
- The Claude Token Counter tool was upgraded to compare token counts across different Claude models, focusing on Opus 4.7 versus 4.6.
- Opus 4.7 uses a new tokenizer that can increase token counts by 1.0–1.35×, with an example showing a 1.46× increase compared to Opus 4.6, potentially making it about 40% more expensive.
- Opus 4.7 features improved image support, handling up to 2,576 pixels on the long edge, and a test image resulted in a 3.01× token increase compared to Opus 4.6.
Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code
a day ago
- The author created a garbage collection library for Rust called safe-gc that uses no unsafe code.
- Unlike other GC libraries in Rust, safe-gc's Trace trait is safe to implement, avoiding unsafe traits.
- Objects are allocated in independently garbage-collected Heaps, and access requires indexing into the Heap.
- Two reference types are provided: Gc<T> (non-rooted, Copy) and Root<T> (rooted, not Copy).
- The heap uses a hash map from TypeId to arenas (Vec-based storage) with free lists for management.
- Garbage collection is implemented via mark-and-sweep, using per-type mark stacks and a root set for each arena.
- safe-gc prevents classic GC footguns by using Drop safely and ensuring memory safety even with incorrect usage.
- A copying collector was considered but abandoned due to borrowing complexities in a heterogeneous heap.
- The library prioritizes safety and simplicity over performance, making it a novel point in Rust's GC design space.
China's 7-tonne cargo drone completes maiden flight
8 hours ago
- China's Changying-8, the world's largest cargo drone, completed its maiden flight on March 31, 2026.
- The 7-tonne-class drone took off in 280 meters, flew for about 30 minutes, and landed accurately, with systems verified.
- Developed independently by China North Industries, it has a 3.5-tonne payload, over 3,000 km range, and short takeoff/landing capability.
- Features include an 18-cubic-meter cargo hold, quick loading/unloading, and operation in diverse environments.
- Expected applications include e-commerce logistics, supply to remote areas, emergency rescue, and disaster relief.
- The flight marks a breakthrough in intelligent unmanned transport and advances China's low-altitude economy.
The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency
8 hours ago
- Traders have placed large bets right before Trump's major announcements, suggesting potential insider trading.
- Significant examples include oil price movements before announcements about the US-Israel-Iran war in March 2026.
- Unusual stock market bets occurred before Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff pause announcement in April 2025.
- Online prediction markets like Polymarket saw suspicious accounts winning large sums on events like Maduro's ouster and Iran strikes.
- U.S. financial authorities have not acknowledged or prosecuted insider trading allegations, citing enforcement difficulties.
Canada's PM calls economic ties with US a weakness that must be corrected
10 hours ago
- Prime Minister Mark Carney identifies Canada's economic dependence on the US as a current weakness that must be addressed.
- Carney cites US tariff increases, trade policy shifts, and investment uncertainty as key challenges harming Canadian industries.
- The government plans to diversify the economy by attracting new investments, signing trade deals with other countries, and boosting clean energy.
- Carney emphasizes strengthening domestic security, reducing internal trade barriers, and increasing defense spending to build resilience.
- He rejects relying on hope for US policy normalization, advocating for proactive strategies to control Canada's future.
Show HN: A lightweight way to make agents talk without paying for API usage
10 hours ago
- The author developed a simple workflow for making coding agents interact without APIs, SDKs, or extra dependencies.
- The workflow uses CLI commands to resume previous sessions, enabling agents to iterate on tasks like drafting or reviewing.
- Two patterns are described: a non-interactive one for simplicity and a tmux-based one for better visibility and control.
- This approach allows leveraging different AI models for varied perspectives, useful for tasks like code review and iteration.
- The author notes limitations, including visibility issues and the risk of producing polished hallucinations without clear benefits.
- The method is recommended for fast experimentation with existing subscription-based agents, avoiding extra costs.

Hasty Briefsbeta

OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS

GitHub's Fake Star Economy

Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time

IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds

C64GFX – Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery

AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse

DIDs Are Cool. We Didn't Need Them

The Rich Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You (2019)

Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail

Show HN: Newsmaps.io a map of how news topics are covered by different countries

Bringing the Power of the Sun to Earth: Nuclear Fusion Reactors

A Common MVP Evolution: Service to System Integration to Product (2017)

Egypt's Forgotten Industrial Revolution

Claude Token Counter, now with model comparisons

Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code

China's 7-tonne cargo drone completes maiden flight

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

Canada's PM calls economic ties with US a weakness that must be corrected

Show HN: A lightweight way to make agents talk without paying for API usage

OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS

GitHub's Fake Star Economy

Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time

IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds

C64GFX – Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery

AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse

DIDs Are Cool. We Didn't Need Them

The Rich Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You (2019)

Independent bookstores make quiet comeback as big chains dominate retail

Show HN: Newsmaps.io a map of how news topics are covered by different countries

Bringing the Power of the Sun to Earth: Nuclear Fusion Reactors

A Common MVP Evolution: Service to System Integration to Product (2017)

Egypt's Forgotten Industrial Revolution

Claude Token Counter, now with model comparisons

Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code

China's 7-tonne cargo drone completes maiden flight

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

Canada's PM calls economic ties with US a weakness that must be corrected

Show HN: A lightweight way to make agents talk without paying for API usage