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Pac Maps
6 hours ago
- A retro-style Pac-Man game adapted for real-world streets using map data.
- Players can select difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, or Hard.
- You can pan, zoom, or rotate the map to choose your play area.
- After selecting a location, press 'Play Here' to start the game.
- Features include sound and music toggles, a pause option, and a 'New Area' button to change locations.
- The game incorporates scoring, level progression, and collectible bonuses like cherries.
AI Is Getting Way Too Expensive
2 hours ago
- The discussion about AI's impact on jobs is a distraction from the real economic issues.
- Anthropic and OpenAI use economic reports as marketing to propagate false beliefs about AI-driven productivity shifts.
- Actual AI industry revenues are tiny compared to the massive investments and commitments made.
- The AI bubble requires ever-increasing amounts of money to sustain, making profitability harder.
- Longer inflation of the bubble leads to higher infrastructure costs, with only two potential customers who cannot pay.
- The focus on theoretical job losses avoids the messy reality of venture capital's exposure and lack of liquidity.
16-bit Serial Homebrew CPU – 2023
5 hours ago
- A 16-bit serial homebrew CPU was built using only 8 ICs, including memory and clock, achieving Turing completeness.
- The CPU uses a single EPROM as both control state machine and 1-bit ALU, with two serial SRAMs and one serial FLASH.
- It executes around 12,000 instructions per second at up to 10 MHz, capable of streaming video on a Nokia 5110 LCD at ~10 FPS.
- The architecture minimizes chip count by shifting data processing into the control memory and using serial operations for 16-bit values.
- Key components: EPROM (control + ALU), 74HC574 (output latch), 74HC595 (instruction buffer), 74HC393 (microcode counter), two 23LCV512 SRAMs, one W25Q80 FLASH, and a 74HC14 clock generator.
- The instruction set includes 52 operations (most 16-bit) with arithmetic, branching, memory access, and I/O, though no self-programming is possible.
- Performance is limited by propagation delays; actual stable clock is 10 MHz despite calculated 4.6 MHz limit.
- Potential improvements include faster binary counter, EPROM with more address lines, and additional instruction fetching bandwidth.
- The CPU can drive a PCD8544 LCD, produce 8-bit audio, and interface with SPI devices like a DS1302 RTC, but 3D graphics are very slow.
We published a new topic page on economic inequality
5 hours ago
- Economic inequality has gained significant public attention over the last two decades, with improved data covering more countries and longer time periods.
- Inequality varies widely across countries and is not inevitable; national policies and institutions can influence its level.
- Global income inequality has decreased recently due to rapid growth in Asia, but within many countries, inequality has risen or remained stable.
- Three key international databases—World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, Luxembourg Income Study, and World Inequality Database—offer different strengths, such as global coverage, comparability, and tracking top incomes.
- Household survey data, used by most databases, often misses the richest individuals, leading to potential underestimation of inequality.
- The World Inequality Database uses tax records and national accounts to better capture top incomes but measures a broader income concept than surveys.
The great wealth transfer reality check
4 hours ago
- Baby boomers hold over $93 trillion in assets, but only about $36 trillion will pass to Gen X and millennial heirs after subtracting liabilities, excluding top 1%, and accounting for retirement spending, taxes, and fees.
- Of the $36 trillion transferred, only an estimated $8 trillion will be spent, as most heirs are already affluent and save or invest inherited wealth.
- Debt, especially mortgage debt in retirement, reduces the net wealth passed down; many older homeowners face housing cost burdens.
- Wealth concentration means most transfers go to already wealthy households, with nearly 75% of recipients having higher net worth.
- The inheritance spending lift is modest overall (0.1 percentage point to annual 2% growth) but significant in categories like housing, transportation, travel, and retail.
- Boomers are increasingly 'giving while living' through down-payment assistance and skip-generation travel, boosting spending now.
- Gen X and millennials start from a stronger wealth position than boomers at the same age, aided by early access to 401(k)s and low mortgage rates.
Google Earth's New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Satellite Images
4 hours ago
- Google introduced an AI feature in Google Earth that lets users generate fake satellite imagery, such as drone strikes or nuclear plants.
- The tool, previously valuable for open source intelligence (OSINT), now risks being used for disinformation.
- Tests by researchers showed easy creation of false scenes like skyscrapers in rural areas or bomb blasts.
- OSINT analysts warn that verifying imagery authenticity will become much harder.
- Google says it adds digital watermarks and blocks harmful prompts, but critics argue many users won't verify images.
Miso (YC S16) is hiring for U.S. expansion
3 hours ago
- Miso operates one of Korea's largest home services marketplaces, completing millions of services with over 130,000 professionals.
- Miso Motion is a new venture supplying robotics data to AI labs for physical AI development, with a U.S. base in San Francisco.
- Seeking a first full-time Bay Area hire to collaborate with the founder on building the U.S. business, including partnerships, recruitment, and operations.
- Miso offers over 70 services (cleaning, moving, remodeling, etc.) with 4+ million bookings and a $140M GMV run rate.
Saudi Arabia prepares sea and possible land offensive against Houthis
4 hours ago
- Saudi Arabia is preparing a major military offensive against Houthis by sea and land to secure oil exports through the Red Sea.
- Saudi forces withdraw from eastern Yemen, possibly for a land offensive, while Riyadh organizes a naval coalition to protect Red Sea shipping.
- 14 states including Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt support a multinational maritime defense coalition.
- Houthis announced a blockade on Saudi ships, linking its removal to Saudi lifting its Yemen blockade.
- Riyadh seeks US and European support for Red Sea coalition; EU already has Aspides mission operational.
- Houthis claim to have hit sensitive Saudi oil transport sites; Red Sea closure would severely constrain Saudi oil exports.
- Saudi strikes in Iraq kill 20; Saudi defense minister meets Trump and Vance to discuss next steps, avoiding escalation with Iran.
- Troop movements in Yemen focus on al-Bayda for a potential attack; fighting intensifies with Houthi attacks on Aramco facilities.
- Tensions could ease if Gulf states and Iran reach an agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
NY sues prediction market Kalshi alleging it's an illegal gambling operation
6 hours ago
- New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Kalshi, a major prediction market, for operating an illegal gambling platform without a state license or paying related taxes.
- The lawsuit seeks to enjoin Kalshi's operations, impose fines, order restitution, and forfeit profits, citing risks like underage betting and gambling addiction.
- Kalshi argues the lawsuit is political theater, claims it is federally licensed by the CFTC, and warns that shutting it down will drive New Yorkers to offshore platforms.
- The case highlights a broader legal battle over whether state gambling commissions or the CFTC should regulate prediction markets, with conflicting court rulings across states.
- Other states—including Rhode Island, Nevada, Michigan, and Washington—have also sued or restricted Kalshi, while the CFTC has intervened to assert exclusive federal jurisdiction.
Cookie Chaos: How to bypass __Host and __Secure cookie prefixes
6 hours ago
- Cookie prefixes (__Host-, __Secure-) enforce browser restrictions to prevent attacks like cookie tossing or session fixation.
- Browsers send cookies as raw bytes, and server parsing discrepancies can allow attackers to bypass prefix protections.
- Using Unicode whitespace characters (e.g., U+2000) before a cookie name can trick the browser into accepting it as non-restricted, while servers like Django trim the whitespace and treat it as a prefixed cookie.
- Safari blocks multibyte Unicode whitespace but allows single-byte characters like U+0085 or U+00A0.
- Legacy cookie parsing ($Version=1) in Java servers (Tomcat, Jetty) can split a single cookie string into multiple cookies, bypassing prefix checks to inject high-privilege cookies from subdomains.
- An attacker with XSS can inject a forged __Host- cookie using Unicode tricks; when multiple cookies with the same name exist, many frameworks (e.g., Django) take the last value, enabling session fixation or reflected XSS.
- Django considers attacks relying on cookies from untrusted subdomains as not a security vulnerability per their documentation.
- A Burp Suite Custom Action was created to help detect backend vulnerabilities to cookie prefix bypasses.
Show HN: I built a gallery for my pen plots, algorithmic art, and ESP32 work
6 hours ago
- Adam Fuhrer is an artist and software engineer.
- He sells his art and builds generative glitch art tools.
- He operates websites such as colors.lol, glitchart.io, and glitchyimage.com.
- His online shop is hosted on BigCartel.
Arch AUR Under Another Wave of Malicious Packages, Package Adoptions Halted
6 hours ago
- Last month, the AUR experienced over 1,500 malicious packages due to a sophisticated malware attack and an influx of spam and profanities.
- A new wave of malicious packages has emerged, prompting the Arch Linux team to temporarily disable package adoptions in the AUR.
- Users are urged to report suspicious adoption events and comments and remain vigilant.
- A mailing list thread documents dozens of affected packages, including i915-sriov-dkms, rtk-git, and others.
AI Everywhere, Regulation Nowhere? Two Years of AI Policy in the UK
5 hours ago
- UK government prioritized AI adoption over regulation, resulting in a lack of dedicated AI regulatory framework.
- The UK refused to sign the Paris AI Safety Summit declaration, aligning with the US deregulation approach.
- Government initiatives like the AI Opportunities Plan and Parlex chatbot were criticized as hyperbole and ineffective.
- Massive government contracts awarded to US AI firms (Palantir, OpenAI) faced scrutiny over overblown benefits and phantom investments.
- Inappropriate uses of AI surged, including facial recognition bias, police misconduct, and flawed age checks for child migrants.
- AI regulation efforts stalled; a private member's bill in the Lords lacked government backing and went nowhere.
- The UK is now years behind the EU in AI regulation, lacking powerful tools like the Digital Services Act or a centralized regulator.
Another Wave of Malicious AUR Packages, Package Adoptions Halted
5 hours ago
- A report on July 30, 2026, identified multiple AUR packages containing malicious ELF binaries, listed in a structured format.
- Robin Candau (Antiz) initially resolved the first batch by banning accounts and reverting commits, but later additional infected packages were reported by firstpick1992.
- After the second report, a follow-up response confirmed that all known infected packages, including the new list, should now be handled.
- The correspondence involved three participants: Saren (initial reporter), Robin Candau (AUR maintainer), and firstpick1992 (secondary reporter).
What Is Digital Sovereignty
5 hours ago
- Digital sovereignty means ensuring that nothing essential can be taken away, not owning everything or having unlimited choice.
- The control camp (owning all infrastructure) is impractical and misses the point; sovereignty is not about holding possessions.
- The choice camp (vendor-neutral selection) confuses initial freedom with the ability to exit; true sovereignty requires reversibility.
- Open standards must be both persistent (readable long-term) and reimplementable (anyone can build compatible tools).
- ODF exemplifies reimplementability, while OOXML offers persistence without full reimplementation, keeping sovereignty with the vendor.
- The most critical decision for sovereignty is the native document format, as it determines whether essential data can be taken elsewhere.
Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to see whose agents can go rogue harder
5 hours ago
- Anthropic and OpenAI race to create more rogue AI agents, with negative consequences for users.
- UK proposes refundable fee for datacenter grid connection requests to discourage time-wasting applications.
- New storage-inspired memory tech promises high-bandwidth flash combining SSD capacities with HBM speeds.
- Open source project ShieldFont poisons text to protect it from AI scrapers.
- Majority of corporate IT now runs off-premises for the first time.
- Russian threat actors pose as Signal support for phishing attacks.
- Microsoft's incomplete patches for on-prem SharePoint leave it vulnerable to zero-day attacks.
- DEF CON's Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure.
- EQT acquires majority share of Swiss cybersecurity firm Acronis at $3.5B+ valuation.
- Ten years after first corporate ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight.
- FOSS movement aims to break another Microsoft monopoly after 20 years of failure.
- GNOME's Simple-taskbar offers Windows-like appearance without extensions.
- Debian releases final version on x86-32 architecture.
- Critical bugs in Joomla extensions exploited with perfect severity scores.
- New X11 server Frame implemented directly in assembly language.
- Cinnamon 6.8 will optionally support Wayland display server.
Full flattening of nested data parallelism
4 hours ago
- Full flattening enables Futhark to compile any program with nested parallelism to GPU code.
- Irregular arrays are handled using segmented representations and operations like segmented scans.
- Performance is maintained through vectorization avoidance, uniformity exploitation, and incremental flattening.
Four Types of Thinker
4 hours ago
- The study found that people's thoughts are dominated by work, coffee, and a desire to return to bed.
- Four distinct groups of thinkers were identified: worriers, domestics, bodily thinkers, and work-hard-play-hards.
- Thoughts follow daily rhythms, with work prominent during the day and entertainment in the evening.
- About half of all thoughts are intentional, while the rest are intrusive or accidental.
- Sensory information and mental impressions account for nearly 20% of thoughts, followed by work (17%) and food (14%).
- Desires often focus on food or drink (especially coffee) and relaxation, including naps and sleep.
- The study supports Marcus Aurelius' idea that the quality of one's thoughts predicts happiness.

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Hasty Briefsbeta

Pac Maps

AI Is Getting Way Too Expensive

16-bit Serial Homebrew CPU – 2023

We published a new topic page on economic inequality

The great wealth transfer reality check

Google Earth's New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Satellite Images

Miso (YC S16) is hiring for U.S. expansion

Saudi Arabia prepares sea and possible land offensive against Houthis

NY sues prediction market Kalshi alleging it's an illegal gambling operation

Cookie Chaos: How to bypass __Host and __Secure cookie prefixes

Show HN: I built a gallery for my pen plots, algorithmic art, and ESP32 work

Arch AUR Under Another Wave of Malicious Packages, Package Adoptions Halted

AI Everywhere, Regulation Nowhere? Two Years of AI Policy in the UK

Another Wave of Malicious AUR Packages, Package Adoptions Halted

What Is Digital Sovereignty

Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to see whose agents can go rogue harder

Full flattening of nested data parallelism

Four Types of Thinker

Cookie Chaos: How to bypass Host and Secure cookie prefixes