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Natural sugar discovered in cloud of dust and gas near centre of Milky Way
9 hours ago
- A natural sugar, erythrulose, found in raspberries and fake tan lotions, was detected in a dust cloud near the Milky Way's center.
- The discovery shows life-important compounds can form in interstellar space, suggesting sugars may be more common than previously thought.
- Erythrulose likely forms from chemical reactions on interstellar dust grains, despite frigid temperatures around -250°C.
- This sugar can contribute to forming ribonucleotides, the building blocks of early genetic material like RNA.
- Millions of tonnes of erythrulose may have rained on Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment, aiding prebiotic conditions for life's emergence.
Human Emacs
4 hours ago
- Emacs project currently rejects LLM-based contributions as a precaution while awaiting GNU's final policy.
- Concerns that GNU's upcoming policy may not uphold high ethical standards and could allow LLM-generated code.
- Intent to develop and use an LLM-free version of Emacs regardless of GNU's decision, potentially involving a fork.
- Discussion and support for this initiative occur via mailing list and Libera Chat's #human-emacs channel.
The 4-Bitter Lesson: Balancing Stability and Performance in NVFP4 RL
3 days ago
- The core challenge is balancing throughput and stability when using low-precision quantization like NVFP4 in reinforcement learning (RL) for large language models, as sampling and training instabilities compound.
- A baseline recipe uses NVFP4 for MoE layers (97% of parameters) with per-token activation scaling to avoid issues like token-dependent quantization and future-to-past leakage.
- Gradient stability is improved via dequantized backward passes, aligning backward operands with forward quantization decisions to reduce mismatches and gradient norm spikes.
- The four-over-six (4/6) technique reduces quantization error by adaptively choosing between maximal values of ±4 or ±6 for both weights and activations, crucial for RL due to disproportionate impacts on pre-trained weights.
- Selective layer precisions keep sensitive layers (e.g., final layers and shared MoE experts) in higher precision (BF16) to optimize memory-performance trade-offs without custom per-model handling.
- Combining optimizations yields stable gradient norms and reward curves comparable to BF16, while enabling efficient online NVFP4 serving without calibration or separate pipelines.
- Future improvements may include using MXFP8 activations with NVFP4 weights to reduce overhead and co-designing optimizers for low-precision training challenges.
- The work emphasizes avoiding the one-step trap by focusing on interactions between trainers and samplers, and long-horizon, multi-agent dynamics rather than standalone tasks.
- Open-source implementations and collaborations with RadixArk and NVIDIA are key, with contributions to TransformerEngine, FlashInfer, SGLang, and others.
Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor
10 hours ago
- Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer is the most accurate on-device speech engine tested, beating all Whisper models (including Whisper Small) on both clean and noisy LibriSpeech with about 3x faster speed.
- The legacy API SFSpeechRecognizer performed worst on clean speech, with SpeechAnalyzer reducing word error rate by 3.5 to 4 times, making migration highly recommended for accuracy improvements.
- SpeechAnalyzer outperforms Whisper Small on English transcription on Apple hardware, but Whisper retains advantages in multilingual support and cross-platform compatibility.
- All engines ran faster than real-time on an M2 Pro, with SpeechAnalyzer being roughly 3x faster than Whisper Small while maintaining higher accuracy.
- The benchmark methodology ensures reproducibility with public raw transcripts and validation against OpenAI's Whisper numbers, and it helped uncover a bug in Inscribe's implementation.
Why space games still struggle with the scale of the universe
8 hours ago
- Space games struggle to depict the realistic scale of the universe due to its vastness, such as the 93 billion light-year observable universe and 100,000 light-year Milky Way.
- Game developers use techniques like level-of-detail scaling, procedural generation, and travel compression (e.g., jump gates, time acceleration) to balance realism with playability.
- In games like X4: Foundations, developers create dense populated areas and empty frontier regions to convey space's emptiness while avoiding boredom during travel.
- Elite Dangerous features a 1:1 scale Milky Way with 400 billion star systems, using Stellar Forge for procedural generation, but only a tiny fraction has been explored.
- Travel in space games involves tiered systems (e.g., Supercruise, Hyperspace) and resource management (fuel, heat) to engage players during long journeys.
- Asteroids in space are typically far apart, making accidental collisions unlikely, contrary to common media portrayals.
- The core challenge is balancing fun gameplay with realism, as simulating true cosmic scales exceeds current hardware and human comprehension.
The End of the Slack Tax
6 hours ago
- Workplace chat tools like Slack act as a tax on attention to maintain company alignment, but AI may reduce this need by keeping work inherently aligned through a shared system.
- Slack's low cost per ping increased overall coordination volume, but AI can absorb work directly into a shared picture, reducing the need for constant pings and status updates.
- An effective AI strategy should shrink the alignment tax; if AI increases chat dependency, it may indicate poor integration and unnecessary coordination rather than productive work.
- As work shifts to AI-managed shared contexts, companies can become more focused, with communication centered on direction and judgment rather than tactical chatter.
EU wants 13+ age restriction for social media
6 hours ago
- EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to impose age-based restrictions on young users accessing social media without parental supervision.
- A key recommendation from an expert panel is that minors under 13 should only have "time-limited" access to social media, under parental supervision.
- The measure aims to prevent social media from accessing children, emphasizing that the issue is about protecting children from potential online harms rather than simply restricting their access.
Mind game helps men reduce Alzheimer's risk by 25% but not women
6 hours ago
- A cognitive speed training game reduced dementia risk by 25% in a prior study, with new research showing it alters beta-amyloid levels in men but not women.
- The training involves recalling object locations and increases the ratio of beta-amyloid forms in men's blood, suggesting enhanced brain clearance of amyloid plaques linked to Alzheimer's.
- While Alzheimer's drugs like lecanemab have limited effects late in the disease, cognitive training may offer greater benefits by reducing amyloid buildup before significant brain damage occurs.
- The study included 53 older adults; only speed training affected amyloid in men, with no effect from other brain games or training types.
- Researchers aim to verify findings in diverse groups and explore how speed training benefits women differently, as it may reduce dementia risk through distinct mechanisms.
Show HN: PlanWright – A control plane for AI coding agents
6 hours ago
- Planwright addresses the shift in software development bottlenecks from coding speed to human-paced ceremonies like planning and acceptance, now that coding agents are faster.
- It inverts planning by using AI to synthesize unstructured inputs (like meeting transcripts and Slack) into structured objectives with machine-checkable criteria, where humans approve instead of write.
- It inverts acceptance by triaging completed objectives—automatically clearing mechanical criteria and routing only judgment-based items to humans, with cryptographic signatures for audit trails.
- The system integrates with Claude Desktop and Claude Cowork, using a board to manage objectives, agent execution via MCP, and human approvals, creating hash-chained records for compliance.
- Pricing tiers include Free for solo developers, Team for small teams, Business for compliance needs, and Enterprise for large organizations with advanced features.
AI Is a Bad Tool
6 hours ago
- AI can be useful as a data distiller, condensing information retrieval and refinement steps that were previously manual.
- Using AI to generate code is inefficient; it often produces unverified, opaque outputs that lack proper abstraction and increase repetition.
- AI's opacity makes 'prompt engineering' questionable, as manipulating a black-box system without understanding its source code is unstable and unreliable.
- AI exposes a lack of proper abstraction in software development, revealing that many programming tasks could be automated by better tools or frameworks.
- The fear of AI making humans irrelevant stems from its ability to handle trivial, unabstracted work, highlighting that many software jobs were already inefficient.
- Dealing with AI's impact may require focusing on passion-driven work, full understanding, and proper abstraction to avoid reliance on AI for non-problems.
Telegram's t.me domain has been suspended
6 hours ago
- Domain t.me was registered on 2010-05-20 and expires on 2035-05-20, with recent updates as of 2026-07-13.
- The domain has multiple prohibited statuses including clientDeleteProhibited, serverDeleteProhibited, serverHold, clientRenewProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, serverTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, and serverUpdateProhibited.
- Name servers are hosted by Google Domains (ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com, etc.), and the registrar is GoDaddy.com, LLC (IANA ID: 146).
- Registrant contact is Domains By Proxy, LLC, based in Arizona, US, with privacy-protected details marked as REDACTED in the raw WHOIS data.
Climate.gov was destroyed. Open data saved it
6 hours ago
- Climate.gov, a key climate data resource, was taken offline after the Trump administration cut NOAA's funding.
- Former NOAA employees Rebecca Lindsey, Anna Eshelman, and Mary Lindsey rebuilt the site as Climate.us, preserving over 15 years of climate data.
- The rebuilt site includes maps, educational materials, climate indicator reports, and the deleted Fifth National Climate Assessment.
- Public domain laws allowed the data to be saved and reused, preventing permanent loss.
- Climate.us features tools like a climate dashboard and teaching resources, but relies on donations due to lack of government funding.
- The archive serves as a form of journalism, aiding public decision-making, and highlights the need for restored government support.
In Praise of Exhaustive Destructuring
2 days ago
- The author initially disliked Rust's requirement to list all fields or use '..' when destructuring structs, finding it less convenient than TypeScript or Haskell.
- They later realized that explicit struct destructuring (listing all fields without '..') enhances software safety by forcing updates when new fields are added.
- Adding a 'wind_speed' field to WeatherReading without updating a function that uses field access ('.' syntax) can lead to bugs without compiler warnings.
- Using struct destructuring in function parameters or within methods triggers a compile-time error if new fields are omitted, ensuring all fields are considered.
- This technique is particularly useful in multi-layered applications (like CRUD services) to ensure consistency when fields are added or changed.
- Observing frequently destructured field groups can indicate a need for refactoring into separate structs to improve design.
I Put My Son in a Swamp
a day ago
- The author modeled his newborn son as a typed resource in a system called 'swamp,' which includes a sync method for pulling the last seven days of data, reports summarizing sleep and feeding, and idempotent delete functionality.
- He developed multiple interfaces to track the baby, including a mobile app, a Pebble watchapp (for which he lacks the hardware), a conversational server, Home Assistant for reminders, and a swamp extension, all connecting to the same Baby Buddy REST API.
- The tracking system serves as a shared source of truth for two exhausted parents, facilitating handoffs during shifts by providing accurate, real-time data on feeding, sleep, diapers, and medication without needing to wake each other.
- Key engineering lessons emerged: ensuring data completeness (e.g., using a 'truncated' flag to indicate missing records) and designing for human error (e.g., soft-deleting timers to avoid data loss from race conditions or mistakes).
- The author open-sourced the extension on the swamp registry, noting that the instincts driving this project also apply to his work at Shrug PW, where stakes are higher but sleep is better.
Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
a day ago
- The author bought a cheap 7-port USB 3.0 hub from AliExpress during sales, but it turned out to be mostly USB 2.0 with only one true USB 3.0 port.
- Teardown revealed poor construction: USB 2.0 ports lacked proper soldering, used cost-saving single-transaction-translator hub chips, and had a design that could backfeed power to the computer, risking damage.
- Despite high ratings and many positive reviews, the hub was deceptive in marketing, leading the author to feel duped and note that such low-quality products contribute to e-waste.
- The hub was detected by a PC as two stacked USB 2.0 hubs, confirming its lack of true USB 3.0 functionality, and its build quality was flimsy with thin metal and minimal components.
Dense Arena Interning: The Engine of Compiler Performance
a day ago
- Compiler performance is improved by reducing repeated string and structure checks using Dense Arena Interning.
- Dense Arena Interning converts strings and structures into dense integers during lexing or type construction, enabling O(1) lookups and comparisons in later compiler phases.
- Arena allocators provide stable memory, allowing pointer-based comparisons and efficient memory management without reallocation.
- Dense IDs enable flat array symbol tables, improving cache locality and turning symbol resolution into O(1) array indexing.
- Interning canonicalizes complex types, allowing shallow pointer comparisons instead of deep structural checks, further speeding up type and symbol comparisons.
Panel meter calculator with floating point
a day ago
- A panel meter calculator with floating point display was created, featuring six SO-45 panel voltmeters and one vintage edgewise meter for the display.
- The project involved making a custom acrylic panel with CNC-milled openings and spray-painted details for a three-dimensional look.
- The enclosure was crafted from thin maple lumber with a custom keypad layout, using NKK JF series tactile switches and vinyl decals for keys.
- An 8-bit AVR128DA28 MCU controls the calculator, using PWM to drive the meters and a 4x4 grid for keypad scanning, with fixed-point arithmetic to avoid accuracy issues.
- The calculator's UI handles fractions, negative numbers, and errors, with specific key functions like repeated operations and a dual-press '=' for clearing state.
States sue to block Paramount's $110B Warner Bros. deal
8 hours ago
- A coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, is suing to block the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).
- The lawsuit alleges the deal violates the Clayton Act by potentially lessening competition in wide release theatrical film distribution, top-grossing movie distribution, and basic cable licensing.
- The merger would combine major film studios and streaming platforms (Paramount+ and HBO Max) and create a large TV network portfolio, including CBS, MTV, CNN, and HBO.
- States claim the merged entity would control 27% of U.S. film distribution, 30% of blockbuster distribution, and 27% of the basic cable market, raising concerns about higher prices and reduced content diversity.
- Paramount argues the combined studios would release 30 movies annually, but critics, including filmmakers and actors, warn it would consolidate the media industry.
- The deal had been cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice and WBD shareholders, with Paramount's CEO expecting closure by September, but the lawsuit challenges this timeline.
NASA has a bold plan to save Swift Observatory from destruction
7 hours ago
- NASA's Swift Observatory is at risk of falling out of orbit due to increased solar storms.
- A rescue mission, launching a commercial robotic spacecraft named LINK by Katalyst Space, aims to boost the telescope's orbit.
- This is the first attempt to service a satellite not designed for in-space capture.
- If successful, the mission will extend the observatory's life and test new capabilities for future missions.
- The launch, using Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket, was postponed due to an issue; a new date is pending.
- Swift studies gamma-ray bursts and has operated since 2004, but lacks propulsion to counter atmospheric drag.
- Without intervention, Swift has a high chance of uncontrolled reentry by 2026.
China's graduate glut: millions enter a job market with little use for them
7 hours ago
- Graduation season in China is marked by increasing trepidation about the future as record numbers of graduates face a saturated job market.
- This year saw 12.7 million college graduates, with intense competition and a lack of vacancies, especially for jobs offering weekends off and proper social insurance.
- Youth unemployment in China stands at 15.6% (16-24 age group), driven by a mismatch between graduates' skills and market demands, exacerbated by AI automation.
- Universities are rapidly culling humanities and arts degrees while adding programs in high-tech fields, reflecting a shift toward AI- and tech-focused education.
- China's slowing economy, with a GDP growth target of 4.5-5%, weak consumption, and an aging population, further hinders job prospects for graduates.
- Informal polls on social media reveal high unemployment among graduates, with phrases like 'graduation means unemployment' expressing widespread despair and anxiety.
- Graduates face tough choices between high-pressure private sector jobs with long hours and lower-paid but stable civil service positions, with few offering work-life balance.
- Authorities have launched initiatives to boost hiring and plan to use AI to create urban jobs, but structural issues may take time to resolve, worsening short-term trends.
- Many graduates are turning to gig economy jobs like delivery driving, which provide income but risk long-term skill depreciation and reduced career progression.
- Experts note that policy responses are crucial to help young workers adapt, but millions remain uncertain about the future, accepting reality amid ongoing challenges.

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Hasty Briefsbeta

Natural sugar discovered in cloud of dust and gas near centre of Milky Way

Human Emacs

The 4-Bitter Lesson: Balancing Stability and Performance in NVFP4 RL

Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor

Why space games still struggle with the scale of the universe

The End of the Slack Tax

EU wants 13+ age restriction for social media

Mind game helps men reduce Alzheimer's risk by 25% but not women

Show HN: PlanWright – A control plane for AI coding agents

AI Is a Bad Tool

Telegram's t.me domain has been suspended

Climate.gov was destroyed. Open data saved it

In Praise of Exhaustive Destructuring

I Put My Son in a Swamp

Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't

Dense Arena Interning: The Engine of Compiler Performance

Panel meter calculator with floating point

States sue to block Paramount's $110B Warner Bros. deal

NASA has a bold plan to save Swift Observatory from destruction

China's graduate glut: millions enter a job market with little use for them