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MCP: The new "USB-C for AI" that's bringing fierce rivals together
a year ago
- OpenAI and Anthropic, competitors in the AI assistant market, collaborated due to a shared technical challenge: connecting AI models to external data sources.
- Anthropic developed the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024, an open specification to standardize AI model connections to external data sources.
- MCP is likened to a 'USB-C port for AI applications,' aiming to unify connections similar to how USB-C standardized cables and ports.
- MCP has gained cross-platform support, with Microsoft integrating it into Azure OpenAI and OpenAI endorsing it in its Agents API documentation.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly supported MCP, stating excitement to add support across OpenAI products.
- Community interest in MCP is growing, evidenced by over 300 open-source servers on GitHub, spanning domains like databases, development tools, and specialized applications.
Pidgin 3.0 Experimental 2 (2.91.0) has been released
a year ago
- Pidgin 3.0 second experimental version (2.91.0) released as a pre-alpha milestone.
- Not recommended for end users; aimed at developers and tinkerers.
- Missing features: Link Local Messaging (Bonjour) delayed to Experimental 3.
- Future releases: Experimental 3 (2.92.0) by 2025-06-30, Alpha 1 by 2025-12-31.
- Highlights: Sorted conversation member lists, search functionality, new message notifications, and IRC formatting support.
- Significant changes in libpurple and Pidgin, including API updates and bug fixes.
- Contributions, donations, and merchandise support welcomed.
Show HN: Neuronpedia, an open source platform for AI interpretability
a year ago
- Neuronpedia is now open source as of March 2025.
- It offers 4TB of interpretability data for AI models.
- The platform supports probes, latents/features, custom vectors, and concepts.
- Recent releases include SAEs (Sparse Autoencoders) for models like Llama-3.1-8B and GPT2-Small.
- Supported models include DeepSeek-R1-Llama-8B, Gemma-2-2B-IT, and GPT2-Small.
- Neuronpedia was created by Johnny Lin, an ex-Apple engineer, and is supported by Decode Research and the Long Term Future Fund.
Sim Daltonism: The color blindness simulator
a year ago
- Sim Daltonism is a color blindness simulator.
- It helps visualize colors as perceived by people with various types of color blindness.
- The tool can use the camera on iOS devices or filter a region of the screen on Mac.
- Sim Daltonism is open source, allowing users to contribute to its code.
Ekapkgs, a poly-repo fork of Nixpkgs
a year ago
- Ekapkgs is a fork of Nixpkgs, aiming to address maintainability and innovation challenges.
- Nixpkgs' monolithic structure leads to slow RFC processes and discourages contributors.
- Mass rebuilds in Nixpkgs cause regressions and require extensive stabilization efforts.
- Ekapkgs splits packages into orthogonal repos (Lib, corepkgs, Languages, Ecosystems, ekapkgs, userpkgs).
- Smaller package sets enable quicker updates and eliminate the need for staging workflows.
- Corepkgs offers stability, while ekapkgs provides more packages with less polish.
- Eka-ci tool optimizes PR reviews by checking downstream builds and package changes.
- Ekapkgs supports overlays for extending package sets, aligning with business needs.
- Shift from RFCs to focused enhancement proposals with a dedicated committee.
- Informational proposals help identify problems before proposing solutions.
Debian bookworm live images now reproducible
a year ago
- Debian 12.10 ("bookworm") live images are now 100% reproducible.
- Reproducible builds ensure identical copies of artifacts given the same source code, build environment, and instructions.
- Debian distributes binaries it didn't build and lacks source code for them, making some builds non-reproducible.
- Nonfree packages in Debian prevent full reproducibility according to some contributors.
- Debian's Reproducible Builds project aims to improve build reproducibility, including live images.
Emacs Solo: A Surprise System Crafters Live Demo
a year ago
- The author was surprised by a live demo of their Emacs Solo configuration on the System Crafters Weekly Show.
- Emacs Solo is a minimalist setup that uses only Emacs' built-in packages to maximize efficiency and speed.
- The project includes features like icomplete-vertical enhancements, custom git-gutter-like functionality, and supercharged eshell customization.
- Other highlights are built-in news readers, advanced file diffing, viper mode for vim-style editing, and tree-sitter modes.
- The goal is to demonstrate Emacs' power as an IDE without relying on external packages.
- The author thanked David Wilson, the System Crafters community, and contributors like Gopar and Protesilaos for their support and inspiration.
Dave Täht has died
a year ago
- Dave Täht, a pivotal figure in network engineering, has passed away.
- He was instrumental in developing FQ-CoDel, CAKE, and LibreQoS, significantly improving internet connectivity globally.
- His work on bufferbloat enabled smoother real-time communication, benefiting millions, especially in remote areas.
- Dave's contributions allowed for reliable video calling, telemedicine, and expanded internet access in developing regions.
- He prioritized principles over profit, ensuring his code remained free and open source.
- Dave's legacy includes enabling Starlink to address latency issues, fostering entrepreneurship in the developing world.
- His efforts in Nicaragua and beyond have paved the way for future network engineers.
- Remembered as a friend, mentor, and inspiration, Dave's impact extends beyond technology into the lives he touched.
An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server
a year ago
- Headscale is an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.
- Tailscale is a modern VPN built on WireGuard, functioning as an overlay network between computers.
- Tailscale's control server manages WireGuard public keys, assigns IPs, and creates network boundaries.
- Headscale aims to provide a self-hosted alternative for personal or small organizational use.
- Headscale is not officially associated with Tailscale Inc., but a Tailscale employee contributes.
- Contributions to Headscale require Go and Buf, with Nix recommended for development setup.
- Code contributions must follow linting and formatting rules using tools like golangci-lint and prettier.
- Development involves generating Go code from Protobuf and running tests with `make test`.
- Headscale encourages sponsorships and donations for those who find it useful.
- Documentation includes features and client support details, with no support for reverse proxies.
The Llama 4 Herd
a year ago
- Meta announces Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick, the first open-weight natively multimodal models with unprecedented context length support and built using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture.
- Llama 4 Scout is a 17 billion active parameter model with 16 experts, fitting on a single H100 GPU, while Llama 4 Maverick is a 17 billion active parameter model with 128 experts, fitting on a single H100 host.
- Llama 4 Behemoth, a teacher model, outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro on STEM-focused benchmarks but is not yet released as it is still training.
- Llama 4 models are designed with native multimodality, incorporating early fusion to seamlessly integrate text and vision tokens into a unified model backbone.
- Meta developed a new training technique called MetaP to reliably set critical model hyper-parameters and pre-trained on 200 languages, including over 100 with over 1 billion tokens each.
- Llama 4 Maverick offers unparalleled performance in image and text understanding, while Llama 4 Scout dramatically increases the supported context length to 10 million tokens.
- Meta has made improvements in addressing bias in LLMs, with Llama 4 performing significantly better than Llama 3 and comparable to Grok.
- Meta is making Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick available for download on llama.com and Hugging Face, with availability across cloud and data platforms to follow shortly.
- Meta is also previewing Llama 4 Behemoth, a teacher model with 288B active parameters and nearly two trillion total parameters, offering state-of-the-art performance for non-reasoning models.
- Meta has integrated mitigations at each layer of model development to ensure safety and has open-sourced several safeguards to identify and guard against potentially harmful inputs and outputs.
The Perl Toolchain Summit 2025 Needs You
a year ago
- The Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS) 2025 is facing fundraising challenges.
- PTS is a key event for Perl, bringing together project leaders and contributors to advance the Perl toolchain.
- Participants often cover their own expenses or take time off work, highlighting the need for financial support.
- Estimated total cost for PTS 2025 is €53,100, with a fundraising target of €25,000.
- Past PTS events have led to significant Perl and CPAN improvements, such as the Oslo and Lancaster consensuses.
- Key projects for 2025 include revitalizing CPAN Testers and enhancing PAUSE security with features like 2FA.
- Sponsors play a crucial role, with financial and in-kind contributions supporting the event.
- Companies and individuals can contribute through sponsoring levels or direct donations.
Bumps in the Gumroad
a year ago
- Gumroad implemented a policy requiring $100 in sales (later clarified as $100 in payouts) for creators to send emails, impacting new creators and membership features.
- The policy change disrupted the author's membership project, removing their ability to notify members of new content via email.
- Gumroad's help site was inaccessible, and support was limited to an ineffective AI chatbot, making it difficult to find information or contact support.
- Gumroad's 'open source' license (Gumroad Community License 1.0) imposes revenue restrictions, conflicting with the Open Source Definition.
- The author expresses disappointment in Gumroad's lack of product oversight and short-term decision-making, leading to account closure.
20 years of Git
a year ago
- Linus Torvalds made the first commit to Git 20 years ago, transforming it from a personal project to the dominant version control system.
- Git was created to improve the 'patches and tarballs' workflow used by the Linux kernel community, addressing the limitations of existing version control systems.
- The first commit included low-level tools for tracking directory contents efficiently, laying the foundation for Git's content-addressable storage.
- Scott Chacon's early use of Git for content distribution at Reactrix led him to contribute significantly to Git's documentation and community resources.
- Git evolved from a backend toolset to a full-fledged version control system as more user-friendly commands were integrated into its core.
- Key Git commands like 'git log' and 'git rebase' started as simple scripts and were later rewritten in C for better performance and portability.
- The term 'octopus merge' in Git inspired GitHub's Octocat mascot, which originated from a search for Git-related imagery.
- Git continues to be used innovatively, as seen in GitButler, which leverages Git's database capabilities for project history tracking.
How Trump's second term just made digital sovereignty a European priority
a year ago
- Donald Trump's return may lead to increased economic protectionism and 'America First' tech policies.
- The CLOUD Act allows U.S. authorities to access data stored abroad, posing risks for European data sovereignty.
- Europe's reliance on U.S. tech giants like Microsoft and Google threatens its digital autonomy.
- European initiatives like GDPR, the Digital Markets Act, and Digital Services Act aim to protect data but require stronger action.
- Investing in open-source solutions and European-controlled cloud infrastructure can reduce dependency on U.S. providers.
- Open-source software offers transparency and control, with projects like openDesk providing secure alternatives to U.S. platforms.
- Europe must build its own digital ecosystem to reclaim sovereignty and avoid geopolitical risks.
There are no "Degrees of Open": why Openness is binary
a year ago
- Openness is binary, not a spectrum, especially in Open Source AI.
- Freedom is at the core of Open Source and is inherently binary—you either have it or you don't.
- Software with usage, modification, or redistribution restrictions isn't partially open—it's not Open Source at all.
- The Open Source Definition clearly distinguishes between Open Source and non-Open Source based on granted freedoms.
- AI systems must meet the same Open Source criteria, including access to training data and unrestricted usage.
- Open Source projects can vary widely in structure and governance but must uphold fundamental freedoms.
- The 'lost decade' of Open Source warns against allowing commercial repackaging without community contribution.
- Upholding Open Source principles in AI is non-negotiable—there's no 'partially open.'
DeepCoder: An Open-Source 14B Coder at O3-Mini Level
a year ago
- DeepCoder-14B-Preview is a 14B parameter code reasoning model developed by Agentica and Together AI, achieving 60.6% Pass@1 accuracy on LiveCodeBench.
- The model is trained using reinforcement learning on 24K high-quality, verifiable coding problems over 2.5 weeks on 32 H100 GPUs.
- Dataset curation involved rigorous filtering of coding problems from TACO Verified, PrimeIntellect’s SYNTHETIC-1, and LiveCodeBench to ensure quality.
- A sparse Outcome Reward Model (ORM) is used to avoid reward hacking, requiring generated code to pass all sampled unit tests.
- Training optimizations include GRPO+ (a stable version of GRPO) and iterative context lengthening to improve reasoning over long contexts.
- DeepCoder-14B-Preview demonstrates strong performance on coding benchmarks like LiveCodeBench and Codeforces, matching OpenAI’s o3-mini.
- System optimizations like verl-pipeline reduce training time by 2.5x, enabling faster RL training for long-context models.
- The project is fully open-source, including datasets, code, and training logs, to democratize RL training for LLMs.
Survey Says More Organizations Are Using Dead CentOS 7 Than RHEL
a year ago
- CentOS 7, a discontinued RHEL clone, has more installations than RHEL itself according to the 2025 State of Open Source Report.
- Ubuntu remains the most used Linux distribution, followed by Debian, with CentOS still in use despite being end-of-life.
- Red Hat's decision to discontinue CentOS as a downstream copy led to the rise of alternatives like AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.
- Enterprises continue using CentOS 7 due to high migration costs, risks of upgrading, and resistance to change.
- Extended support services, like those from TuxCare, allow companies to mitigate risks while delaying migration.
- AlmaLinux's chairperson notes that companies running CentOS plan to migrate within five years as support contracts end.
Is anyone using the Gemini protocol (not Google's Gemini)
a year ago
- Amfora is a terminal-based Gemini client with a focus on aesthetics and features.
- It is cross-platform, including full Windows support, though recommends Windows Terminal for better UTF-8 compatibility.
- Passes client torture tests by Sean Conman and Egsam.
- Currently in maintenance mode, with slow integration of bug fixes and feature PRs.
- Available for download on Unix-based systems, Windows, and through package managers like Homebrew, MacPorts, and Scoop.
- Special installation instructions provided for Termux on Android.
- Advanced users can install from source with Go 1.15+ and GNU Make.
- Features include URL browsing with TOFU, tabbed browsing, ANSI color support, and more.
- Open-source, licensed under GPL v3.0, utilizing several libraries like cview and Viper.
Open source and self hostable/private file converter
a year ago
- All processing is done on the device with no file size limits, no ads, and is completely open source.
- Supported image formats include .png, .jpeg, .jpg, .webp, .gif, .hdr, and others.
- Supported audio formats include .mp3, .wav, .flac, .ogg, .aac, and others.
- Video uploads default to server processing but can be set up locally.
- Supported video formats include .mkv, .mp4, .webm, .avi, .wmv, and others.
- Status for all features is currently 'not ready'.
Charts.css
a year ago
- Charts.css is a modern CSS framework for data visualization.
- It uses CSS utility classes to style HTML elements as charts.
- The source code is available on GitHub and is open-source under the MIT license.
- Framework benefits include semantic structure, customization, responsiveness, and accessibility.
- It supports a large variety of chart types and has no dependencies.
- The library is small (76kb file size, 7kb gzipped) and offers better performance with no JavaScript rendering.
- The project is developed by Rami Yushuvaev and designed by Lana Gordiievska.

Hasty Briefsbeta

#open source

MCP: The new "USB-C for AI" that's bringing fierce rivals together

Pidgin 3.0 Experimental 2 (2.91.0) has been released

Show HN: Neuronpedia, an open source platform for AI interpretability

Sim Daltonism: The color blindness simulator

Ekapkgs, a poly-repo fork of Nixpkgs

Debian bookworm live images now reproducible

Emacs Solo: A Surprise System Crafters Live Demo

Dave Täht has died

An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server

The Llama 4 Herd

The Perl Toolchain Summit 2025 Needs You

Bumps in the Gumroad

20 years of Git

How Trump's second term just made digital sovereignty a European priority

There are no "Degrees of Open": why Openness is binary

DeepCoder: An Open-Source 14B Coder at O3-Mini Level

Survey Says More Organizations Are Using Dead CentOS 7 Than RHEL

Is anyone using the Gemini protocol (not Google's Gemini)

Open source and self hostable/private file converter

Charts.css