Hacker News Daily — August 9, 2026
30 stories · August 9, 2026
In this issue
- 1
Mea Culpa – Dark Hours
blog.terrygodier.com · 482 points · Discussion
Last week I launched a project called Dark Hours, which was a website utility to give you an idea of what could be seen in the sky that night. A developer who created another web app called…
- 2
Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM
notebookcheck.net · 220 points · Discussion
ⓘ Microsoft The Windows 11 logo. Microsoft has recently been working to improve the operating system's performance. A new report shows Windows 11's built-in Weather app can consume more than 1 GB of…
- 3
There Are Magic Hexagons of Every Order
gukov.dev · 172 points · Discussion
What is so special about the number 19? The question came up last month in a conversation among YSDA alumni, when the school turned 19. Someone pointed out that 19 is a twin prime. Someone else…
- 4
Analyzing data from Silicon Valley ventures and founders prosecuted for fraud
pubsonline.informs.org · 171 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 5
Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone
techeblog.com · 169 points · Discussion
Tom Stanton has spent years chasing a number that gravity itself seemed to forbid. On a quiet field somewhere in the UK, a 40-kilogram mass dropped a short distance, spun a carbon-fiber arm past 2,300…
- 6
Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port
github.com · 155 points · Discussion
Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a - Native x64 Port This project is a fully working native Windows x64 port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, whose historical codename was Opus. It builds the original…
- 7
How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
laurentiugabriel.github.io · 147 points · Discussion
Many engineers I know use generative AI for many functions, like building PoCs, internal tools or dashboards, or even learning new stuff. I personally find the style used by LLMs to explain things…
- 8
Everything you do is being recorded
theatlantic.com · 125 points · Discussion
Anthony “Bingy” Arillotta waited years to become a made man in the Genovese crime family, and when at last the call came in August 2003, he followed directions to the letter. According to sworn…
- 9
Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)
w3.org · 119 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 10
Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
114 points · Discussion
What are you working on? What have you been curious about lately?
- 11
John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
kibotronics.net · 101 points · Discussion
From John C. Lilly’s “The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography” 1978 In the isolation tank with K 1, John received a new message as follows: What is the purpose of Man’s existence on the planet…
- 12
Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2
oskrim.github.io · 98 points · Discussion
I found my old reMarkable 2 paper tablet, bought in 2021, it had sat unused for ~4 years or so. The device was in a sorry state: Cloud sync failing. The only thing showing was a cryptic error 0.…
- 13
FCC moves to ban Lidar-equipped foreign drones from US
tomshardware.com · 96 points · Discussion
(Image credit: DJI) The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to ban drones with LiDAR obstacle-avoidance features, a move that would remove a number of popular consumer drones from US…
- 14
Show HN: A Project Oberon System version running on RISC-V instead of RISC-5
github.com · 89 points · Discussion
This is a version of the Project Oberon System migrated from Oberon 07 to the more common Oberon 90, using a recent version of the OP2 compiler with a RISC-V (RV32) backend; the repository also…
- 15
Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's
theconversation.com · 79 points · Discussion
Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly…
- 16
- 17
The Alpha 21264 CPU: NT's Greatest RISC (1998)
halfhill.com · 72 points · Discussion
[Editor's note: This article was originally scheduled for publication in the September 1998 issue of BYTE Magazine but was canceled when BYTE folded in June 1998. It appeared instead in Windows NT…
- 18
OpenChamber: An Agentic Development Environment
openchamber.dev · 67 points · Discussion
Artwork by Halyna Session Goals Set a finish line. The agent keeps working toward it, turn after turn — even with the app closed. Multi-run and Fusion Run one task across up to five models. Keep the…
- 19
Crickets as Pets
en.wikipedia.org · 57 points · Discussion
A pet cricket and his container made of a gourd. Watercolor by Qi Baishi (1864–1957). Keeping crickets as pets emerged in China in early antiquity. Initially, crickets were kept for their "songs" (…
- 20
Stylized GGX Shading
alexandrelamure.github.io · 56 points · Discussion
Back to graphics July 19, 2026 To achieve a toon look in 3D rendering, the most common way is to threshold the lighting. It transforms the soft color gradients into flat colors. // The rendering…
- 21
Every fast write moves work somewhere else
shayon.dev · 50 points · Discussion
Every storage engine has to decide what must finish before it tells a client that a write succeeded. The quickest answer is to return after copying the bytes into memory. A local durable write waits…
- 22
Plug-In Solar Panels Starting to Sprout in U.S. Backyards
nytimes.com · 48 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 23
Poland now 6th-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium
euronews.com · 47 points · Discussion
Published on 09/08/2026 - 19:23 GMT+2 According to data from the European statistical office, the value of Poland's GDP at current prices amounted to €922.9 billion in 2025. This means that Poland…
- 24
Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager
theregister.com · 41 points · Discussion
security Gen Xers who feel triggered by this should remember to unplug the network cable and call the cops Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn't calling the CEO…
- 25
If experience is the goal, then you always win
startingfromnix.com · 38 points · Discussion
You can measure internal congruence by the lag between desire and action. We all have friends who want to change something about their lives, sometimes harboring secret desires for years, yet stay…
- 26
Human vs. AI – Diff-based line-level provenance for text under agentic editing
github.com · 36 points · Discussion
Us vs. Them Line-level provenance for text under agentic editing — who wrote this line, us or them? — derived from a text's version history. Use it as library or as CLI tool. The problem With agentic…
- 27
Show HN: Today's cities on a globe of Earth's tectonic past and future
douwe.com · 24 points · Discussion
Today's countries and cities are used as colored crust markers. Country polygons are split by the present-day static polygons from the Merdith 2021 plate model, then each country-on-plate fragment is…
- 28
Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
github.com · 22 points · Discussion
Last updated: 2026-07-16 Research and practical hardening for Microsoft's Global Device Identifier (GDID), a server-assigned installation identifier that Windows can acquire even when the interactive…
- 29
A zero-dependency, ultra-lightweight database time machine for SQLite
github.com · 20 points · Discussion
An open-source, ultra-lightweight web application and CLI daemon designed to track and instantly rewind a corrupted or modified SQLite database file back to any previous state (e.g. 3 minutes ago)…
- 30
How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
newyorker.com · 16 points · Discussion
One of the virtues of John Bunyan, the author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” is how little he bothered with the high and mighty. He preferred the low and ordinary, in his discourse as in the company he…