Hacker News Daily — August 23, 2026
19 stories · August 23, 2026
In this issue
- 1
To become a better writer, read as much as you can
nappertime.com · 316 points · Discussion
I’m obsessed with the craft of writing. I write every day, I read about the craft often, and in my spare time I like to unwind by… watching interviews where authors talk about their writing process.…
- 2
Thinking in Python
thinkinginpython.com · 251 points · Discussion
Bruce Eckel Insights, Idioms and Patterns 01 Introduction Part I · Foundations 02 Tour 03 Containers 04 Control Flow 05 Functions 06 Modules and Packages 07 Classes 08 Static Typing 09 Class…
- 3
I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes
xda-developers.com · 159 points · Discussion
Qwen 3.8 27B was one of the most highly-anticipated open-weights releases that I've seen in a long time, and like many others, I immediately got to work testing it out and playing with it when it…
- 4
MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust
martypc.net · 154 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 5
The End of an Athlon
os2museum.com · 143 points · Discussion
When I was researching the mess related to strange and poorly documented CPUID bits in the Athlon MP and XP processors, I had to swap a lot of CPUs. This was uneventful in most cases… but only most.…
- 6
The Art and Beauty of Blade Runner (2015)
nappertime.com · 136 points · Discussion
This article was published last year, but due to its enduring popularity I’ve moved it to the front page for those of you who haven’t seen it yet.  Blade Runner is one of the most visually…
- 7
NanoGPT Speedrun Frontier
primeintellect.ai · 127 points · Discussion
We ran 153 autonomous runs across 18 frontier models on the nanoGPT optimizer speedrun. Read Blog All models Best validated result for each model 1 Fable 5 2,726 81.7% closed claude-code · high @24H…
- 8
JIT Compiling Code in 5μs
malisper.me · 123 points · Discussion
Historically, fast JIT compilation was a black art. To write a fast JIT compiler, you would need to know how to write assembly. Case in point: there is no production-ready database today that has its…
- 9
Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium
bbc.com · 90 points · Discussion
Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium Instagram: sydney_marathon The medal design appears to show Munich's Allianz Arena on the bottom-right One week out from the world-renowned…
- 10
Malware infects Android-based automotive head unit firmware
securelist.com · 87 points · Discussion
While monitoring Android threats in June 2026, we discovered a new piece of Android malware. What struck us as unusual was that it installed like an ordinary user app yet made no attempt to disguise…
- 11
Fast and Hard Code
lucumr.pocoo.org · 81 points · Discussion
written on August 22, 2026 One of the memes on Twitter is that “programming is solved now.” I’m not sure to what degree it is, but one thing is pretty clear: the act of familiarizing yourself with a…
- 12
Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days
telegraph.co.uk · 56 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 13
My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes
bookdna.com · 48 points · Discussion
The books I picked & why Why I love this book Amanda is a language whiz, and does an amazing job showing how cultism is a spectrum; that we are all victims of undue influence. She talks about the…
- 14
Show HN: Live 3D satellite tracker and the declassified Pentagon UFO archive
skylens.yantraai.app · 36 points · Discussion
Live · updated continuously Track the sky. Read the evidence. Live satellite tracker, declassified UAP archive, daily editorial coverage of space and unidentified-aerial-phenomena news — from official…
- 15
What Is a Harness?
earendil.com · 27 points · Discussion
Harness – definition by the Cambridge Dictionary Noun. a piece of equipment with straps and belts, used to control or hold in place a person, animal, or object Verb. to control something, usually in…
- 16
Risk of transmission of amyloid β pathology via transfused blood products
doi.org · 24 points · Discussion
Read via the links — full text wasn’t available.
- 17
Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras
risky.biz · 21 points · Discussion
Risky Bulletin Newsletter August 19, 2026 Written by Catalin Cimpanu News Editor This newsletter is brought to you by Socket Security. You can subscribe to an audio version of this newsletter as a…
- 18
Death to px, long live ch
shkspr.mobi · 20 points · Discussion
Pixels are a lie. Even if you think you're drawing something with " pixel perfect " accuracy, your monitor is lying to you. There is no grid of platonically perfect squares. In CSS, pixels are a…
- 19
Things I want in a modern relational query language
sporks.space · 19 points · Discussion
This was a very old draft I’ve had sitting around for years. The recent discussions of new query languages like Acadia spurred me to revisit, revise, and publish this. I think one of the biggest…