The Intelligence Failure in Iran
(theatlantic.com)
The Atlantic argues that U.S. intelligence on Iran before the war was largely accurate—indicating Iran was unlikely to have a near-term nuclear capability but would retaliate by targeting Gulf energy and potentially move to control the Strait of Hormuz. The article contends the larger failure was Trump’s decision to disregard or misrepresent those assessments, leading to predictable regional and economic blowback. It draws parallels to the Iraq WMD case, saying this time the intelligence itself “got it right,” but policy choices turned it into a costly quagmire.
Is Germany's gold safe in New York ?
(dw.com)
Germany keeps about one-third of its gold reserves in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and officials say they have special protections. The video explores concerns that a change in US leadership and norms could increase the risk of those safeguards being altered, particularly amid fears about a shift away from the rules-based international order under President Trump. It also links the debate to wider questions about transatlantic financial stability.
Number in man page titles e.g. sleep(3)
(lalitm.com)
The post explains what the trailing numbers in Linux man-page titles (e.g., sleep(3), read(2)) mean, pointing to the man(1) manual’s section numbering: section 2 covers system calls and section 3 covers library calls. It also notes that additional letter suffixes like “p” (POSIX) or “x” (X/Open or related documentation) may appear. The author shares that they were previously unsure why these numbers existed, but clarifies how to interpret them when reading man pages.
The end of password pain: building frictionless authentication at the Guardian
(theguardian.engineering)
The Guardian Engineering team replaced passwords with short-lived one-time passcodes sent by email across account creation, password reset and sign-in, using a unified identity portal for web and apps. The shift was intended to reduce account-creation drop-off caused by email verification links (including device/deep-link issues) and to lower password-related security risks from stolen credentials. The blog reports that passwordless sign-in adoption grew to about 82% of readers, with account verification failing rates dropping from 17% to 11% after moving from link-based verification to passcodes.
Idiomatic Koru Kernels Match Hand-Specialized C
(korulang.org)
Koru’s developers report that fused “kernel” code written in idiomatic Koru compiles to performance within about 1% of hand-specialized, fixed-size scalarized C for a 5-body n-body benchmark, outperforming plain reference C, Rust, and Zig by roughly 12–17%. They argue the key is that kernel code preserves optimization-relevant structure (fixed pairwise interactions, explicit aliasing constraints) so the compiler can generate fast machine code without programmer “smuggling” tricks via specialized C rewrites or fast-math. A follow-up Common Lisp kernel DSL can match C on x86-64 with explicit SIMD, but lags on arm64 where it falls back to scalar code, while Koru’s compiler-to-Zig/LLVM approach relies on platform-appropriate auto-vectorization.
NIMBY Rails
(store.steampowered.com)
The Steam store page for NIMBY Rails describes the 2021 early-access rail-management sandbox where players design and run real-world rail networks with simulated passenger demand and experience. It highlights features like configurable signaling, mixed train types, detailed stations, and optional co-op building, along with an outlined roadmap for adding more advanced mechanics and “NIMBYism” political consequences. The page also notes the current early-access build is fully playable, with development proceeding in quarterly major versions.
Euro-Office – Your sovereign office
(github.com)
Euro-Office is an open-source, AGPL-based web component for real-time collaborative editing of office documents (e.g., DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODF formats, and PDF). The project is positioned as an embeddable “sovereign office” editing layer that relies on partner platforms for storage, permissions, and sharing. Euro-Office was created by European contributors after they said collaboration with the upstream ONLYOFFICE project was difficult, and it is currently setting up a consensus-driven governance model while inviting public contributions.
Jobs Being Created by AI
(wsj.com)
AI
The Wall Street Journal reports that as AI systems spread, new kinds of roles are emerging—focused on human–AI collaboration and solution design—highlighting that some jobs are being reshaped rather than simply eliminated.
France pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain
(mining.com)
France has repatriated the last of its gold reserves held in the United States, completing a move to bring its bullion back home. The transaction is reported to be worth about $15 billion, representing a significant gain as part of France’s ongoing efforts to secure its gold reserves domestically.
The Evolution of x86 SIMD: From SSE to AVX-512
(bgslabs.org)
The article traces how x86 SIMD evolved from Intel’s MMX (1993) through SSE and SSE2 as a mix of engineering tradeoffs, OS compatibility constraints, and competitive pressure from AMD. It highlights key turning points—MMX’s register aliasing compromise and limited usability without mode-switching, Intel’s SSE response to AMD’s 3DNow!, and the later SSE wars shaped by gaming/DirectX and the shift to x86-64. Overall, it frames SIMD progress less as a straight technical line and more as a behind-the-scenes outcome of marketing, corporate decisions, and incremental fixes.
China fell for a lobster: What an AI assistant tells us about Beijing's ambition
(bbc.com)
AI
A BBC report says China’s “lobster” craze around the open-source AI assistant OpenClaw reflects Beijing’s drive to push AI adoption through the government-led “AI Plus” strategy. The tool’s openness and limited access to Western models have helped it spread quickly among businesses and ordinary users, but official cybersecurity warnings and bans over security risks have cooled some enthusiasm. The article also links the trend to fears about job competition and the push to enable smaller, even one-person, AI-aided startups.
Drop, formerly Massdrop, ends most collaborations and rebrands under Corsair
(drop.com)
Drop, previously known as Massdrop, is ending most of its collaborations and rebranding its site as a Corsair hub. The company says drop.com will focus on future partnership runs across Corsair’s brands, with new collaboration announcements for franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, Cyberpunk 2077, and Fallout Nuka Cola. Current collaborations are listed alongside a shorter set of past partnership collections.
Make your own ColecoVision at home, part 5
(leadedsolder.com)
The article describes revision 7 of a “Leako” ColecoVision clone aimed at being more buildable and reliable, including switching power input to USB, improving mechanical strain relief for the board and controller ports, and updating parts to address shortages.
SideX – A Tauri-based port of Visual Studio Code
(github.com)
SideX is an early-release open-source project that ports Visual Studio Code’s architecture to Tauri by replacing the Electron runtime with a Rust backend and native webview, aiming for much lower size and memory use. The work includes a largely 1:1 port of the VS Code workbench (editor, terminal, file explorer, themes, and extension loading) with many features still stubbed or incomplete, especially around the extension host and debugging. The repository provides build instructions and an explicit contribution roadmap covering areas like terminal stability, extensions, editor services, and platform testing.
Scientists found a protein that drives brain aging – and how to stop it
(sciencedaily.com)
Researchers at UCSF report that a protein called FTL1 increases in the aging mouse hippocampus and is associated with weaker neuron connections and worse memory. In experiments, raising FTL1 made young mice’s brain cells and behavior resemble those of older animals, while reducing FTL1 in older mice improved synaptic connections and memory performance. The study also links FTL1 to slowed cellular metabolism in the brain and suggests metabolism-boosting approaches could counter some effects.
Does coding with LLMs mean more microservices?
(ben.page)
AI
The author argues that LLM-assisted coding can encourage teams to split work into small, well-defined microservices because refactors inside a service are safer as long as the external contract stays the same. They also note organizational incentives—separate repos and easier access to production infrastructure—that can make microservices feel like the path of least resistance. However, they warn that this can lead to an eventual proliferation that’s harder to maintain, including operational and vendor-management issues.
Show HN: Real-time AI (audio/video in, voice out) on an M3 Pro with Gemma E2B
(github.com)
AI
The GitHub project “parlor” showcases an early, on-device system for real-time multimodal AI conversations, using a browser mic/camera input stream and replying with streamed audio. It runs locally via a FastAPI WebSocket server that performs speech and vision understanding with Gemma 4 E2B (LiteRT-LM) and text-to-speech with Kokoro. The demo targets Apple Silicon (e.g., M3 Pro) or Linux with a supported GPU and emphasizes hands-free features like voice activity detection and barge-in (interrupting mid-response).
Pokémon cards are igniting an international crime spree
(cnn.com)
CNN reports a surge in robberies targeting Pokémon trading cards, with thefts hitting collectible shops and individual creators across multiple countries. Investigators say the cards’ rising resale value, compact size, and fast liquidity make them an attractive target, while tracking stolen cards can be difficult due to the lack of serial numbers. The article also notes that some shops have faced insurance challenges and that offenders are facing felony charges, though arrests are relatively rare.
Signals, the push-pull based algorithm
(willybrauner.com)
The article explains how UI reactivity “signals” work under the hood, focusing on a push–pull approach where basic signals eagerly notify dependents while computed values pull from their dependencies via lazy re-evaluation and caching. It describes how computed functions auto-track their dependencies using a global stack during execution, mark themselves dirty when sources change, and clean up old subscriptions to keep the dependency graph accurate.
TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer (Hierarchical Spreadsheet)
(strlen.com)
TreeSheets is an open-source “hierarchical spreadsheet” application that aims to replace traditional spreadsheets and outliners for organizing complex, structured data like tasks, projects, and notes. The project offers downloads for Windows, OS X, and Linux, and highlights small memory usage and fast performance, with source code and issue tracking hosted on GitHub.
Anthropic has a blacklist on the word "OpenClaw"
(iili.io)
The image-only link (unable to retrieve article text) claims that Anthropic maintains a blacklist rule that blocks the word “OpenClaw,” suggesting specific terms may be restricted in its communications or systems.
AI dolls offer companionship to the elderly
(ft.com)
AI
The Financial Times piece discusses the use of AI-powered dolls intended to provide companionship for elderly people, framing them as a potential support for those who may feel isolated. The article is not available in full in the provided text, so details on results or adoption are not included here.
Make Humans Analog Again
(bhave.sh)
AI
The opinion piece argues that AI agents can make people more “analog” by boosting hands-on creation, movement, and communication rather than replacing human work. It describes examples of using agents for coding, diagramming, and implementing ideas, and argues that better engineering practices (refactoring, documentation, testing) help agents work faster. The author also frames software development skills like delegation and orchestration as new forms of management and emphasizes that AI’s capabilities have limits that humans must bridge.