We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How (unmitigatedrisk.com) AI

The post argues that spaceflight know-how—once built through hands-on experimentation and then preserved in documents like NASA SP-287—has been eroding as organizations grow too complex and stop asking basic operational questions. It recounts the author’s father learning rocket chemistry and working on satellite attitude control, then contrasts that transferable “keep it in your head” approach with modern Artemis planning, which the author says reflects hidden constraints and insufficient familiarity among leaders. The author extends the warning to software and AI, suggesting capability can be outsourced before judgment and underlying understanding are transmitted, leaving teams “renting” complexity without owning the decisions.

Tom Scott is back on YouTube [video] (youtube.com)

The linked video is a return-to-YouTube update from Tom Scott, sharing that he’s back on the platform and will be posting new content.

I Quit. The Clankers Won (dbushell.com) AI

The author argues that despite claims that blogging is “over,” now is a crucial time to keep writing to preserve authentic human voices in an industry increasingly dominated by AI hype, plagiarism machines, and surveillance. They also criticize generative AI (including Sora) as largely low-value “slop,” and encourage readers to avoid Big Tech narratives and use blogging to support an open, indie web.

Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs (euronews.com)

The article says the prospect of renewed conflict tied to Iran has accelerated demand across Europe for lower-energy-cost technologies—especially rooftop solar, heat pumps, and electric vehicles—as households and businesses look to reduce exposure to fuel and power-price swings.

AI has suddenly become more useful to open-source developers (zdnet.com) AI

ZDNET reports that open-source maintainers are increasingly finding AI coding and security tools more reliable for real-world tasks, improving report quality and helping with legacy code maintenance. The article also highlights ongoing concerns, including potential legal disputes over AI-assisted rewrites, and the flood of low-quality “AI slop” that can overwhelm projects. Organizations like OpenSSF are working to make better AI tools available to maintainers as reliability continues to improve.

OnlyOffice kills Nextcloud partnership for forking its project without approval (neowin.net)

ONLYOFFICE has suspended its partnership with Nextcloud after Nextcloud and other European groups forked ONLYOFFICE into a new “Euro-Office” project without what ONLYOFFICE says is required permission under its AGPL v3 licensing terms. ONLYOFFICE claims the fork repackages AGPL-licensed code derived from its editors without preserving required attribution/branding, though it says existing partners and clients won’t be affected. The article frames the dispute as a breakdown in trust following the Euro-Office announcement.

Ada and Spark on ARM Cortex-M – A Tutorial with Arduino and Nucleo Examples (inspirel.com)

The article provides a tutorial on using Ada and SPARK to program ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, including example projects using Arduino and Nucleo boards. It walks through a structured set of embedded programming topics and references accompanying downloadable code and documentation/tools.

Claude Wrote a Full FreeBSD Remote Kernel RCE with Root Shell (CVE-2026-4747) (github.com)

The GitHub write-up describes CVE-2026-4747 as a stack buffer overflow in FreeBSD’s kgssapi.ko RPCSEC_GSS validation code, reachable via an NFS server handling Kerberos-authenticated RPCSEC_GSS traffic. It explains how a missing bounds check on the credential length lets attackers overwrite the stack and achieve remote code execution to a root reverse shell, then outlines the kernel fix added in FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE-p1. The document also covers practical testing setup requirements (including using a Kerberos KDC and NFS on port 2049).

Consider the Greenland Shark (2020) (lrb.co.uk)

Katherine Rundell uses the Greenland shark as a lens on deep time, describing how science estimates these slow, long-lived fish can live for several centuries. She details their distinctive features—such as long-lived parasites in their eyes and urea-rich flesh that must be fermented to be eaten—as well as their elusive reproduction and the uncertainty around their conservation status. The piece ends by framing the shark’s persistence as a rare, hopeful continuity amid human upheaval.

Intuiting Pratt Parsing (louis.co.nz)

The article explains Pratt parsing as a way to build expression trees from flat tokens using intuition about left- vs right-leaning AST structure driven by operator precedence. It shows how precedence “transitions” require walking back up the current parse spine (implemented via recursion or a while-loop) to find where a new operator attaches. It also covers how binding power choices handle associativity, using left/right binding power (LBP/RBP) so right-associative operators nest correctly.

Show HN: Baton – A desktop app for developing with AI agents (getbaton.dev) AI

Baton is a desktop app for running AI coding agents with separate, git-isolated workspaces so multiple agents can work in parallel without stepping on each other. It provides a dashboard to monitor agent status, view diffs and file changes, manage worktrees, and open pull requests from the app, while running CLI agents in real terminal sessions. The project claims code stays local, with optional AI-generated workspace titles/branch names handled via a paid provider and supporting custom or first-class integrations like Claude Code, Codex, and others.

Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity (sycamore.dev)

Sycamore is a Rust + WebAssembly web UI library focused on fine-grained reactivity, offering type-checked UI (via a DSL or builder API), SSR, async data loading with suspense, and built-in routing for both client and server rendering.

Is BGP Safe Yet? No. Test Your ISP (isbgpsafeyet.com)

The article argues that BGP (the protocol that routes internet traffic) is not yet inherently secure, because attackers can announce or hijack routes. It says a widely used fix is for ISPs and major network operators to adopt RPKI, which certifies which IP address prefixes may be originated by which networks. The site cites many recent deployments and filtering steps by major transit providers and ISPs that reject RPKI-invalid routes, including examples from 2020–2026, and presents this as a practical way to “test your ISP.”

Show HN: Postgres extension for BM25 relevance-ranked full-text search (github.com)

Timescale’s open-source pg_textsearch is a PostgreSQL extension that adds BM25-based, relevance-ranked full-text search using a simple ORDER BY ... <@> syntax. It integrates with existing PostgreSQL text search configurations (e.g., english/french/german), supports fast top‑k retrieval via Block-Max WAND, and can build indexes in parallel and on partitioned tables. The project targets PostgreSQL 17–18 and is marked as production-ready (v1.0.0), with options to tune BM25 parameters and manage index segments for performance.

Teenage Engineering's PO-32 acoustic modem and synth implementation (github.com)

The GitHub project libpo32 provides a freestanding C99 library that reimplements the Teenage Engineering PO-32’s acoustic transfer protocol, including building and decoding patch, pattern, and state packets, plus rendering transfer frames to DPSK audio for playback. It also includes a compatible local drum synthesis “voice” to preview drum data without acting as a full PO-32 firmware or UI emulator. The repository includes demo programs that exercise an end-to-end encode/render/decode workflow and generate WAV files for testing.

Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data (nautil.us)

A study in RSC Analytical Methods finds that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed “stearates” that resemble microplastics and can be misread by spectroscopy and electron microscopy. Researchers initially saw unexpectedly high microplastic readings in the lab and traced the contamination to gloves, then tested seven glove types to measure false positives. The authors stress this doesn’t rule out real microplastic pollution, but it suggests researchers need improved controls and may consider clean-room gloves to reduce measurement bias.

Back to FreeBSD – Part 2 – Jails (hypha.pub)

The article “Back to FreeBSD – Part 2 – Jails” discusses how FreeBSD jails work, outlining their purpose for lightweight OS-level virtualization and how they can be used to isolate services and manage environments within the operating system.

Analyzing Geekbench 6 under Intel's BOT (geekbench.com)

Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool (BOT) can rewrite instruction sequences in selected executables, and Geekbench 6 is one of the few supported apps. In testing on a Panther Lake laptop, BOT raised Geekbench 6.3 scores by about 5.5% (with a larger gain for certain workloads up to ~30%) but had little effect on Geekbench 6.7. The blog attributes most of the HDR workload improvement to BOT vectorizing code, and notes BOT adds a short startup delay and can reduce cross-CPU comparability by producing processor-tuned binaries rather than typical execution.

Remembering Magnetic Memories and the Apollo AGC (2earth.github.io)

The article reviews why magnetic memory technologies mattered for early computing—especially in spaceflight—using the Apollo Guidance Computer as a case study. It explains how NASA’s need for rapid, reliable guidance pushed designs that paired digital execution with specialized “artificial memory” built from magnetic components, then surveys several magnetic memory types (including transformer read-only storage and core rope memory) and the design tradeoffs they faced under strict environmental constraints.

4D Doom (github.com)

The GitHub repository for “HYPERHELL” introduces a “4-Dimensional DOOM-like” demo that uses WebGPU and a “4D Eye” camera concept to render 4D worlds through a 3D sensor. It explains the project’s goal of making 4D environments more intuitive by experimenting with 4D rendering techniques and gameplay built around this “Unblink” mechanic.

OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation (cnbc.com) AI

OpenAI has closed a record $122 billion funding round at a post-money valuation of $852 billion, up from $110 billion previously announced. The round was co-led by SoftBank and included investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw Ventures, and OpenAI also added participation via bank channels plus $3 billion from individual investors. The company is not yet profitable and continues to burn cash as it prepares for potential IPO scrutiny.

In Case of Emergency, Make Burrito Bison 3 (juicybeast.com)

Juicy Beast explains how “Burrito Bison 3” was created after financial trouble from a previous release, ultimately securing funding through Kongregate’s Battle KongRoyale/Launchpad program. The post says the team used the familiar Burrito Bison formula but added changes aimed at mobile/free-to-play players, including removing distracting HUD elements from mini-games and redesigning how players interact with obstacles like giant walls.

MiniStack (replacement for LocalStack) (ministack.org)

MiniStack is an MIT-licensed, open-source AWS emulator positioned as a free replacement for LocalStack’s now-paid core services. It aims to stay compatible with standard AWS tooling and focuses on running “real” infrastructure locally, including actual Postgres/MySQL via RDS, Redis via ElastiCache, and Docker containers via ECS. The project claims quick startup and low idle resource use while offering a broad set of AWS services over a single port.

Chess in SQL (dbpro.app)

The article demonstrates how to implement and render a playable chess board using only SQL, including generating the 8x8 grid with CTEs and conditional aggregation, and moving pieces via UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE operations. It also walks through an example opening and a short replay of Paul Morphy’s “Opera Game” entirely within SQL queries.

TruffleRuby (chrisseaton.com)

The article is an overview of TruffleRuby, a Ruby implementation that runs on the JVM using GraalVM’s Truffle framework and Graal JIT compiler. It traces the project’s origins at Oracle Labs, its open-sourcing and integration into JRuby, and its later evolution into a standalone project within GraalVM. The page also links to related blog posts, research papers, thesis work, and talks covering performance techniques such as object representation, deoptimization, and tooling support.