1. WASM 3.0 Completed
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
Wasm 3.0, the new live standard, expands Wasm significantly beyond Wasm 2.0. It adds 64-bit addressing for memories and tables via i64, expanding address space (web limits remain; non-web hosts can access much larger data). It allows multiple memories in a single module with direct inter-memory data transfer. Wasm GC introduces low-level, compiler-controlled managed storage, with typed references for exact heap shapes, subtyping, and safe indirect calls via call_ref. Tail calls are fully supported; native exception handling with exception tags and catch handlers is added. SIMD persists with relaxed vector instructions for performance across platforms.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Excited about 64-bit becoming the default in the spec, since many web apps (notably online video editors) are hamstrung by 32-bit limits. At Figma, the 32-bit cap causes restrictions. The author also wonders whether mobile devices will maintain their per-tab memory cap, which is often defined by the OS rather than the 32-bit space.
Top 2 Comment Summary
WebAssembly now includes a separate, automatically managed storage area via a garbage collector. Following Wasm’s low-level ethos, compilers can describe runtime data layouts with structs, arrays, and unboxed tagged integers, while the Wasm runtime handles allocation and lifetimes. The feature provides low-level, minimal garbage collection integration.
2. Apple Photos app corrupts images
Total comment counts : 72
Summary
An Apple Photos import bug can randomly corrupt images from an OM System OM‑1 camera. The author used RAW+JPG with “delete after import,” masking pre‑import corruption. At a wedding, about 30% of images were corrupted—RAW, JPG, or both. After replacing nearly all hardware and testing sequentially, corruption persisted, suggesting a software race condition. After RailsConf, they confirmed a corrupted image wasn’t on the SD card. Re‑import sometimes fixes it, sometimes not. They conclude Photos can corrupt files randomly and are abandoning Photos for their workflow.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Rejects Apple and Google, migrated to GrapheneOS on a Pixel, and runs a self-hosted cloud with Nextcloud, Home Assistant, and a personal email server, claiming superior control and performance versus Big Tech software.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The issue appears to be a bug in Photos’ import pipeline. Importing triggers heavy processing (merging RAW+JPEG, generating previews, indexing the database, optional deletion), implying a concurrency problem. A buffer may be reused or a file handle closed before copying finishes, causing rare, nondeterministic corruption.
3. Optimizing ClickHouse for Intel’s 280 core processors
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
Intel performance engineers optimized ClickHouse for ultra-high-core servers to address bottlenecks in lock contention, cache coherence, NUMA, and memory bandwidth. Over three years they profiled 43 ClickBench queries on systems up to 240 vCPUs, using perf and VTune, and identified five optimization areas. A key fix reduced lock wait times by replacing exclusive locks with finer-grained or atomic primitives, and, after jemalloc optimizations, tackled a hotspot in native_queued_spin_lock_slowpath with a double-checked locking fast path for the query condition cache. Results: some queries up to 10x faster; geometric mean improvements 2-10% per optimization; changes merged into ClickHouse mainline.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Memory optimization on ultra‑high‑core systems differs greatly from single‑threaded cases: allocators become bottlenecks, bandwidth is shared across many cores, and allocation patterns that work on small systems can cause cascading slowdowns at scale. The author urges mindful memory usage. In bioinformatics, popular alignment algorithms depend on random RAM access (e.g., FM‑index on the BWT), so performance on these large, many‑core chips remains uncertain. Recalling past large‑system optimization, the author wonders how many memory channels these new CPUs expose and how NUMA will impact scalability.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The text calls 288 cores absurd and questions AVX-512 support, noting some Sierra Forest chips do have AVX-512 with 2x FMA. It emphasizes how wide the design is and jokingly wonders about selling it on a card as a GPU, a sarcastic remark about whether the idea is truly original or already tried.
4. Gluon: a GPU programming language based on the same compiler stack as Triton
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
The article says it reads and values every piece of feedback and directs readers to documentation for all qualifiers. It also contains repeated error messages indicating loading failures and instructing users to reload the page.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article describes Triton’s response to NVIDIA’s tilus, a lower-level interface intended for register-level control. It notes NVIDIA’s desire to prevent CUDA tooling from migrating to Triton, due to Triton’s support for AMD and other accelerators. It adds that Gluon offers access to lower-level features while keeping users within the Triton ecosystem.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author critiques the language for remaining Python code that must be traced, calling it off-putting and hacky, and would prefer a standalone compiler.
5. Tinycolor supply chain attack post-mortem
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
A malicious GitHub Actions workflow in a shared angulartics2 repo exfiltrated an npm token with broad publish rights and used it to publish 20 malicious package versions, including @ctrl/tinycolor. The author’s GitHub account and repo weren’t directly compromised; there was no phishing or local postinstall payload, and pnpm was used. An admin collaborator pushed a Shai-Hulud-named branch with a harmful workflow that ran on push and stole the token. GitHub/npm quickly unpublished the versions; the author released clean versions to flush caches. Future plans include Trusted Publishing (OIDC), stricter token controls, 2FA, and continued pnpm.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues that MFA should be integrated into automated publishing workflows, a point that’s under-discussed. While the author supports an MFA prompt to confirm CI-initiated publishes, implementing it is currently awkward, requiring an HTTPS tunnel via a third-party tool to deliver the code. They call for npm or GitHub to provide an easy, out-of-the-box method to supply or confirm a code during CI.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article warns that a GitHub Actions secret npm token with broad publish rights existed and advocates adopting Trusted Publishing. Trusted Publishing removes long-lived publish tokens by generating short-lived tokens on the CI VM that expire after 15 minutes. This approach is already in use in PyPI, npm, Cargo, and Homebrew, and is encouraged for easier, safer publishing. If the documentation is unclear, maintainers are ready to help, and broader adoption is welcomed. Reference: PyPI Trusted Publishers docs.
6. DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
OpenAI reportedly achieved a perfect 12/12 on a reasoning problem set, outperforming the best human team (11/12). In 11 cases the system’s first answer was correct, and the hardest problem was solved on the 9th submission. The run used GPT-5 alongside an experimental reasoning model that selects which solutions to submit; GPT-5 answered 11 correctly, while the experimental model solved the final difficult problem. The note suggests higher compute and parallel instances may drive such results and questions the API cost to replicate it.
Top 2 Comment Summary
ICPC’s “collegiate” round teams three people to share a single computer, requiring smart division of coding, thinking, and debugging under tight time pressure—it’s a true team sport. The piece notes the fun of teammates with different preferences (Dvorak keyboard layout and vi versus others). It ends by speculating that collaboration among three different AI vendors could push reinforcement learning to the next level.
7. YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers
Total comment counts : 52
Summary
Over the last month, many YouTubers have seen sharp drops in view counts, especially on desktop. The likely cause is ad blockers causing inaccuracies in reported views, with Google acknowledging that blockers and similar tools can affect counts. Mobile and TV views remain steady, while computer views dropped for some creators. YouTube denies a systemic issue or AI age-verification fault, citing other possible factors like seasonal viewing habits and competition. Linus Tech Tips also noted desktop declines with unchanged ad revenue, suggesting blockers may skew the impact of lower counts.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Two factors may explain view-count fluctuations: YouTube says ad blockers and similar tools can skew reported views, especially for channels with many such users. Granzymes notes a GitHub issue that YouTube didn’t change its rules; instead, two endpoints attribute views—one used multiple times during playback (longstanding in EasyList) and another at the start of playback (recently added). The new endpoint’s timing coincides with reports of view drops by tech YouTubers. Sources include YouTube support and EasyList/GitHub issue.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Jeff Geerling has been investigating YouTube’s view-count discrepancy and finds that only viewer counts are down while revenue remains steady. He emphasizes that view counts are vanity, but revenue is the true measure of value. His insights are discussed in his blog post “Digging deeper into YouTube’s view-count discrepancy.”
8. Launch HN: RunRL (YC X25) – Reinforcement learning as a service
Total comment counts : 3
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
An author excited about reinforcement learning for training a game-playing agent notes that most current RL research is focused on large language models rather than other applications.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article questions whether these startups are essentially wrappers around dspy, and assesses the credibility of that view and its implications for innovation and value. If you provide the full text, I can offer a more detailed summary (≤100 words).
9. Noise cancelling a fan
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
Indoor air quality affects comfort, cognition, and infection risk; better ventilation can improve it, such as a window fan. The CDC recommends exhausting air outside. The author seeks quieter operation from a loud 20-inch fan and experiments with noise cancellation inspired by headphones. They identify a dominant 312 Hz tone via Fourier analysis, but turbulence yields a broad spectrum that resists cancellation; a pure-tone, delayed-antiphase approach proved ineffective. Possible improvements include a box around the fan or a second fan to create destructive interference, though gains may be localized. Notes on 120mm vs 180mm fans and rpm tradeoffs.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Attempting to cancel a fan’s sound with room acoustics won’t work well. Different spots have different distances to the fan and speaker, and the fan’s fundamental is unstable, so cancellation will wander. The fan has harmonics; canceling the fundamental isn’t enough, and higher frequencies require precise phase. There are also significant atonal noise components. Even with tonal cancellation, the missing fundamental effect leaves residual sound. Practical fixes: use a quieter fan, move it farther away (or install a whole-house attic fan) to reduce noise at the source and in the space.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Across 2D/3D spaces, cancelling a wave from any point other than the source cannot wipe it out; it creates a patchwork of destructive and constructive zones depending on wavelength and geometry, so full-space cancellation in a room is impossible. You only get local patterns, with echoes complicating things. Noise-cancelling headphones work by sensing your ear position and generating anti-noise to cancel at the eardrum for audible frequencies, while other zones persist. True distance cancellation would require precise geometry and advanced processing to handle echoes and motion—hard, likely PhD-level work, not a weekend project. 1D is insufficient; 2D captures the effect.
10. Drought in Iraq reveals tombs created 2,300 years ago
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
An inquiry asks if the site was known before the Mosul Dam’s construction, and it notes that about 40 years have passed since then.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Someone promotes the Fall of Civilizations podcast episode on the Assyrians (Empire of Iron), clarifying they’re not affiliated. They state a love for history and praise the show as deeply researched and entertaining for history nerds, and share a link to the SoundCloud episode.