hackernews

1. Flock cameras gifted by Horowitz Foundation, avoiding public oversight Total comment counts : 10 Summary Las Vegas police quietly contracted with Flock Security in 2023 to deploy AI-powered license-plate readers, funded largely by the Horowitz Family Foundation through a private nonprofit, allowing the department to bypass public meetings on surveillance. The cameras collect plates and vehicle data, feed it to a national database, and are used across hundreds of agencies....

1. I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard Total comment counts : 27 Summary Over a decade I built Timeframe, a home dashboard blending calendar, weather, and smart-home data, after choosing a screen-free bedroom. Initial Magic Mirror failed in daylight; jailbroken Kindles offered a readable but slow display. e-paper proved best, but Visionect hardware demanded costly SaaS and price-need gaps. After a 2021 fire, I rebuilt with Boox Mira Pro’s 25....

1. EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source) Total comment counts : 9 Summary EDuke32 is a free, open-source source port of Duke Nukem 3D for Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and more. It adds advanced features like per-pixel dynamic lighting, realtime shadows, and a Polymer renderer, requiring a capable video card. The project offers thousands of gameplay enhancements plus editing tools and scripting for modders. Created by Richard “TerminX” Gobeille and a team (Hendricks266, Griffais, Helixhorned) with work by Todd Replogle et al....

1. Keep Android Open Total comment counts : 34 Summary At FOSDEM, F-Droid users wrongly believed Google canceled Android lockdown; plans remain, fueling concerns about misinformation and gatekeeping. In response, F-Droid and IzzyOnDroid are adding banners warning of shrinking time and urging civic action. Development continues: F-Droid Basic is moving to 2.0-alpha3 with a manual upgrade path. The team reports steady app updates (Buses 1.10, Conversations 2.19.10+free, Dolphin Emulator 2512, Nextcloud suite, ProtonVPN 5....

1. Gemini 3.1 Pro Total comment counts : 99 Summary Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro, an upgraded model for complex tasks needing advanced reasoning. It’s available in preview across Gemini API, Vertex AI, the Gemini app, and NotebookLM, with broader rollouts to developers, enterprises, and consumers to vet updates and advance agentic workflows. In ARC-AGI-2 benchmarks, 3.1 Pro scores 77.1%—over twice 3 Pro. It enables practical uses: visual explanations, data synthesis, and creative coding—such as text-to-animated SVGs, live dashboards, interactive 3D simulations, and translating themes into code....

1. Cosmologically Unique IDs Total comment counts : 17 Summary ID assignment needs to scale from ships to trillions of parts, so a random ID approach can work without central authority, as long as the ID space is large enough to make collisions negligible. UUIDs use 122 random bits, yielding an expected collision after about 2^61 IDs. At cosmic scales, the universe’s computronium limit (~10^120 operations) suggests ~10^240 possible IDs (≈798 bits) to avoid collisions until heat death....

1. Claude Sonnet 4.6 Total comment counts : 54 Summary Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the most capable Sonnet model yet, upgrading coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, planning, knowledge work, and design. It features a 1-million-token context window (beta) and is the default for Free and Pro Claude AI and Claude Cowork, with pricing unchanged from 4.5. Users report major gains in coding consistency and instruction-following, plus practical improvements in computer use for complex tasks....

1. 14-year-old Miles Wu folded origami pattern that holds 10k times its own weight Total comment counts : 14 Summary error Overall Comments Summary Main point: The thread debates whether origami-inspired folded cardboard/paper structures can achieve high load-bearing strength and have practical applications, while noting potential weaknesses. Concern: The main worry is that such designs may be strong against vertical loads but fail under lateral stresses and other real-world conditions, limiting their practicality....

1. LT6502: A 6502-based homebrew laptop Total comment counts : 19 Summary An enthusiast documents a 6502-based laptop project (PC6502). Despite joking about being crazy, they prefer a portable build to a tower of PCBs on the sofa. The post outlines simple specs and shows assembled front, rear, side, and closed views, with the main board, battery, and keyboard in a case and a BASIC-capable screen. The memory map is currently stable and hardware operates, with some extra EhBASIC commands added....

1. News publishers limit Internet Archive access due to AI scraping concerns Total comment counts : 29 Summary Publishers are recalibrating their relationship with the Internet Archive as AI models increasingly scrape training data. The Guardian found Internet Archive crawlers frequently accessed its content and began restricting access to its articles via APIs and Wayback URLs, while leaving regional and topic pages visible. The move aims to reduce IP leakage but keeps some pages accessible....