hackernews

1. The Illustrated Transformer Total comment counts : 8 Summary This article explains the Transformer, a neural translation model that uses attention to speed training and enable parallelization. Building on the ‘Attention is All You Need’ paper, it comprises stacked encoders and decoders (typically six layers each). Each encoder uses a self-attention layer then a feed-forward network, and the decoder adds an attention layer to focus on the input while producing output....

1. Logging Sucks Total comment counts : 55 Summary Logs are broken for distributed systems; traditional logs lack context and are hard to correlate across services. Adding OpenTelemetry doesn’t fix them. Emphasize structured logging with high cardinality and high dimensionality, producing wide (canonical) log lines: one per request per service, containing all relevant context. Treat logs as structured business events rather than a debugging diary. Use a wide event per service hop, enabling SQL-like querying of production data rather than grep searches....

1. Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title Total comment counts : 13 Summary Irish Excel prodigy Diarmuid Early, nicknamed “Dim” and dubbed the LeBron James of Excel, won the 2025 Microsoft Excel World Championships in Las Vegas, securing the $60,000 prize pot and the $5,000 event prize. The event drew 256 competitors, with knockout rounds leading to a final 24 and a raucous arena atmosphere. Early, a three-time finance-tournament champion, claimed his first overall title, beating rival Andrew Ngai....

1. Mistral OCR 3 Total comment counts : 6 Summary Mistral OCR 3 is a high-accuracy, cost-efficient OCR model for broad document processing. It reports a 74% win rate against Mistral OCR 2 on forms, scanned documents, complex tables, and handwriting, outperforming enterprise and AI-native OCR. It powers the Document AI Playground in Mistral AI Studio, enabling drag-and-drop parsing of PDFs/images into text or structured JSON. Upgrades include improved handwriting, dense forms, low-quality scans, and table reconstruction with HTML tables....

1. Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access Total comment counts : 25 Summary error Overall Comments Summary Main point: The discussion centers on open-access publishing and ACM’s transition to OA, comparing APC-based, library-funded models like Subscribe to Open (S2O), and their implications for authors, institutions, and readers. Concern: The shift could burden authors or libraries with high costs, create inequities, and raise licensing and quality issues (e....

1. Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed Total comment counts : 68 Summary Google announces Gemini 3 Flash, a fast, cost-efficient member of the Gemini 3 family designed for frontier intelligence at Flash-level latency. It pairs Pro-grade reasoning with speed for coding, complex analysis, and quick app interactivity. Available in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, and via the Gemini API across Google platforms. It outperforms Gemini 2....

1. alpr.watch Total comment counts : 30 Summary Local governments are increasingly deploying surveillance tech such as Flock Safety ALPR cameras that read license plates, collect biometric data, and build vast databases, with over 80,000 cameras already in use. alpr.watch scans meeting agendas for keywords (e.g., “flock,” “alpr”) and maps where such discussions occur, enabling civic action and notifications. ALPR operates 24/7 and shares data across agencies, creating a widespread surveillance network....

1. 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web Total comment counts : 6 Summary Two early pioneers, Last.fm and Audioscrobbler, independently built music discovery around collaborative filtering before the Web 2.0 era. Last.fm, founded in 2002 by four Austrian/German students in London, let users build listening profiles and share them via a “Map of Music,” using collaborative filtering to recommend songs akin to Amazon’s item-to-item approach. Audioscrobbler, started the same year by Richard Jones at the University of Southampton, coined “audioscrobbler” (scrobbling) to track listening and generate recommendations....

1. VPN location claims don’t match real traffic exits Total comment counts : 9 Summary IPinfo’s analysis of 20 popular VPNs found 17 exit traffic from countries different than claimed, with many listing 100+ countries but using few actual data centers in the US/Europe. They examined 150k exit IPs across 137 countries, revealing mismatches between claimed and measured exits. Mullvad, IVPN, and Windscribe had zero mismatches; others show significant discrepancies, often via virtual locations....

1. GNU Unifont Total comment counts : 10 Summary GNU Unifont is a GNU Project font providing glyphs for all printable BMP code points (U+0000–U+FFFF), with growing coverage of SMP and CSUR. It is dual-licensed under GNU GPLv2+ with the GNU Font Embedding Exception and the SIL Open Font License v1.1, permitting use in commercial software; derivatives must remain under the same terms, preserving contributor acknowledgments. As of version 13.0.04, there are standard and CSUR variants....