I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure
The article discusses the challenges encountered by a technology entrepreneur in starting a business in the European Union, including navigating complex regulations, finding talent, and securing funding. The author shares insights on the differences between launching a startup in the EU versus other regions.
The path to ubiquitous AI (17k tokens/sec)
The article explores the advancements and challenges in making artificial intelligence (AI) ubiquitous, discussing the importance of improved training data, hardware capabilities, and ethical considerations to enable widespread adoption and integration of AI systems into various aspects of society.
I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs
The article describes a one-liner command that can be used to clean up merged Git branches, which was allegedly leaked from the CIA's developer documentation. This command allows users to efficiently remove local and remote branches that have already been merged into the main branch.
Web Components: The Framework-Free Renaissance
The article discusses the rise of web components as a framework-free approach to building web applications, highlighting their advantages in terms of modularity, browser-native integration, and the potential for a new era of web development without the need for large, opinionated frameworks.
Reading the undocumented MEMS accelerometer on Apple Silicon MacBooks via iokit
The article discusses the reverse engineering of the accelerometer on Apple's M1 chip, including the discovery of its unique hardware and software implementation, and the implications for developers and researchers working with Apple's new silicon.
PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months
PayPal has disclosed a data breach that exposed personal information of some of its customers, including names, addresses, and dates of birth. The company is working to notify affected users and has not found any evidence of unauthorized access to financial information.
Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI
Hey HN! I built a native macOS desktop client for Hacker News and I'm open-sourcing it under the MIT license.
GitHub: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News
Download (signed & notarized DMG, macOS 14.0+): https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News/releases
Screenshots: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News#screenshots
I spend a lot of time reading HN — I wanted something that felt like a proper Mac app: a sidebar for browsing stories, an integrated reader for articles, and comment threading — all in one window. Essentially, I wanted HN to feel like a first-class citizen on macOS, not a website I visit.
What it does:
- Split-view layout — stories in a sidebar on the left, articles and comments on the right, using the standard macOS NavigationSplitView pattern.
- Built-in ad blocking — a precompiled WKContentRuleList blocks 14 major ad networks (DoubleClick, Google Syndication, Criteo, Taboola, Outbrain, Amazon ads, etc.) right in the WebKit layer. No extensions needed. Toggleable in settings.
- Pop-up blocking — kills window.open() calls. Also toggleable.
- HN account login — full authentication flow (login, account creation, password reset). Session is stored in the macOS Keychain, and cookies are injected into the WebView so you can upvote, comment, and submit stories while staying logged in.
- Bookmarks — save stories locally for offline access. Persisted with Codable serialization, searchable and filterable independently.
- Search and filtering — powered by the Algolia HN API. Filter by content type (All, Ask, Show, Jobs, Comments), date range (Today, Past Week, Past Month, All Time), and sort by hot or recent.
- Scroll progress indicator — a small orange bar at the top tracks your reading progress via JavaScript-to-native messaging.
- Auto-updates via Sparkle with EdDSA-signed updates served from GitHub Pages.
- Dark mode — respects system appearance with CSS and meta tag injection.
Tech details for the curious:
The whole app is ~2,050 lines of Swift across 16 files. It uses the modern @Observable macro (not the old ObservableObject/Published pattern), structured concurrency with async/await and withThrowingTaskGroup for concurrent batch fetching, and SwiftUI throughout — no UIKit/AppKit bridges except for the WKWebView wrapper via NSViewRepresentable.
Two APIs power the data: the official HN Firebase API for individual item/user fetches, and the Algolia Search API for feeds, filtering, and search. The Algolia API is surprisingly powerful for this — it lets you do date-range filtering, pagination, and full-text search that the Firebase API doesn't support.
CI/CD:
The release pipeline is a single GitHub Actions workflow (467 lines) that handles the full macOS distribution story: build and archive, code sign with Developer ID, notarize with Apple (with a 5-retry staple loop for ticket propagation delays), create a custom DMG with AppleScript-driven icon positioning, sign and notarize the DMG, generate an EdDSA Sparkle signature, create a GitHub Release, and deploy an updated appcast.xml to GitHub Pages.
Getting macOS code signing and notarization working in CI was honestly the hardest part of this project. If anyone is distributing a macOS app outside the App Store via GitHub Actions, I'm happy to answer questions — the workflow is fully open source.
The entire project is MIT licensed. PRs and issues welcome: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News
I'd love feedback — especially on features you'd want to see. Some ideas I'm considering: keyboard-driven navigation (j/k to move between stories), a reader mode that strips articles down to text, and notification support for replies to your comments.
Minions – Stripe's Coding Agents Part 2
The article discusses the development of an end-to-end coding agent, Minions Stripes, which is designed to automate the process of creating and managing Stripe-powered applications. It highlights the agent's capabilities, such as handling payments, managing customer data, and integrating with other services.
Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking
The article explores the rise of an AI startup, founded by Sam Kriss, that aims to create an artificial child capable of growing and learning. It examines the ethical and societal implications of this technology, as well as the personal motivations and challenges faced by the startup's founder.
How to Stop Being Boring
The article provides practical tips on how to avoid being boring, including embracing your unique personality, trying new things, and engaging in active listening. It encourages readers to step outside their comfort zones and find creative ways to make interactions more interesting.
No Skill. No Taste
This article discusses the importance of skill and taste in creative pursuits, arguing that both are essential for producing high-quality work. It explores the challenges faced by those who lack either skill or taste, emphasizing the need to develop both to achieve success in creative fields.
SwiftUI Agent Skill: Build Better Views with AI
The article explores the use of an AI-based SwiftUI agent to build better views. It discusses how the agent can help developers create more efficient and intuitive user interfaces by analyzing design patterns, identifying code smells, and suggesting improvements.
Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs
The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump had the authority to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, upholding the president's ability to use national security as justification for trade restrictions.
The Gay Tech Mafia
The article explores the influential network of LGBTQ+ tech leaders and investors in Silicon Valley, known as the 'Gay Tech Mafia', and how they have leveraged their power and connections to shape the industry and champion diversity and inclusion.
A Primer on Terrorism, Insurgency and Protest
This article provides a primer on the complex topics of terrorism, insurgency, and protest, exploring the strategies, tactics, and motivations of groups that challenge state authority through non-conventional means. It aims to offer a nuanced understanding of these phenomena and the factors that contribute to their emergence and evolution.
Show HN: Fostrom, an IoT Cloud Platform built for developers
Hey HN! Arjun and Sid here.
Fostrom is an IoT Cloud Platform designed for developers to make it really easy to get started and scale fleets. We have Device SDKs (in Python, JS, Elixir, more coming soon), Typed Schemas, Per-Device Mailboxes, Programmable Actions, 4 Global Regions for lower-latency connections, and much more.
We've built Fostrom to solve a real need we faced in our previous startup, building a fully automated indoor vertical farm. We spent more time figuring out IoT infrastructure than writing automation logic. Fostrom is the platform we wished existed back then.
Over the last few years we've experimented with a lot of interesting tech and architectures, and settled on an architecture that we believe is quite elegant. We wrote a Go<->Elixir bridge to execute JS code in WASM for Actions, implemented a DuckDB library for Elixir, and wrote a Device Agent in Rust that our SDKs run in the background (https://github.com/fostrom/devicekit).
The most interesting realization we had was about the data architecture. For years, we tried using distributed databases and built complex layers on top of them, but all approaches had significant limitations specifically around consistency and querying. We want to provide operational correctness, rich insights, and reliability. Finally, we came to the conclusion that to achieve this we really need a SQL database for fleet data. So we built a DuckDB-based replicated multi-tenant data layer. We're still improving it (hence the Technical Preview badge) but we're quite proud of this decision. It simplifies the rest of the codebase, while keeping operational complexity in just a few places.
Our vision is to make a powerful IoT platform that enables you to build correct, secure, and reliable connected systems without dealing with any of the plumbing or infrastructure.
Next up, we're gonna launch our CLI, add automatic device monitoring to our Device SDKs, and improve the debugging experience. We have some pretty cool ideas to make Fostrom and the experience of developing connected systems better. We're also going to write more about our architecture and journey soon.
We also published our launch blog post which goes into more detail about our vision, what we've built, and our future plans: https://fostrom.io/blog/introducing-fostrom
Would love for you to try out Fostrom and give us your feedback and thoughts.
Microsoft Uses Plagiarized AI Slop Flowchart to Explain How Git Works
The article discusses Microsoft's use of a plagiarized AI-generated flowchart to explain how Git, a popular version control system, works. The article highlights the issues with relying on AI-generated content without proper attribution or fact-checking.
Google Maps now restricts its content if you're not logged in
Google Maps is limiting the view for signed-out users, requiring them to sign in to access certain features such as Street View, directions, and local business information. This change aims to enhance user privacy and data protection for non-authenticated users.
Newly discovered virus linked to colorectal cancer
Researchers have discovered a new virus that may be linked to the development of colorectal cancer. The findings suggest this virus could play a role in the progression of the disease and may provide new insights into its prevention and treatment.
Accenture 'links staff promotions to use of AI tools'
Accenture, a global professional services company, is linking employee promotions to the use of AI tools, aiming to increase efficiency and productivity. The article explores how this policy shift could impact the company's workforce and the broader implications of AI-driven performance evaluation in the workplace.