Best stories

The article discusses the growing concerns around the centralization of the internet and the potential risks it poses, particularly in terms of privacy, censorship, and control. It highlights the need for decentralized alternatives like the Fediverse, which aims to provide a more democratic and user-centric approach to online communication and content sharing.

GrapheneOS is a privacy and security-focused Android operating system that aims to provide a more secure and private alternative to mainstream Android versions. It emphasizes strong security measures, app sandboxing, and user privacy, making it a compelling choice for those concerned about digital privacy and security.

A 14-year-old inventor is using origami principles to design emergency shelters that are sturdy, cost-efficient, and easy to deploy, addressing the critical need for affordable and practical housing solutions in disaster-stricken areas.

https://www.anthropic.com/claude-sonnet-4-6-system-card [pdf]

https://x.com/claudeai/status/2023817132581208353 [video]

The article discusses the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, particularly in areas like disease diagnosis, drug discovery, and patient monitoring. It explores the potential benefits and challenges of AI in the medical field, highlighting the need for responsible development and deployment of these technologies.

The article discusses the emerging Bluetooth privacy threat known as 'BlueBorne,' which allows attackers to gain unauthorized access to devices through Bluetooth vulnerabilities. It highlights the importance of staying informed about Bluetooth security issues and keeping devices updated to protect against such attacks.

The Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database, citing concerns over privacy and data protection. The move has sparked controversy and debate over the balance between transparency in the justice system and individual privacy rights.

Related: Show HN: JeffTube - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030797

The article discusses Stephen Colbert's complaint to the FCC about a Texas state representative's actions during a segment on Colbert's show. Colbert claims the representative's behavior violated FCC regulations, and the article examines the potential implications of Colbert's complaint.

Qwen AI's latest blog post explores the potential of generative AI in revolutionizing creative and technical fields, discussing the technology's capabilities in tasks like art generation, language modeling, and problem-solving.

The article discusses the rise of the Triforce, a popular game emulator for the Nintendo GameCube and Wii consoles. It highlights the emulator's key features, its development history, and its growing popularity among the gaming community.

13 years ago, we launched Watsi.org with a Show HN [1].

For nearly a year, this community drove so much traffic that we couldn’t list patients fast enough. Then pg saw us on HN, wrote us our first big check, and accepted us as the first YC nonprofit (W13). The next few years were a whirlwind.

I was a young, naive founder with just enough experience to know I wanted Watsi to be more efficient, transparent, and innovative than most nonprofits. We spent 24/7 talking to users and coding. We did things that don’t scale. We tried our best to be walking, talking pg essays.

Over the years we learned that product/market fit is different for nonprofits. Not many people wake up and think, "I'd love to donate to a nonprofit today" with the same oomph that they think, "I'd love a coffee" or "I'd like to make more money."

No matter how much effort we put into fundraising, donations grew linearly, while requests for care grew exponentially. I felt caught in the middle. After investing everything I had, I eventually burned out and transitioned to the board.

I made a classic founder mistake and intertwined my self-worth with Watsi's success. I believed that if I could somehow help every patient, I was a good person, but if I let down some patients, which became inevitable, I was a bad person.

This was exacerbated by seeing our for-profit YC batch mates raise massive rounds. I felt like a failure for not scaling Watsi faster, but eventually we accepted reality and set Watsi on more of a slow, steady, and sustainable trajectory.

Now that I have perspective, I'm incredibly proud of what the org has accomplished and grateful to everyone who has done a tour of duty to support us. Watsi donors have donated over $20M to fund 33,241 surgeries, and we have a good shot of helping patients for a long time to come.

In a world of fast growth and fast crashes, here's a huge thank you to the HN users who have stuck by Watsi, or any other important cause, even when it's not on the front page. I believe it embodies the best of humanity. Thanks HN!

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4424081

The article discusses the potential negative impacts of AI on open-source software development, including the risk of AI systems displacing human developers, the challenges of maintaining open-source projects, and concerns about the long-term sustainability of the open-source ecosystem.

The article discusses the demise of Show HN, a popular feature on Hacker News that allowed users to showcase their projects. It explores the reasons behind its decline, including changes in the platform's priorities and the challenges faced by smaller creators in gaining visibility.

Anthropic's AI model Claude has gained the ability to edit its own outputs, allowing users to refine and improve the AI's responses. This update aims to enhance the model's transparency and user control, enabling more collaborative and iterative interactions.

The article reports on a series of crashes involving Tesla's Autopilot system, with the company's robotaxi service in Austin experiencing a spike in incidents four times higher than human-driven vehicles in the same area over the past month.

The article discusses the current shortage of hard disk drives (HDDs) and its impact on the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. It highlights how leading HDD manufacturer Western Digital has experienced significant supply challenges, leading to shortages and increased demand for AI-focused storage solutions.

UK Discord users were unwittingly part of a data collection experiment linked to Peter Thiel, a controversial tech billionaire, raising concerns about privacy and the use of personal data without user consent.

The article discusses the perceived problems with the use of the term 'privilege' in discussions about inequality and social justice. It argues that the term can be grammatically and conceptually problematic, and suggests alternative ways to frame these important conversations.

This article argues that using protocols, such as HTTP, SMTP, and DNS, is preferable to using proprietary web services, as protocols are open, decentralized, and interoperable, allowing for more flexibility and innovation compared to centralized web services.

The article discusses the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and its Pegasus software, which was accidentally revealed to have been used to target political leaders, activists, and journalists worldwide. It examines the ethical and legal implications of the widespread use of such powerful surveillance tools without proper oversight or accountability.

The article discusses the gofix tool, which is a command-line tool that can automatically update Go code to use the latest language features and standard library changes. It provides details on how to use gofix, its capabilities, and the types of changes it can make to improve the maintainability and modernization of Go codebases.

Hi HN, After roughly 8 years of silently rolling 1.1 nightlies, we finally tagged a proper stable 2.0 release. We built this because wrist-sized Linux is genuinely fun to hack on, and because a handful of us think it's worth keeping capable hardware alive long after manufacturers move on. Smartwatches don't really get old — the silicon is basically the same as it was a decade ago. We just keep making it useful for us.

No usage stats, no tracking, no illusions of mass adoption. The only real signal we get is the occasional person who appears in our Matrix chat going "hey, it booted on my watch from 2014 and now it's usable again" — and that's plenty.

Privacy is non-negotiable: zero telemetry, no cloud, full local control. Longevity is the other half: we refuse to let good hardware become e-waste just because support ended. On the learning side, it's been one of the best playgrounds: instant feedback on your wrist makes QML/Qt, JavaScript watchfaces and embedded Linux feel tangible. The community is small and kind — perfect for people who want to learn open-source dev without gatekeeping.

Technically we're still pragmatic: libhybris + older kernels on most devices since it just works, but we've already mainlined rinato (Samsung Gear 2) and sparrow (ASUS ZenWatch 2) — rinato even boots with a usable UI. That's the direction we're pushing toward.

Repo: https://github.com/AsteroidOS Install images & docs: https://asteroidos.org 2.0 demo video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FiQz0yACc Announcement post: https://asteroidos.org/news/2-0-release/

Questions, port requests, mentoring offers, criticism, weird ideas — all welcome. We do this because shaping a tiny, open wearable UX and infrastructure is oddly satisfying, and because Linux on the wrist still feels like a playground worth playing in.

Cheers, the AsteroidOS Team

Freeflow is an open-source, self-hosted, and privacy-focused alternative to popular social media platforms. It aims to provide users with a decentralized and ad-free social networking experience that prioritizes user control and data privacy.

Gentoo has announced that they are transitioning their source code hosting from GitHub to Codeberg, a community-driven, non-profit platform. This move aims to provide a more privacy-focused and ethically aligned hosting solution for the Gentoo project.

The article discusses the psychological impact of 'token anxiety' in video games, where players become addicted to the dopamine rush from earning and collecting in-game rewards. It explores the parallels between this behavior and the compulsive nature of slot machines, highlighting the potential for video game mechanics to exploit player psychology and create unhealthy gaming habits.

This article provides an overview of XMPP, TURN, STUN, and Coturn, and how they can be used together with the Prosody XMPP server to enable secure and reliable real-time communication in web applications.

The article explores the concept of 'semantic ablation', where AI systems are trained to selectively remove or alter specific semantic elements from text, potentially enabling more nuanced and controlled text generation. The technique could have applications in areas like content moderation, creative writing, and generating text tailored to specific audiences.