Best stories

https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/latest-model

System card: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/3a4153c8-c748-4b71-8e31-aecbde944...

The article discusses the importance of design patterns in software development, providing an overview of common patterns and how they can be applied to create more maintainable, scalable, and efficient code.

The article explores the revival of the Nokia N900 smartphone, a pioneering device that has gained a dedicated following years after its discontinuation. It delves into the efforts of enthusiasts to keep the N900 alive and functional through software modifications and customizations.

The article discusses the importance of choosing effective and memorable names for products, companies, and other entities. It explores the factors to consider, such as meaning, emotion, memorability, and uniqueness, in order to create impactful and successful names.

This article discusses the author's experience with Google de-indexing their entire Bear Blog without explanation, highlighting the challenges faced by website owners when search engines make unexpected decisions that significantly impact their online presence and traffic.

Rivian unveils its custom silicon R2 LiDAR, a roadmap for universal hands-free driving, and details on its next-generation autonomy platform. The article highlights Rivian's advancements in developing in-house technology to enhance the safety and capabilities of its electric vehicles.

The article discusses the development and impact of the Mastodon social network, an open-source alternative to Twitter that emphasizes decentralization, privacy, and community-driven moderation. It explores Mastodon's growth, key features, and the potential implications of its distributed model for the future of social media.

Meta has shut down global accounts linked to providing advice on abortion and LGBTQ+ content, raising concerns about censorship and access to information on reproductive health and rights.

The article discusses Litestream, a lightweight, open-source database replication tool that provides a virtual file system (VFS) layer for SQLite databases. Litestream enables easy backup and restore of SQLite databases, making it a convenient solution for managing and maintaining SQLite-powered applications.

See also: https://blog.cloudflare.com/react2shell-rsc-vulnerabilities-..., https://nextjs.org/blog/security-update-2025-12-11

The article explores how Craft, a software company, aims to create products that evoke emotions and meaningful experiences for users, rather than solely focusing on features or efficiency. It emphasizes Craft's mission to craft software that makes people feel something.

The article explores the versatility of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) by demonstrating how it can be used to create complex visual effects and animations without relying on external libraries or frameworks. It showcases the power and flexibility of SVG as a standalone solution for web development tasks.

Disney has collaborated with OpenAI to create Sora, a new AI-powered virtual character that can engage in interactive conversations and perform various tasks. The article explores the potential applications and implications of this technology in the entertainment industry.

The article discusses Epic Games' victory in an appeals court case against Apple over in-app payments on iOS. The ruling allows developers to direct users to alternative payment methods outside of Apple's ecosystem, potentially reducing the company's commission on transactions.

The article discusses the ongoing effort to rewrite the Tor anonymity network in the Rust programming language, aiming to improve performance and security. It outlines the progress made and the potential benefits of the Rust-based Tor implementation.

The article discusses the construction of the Koralm Railway, a major infrastructure project in Austria that is part of the Southern Railway Line connecting Vienna and Villach. The Koralm Railway aims to improve transportation links and reduce travel times between the two cities.

The article discusses the development of a new drought-tolerant maize variety by researchers in Kenya, which is expected to help smallholder farmers improve their yields and food security in the face of climate change and unpredictable weather patterns.

The article discusses how to use JSON virtual columns in SQLite to efficiently query and index JSON data within a database, providing a practical approach to working with semi-structured data in a relational database.

The article discusses the benefits of using a plain text file for managing productivity and tasks, including its simplicity, flexibility, and ability to be easily integrated with various tools and workflows.

Developers at id Software, the studio behind Doom, have voted to form a union with 165 workers, becoming the latest video game company to unionize. The union, named Wall to Wall, is the result of collective bargaining efforts to improve working conditions and support employees.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/disney-openai-sora-character...

The article explores the mental health challenges faced by programmers, discussing the demanding nature of coding work, the pressure to constantly learn new skills, and the isolating aspects of the profession that can lead to depression and burnout.

The article discusses the development of a miniature, low-cost telescope called the 'Miniscope', which is designed to be affordable and accessible to amateur astronomers and educators. It highlights the Miniscope's compact design, its ability to capture high-quality images, and its potential applications in astronomy education and outreach.

The article explores the Snowden documents, revealing insights into the expansive global surveillance programs of the United States government and its intelligence agencies, which have drawn significant public attention and controversy.

Hey HN, Waleed here. We're building Sim (https://sim.ai/), an open-source visual editor to build agentic workflows. Repo here: https://github.com/simstudioai/sim/. Docs here: https://docs.sim.ai.

You can run Sim locally using Docker, with no execution limits or other restrictions.

We started building Sim almost a year ago after repeatedly troubleshooting why our agents failed in production. Code-first frameworks felt hard to debug because of implicit control flow, and workflow platforms added more overhead than they removed. We wanted granular control and easy observability without piecing everything together ourselves.

We launched Sim [1][2] as a drag-and-drop canvas around 6 months ago. Since then, we've added:

- 138 blocks: Slack, GitHub, Linear, Notion, Supabase, SSH, TTS, SFTP, MongoDB, S3, Pinecone, ...

- Tool calling with granular control: forced, auto

- Agent memory: conversation memory with sliding window support (by last n messages or tokens)

- Trace spans: detailed logging and observability for nested workflows and tool calling

- Native RAG: upload documents, we chunk, embed with pgvector, and expose vector search to agents

- Workflow deployment versioning with rollbacks

- MCP support, Human-in-the-loop block

- Copilot to build workflows using natural language (just shipped a new version that also acts as a superagent and can call into any of your connected services directly, not just build workflows)

Under the hood, the workflow is a DAG with concurrent execution by default. Nodes run as soon as their dependencies (upstream blocks) are satisfied. Loops (for, forEach, while, do-while) and parallel fan-out/join are also first-class primitives.

Agent blocks are pass-through to the provider. You pick your model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, vLLM), and and we pass through prompts, tools, and response format directly to the provider API. We normalize response shapes for block interoperability, but we're not adding layers that obscure what's happening.

We're currently working on our own MCP server and the ability to deploy workflows as MCP servers. Would love to hear your thoughts and where we should take it next :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823096

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052766

The article provides an overview of recent incidents and outages affecting the GitHub platform, including service disruptions, security vulnerabilities, and other technical issues that have impacted developers and users.

The article discusses the performance impact of using closures in C++, highlighting the additional memory and runtime costs associated with them. It provides insights into the underlying implementation and considerations for developers when deciding to use closures in their C++ code.