What's the best programming language for coding agents?
• Dynamic languages may use 1/2 to 1/3 the LLM tokens of static languages on trivial problems.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• More complex tasks show no clear superiority of dynamic or static languages for LLM coding agents.
• Obscure or very dense languages like J score lower or inconsistently in practical evals.
• Language popularity weakly correlates with better correctness and lower cost in LLM tasks.
• Strong claims on best language for LLM coding are unsupported; many evals have flaws and variance.#ProgrammingLanguages #LLM #AIcoding
Exploring Claude/GPT Knowledge Cutoffs and Pre-Training Timelines
• Pre-training checkpoint dates estimated by probing daily-fact quizzes on models like GPT-5 and Opus.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Anthropic Opus 4.7+ models share a knowledge cutoff around December 2025, indicating the same training run.
• OpenAI GPT-5.6 models have a separate checkpoint with a cutoff around February 2026.
• Models self-identify their versions revealing training on past-model outputs and chat data.
• Opus 5's published cutoff is May 2026 but matches earlier models' knowledge cutoff (~January 2026).#AItraining #LanguageModels #ModelCutoffs
blog.sshh.io
Exploring Claude/GPT Knowledge Cutoffs
A mildly interesting analysis of what models know and what it tells us about how they were trained.
As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
• Google Search's new AI summaries produce inaccurate factual info, like false sunset times.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Link rot, AI intermediaries, and content manipulation threaten internet's archival integrity.
• Disney deleted nearly entire FiveThirtyEight archive after dropping the site in 2025.
• Wikipedia traffic declines as AI scrapes content directly, reducing public donations.
• European countries adopt homegrown digital platforms to ensure technological sovereignty.#DigitalSovereignty #AIImpact #InternetArchive
The Walrus
Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse | The Walrus
As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
Tail-call optimization in C is relatively recent (2025)
• Tail-call optimization in C was not common before the 1990s due to calling convention constraints.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• In 2001, Mark Probst added tail-call optimization to GCC with limitations like no indirect call handling.
• Recent tests show modern GCC and Clang compilers successfully perform tail-call optimization as per recent research.
• The technique supports compiling very large numbers of code snippets, beyond previous tooling capacity.
• Gforth has not yet integrated this optimization, while the Python community pioneered its application.#TailCallOptimization #CProgramming #GCC
How Claude marks AI-generated content
• Claude models launching in the EU on/after August 2, 2026 will embed AI-generated content marks.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Marks include imperceptible text watermarks and signed provenance metadata on files.
• Marks apply globally across Claude Platform, API, Claude Code, Cowork, and Tag products.
• Detection tools for Claude’s marks will be provided with future technical documentation.
• Marks signal possible AI processing but don’t confirm original authorship or unchanged content.#AITransparency #ClaudeAI #ContentMarking
Claude
How Claude marks AI-generated content | Claude Help Center
France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls
• France bans unsolicited telemarketing calls starting August 11, 2026.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Fines reach €375,000 per illegal call for companies, €75,000 for individuals.
• Consumers can report calls via a government website.
• Exceptions include prior consumer consent and existing contractual relations.
• Morocco fears loss of 40,000-50,000 call center jobs due to French law.#FranceLaw #TelemarketingBan #ConsumerProtection
The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life
• Mark Twain invested around $10 million in the Paige Compositor, a complex typesetting machine with over 18,000 parts.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• The Paige Compositor attempted to mimic human compositors mechanically but was impractical and never mass-produced.
• Twain's financial ruin and depression were largely due to the failure of this invention during his prime creative years.
• The Linotype machine surpassed Paige's design by simplifying typesetting, casting entire lines more efficiently.
• Only one Paige machine survives today; Twain's vision of automated typesetting machines was ahead of its time but flawed in execution.#MarkTwain #PaigeCompositor #InnovationFailure
Substack
The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life
Learning from the automation dreams of the first Machine Age
Show HN: Ante, a coding agent in a single binary that runs offline
• Ante is a self-contained Rust-based coding agent with a ~15MB binary and no runtime dependencies.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Runs AI models locally via a pinned llama.cpp engine; supports over 12 providers including OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Publicly benchmarked with 89 tasks at 82.7% accuracy using DeepSeek V4 Flash model.
• Uses ~7x less peak memory, ~9x less CPU, and ~5x less disk I/O than Claude Code in benchmarks.
• Supports interactive, headless, server, and bot gateway modes; open protocol and SDK under Apache 2.0.#AIagents #RustLang #LocalInference
GitHub
GitHub - AntigmaLabs/ante: Ghost in your shell. Ante is a self-contained agent harness with a highly optimized core. It works like…
Ghost in your shell. Ante is a self-contained agent harness with a highly optimized core. It works like Claude Code or Codex, with none of their dependencies or model constraints. - AntigmaLabs/ante
More than 10 firms pay up to $100k a month for access to Truth Social posts
• Trump Media launched Truth API, charging Wall Street firms $60,000-$100,000 monthly for early social media data.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Trump Media reported a $238 million loss between April and June, over ten times last year’s loss.
• The company's revenue rose 89% to $1.7 million, but losses stem mainly from cryptocurrency ventures.
• Truth API aims to create a durable revenue stream alongside advertising and digital assets.
• Trump Media holds $2 billion in total assets, predominantly in cash, short-term investments, and digital currencies.#TrumpMedia #TruthAPI #WallStreet
Bbc
More than 10 firms pay up to $100,000 a month for fast access to Truth Social posts
Trump Media expects the controversial service, which launched this month, to provide a new revenue stream, as it posts a quarterly loss.
Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor
• In 1988, the author began a 3.5-year solo around-the-world sail in a 31-foot sailboat.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• The book recounts encounters with pirates, storms, and wars during the voyage.
• It explores the evolving relationship between the solo sailor and the sea.
• The author shares a personal transformation from fearing departure to loving ocean life.
• The book is available online and as a 1.3 MB downloadable ZIP under CareWare, free with conditions.#SoloSailing #AroundTheWorld #SeaAdventure
Arachnoid
* Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor
Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor. Download page for book.
England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C
• England aims to eliminate hepatitis C, having treated 80% of known cases by 2024.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Hepatitis C-related deaths have fallen 36% in the last decade in England.
• Over 100,000 people diagnosed and treated since 2015 in England.
• Free NHS home-testing kits are available for early hepatitis C detection.
• 30,000+ UK people infected via contaminated blood products from 1970-1991.#HepatitisC #HealthUK #VirusElimination
Bbc
England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C
England is on track to become one of the first countries in the world to eliminate hepatitis C, a dangerous virus that attacks the liver, figures show.
World Train Map – 1247 train routes around the world
• World Train Map features 1,249 curated passenger train routes worldwide.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Covers 120 countries with approximately 317,400 km of railway lines.
• The map focuses on notable routes, not every railway on Earth.
• Interactive platform allows browsing detailed train route information.#WorldTrainMap #RailwayRoutes #TravelTech
World Train Map
World Train Map — Interactive Railway Map · 1,269 Train Routes
An interactive railway map of the world: 1,269 notable train routes. High-speed, classic, night, scenic, heritage and luxury lines, with the facts behind every one.
Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs
• Proprietary LLM APIs return encrypted reasoning (chain-of-thought) blocks replayable across sessions and models.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Researchers demonstrated recovering hidden reasoning by replaying encrypted traces into weaker, jailbroken models.
• Recovered traces revealed private user data including 704 distinct secrets like API keys and passwords.
• 64 secrets were found exclusively inside reasoning blocks, not visible in chat content.
• Analysis covered models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, showing broad vulnerability of encrypted traces.#AIPrivacy #LLMSecurity #ChainOfThought
Stolen-Thoughts
Stolen Thoughts
Encrypted chain-of-thought blocks returned by Anthropic, OpenAI and Google APIs are interchangeable across sessions, users and models. We exploit this to decode hidden reasoning at scale.
Nvidia's Risky Business
• Jay Cooke's 1870 financing for Northern Pacific Railway led to the 1873 Panic and economic depression.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• In 2026, tech companies Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon have issued $194 billion in debt for AI infrastructure.
• Google raised $85 billion equity in June 2026, including $10 billion from Berkshire Hathaway, to fund AI build-out.
• DeepMind faces leadership changes and loss of frontier AI status with Google Cloud gaining more compute resources.
• Nvidia partners with major financiers to mobilize $500 billion for AI infrastructure as an investable asset class, risking 25% residual-value financing.#AIInfrastructure #Nvidia #TechFinance
Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Nvidia’s Risky Business
Nvidia is finding new ways for its customers to raise money, and it’s expanding the risk of the AI buildout significantly.
ATProto for Distributed Systems Engineers
• AT Protocol uses a NoSQL cluster with eventual consistency for scalability.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Introduces an event log (e.g., Kafka) to sync view servers with the NoSQL cluster.
• Data is organized in user data repositories with collections of JSON document records.
• Every internal service is externalized with public APIs for decentralized backend participation.
• Applications read/write JSON repos, emit events to logs, and update view servers in a circular data flow.#ATProtocol #DistributedSystems #Decentralization
AT Protocol
Atproto for distributed systems engineers - AT Protocol
In this article we're going to explore atproto from the perspective of distributed backend engineering.
Apple Silicon and macOS VMs: 11–16× Faster LLM Inference with Llama.cpp
• A Metal capability shim boosts LLM inference in macOS VMs up to 16x faster on M1 Ultra.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Shim changes Apple GPU capability reports, enabling newer Metal kernels in llama.cpp.
• TinyLlama 1.1B prompt processing was 11.08x faster; token generation 16.36x faster inside VM.
• Tested on macOS 26.6.1, shim achieves near bare-metal performance (up to 99.59%) for some models.
• Shim is experimental, per-process, uses private Metal APIs, and limited to current Apple Silicon and guest versions.#AppleSilicon #GPUAcceleration #MacOSVM
GitHub
cua/blog/gpu-passthrough-macos-vms.md at main · trycua/cua
Scale computer-use 2.0 with open-source drivers, cross-OS fleets, and benchmarks for training, evaluation, and data generation. - trycua/cua
LFM2.5 2.6B model competitive with 4x larger models
• LFM2.5-2.6B is a 2.69B parameter hybrid model with a 128K context window for on-device deployment.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• It achieves 220 tokens/s inference on Apple M5 Max and 113 tokens/s on AMD Ryzen CPU using under 2.5 GB RAM.
• Trained on 34 trillion tokens with agentic reinforcement learning for tool use and multi-step tasks.
• Available in native, GGUF, ONNX, and MLX formats optimized for various hardware including Apple Silicon.
• Benchmark tests show it outperforms larger models (4x size) in tool use and multi-agent tasks.#LiquidAI #OnDeviceAI #LFM2Model
huggingface.co
LiquidAI/LFM2.5-2.6B · Hugging Face
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
Woman Pulled over at Gunpoint Twice After Flock Camera Glitch
• Amber Newell of Brookfield, Wisconsin, was pulled over twice at gunpoint due to a Flock camera glitch.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• The camera falsely flagged her car in connection to a homicide investigation on I-94 near Milwaukee.
• Milwaukee police admitted the alert was outdated and should have been removed days earlier.
• Brookfield officers followed protocol given the alert, despite the mistake being a human error.
• Newell's daughter is now fearful of police stops, highlighting the impact of the error.#FlockCameraGlitch #FalsePoliceStop #PoliceTechnology
Guessing Headlights
"Y'all Failed Me": Woman Pulled Over at Gunpoint Twice After Flock Camera Glitch
Technology is supposed to make police work faster and safer. Most of the time it does. But every so often, a computer system hiccups, and an ordinary person
Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering
• Go language focuses on software engineering with strong team-driven development principles.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Go is a platform with built-in tools: formatter, test framework, dependency management, security.
• Go enforces readability and uniform code format, aiding AI and human code review.
• Go has a strong static type system and comprehensive standard library for secure, reliable code.
• Go guarantees backward compatibility and provides tools for large-scale, maintainable codebases.#GoLang #AIcoding #SoftwareEngineering
Googleblog
Google for Developers Blog - News about Web, Mobile, AI and Cloud
As AI shifts software engineering from writing to reviewing, discover how Go's strict compiler and unified toolchain ensure reliable AI-generated code.
Mojo 1.0
• Mojo language reaches stable 1.0 release after initial 2023 launch.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• Mojo 1.0 provides stable foundation for long-term development, minimizing breaking changes.
• New features include Python-style lambda syntax and improved memory safety diagnostics.
• MAX framework updated with easier installation and support for GLM-5.2 and Nemotron-H models.
• Modular plans to open source Mojo compiler and toolchain within 2026.
• Upcoming ModCon event on August 18 will discuss Mojo 1.0 and open source plans.#MojoLang #ModularAI #AIProgramming
Modular
Modular: Modular 26.5: Mojo 1.0 is here!
Today, the Mojo language officially reaches 1.0: a milestone the language has been building toward since its first release in 2023. Mojo has grown into a general-purpose language with a vibrant developer community writing their own libraries, tools, and applications…
OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
• OpenAI's head of ethics left the start-up less than one year after joining.Read more | Comments | @hackernws
• The departure occurred before August 10, 2026, as reported by Financial Times.
• No specific reasons for the departure were disclosed in the article.
• The Oxford-based start-up had recently hired the ethics head from OpenAI.
• The exit highlights challenges in retaining top ethics executives in AI start-ups.#OpenAI #AIethics #TechLeadership