Year: 2026

Is it all just vapourware? — Kira Howe

Is it all just vapourware? — Kira Howe

💥 Check out this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: August 8, 2026/3 min readMaybe I’m just too cynical but it’s really starting to feel like more or less all of this new “AI”/agent software is vapourware. I’ve been trying to take this whole “agentic development” thing seriously and there is just so much friction in this ecosystem it’s absolutely insane. It’s very clear that all this stuff is built by engineers who a) have free access to unlimited tokens and b) have no systematic review or QA process for usability testing or dogfooding…
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Poland now sixth-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

Poland now sixth-largest EU economy, ahead of Switzerland and Belgium

💥 Check out this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Published on 09/08/2026 - 19:23 GMT+2 According to data from the European statistical office, the value of Poland's GDP at current prices amounted to €922.9 billion in 2025. This means that Poland accounted for 4.9 percent of the economy of the entire European Union. In terms of economic size, only Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands now rank above Poland. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Germany remains in first place, with GDP at €4.47 trillion. France generated €2.99 trillion, Italy €2.26 trillion, Spain €1.69 trillion and…
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Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

🚀 Discover this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: security Gen Xers who feel triggered by this should remember to unplug the network cable and call the cops Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn't calling the CEO – it's targeting the 46-year-old IT manager.That's according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month.The data suggests today's ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds…
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if experience is the goal, then you always win

if experience is the goal, then you always win

🚀 Read this trending post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: You can measure internal congruence by the lag between desire and action. We all have friends who want to change something about their lives, sometimes harboring secret desires for years, yet stay static in place. Others upend their lives on a whim. Reinvent. Start anew. What separates them? My hunch is that the latter view experience as a goal in itself, where most of us see-saw between rational pro and cons lists, or terminal value calculations. And if experience is the goal: whatever happens in…
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Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

🔥 Discover this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: I'm working on moving beyond the LeetCode interview for software developers.Most software engineering interviews are a “signal crisis”. They measure recall, not real-world engineering.I'm working on moving the evaluation from “writing code under pressure” to technical judgment via structured code review.https://entrevue.app/tryEver since I read this https://paulbupejr.com/developing-the-optigap-sensor-system/ I've wanted to build a system that takes in a shape and adds bends and fiber routing so you can dynamically create readable objects. I was initially imagining wanting to add the bending points manually but I'm not so…
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FCC moves to ban LiDAR-equipped foreign drones from US — classifies the technology as “military-grade” in a proposal that could also hit thermal models and the swarms used in drone light shows

FCC moves to ban LiDAR-equipped foreign drones from US — classifies the technology as “military-grade” in a proposal that could also hit thermal models and the swarms used in drone light shows

💥 Explore this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to ban drones with LiDAR obstacle-avoidance features, a move that would remove a number of popular consumer drones from US shelves. In a public notice published in the Federal Register on August 3 (DA 26-758), the agency proposed retroactively banning the import and sale of any foreign-made drone on its Covered List that “contains or integrates” a LiDAR sensor, categorizing the technology under a broad “military-grade” umbrella.The proposal builds on a ban the FCC set in motion late…
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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain

Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain

🔥 Discover this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S. These findings stopped me in my tracks because those two jobs rely on the same thing as my own work: maps. I have spent more than two decades staring at maps. Not paper maps on a wall, but digital ones with multiple layers: flood boundaries…
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Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

✨ Check out this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Government & Policy,Media & Entertainment,AI policy,AI regulation,Elon Musk,Equity podcast,Jill Lepore,sam altman 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: In her upcoming book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” Jill Lepore warns that tech companies are increasingly replacing the functions of democratic government. This shift, she said, marks “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.” On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, I spoke to Lepore — a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for…
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Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

💥 Check out this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Government & Policy,Media & Entertainment,AI policy,AI regulation,Elon Musk,Equity podcast,Jill Lepore,sam altman ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: In her upcoming book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” Jill Lepore warns that tech companies are increasingly replacing the functions of democratic government. This shift, she said, marks “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.” On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, I spoke to Lepore — a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for…
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Lilly’s message | Kibotronics

Lilly’s message | Kibotronics

💥 Check out this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: From John C. Lilly’s “The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography” 1978 In the isolation tank with K, John received a new message as follows: What is the purpose of Man’s existence on the planet Earth? Man is a form of biological life which is sustained in the presence of water. A very large fraction of his body, like that of other organisms on the planet Earth, consists of water and carbon compounds. His Biocomputer depends on water and the flow of ions through membranes. It…
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