23998
Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
How to have the browser pick a contrasting color in CSS (Score: 151+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uDwH
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uDwH
Náhuatl and Mayan Language Renaissance Occurring in Mexico (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uquf
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uquf
Show HN: KVSplit – Run 2-3x longer contexts on Apple Silicon (🔥 Score: 150+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uBAK
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uBAK
I discovered that in LLM inference, keys and values in the KV cache have very different quantization sensitivities. Keys need higher precision than values to maintain quality.
I patched llama.cpp to enable different bit-widths for keys vs. values on Apple Silicon. The results are surprising:
- K8V4 (8-bit keys, 4-bit values): 59% memory reduction with only 0.86% perplexity loss
- K4V8 (4-bit keys, 8-bit values): 59% memory reduction but 6.06% perplexity loss
- The configurations use the same number of bits, but K8V4 is 7× better for quality
This means you can run LLMs with 2-3× longer context on the same Mac. Memory usage scales with sequence length, so savings compound as context grows.
Implementation was straightforward:
1. Added --kvq-key and --kvq-val flags to llama.cpp
2. Applied existing quantization logic separately to K and V tensors
3. Validated with perplexity metrics across context lengths
4. Used Metal for acceleration (with -mlong-calls flag to avoid vectorization issues)
Benchmarked on an M4 MacBook Pro running TinyLlama with 8K context windows. Compatible with Metal/MPS and optimized for Apple Silicon.
GitHub: https://github.com/dipampaul17/KVSplit
Windsurf SWE-1: Our First Frontier Models (Score: 151+ in 23 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uxZt
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uxZt
What were the MS-DOS programs that the moricons.dll icons were intended for? (❄️ Score: 152+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6upzs
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6upzs
A Research Preview of Codex (🔥 Score: 159+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uADB
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uADB
Sci-Net (🔥 Score: 153+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uA6T
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uA6T
Tek – A music making program for 24-bit Unicode terminals (Score: 150+ in 17 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uydd
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uydd
After months of coding with LLMs, I'm going back to using my brain (🔥 Score: 157+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uzNn
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uzNn
Initialization in C++ is bonkers (2017) (Score: 150+ in 12 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uyte
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uyte
Ollama's new engine for multimodal models (Score: 150+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uyXH
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uyXH
A leap year check in three instructions (🔥 Score: 150+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uyxN
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uyxN
Harvard Law paid $27 for a copy of Magna Carta. It's an original (Score: 152+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uxVy
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uxVy
Show HN: Lumier – Run macOS VMs in a Docker (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uu3A
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uu3A
Hey HN, we're excited to share Lumier (https://github.com/trycua/cua/tree/main/libs/lumier), an open-source tool for running macOS and Linux virtual machines in Docker containers on Apple Silicon Macs.
When building virtualized environments for AI agents, we needed a reproducible way to package and distribute macOS VMs. Inspired by projects like dockur/windows (https://github.com/dockur/windows) that pioneered running Windows in Docker, we wanted to create something similar but optimized for Apple Silicon. The existing solutions either didn't support M-series chips or relied on KVM/Intel emulation, which was slow and cumbersome. We realized we could leverage Apple's Virtualization Framework to create a much better experience.
Lumier takes a different approach: it uses Docker as a delivery mechanism (not for isolation) and connects to a lightweight virtualization service (lume) running on your Mac. This creates true hardware-accelerated VMs using Apple's native virtualization capabilities.
With Lumier, you can:
- Launch a ready-to-use macOS VM in minutes with zero manual setup
- Access your VM through any web browser via VNC
- Share files between your host and VM effortlessly
- Use persistent storage or ephemeral mode for quick tests
- Automate VM startup with custom scripts
All of this works natively on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) - no emulation required.
To get started:
1. Install Docker for Apple Silicon: https://desktop.docker.com/mac/main/arm64/Docker.dmg
2. Install lume background service with our one-liner:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trycua/cua/main/libs/lume/scripts/install.sh)"
docker run -it --rm \
--name lumier-vm \
-p 8006:8006 \
-e VM_NAME=lumier-vm \
-e VERSION=ghcr.io/trycua/macos-sequoia-cua:latest \
-e CPU_CORES=4 \
-e RAM_SIZE=8192 \
trycua/lumier:latest
Baby Is Healed with First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment (🔥 Score: 157+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uxS6
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uxS6
If nothing is curated, how do we find things (Score: 151+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uDsJ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uDsJ
Getting AI to write good SQL (Score: 154+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uBLa
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uBLa
Show HN: Visual flow-based programming for Erlang, inspired by Node-RED (Score: 153+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uABz
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uABz
Hi There,
Erlang-RED has been my project for the last couple of months and I would love to get some feedback from the HN community.
The idea is to take advantage of Erlangs message passing and low overhead processes to have true concurrency in Node-RED flows. Plus also to bring low-code visual flow-based programming to Erlang.
Ollama violating llama.cpp license for over a year (Score: 152+ in 7 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uzP7
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uzP7
The Awful German Language (1880) (Score: 151+ in 13 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uzbP
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uzbP
The first year of free-threaded Python (Score: 150+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uzHP
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uzHP
Material 3 Expressive (❄️ Score: 156+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uqLa
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uqLa
A $130M company faked trials instead of running our free OSS (🔥 Score: 183+ in 46 minutes)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uA2E
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uA2E
Teal – A statically-typed dialect of Lua (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uyRR
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uyRR
BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries, and nobody cares (🔥 Score: 150+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uzmX
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uzmX
NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix (🔥 Score: 155+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uyQN
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uyQN
Show HN: Min.js style compression of tech docs for LLM context (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ux2M
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ux2M
The unreasonable effectiveness of an LLM agent loop with tool use (🔥 Score: 157+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uy92
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uy92
California sent residents' personal health data to LinkedIn (Score: 150+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ux8q
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ux8q
I Don't Like NumPy (🔥 Score: 153+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6uxuz
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6uxuz