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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
F-Droid build servers can't build modern Android apps due to outdated CPUs (Score: 153+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6zAJF
On August 7, 2025, a new build problem started hitting many Android apps on F-Droid. Many Android apps on F-Droid have been unable to publish updates if they use Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) 8.12.0 or Gradle 9.0.
The root cause: Google’s new aapt2 binary in AGP 8.12.0 started requiring CPU instructions (SSE4.1, SSSE3) that F-Droid’s build farm hardware doesn’t support. This is similar to a 2021 AGP 4.1.0 issue, but it has returned, and now affects hundreds of apps.
As an example, my open-source app MBCompass hit this issue. I downgraded to AGP 8.11.1 with Gradle 8.13 to make it build, but even then, F-Droid failed due to a baseline profile reproducibility bug in AGP. The only workaround was disabling baseline profiles and pushing yet another release.
This has led to multiple “maintenance” versions in a short time, confusing users and wasting developer time, just to work around infrastructure issues outside the developer’s control.
References:
- F-Droid admin issue: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/593
- Catima example: https://github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Android/issues/2608
- MBCompass case: https://github.com/CompassMB/MBCompass/issues/88
Online Safety Act – shutdowns and site blocks (🔥 Score: 152+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zAV9
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zAV9
RISC-V single-board computer for less than 40 euros (❄️ Score: 153+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zma4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zma4
Millau Viaduct (❄️ Score: 150+ in 5 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zeXU
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zeXU
A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008) (❄️ Score: 152+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zmvR
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zmvR
Search all text in New York City (🔥 Score: 158+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zAhA
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zAhA
https://pudding.cool/2025/07/street-view/
36B solar mass black hole at centre of the Cosmic Horseshoe gravitational lens (Score: 150+ in 20 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zum2
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zum2
Zig's Lovely Syntax (Score: 153+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zrxT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zrxT
Sandstorm- self-hostable web productivity suite (Score: 150+ in 19 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zmSL
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zmSL
Show HN: The current sky at your approximate location, as a CSS gradient (🔥 Score: 152+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6znut
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6znut
For HTML Day 2025 [1], I made a web service that displays the current sky at your approximate location as a CSS gradient. Colours are simulated on-demand using atmospheric absorption and scattering coefficients. Updates every minute, without the use of client-side JavaScript.
Source code and additional information is available on GitHub: https://github.com/dnlzro/horizon
[1] https://html.energy/html-day/2025/index.html
A message from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to all company employees (Score: 150+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zkp3
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zkp3
Achieving 10,000x training data reduction with high-fidelity labels (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zhrc
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zhrc
How attention sinks keep language models stable (Score: 150+ in 16 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ziRy
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ziRy
Ask HN: How can ChatGPT serve 700M users when I can't run one GPT-4 locally? (🔥 Score: 161+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6zkHi
Sam said yesterday that chatgpt handles ~700M weekly users. Meanwhile, I can't even run a single GPT-4-class model locally without insane VRAM or painfully slow speeds.
Sure, they have huge GPU clusters, but there must be more going on - model optimizations, sharding, custom hardware, clever load balancing, etc.
What engineering tricks make this possible at such massive scale while keeping latency low?
Curious to hear insights from people who've built large-scale ML systems.
How we replaced Elasticsearch and MongoDB with Rust and RocksDB (Score: 152+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zjm9
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zjm9
H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House (Score: 150+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zza4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zza4
WHY2025: How to become your own ISP [video] (Score: 150+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zyTe
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zyTe
We shouldn't have needed lockfiles (❄️ Score: 150+ in 6 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zbZf
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zbZf
Blender is Native on Windows 11 on Arm (❄️ Score: 152+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zmCk
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zmCk
All known 49-year-old Apple-1 computers (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zkkH
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zkkH
Show HN: Building a web search engine from scratch with 3B neural embeddings (Score: 156+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zyDz
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zyDz
ESP32 Bus Pirate 0.5 – A hardware hacking tool that speaks every protocol (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6znHj
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6znHj
ESP32 Bus Pirate is an open-source firmware that turns your device into a multi-protocol hacker's tool, inspired by the legendary Bus Pirate.
It supports sniffing, sending, scripting, and interacting with various digital protocols (I2C, UART, 1-Wire, SPI, etc.) via a serial terminal or web-based CLI.
Modes for:
- HiZ (default)
- I2C (scan, glitch, slave mode, dump)
- SPI (flash, sdcard, slave mode)
- UART / Half-Duplex UART (bridge, read, write)
- 1-WIRE (ibutton, temp sensor)
- 2WIRE (smartcard) / 3WIRE (eeprom)
- DIO (Digital I/O, read, pullup, set)
- Infrared (device-b-gone, send and receive)
- USB (HID, mouse, keyboard, gamepad, storage)
- Bluetooth (BLE HID, scan, spoofing, sniffing)
- Wi-Fi (scan, AP, connect, sniff, deauth)
- JTAG (scan pinout, SWD)
- LED control (animations, set LEDs)
- I2S
- CAN
https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bus-Pirate
Fight Chat Control (🔥 Score: 168+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zrHC
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zrHC
Quickshell – building blocks for your desktop (❄️ Score: 152+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6z7JS
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6z7JS
I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C (❄️ Score: 156+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zbcW
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zbcW
Dial-up Internet to be discontinued (Score: 150+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zmyt
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zmyt
Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zfNg
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zfNg
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 shortlist (Score: 150+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zjEu
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zjEu
Tor: How a military project became a lifeline for privacy (Score: 156+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zjXk
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zjXk
Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 commander, has died (🔥 Score: 153+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zkEG
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zkEG