top 50% hacker news stories for 2026-01-17

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering

https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering

7 months ago

If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design

https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTeOwAykwQ1

7 months ago

The recurring dream of replacing developers

https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html

7 months ago

Raising money fucked me up

https://blog.yakkomajuri.com/blog/raising-money-fucked-me-up

7 months ago

US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

https://electrek.co/2026/01/16/us-electricity-demand-surged-in-2025-solar-handled-61-percent/

7 months ago

Map To Poster – Create Art of your favourite city

https://github.com/originalankur/maptoposter

7 months ago

PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/patch_tuesday_secure_launch_bug_no_shutdown/

7 months ago

A programming language based on grammatical cases of Turkish

https://github.com/kip-dili/kip

7 months ago

Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-greenland-us-trump-4ad99ea3975a8b62d37bd04961feda55

7 months ago

Light Mode InFFFFFFlation

https://willhbr.net/2025/10/20/light-mode-infffffflation/

7 months ago

ClickHouse Acquires Langfuse

https://langfuse.com/blog/joining-clickhouse

7 months ago

EmuDevz: A game about developing emulators

https://afska.github.io/emudevz/

7 months ago

After 25 years, Wikipedia has proved that news doesn't need to look like news

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/after-25-years-wikipedia-has-proved-that-news-doesnt-need-to-look-like-news/

7 months ago

2025 was the third hottest year on record

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/01/14/2025-was-the-third-hottest-year-on-record

7 months ago

What life is like in Minneapolis now

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-the-occupation

7 months ago

Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46654726

7 months ago

Canada's deal with China signals it is serious about shift from US

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm24k6kk1rko

7 months ago

An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260116-an-elizabethan-mansions-secrets-for-staying-warm

7 months ago

The 'untouchable hacker god' behind Finland's biggest ever crime

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/17/vastaamo-hack-finland-therapy-notes

7 months ago

Don't Waste Your Back Pressure

https://banay.me/dont-waste-your-backpressure/

7 months ago

Show HN: Streaming gigabyte medical images from S3 without downloading them

https://github.com/PABannier/WSIStreamer

7 months ago

You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass – geohot

https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/01/17/three-minutes.html

7 months ago

Drone Hacking Part 1: Dumping Firmware and Bruteforcing ECC

https://neodyme.io/en/blog/drone_hacking_part_1/

7 months ago

The WebRacket language is a subset of Racket that compiles to WebAssembly

https://github.com/soegaard/webracket

7 months ago

Show HN: RatatuiRuby wraps Rust Ratatui as a RubyGem – TUIs with the joy of Ruby

https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/

7 months ago

Binary Fuse Filters: Fast and Smaller Than XOR Filters

https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.01174

7 months ago

A Year of 3D Printing

https://brookehatton.com/blog/making/a-year-of-3d-printing/

7 months ago

No knives, only cook knives

https://kellykozakandjoshdonald.substack.com/p/no-knives-only-cook-knives

7 months ago

Italy investigates Activision Blizzard for pushing in-game purchases

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/16/italy-investigates-activision-blizzard-for-pushing-in-game-purchases/

7 months ago

Justice Dept. launches criminal investigation of Minnesota governor

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/16/trump-minnesota-walz-frey-criminal-investigation/

7 months ago

Show HN: ChunkHound, a local-first tool for understanding large codebases

https://github.com/chunkhound/chunkhound

7 months ago

Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/12/16/earth-is-warming-faster-scientists-are-closing-in-on-why

7 months ago

My first year in sales as technical founder

https://www.fabiandietrich.com/blog/first-year-in-sales.html

7 months ago

The thing that brought me joy

https://www.stephenlewis.me/blog/the-thing-that-brought-me-joy/

7 months ago

The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260113-hello-hiya-aloha-what-our-greetings-reveal

7 months ago

Crypto grifters are recruiting open-source AI developers

https://www.seangoedecke.com/gas-and-ralph/

7 months ago

Why There's No Single Best Way to Store Information

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-theres-no-single-best-way-to-store-information-20260116/

7 months ago

Gathering Linux Syscall Numbers in a C Table

https://t-cadet.github.io/programming-wisdom/#2026-01-17-gathering-linux-syscall-numbers

7 months ago

Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

https://disconnect.blog/escaping-the-trap-of-us-tech-dependence/

7 months ago

The Risks of AI in Schools Outweigh the Benefits, Report Says

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5674741/ai-schools-education

7 months ago

Counterfactual evaluation for recommendation systems

https://eugeneyan.com/writing/counterfactual-evaluation/

7 months ago

Congress Wants to Hand Your Parenting to Big Tech

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/congress-wants-hand-your-parenting-big-tech

7 months ago

OpenAI could reportedly run out of cash by mid-2027

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/openai-could-reportedly-run-out-of-cash-by-mid-2027-nyt-analyst-paints-grim-picture-after-examining-companys-finances

7 months ago

Trump to impose tariffs on European nations over Greenland

https://www.dw.com/en/trump-to-impose-tariffs-on-european-nations-over-greenland/a-75549367

7 months ago

Every data centre is a U.S. military base

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/every-data-centre-is-a-u-s-military-base/

7 months ago

Germany's shut down of nuclear plants a 'huge mistake', says Merz

https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/01/germanys-shut-down-of-nuclear-plants-a-huge-mistake-says-merz/

7 months ago

Why Twenty Years of DevOps Has Failed to Do It

https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/you-had-one-job-why-twenty-years-of-devops-has-failed-to-do-it

7 months ago

Compiling Scheme to WebAssembly

https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2026/compiling-scheme-to-webassembly/

7 months ago

LG UltraFine Evo 6K 32-inch Monitor Review

https://www.wired.com/review/lg-ultrafine-evo-6k-32-inch-monitor/

7 months ago

OpenAI to test ads in ChatGPT as it burns through billions

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/01/openai-to-test-ads-in-chatgpt-as-it-burns-through-billions/

7 months ago

Keifu – A TUI for navigating commit graphs with color and clarity

https://github.com/trasta298/keifu

7 months ago

Show HN: Docker.how – Docker command cheat sheet

https://docker.how/

7 months ago

Folding NASA Experience into an Origamist's Toolkit

https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Folding_NASA_Experience_into_an_Origamist%E2%80%99s_Toolkit

7 months ago

Netflix Wants Movies to Restate the Plot Three or Four Times in the Dialogue

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/matt-damon-netflix-movies-restate-plot-viewers-on-phones-1236633939/

7 months ago