top 50% hacker news stories for 2026-05-17

Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2026/05/15/mozilla-to-uk-regulators-vpns-are-essential-privacy-and-security-tools-and-should-not-be-undermined/

5 months ago

I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-05-15-i-dont-think-ai-will-make-your-processes-go-faster/

5 months ago

Security researcher says Microsoft built a Bitlocker backdoor, releases exploit

https://www.techspot.com/news/112410-security-researcher-microsoft-secretly-built-backdoor-bitlocker-releases.html

5 months ago

AI is a technology not a product

https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product

5 months ago

Native all the way, until you need text

https://justsitandgrin.im/posts/native-all-the-way-until-you-need-text/

5 months ago

I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

https://github.com/tech4bot/rk3562deb

5 months ago

★ 353 C MIT

Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep

https://github.com/MinishLab/semble

5 months ago

★ 4.2k Python MIT

Americans Are Smashing Flock Cameras

https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-cameras-destroyed-nationwide-ice-backlash-2026/

5 months ago

GenCAD

https://gencad.github.io/

5 months ago

Every AI Subscription Is a Ticking Time Bomb for Enterprise

https://www.thestateofbrand.com/news/ai-subscription-time-bomb

5 months ago

Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

https://www.williamangel.net/blog/2026/05/17/offline-llm-energy-use.html

5 months ago

WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak a Global Health Emergency

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/world/africa/ebola-congo-uganda-who-public-health-emergency.html

5 months ago

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

https://electrek.co/2026/05/14/tesla-solar-roof-promise-vs-reality-pivot-panels/

5 months ago

I Found Ultra-Pure Quantum Crystals in an Abandoned Mine in the Atacama Desert

https://medium.com/@breid.at/ultra-pure-quantum-crystals-from-an-abandoned-mine-in-a-mysterious-desert-93cc87d12314

5 months ago

WriteUp: 16 Bytes of x86 that turn Matrix rain into sound

https://hellmood.111mb.de//wake_up_16b_writeup.html

5 months ago

Hosting a website on an 8-bit microcontroller

https://maurycyz.com/projects/mcusite/

5 months ago

Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

https://idahonews.com/news/local/two-f-18-fighter-jets-have-crashed-during-an-airshow-at-mountain-home-air-force-base

5 months ago

CUDA Books

https://github.com/alternbits/awesome-cuda-books

5 months ago

★ 818 MIT

Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

https://rutgerbregman.substack.com/p/10-signs-of-fascism-america-has-all

5 months ago

Polypad

https://polypad.amplify.com/

5 months ago

Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/2055992439031185782

5 months ago

Prolog Coding Horror

https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/horror

5 months ago

Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users

https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP

5 months ago

★ 11.2k CSS GPL-3.0

VoIP Brings Back Old-Fashioned Pay Phones to Rural Vermont

https://spectrum.ieee.org/payphone-voip

5 months ago

EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process sensitive gov data

https://www.osnews.com/story/144943/eu-weighs-restricting-use-of-us-cloud-platforms-to-process-sensitive-government-data/

5 months ago

Intro to TLA+ for the LLM Era: Prompt Your Way to Victory

https://emptysqua.re/blog/intro-to-tla-plus-for-the-llm-era/

5 months ago

Growing Neural Cellular Automata

https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/

5 months ago

Anyone on the Internet Can Ring Your Doorbell

https://www.abgeo.dev/blog/anyone-can-ring-your-doorbell

5 months ago

The occasional ECONNRESET

https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-05-05/1/POSTING-en.html

5 months ago

Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

https://www.businessinsider.com/mistral-ceo-warns-europe-2-years-avoid-us-ai-dependence-2026-5

5 months ago

Scientists believe ibogaine can help veterans overcome PTSD

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260514-how-hallucinogenic-ibogaine-helps-veterans-overcome-ptsd

5 months ago

Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

https://arnaud-carre.github.io/2026-05-15-ym-fast-emu/

5 months ago

ThinkPad: From IBM's Bento Box to Lenovo's AI Workstations

https://www.jdhodges.com/blog/thinkpad-history/

5 months ago

An AI Hate Wave Is Here

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/17/ai-backlash-polling-sentiment

5 months ago

Self-Distillation Enables Continual Learning [PDF]

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19897

5 months ago

University of Arizona students boo Eric Schmidt's AI cheerleading

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/932203/university-of-arizona-students-boo-eric-schmidt-ai-commencement

5 months ago

Don't Outsource the Learning

https://addyosmani.com/blog/dont-outsource-learning/

5 months ago

The lasting influence of Netscape Time

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-lasting-influence-of-netscape-time/

5 months ago

Design posters showcasing your country's electrical grid

https://github.com/open-energy-transition/grid2poster

5 months ago

★ 180 Python MIT

Dontsurveil.me

https://opencivics-labs.github.io/dontsurveil.me/c22.html

5 months ago

In 1979 engineer Hugh Padgham discovered "gated reverb" – by accident

https://producelikeapro.com/blog/how-one-recording-mistake-created-a-musical-phenomenon-in-the-80s/

5 months ago