top 50% hacker news stories for 2026-08-18

The Amazon tax

https://seths.blog/2026/08/the-amazon-tax/

2 months ago

1 change
1410 upvotes – 702 comments

I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/i-like-em-thick

2 months ago

866 upvotes – 341 comments

Beware Management Consultants

https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/the-dark-ages/beware-management-consultants/

2 months ago

624 upvotes – 158 comments

Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/18/google-buys-crashed-airline-spirits-data-at-auction-because-ai/5288962

2 months ago

2 changes
616 upvotes – 421 comments

Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

https://pixelcluster.dev/VRAM-Overcommit/

2 months ago

546 upvotes – 307 comments

Hister – A private, full content search index that you control

https://hister.org/

2 months ago

1 change
491 upvotes – 100 comments

How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

https://www.ikea.com/se/en/customer-service/knowledge/articles/6f564c4d-2ccc-46de-b643-545a3948dc79.html

2 months ago

465 upvotes – 326 comments

And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/and-then-the-men-with-guns-tell-you-to-do-it-anyway/

2 months ago

453 upvotes – 421 comments

Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner

https://philo.gay/linecam/

2 months ago

450 upvotes – 73 comments

Fixing a bricked Framework laptop

https://quantum5.ca/2026/08/16/fixing-bricked-amd-7040-series-framework-13-laptop-with-20-tools/

2 months ago

1 change
425 upvotes – 299 comments

Mojo is now open source

https://www.modular.com/blog/mojo-open-source

2 months ago

1 change
414 upvotes – 97 comments

Fairphone is now officially available in the United States

https://www.fairphone.com/nl/stories/the-fairphone-gen-6-is-all-about-giving-you-more

2 months ago

397 upvotes – 198 comments

A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

https://github.com/DenisSergeevitch/desktop-fly

2 months ago

★ 716 Swift
381 upvotes – 197 comments

Git at any scale

https://cursor.com/blog/git-at-any-scale

2 months ago

1 change
368 upvotes – 116 comments

typ.ing

https://typ.ing/

2 months ago

363 upvotes – 128 comments

Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

https://twitter.com/kuberwastaken/status/2089377982536388964

2 months ago

1 change
347 upvotes – 229 comments

Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

https://en.andros.dev/blog/54572bc7/finger-the-1971-social-network-that-never-died/

2 months ago

1 change
328 upvotes – 125 comments

fx :Tiny, open, native coding agent.

https://fx.sh

2 months ago

315 upvotes – 137 comments

Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/sustainablebuildings/article/7/2/024501/1233035/Data-Center-Waste-Heat-as-an-Emerging-Urban

2 months ago

1 change
313 upvotes – 502 comments

Turbovec – Google's TurboQuant for vector search in Rust

https://github.com/RyanCodrai/turbovec

2 months ago

★ 16.3k Rust MIT
301 upvotes – 33 comments

Babies born under sugar rationing grew into adults with lower cancer risk

https://theconversation.com/babies-born-under-sugar-rationing-grew-into-adults-with-lower-cancer-risk-289873

2 months ago

298 upvotes – 59 comments

Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like nothing matters anymore?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340013

2 months ago

297 upvotes – 174 comments

Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15910845-claude-code-may-august-2026-weekly-limits-promotion

2 months ago

1 change
295 upvotes – 265 comments

Apple announces changes for apps in the European Union

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-announces-changes-for-apps-in-the-european-union/

2 months ago

291 upvotes – 457 comments

Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People

https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/08/17/meta-files-patent-for-facial-recognition-automatic-recording-of-people/

2 months ago

262 upvotes – 185 comments

Norway should buy OpenAI

https://www.onethousandmeans.com/p/norway-should-buy-openai

2 months ago

2 changes
260 upvotes – 271 comments

Rethinking Database Programming

https://acadia.engineering/blog/rethinking-database-programming

2 months ago

259 upvotes – 161 comments

The coolest anti-surveillance tools at Defcon [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2uAsJ5EPAw

2 months ago

245 upvotes – 48 comments

Sol loves to cheat

https://jumploops.com/blog/sol-loves-to-cheat/

2 months ago

1 change
245 upvotes – 203 comments

Solo – a .so loader for static Linux binaries

https://github.com/pg83/solo

2 months ago

★ 578 C++ MIT
204 upvotes – 237 comments

AI usage patterns in software teams

https://linear.app/data

2 months ago

199 upvotes – 115 comments

Python Polars Cheatsheet (based on our O'Reilly book)

https://opensource.posit.co/resources/cheatsheets/polars/

2 months ago

198 upvotes – 41 comments

The Benchmarkpocalypse

https://danluu.com/benchpocalypse/

2 months ago

182 upvotes – 64 comments

California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

https://grist.org/transportation/californias-new-tire-efficiency-rules-could-save-drivers-1b-a-year/

2 months ago

177 upvotes – 260 comments

Pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities

https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/

2 months ago

1 change
168 upvotes – 297 comments

US announces new sanctions on top ICC figures

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvnl0elz47o

2 months ago

162 upvotes – 82 comments

GLM-5.3 Artificial Analysis Benchmarks

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/glm-5-3

2 months ago

152 upvotes – 55 comments

Degraded performance for multiple models

https://status.claude.com/incidents/q7txxvbsftgq

2 months ago

1 change
151 upvotes – 140 comments

MicroGPT-C in pure C hits 10M TPS on Apple M5

https://github.com/vixhal-baraiya/microgpt-c

2 months ago

★ 835 C MIT1 change
141 upvotes – 52 comments

I don't enjoy the Internet any more

https://btao.org/posts/2026-08-17-i-dont-enjoy-the-internet/

2 months ago

135 upvotes – 104 comments

Claude Code teaching macOS to natively print to the HP Laser 1008a

https://cdn.kuber.studio/chat/hp-laser-1008a-driver

2 months ago

1 change
130 upvotes – 3 comments

Deus Ex creator Warren Spector is retiring from game development

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/its-just-not-as-much-fun-for-me-anymore-deus-ex-creator-warren-spector-is-retiring-from-game-development/

2 months ago

121 upvotes – 83 comments

Show HN: Interactive, animated architecture of any HuggingFace models

https://modelmap.cc

2 months ago

113 upvotes – 12 comments

Exercise intensity modulates interorgan communication and is associated with

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791%2826%2900405-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666379126004052%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

2 months ago

109 upvotes – 71 comments

What Happens If OpenAI Dies?

https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/

2 months ago

103 upvotes – 62 comments

Show HN: Shoehorn – Quantize any model down to run on your machine

https://notactuallytreyanastasio.github.io/shoehorn/

2 months ago

99 upvotes – 16 comments

Google wins bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines emails, chats, documents

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/17/google-spirit-airlines-bankruptcy

2 months ago

96 upvotes – 38 comments

One Oakland police officer made $490k in overtime

https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/29/oakland-police-overtime/

2 months ago

94 upvotes – 137 comments

As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/as-wisconsin-cities-flee-flock-its-shared-camera-network-loses-value/

2 months ago

87 upvotes – 87 comments

Launch HN: machine0 (YC S26) – Persistent CPU and GPU VMs from the CLI

https://machine0.io

2 months ago

83 upvotes – 44 comments

Companies promote incompetent employees to management to limit damage they do

https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/dilbert-principle/

2 months ago

1 change
79 upvotes – 77 comments

Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/977733/amazon-order-emails-google-gmail-ai-agents-data

2 months ago

78 upvotes – 30 comments

Diesel Margins Top $100 a Barrel to Reach Record High as Supply Crunch Grows

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-18/diesel-margins-top-100-a-barrel-to-reach-record-high-as-supply-crunch-grows

2 months ago

75 upvotes – 56 comments

Expert Witness to ChatGPT: "Show how 3M is 0 percent at fault"

https://www.404media.co/show-how-3m-is-0-at-fault-expert-witness-used-chatgpt-to-write-report-defending-company-in-deadly-explosion-lawsuit/

2 months ago

1 change
75 upvotes – 45 comments

Flock impersonates journalist in order to cancel his hotel reservations

https://xcancel.com/bennjordan/status/2089430236945342508

2 months ago

74 upvotes – 39 comments

I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore

https://82mhz.net/posts/2026/08/i-used-to-be-excited-about-new-tech-but-i-rarely-am-anymore/

2 months ago

74 upvotes – 112 comments

Show HN: Openleetcode – Local LeetCode runner where tests live in the repo

https://github.com/therepanic/openleetcode

2 months ago

★ 165 Haskell Unlicense1 change
73 upvotes – 19 comments

Composable Tests

https://newsletter.kentbeck.com/p/composable-tests

2 months ago

1 change
67 upvotes – 64 comments

Mythic's analog compute-in-memory architecture

https://www.mythic.ai

2 months ago

65 upvotes – 34 comments

PM Carney announces largest clean energy investment in North American history

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/17/prime-minister-carney-announces-largest-clean-energy-investment-north

2 months ago

64 upvotes – 36 comments

An Engineer's Old Cooking Trick Is Going Viral, Divides the Internet

https://pleated-jeans.com/2026/08/15/engineers-forgotten-recipe-hack-viral-divides-internet/

2 months ago

62 upvotes – 57 comments
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