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Show HN: Poddley.com – Follow people, not podcasts

https://poddley.com/guests/ana-kasparian/episodes
1•onesandofgrain•1m ago•0 comments

Layoffs Surge 118% in January – The Highest Since 2009

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/layoff-and-hiring-announcements-hit-their-worst-january-levels-si...
2•karakoram•1m ago•0 comments

Papyrus 114: Homer's Iliad

https://p114.homemade.systems/
1•mwenge•2m ago•1 comments

DicePit – Real-time multiplayer Knucklebones in the browser

https://dicepit.pages.dev/
1•r1z4•2m ago•1 comments

Turn-Based Structural Triggers: Prompt-Free Backdoors in Multi-Turn LLMs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14340
2•PaulHoule•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Agent Tool That Keeps You in the Loop

https://github.com/dshearer/misatay
2•dshearer•5m ago•0 comments

Why Every R Package Wrapping External Tools Needs a Sitrep() Function

https://drmowinckels.io/blog/2026/sitrep-functions/
1•todsacerdoti•5m ago•0 comments

Achieving Ultra-Fast AI Chat Widgets

https://www.cjroth.com/blog/2026-02-06-chat-widgets
1•thoughtfulchris•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Runtime Fence – Kill switch for AI agents

https://github.com/RunTimeAdmin/ai-agent-killswitch
1•ccie14019•9m ago•1 comments

Researchers surprised by the brain benefits of cannabis usage in adults over 40

https://nypost.com/2026/02/07/health/cannabis-may-benefit-aging-brains-study-finds/
1•SirLJ•11m ago•0 comments

Peter Thiel warns the Antichrist, apocalypse linked to the 'end of modernity'

https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/peter-thiel-antichrist-greta-thunberg-end-of-modernity-billionaires/
1•randycupertino•12m ago•2 comments

USS Preble Used Helios Laser to Zap Four Drones in Expanding Testing

https://www.twz.com/sea/uss-preble-used-helios-laser-to-zap-four-drones-in-expanding-testing
2•breve•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Animated beach scene, made with CSS

https://ahmed-machine.github.io/beach-scene/
1•ahmedoo•18m ago•0 comments

An update on unredacting select Epstein files – DBC12.pdf liberated

https://neosmart.net/blog/efta00400459-has-been-cracked-dbc12-pdf-liberated/
1•ks2048•18m ago•0 comments

Was going to share my work

1•hiddenarchitect•21m ago•0 comments

Pitchfork: A devilishly good process manager for developers

https://pitchfork.jdx.dev/
1•ahamez•21m ago•0 comments

You Are Here

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/02/07/you-are-here.html
3•mltvc•26m ago•1 comments

Why social apps need to become proactive, not reactive

https://www.heyflare.app/blog/from-reactive-to-proactive-how-ai-agents-will-reshape-social-apps
1•JoanMDuarte•26m ago•1 comments

How patient are AI scrapers, anyway? – Random Thoughts

https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/07/how-patient-are-ai-scrapers-anyway/
1•samtrack2019•27m ago•0 comments

Vouch: A contributor trust management system

https://github.com/mitchellh/vouch
2•SchwKatze•27m ago•0 comments

I built a terminal monitoring app and custom firmware for a clock with Claude

https://duggan.ie/posts/i-built-a-terminal-monitoring-app-and-custom-firmware-for-a-desktop-clock...
1•duggan•28m ago•0 comments

Tiny C Compiler

https://bellard.org/tcc/
2•guerrilla•29m ago•0 comments

Y Combinator Founder Organizes 'March for Billionaires'

https://mlq.ai/news/ai-startup-founder-organizes-march-for-billionaires-protest-against-californi...
1•hidden80•30m ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Need feedback on the idea I'm working on

1•Yogender78•30m ago•0 comments

OpenClaw Addresses Security Risks

https://thebiggish.com/news/openclaw-s-security-flaws-expose-enterprise-risk-22-of-deployments-un...
2•vedantnair•31m ago•0 comments

Apple finalizes Gemini / Siri deal

https://www.engadget.com/ai/apple-reportedly-plans-to-reveal-its-gemini-powered-siri-in-february-...
1•vedantnair•31m ago•0 comments

Italy Railways Sabotaged

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czr4rx04xjpo
10•vedantnair•32m ago•2 comments

Emacs-tramp-RPC: high-performance TRAMP back end using MsgPack-RPC

https://github.com/ArthurHeymans/emacs-tramp-rpc
1•fanf2•33m ago•0 comments

Nintendo Wii Themed Portfolio

https://akiraux.vercel.app/
2•s4074433•37m ago•2 comments

"There must be something like the opposite of suicide "

https://post.substack.com/p/there-must-be-something-like-the
1•rbanffy•39m ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Think Weirder: The Year's Best SciFi Ideas

https://thinkweirder.com
133•mooreds•3mo ago

Comments

pelagicAustral•2mo ago
Sadly, no PDF version available... meh...
mojoe•2mo ago
email me at joe@thinkweirder.com and I'll get you a PDF!
pelagicAustral•2mo ago
done! =)
shinymarmot•2mo ago
Bought a copy - unfortunately that site only has a link to an Amazon DRM version. Link to purchase a DRM free epub is available here: https://compellingsciencefiction.com/posts/think-weirder-is-...
shinymarmot•2mo ago
Ha - immediately taken down. It's fine to not want folks to use the discount anymore, but please provide an option besides renting from Amazon.
mojoe•2mo ago
Publisher here, this link still works for a discounted DRM-free epub: https://thinkweirder.kit.com/products/think-weirder-volume-1...
shinymarmot•2mo ago
Ah sorry, I checked the second time from Firefox with tracking protection on, which just returns a blank page. Works fine on Chrome/Safari.
atlasunshrugged•2mo ago
Just ordered, thanks for sharing!
hn_acc1•2mo ago
Cool. In for one.
Loughla•2mo ago
Perfect. Thanks!
criddell•2mo ago
Why include DRM in your Amazon ebook? I know Tor's books are DRM-free on Amazon and it would be nice to see more publishers do the same.
mojoe•2mo ago
I did not. It should be DRM-free on Amazon as well!
scrollop•2mo ago
Is this in epub?

Doesn't say.

EDIT: Confirmed it is epub (bought it).

385 p

dupdup•2mo ago
After purchase I am able to send it to my amazon fire tablet using send to amazon https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle
Semaphor•2mo ago
Included in kindle unlimited, I think that's the most expensive KU book I've seen at 8.68€ normal price
Animats•2mo ago
Never heard of any of those authors. Is this the year's best ideas, or just the ones for which an unknown aggregator could get republication rights?
gsf_emergency_4•2mo ago
Greg Egan?

I've heard of Lance, another scientist-writer of the same mold

https://www.bayviewmagazine.com/article/2024/06/write-what-y...

KingFelix•2mo ago
Egan has some pretty awesome books, I've read Permutation City and Axiomatic both pretty great.
mojoe•2mo ago
Hi, I'm the editor, I chose the stories. I read 391 short science fiction stories published last year (all the stories in the big science fiction magazines and a few smaller ones), and selected these sixteen.

None of the authors I reached out to refused to sell me reprint rights, so there was no bottleneck there.

I'm a software engineer who enjoys near-future concept-driven science fiction, so if that's not your thing then you might not agree with my choices. The stories I look for are the ones where I think "wow, this contains ideas that reflect something interesting about reality".

micheles•2mo ago
I like far-future concept-driven science fiction, is there something for me too?
adaml_623•2mo ago
That would be in, "The Year 3000's Best SciFi Ideas"
mojoe•2mo ago
There are only two stories in the collection that feel a little further out:

"Best Practices for Safe Asteroid Handling" by David W. Goodman feels like a smart, polished successor to golden age space opera, it's set in a future where the solar system is colonized, but not thousands of years out.

Grant Collier's "The Best Version of Yourself" is also not set very far into the future, but it's a kind of post-human future so it might have far-future vibes for you. This specific story is actually available free online, so you don't have to purchase the anthology to read it: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/collier_07_24/

babelfish•2mo ago
Out of curiosity, how do reprint rights work? I assume you give each author some percentage of the proceeds of the book?

I purchased the DRM-free epub :-)

mojoe•2mo ago
Thanks!

I pay a fixed rate up-front for reprint rights, which is a one-time deal. This is mostly because pro rata royalties on an anthology are a pain (I've done this before, it involves sending out lots of tiny single-digit-dollar checks), but also because it's unlikely for me to make back the money I spend on anthology creation (science fiction short stories are a tiny market).

This is a hobby project for me, I'm obsessed with trying to get more people to read science fiction short stories. I spent about $6k creating the anthology (to pay for cover art, reprint rights, proof prints, etc), and I'll probably recoup about half of what I spent? We'll see, I'm currently testing various marketing strategies.

atlasunshrugged•2mo ago
This is really amazing, thank you for taking the time and spending the resources to share these stories!
KingFelix•2mo ago
This is really amazing, I was daydreaming recently and thought how cool it would be to create something like that. I am glad that you've taken the initiative to get it going. Looks awesome will check it out, love Greg Bear too, just recommended Blood Music to a good friend.
robocat•2mo ago
Do you have a link to how we can donate to you or a project you are part of?

I likely won't get the book (space issues).

mojoe•2mo ago
Thank you for offering, but I don't have any channel for donations -- I'm grateful that my software work enables me do projects like this without worrying too much about the funding part.
crooked-v•2mo ago
I don't meant to be insulting about it, but I'm a little surprised you would pay for new cover art, but not for a more professional design for the cover in general. The current design seems very obviously 'amateur' to me in a way that I automatically associate with vanity press or other low-quality works, and I think it would have been more beneficial to pay more attention to the layout and typography even if that meant just using stock art.
twentyfiveoh1•2mo ago
I would love to hear more about your point of view. I love science fiction but short stories always feel off the mark to me. Either fluff that shouldn't have been written, or something so good it's bitter-sweet that you read it and nothing more will come of it. Where did your obsession and love for the format come from?
financetechbro•2mo ago
You should checkout the short stories by JG Ballard. He does a great job with the medium
twentyfiveoh1•2mo ago
Will do ! Thank you.
mojoe•2mo ago
I think your feeling is probably the most common one, which is why short science fiction readers are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. One of the reasons novels are much more popular than short fiction (orders of magnitude more popular) is because once you find a world you enjoy you can sit in it for a while. With short fiction as soon as you build up the world in your head it's done and you have to move on to the next one.

I like jumping from world to world more than the average person -- I'm happy getting that new, novel idea and then jumping to the next thing. I understand I'm atypical, but I think there's probably a higher percentage of people like me on HN than there are in the overall population.

twentyfiveoh1•2mo ago
I picked it up :) Your passion for it and the care you put into it makes me want to read it.
mojoe•2mo ago
Thank you, I hope you enjoy it!
yencabulator•2mo ago
This is a big part of the appeal of short stories, to me. Either the story is brilliant, or I can skip to the next one quickly; churning through a 400-page book in the hopes of it getting better later is much worse. Or even worse, hearing rumors that it gets better in book #3 of a 5-book series. I hate how current-day publishers feel the need to tell authors to bloat their books because that's what sells. When an author ends up with 1.4 books worth of material, the good answer is to tighten it up, not split it into two books.

Then again, I most love really short stories. It's a challenge I enjoy, to do as much worldbuilding as possible in as few words as I can, while still having a plot and even more to the point telling a story that's bigger inside the reader's imagination that it is on paper.

For example, here's something I wrote way back when, that Joe Stech (the editor/publisher here) published in 2016. 747 words is not even a short story!

https://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/seedsofwar.html

IvyMike•2mo ago
I'm so happy that you get to discover Greg Egan. If you can find a copy of Axiomatic, start there.
howdyhowdy123•2mo ago
Not even Greg Egan? He's pretty popular.
jgon•2mo ago
One of the short stories in this collection "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" by Isabel J. Kim, won the BSFA award for short fiction, the Locus award for Best Short Story, the Nebula award for Best Short Story, and was nominated for a Hugo for Best Short Story. So I think that should pretty firmly answer your question on the relative quality of the works included.
attentive•2mo ago
I guess the reason it won all those awards is the same reason I dislike it as much. It's more of a political pamphlet than a sci-fi. Definitely far from "Best SciFi Ideas".
Scarblac•2mo ago
Greg Egan at least is well known in hard science fiction and frequently mentioned on HN.
dylan604•2mo ago
What's up with the ? after the author's name in the little blurbs about each story? Is the author of something being published really in question?
mojoe•2mo ago
Are you referring to this?

"How will it use these memories, while simultaneously protecting its young charge, in THE LARK ASCENDING by ELEANNA CASTROIANNI?"

This is just a rhetorical device, I think it's called a 'hook question'. It's probably unclear due to the distracting colors and capitalization.

davnicwil•2mo ago
I bought a copy on launch and working my way through. There's some really excellent stuff in here, fiction is a great way to analyse and get thinking about how the near-ish future could look, and that's what the theme of this collection is.
dylan604•2mo ago
That's what makes Black Mirror so compelling. It's not flights of fancy with things like FTL traveling through space. It's taking slight twists to the darker side of where our tech leaders are taking us. At least someone is thinking these things through to the end even if our teach leaders are only thinking through to the $$$$. Too bad these stories are never enough to slow things down and used as "oooh, let's not let our tech come to that".
asacrowflies•2mo ago
Yeah a lot like older sci Fi works I think we won't take the warnings. Glad we aren't completely blind to it tho. Remind me of the "1984 was not a manual" memes
jandrese•2mo ago
The meme about the Torment Nexus continues to be worryingly relevant in the modern world.
fragmede•2mo ago
OH that's the fantasy that people like watching that show under! I hate that show's premise because reality is depressing enough, my mind easily conjures up shit going wrong, and (as an adult) I don't need a TV show giving me more nightmare fuel. Plus, that one episode where we all wear glasses that let you delete people by not seeing them seems like a instruction manual to tech giants working on AR glasses. Apple airpod noise cancellation already does this for audio, Apple Vision or Meta glasses doing that for visual pollution seems not that far behind. It would be nice to walk around the neighborhood and not see any billboards. Not seeing people that wrote wrong things on Twitter seems like it's just a GitHub repo away.
pbhjpbhj•2mo ago
Maybe one could hack it to block out adverts? There would be a sudden impulse towards "moral conscience" meaning the feature had to be removed.

Creating a World without adverts might be a route to utopia.

fragmede•2mo ago
You're absolutely right! let me get back to you after these messages from Coca cola!

I'm not an absolutist. How would you find out about new products in a world without advertising? There are ads I could do without, sure, but some do perform a useful function.

pbhjpbhj•2mo ago
Information and adverts are different.

I feel HN is probably not conducive to an extended conversation about where the line lies. But, ...

I'd loved to have an extended database of well structured factual information about products.

dylan604•2mo ago
Meta would never block ads. If anything, they would detect things like billboards and have the AR system replace them with ads bought through Meta's ad system. But blocking them completely so the user has an ad free life experience? Never.
fragmede•2mo ago
Meta wouldn't just not block ads, they'd use the eye tracking system in the apple goggles to charge advertisers for time you spent actually looking at the ads, and then also the ad countdown timer would only count down while you were actually watching the ad. Look away from the ad and the ad stops playing! (See? No black mirror necessary for my brain to dredge out some dystopian ass shit)
ad_hockey•2mo ago
That actually does happen in Black Mirror, in the episode Fifteen Million Merits. There's a sort of deafening siren that goes off if the characters look away from the ad without paying to skip it.
dylan604•2mo ago
> (See? No black mirror necessary for my brain to dredge out some dystopian ass shit)

oops. you poor poor fella. haven't we pretty much gotten to the point that if you've thought about it, someone else has also already thought it and released it? at least, that's my core belief in any thing clever I think I might have just thought.

fragmede•2mo ago
I'm not saying it in a "look at me I'm so smaht" sort of way, I'm saying that as an explanation as to why I don't want to watch black mirror
everyone•2mo ago
cool
throwanem•2mo ago
Good to see a couple stories here I first read in Clarkesworld! If you're a fan of the old-school SF magazine as form, there's no better place to go lately, in my view, and Neil's editorial taste is excellent - if you like this anthology, you'll enjoy the magazine, also. Take a look!

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/

mojoe•2mo ago
Thank you for posting a link to Neil's magazine! I think he's the best short-form editor working in SFF today.
shawn_w•2mo ago
I occasionally encounter a story in Clarkesworld that I don't click with and skip over, but most of them range from like to love (I really hope The Apologists¹ from this month's issue wins some awards).

Even though he makes each issue free to read online, I've been buying it Kobo every month for around a year now to help support the magazine. Too bad the platform doesn't seem to support subscriptions so I don't have to manually buy each issue.

[1] https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/thompson_11_25/

TheCoelacanth•2mo ago
IMO, if you like every single story that a magazine publishes, the editor is playing it too safe and not doing their job properly.

The biggest advantage of short fiction magazines over longer form is that it's a lower stakes way to try out new ideas and ways of telling stories and to expose readers to new authors.

Doing that means taking some risks and publishing some stories that won't always land with readers.

astroflection•2mo ago
A few non-Amazon links for you:

https://www.alibris.com/Think-Weirder-Volume-1-The-Years-Bes...

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/think-weirde...

ortusdux•2mo ago
Reminds me of The Best American Nonrequired Reading series:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_American_Nonrequired_...

Ironically, the 5th ed was required reading in my ENG 101 course. It included a collection of Onion headlines. I will never forget "CIA realizes they have been using black highlighters all these years."

soupfordummies•2mo ago
Oh man, I used to love this series. Weird that this comment just jogged my memory that I dreamed last night they brought it back.
robocat•2mo ago
A shame the front image is so irrationally greebled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble

SciFi art continues its strange stylistic journey.

Makes me want to look through my old SciFi art books.

Edit: The Greeble article refers to the art term diapering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapering

octaane•2mo ago
I agree, but just a heads up: the front images for most scifi novels these days (and for the past few decades) have largely been out of the hands of the writer. The publishing house pretty much unilaterally decides on the cover for marketing reasons.
robocat•2mo ago
Author said they paid for the cover art: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879213 (of course that doesn't mean they chose it).

I actually like the art - but I'm somewhat eclectic.

mojoe•2mo ago
Just confirming that yes, I chose the art. It's hard to please everyone with a project like this, I'm glad you like it!
crooked-v•2mo ago
I'm a bit sad they only have an ebook on, and only link to, Amazon, and not somewhere more ethical, like Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/p/books/think-weirder-volume-1-the-year...).
raincole•2mo ago
I know this site is full of ads, but isn't this a little bit too much? It's just a link to buy a book on Amazon. At least pretend to have hacker spirit, wrap it as "how I use {insert open source book layout software} to make a book" and sell DRM-free epub or something. Where is the usual HN hatred towards DRM, Amazon and copyright...
SideburnsOfDoom•2mo ago
There has been a gap in the market ever since Gardner Dozois died and "The Year's Best Science Fiction" ceased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year%27s_Best_Science_Fict...

shawn_w•2mo ago
I've been enjoying The Long List anthology series put out by Diabolical Plots. Stories that were nominated for a Hugo but didn't get enough of them to make the final ballot. It's up to 9 volumes.

https://www.diabolicalplots.com/support/books/

mojoe•2mo ago
I'm the editor, and I actually used LaTeX to typeset the book and wrote my own Python software to keep track of all the story metadata while I was evaluating stories over the course of the last year, I should write a post about that :)
dang•2mo ago
Please do! and email us at hn@ycombinator.com if you submit it to Hacker News.
oraphalous•2mo ago
I bought the book - looks good! Would be keen to know which magazines they were originally published in. I feel you should include those references in the book (forgive me if I've missed them.)
mojoe•2mo ago
All of the source references are in the section called "Permissions" at the end of the book, this is a common way that anthologies do references but I understand it is easy to miss!
BrenBarn•2mo ago
Very cool. I often wish for the ability to do something like this but with slightly friendlier GUI tools. In particular I long for a visual tool that has all the power and convenience of a spreadsheet, but supports other backends (like an SQL db or some directory-tree structure like in this post), with well-defined mechanisms for smoothly translating between them. I've looked at a few of the "database management" tools like DBeaver but it's hard to find anything that's as fluid as a spreadsheet.
HardwareLust•2mo ago
Looks great, early reviews are excellent! Wish-listed for sure.