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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/15012
537•bertman•6h ago•316 comments

Learn Prolog Now

https://lpn.swi-prolog.org/lpnpage.php?pageid=top
75•rramadass•2h ago•29 comments

Kubernetes Is Your Private Cloud

https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2025-11-12-kubernetes-is-your-private-cloud/view
22•ndhandala•1h ago•27 comments

Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/metas-chief-ai-scientist-yann-lecun-depart-and-launch-ai-start-fo...
656•MindBreaker2605•9h ago•470 comments

The Geometry Behind Normal Maps

https://www.shlom.dev/articles/geometry-behind-normal-maps/
69•betamark•3h ago•3 comments

Micro.blog launches new 'Studio' tier with video hosting

https://heydingus.net/blog/2025/11/micro-blog-offers-an-indie-alternative-to-youtube-with-its-stu...
39•justin-reeves•3h ago•12 comments

Ioannis Yannas invented artificial skin for treatment of burns–dies at 90

https://news.mit.edu/2025/professor-ioannis-yannas-dies-1027
42•bookofjoe•1w ago•1 comments

Waymo begins freeway rides for the public

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/12/waymo-robotaxis-are-now-giving-rides-on-freeways-in-these-3-cit...
61•nharada•1h ago•32 comments

What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-transmeta-the-last-big-dotcom-ipo/
132•onename•8h ago•68 comments

Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article

https://twitter.com/omar_quraishi/status/1988518627859951986
347•wg0•5h ago•125 comments

Testing out Crush, a TUI based coding agent

https://grahamhelton.com/blog/crushing-it
6•eustoria•1h ago•0 comments

The PowerPC Has Still Got It (Llama on G4 Laptop)

https://www.hackster.io/news/the-powerpc-has-still-got-it-c4348bd7a88c
16•stmw•50m ago•6 comments

Laptops with Stickers

https://stickertop.art/main/
555•z303•1w ago•601 comments

A Vision of Chocolate's Future in an Amsterdam Brownie

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-opinion-future-of-chocolate/
44•laurex•5d ago•32 comments

X5.1 solar flare, G4 geomagnetic storm watch

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/view/593/20251111-x5-1-solar-flare-g4-geomagnetic-storm-...
374•sva_•19h ago•105 comments

NetHack4 Philosophy

http://nethack4.org/philosophy.html
8•suioir•1w ago•4 comments

Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

https://www.ntp.org/
282•gastonmorixe•9h ago•199 comments

Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB comms, and testing

https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/11/05/bluetooth-6-2-gets-more-responsive-improves-security-usb-...
201•zdw•6d ago•119 comments

Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2025/11/odd-places-to-see-londons-roman-wall.html
244•zeristor•18h ago•81 comments

I didn't reverse-engineer the protocol for my blood pressure monitor in 24 hours

https://james.belchamber.com/articles/blood-pressure-monitor-reverse-engineering/
314•jamesbelchamber•19h ago•120 comments

.NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

https://avaloniaui.net/blog/net-maui-is-coming-to-linux-and-the-browser-powered-by-avalonia
291•vyrotek•18h ago•236 comments

Simulating a Planet on the GPU: Part 1 (2022)

https://www.patrickcelentano.com/blog/planet-sim-part-1
98•Doches•10h ago•15 comments

Seaque Live Bell Test

https://research.physics.illinois.edu/QI/Photonics/SEAQUE/
10•EvgeniyZh•1w ago•2 comments

Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

https://openai.com/index/fighting-nyt-user-privacy-invasion
107•meetpateltech•3h ago•96 comments

Perkeep – Personal storage system for life

https://perkeep.org/
277•nikolay•13h ago•57 comments

The terminal of the future

https://jyn.dev/the-terminal-of-the-future
281•miguelraz•20h ago•146 comments

Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

https://pikaday.dbushell.com
274•mnemonet•1d ago•124 comments

Stochastic computing

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/stochastic-computing/
47•emmelaich•1w ago•5 comments

The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

https://steveblank.com/2025/11/11/the-department-of-war-just-shot-the-accountants-and-opted-for-s...
263•ridruejo•1d ago•424 comments

The history of Casio watches

https://www.casio.com/us/watches/50th/Heritage/1970s/
292•qainsights•3d ago•155 comments
Open in hackernews

Fungus in Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone has mutated to 'feed' on radiation (2024)

https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/fungus-chernobyl-mutated-feed-radiation-164735-20241217
49•thunderbong•2h ago

Comments

datadrivenangel•1h ago
Life finds a way.

We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.

chistev•1h ago
I was going to ask about plastic eating microbes in my comment. Even metal eating microbes. I wonder how we'll handle that when they start destroying the foundation of civilization. Lol
freehorse•1h ago
We will invent something to kill them, as usual.
cyberlimerence•1h ago
Only if antibiotic resistant bacteria don't kill us first.
chistev•1h ago
Always trust humans when united
datadrivenangel•1h ago
To a large extent, it probably won't be too bad because the density of plastics is still low in the general environment. If there are steep energy gradients, eventually life tends to take advantage of them.

Also there's the risk that we accidentally release some genetically modified bacteria and they prove to be hardier than expected.

dilawar•1h ago
I few months ago I learnt something related that may be a common knowledge to many here. I feel silly that I didn't know.

Earth had a plastic like problem before. There were no fungi that eat cellulose so dead trees were just piling up without degrading. Those trees turned into ~petroleum~ coal that we consume now.

That trees somehow turned into ~petroleum~ coal, I learnt in school. I used to imagine trees were somehow buried under stand suddenly and before they could be degraded they turned into ~petroleum~ coal under heavy pressure.

lucianbr•1h ago
Funny, we make plastics from petroleum, so it looks like some particular carbon atoms just don't want to go back in the circuit.
chistev•1h ago
You mean coal. Petroleum was from the dead animals from millions of years ago.
dilawar•54m ago
Yes. Thanks. Fixed it.
observationist•53m ago
Algae and phytoplankton, but mostly algae. Not large creatures, generally. You'd get massive blooms with phyto/zoo plankton die-offs, they'd settle, then get buried in sand and sediment. Over centuries and millenia, you'd get cyclic deposits, creating massive accumulations, and then over geologic timeframes, you get pockets of striated deposits of these decomposing materials in high heat and pressure conditions. Once the deposits liquefy, they all flow into a common area.

Depending on the conditions and chemistry, you can get coal from ancient algal sources, but you can't get petroleum / liquid oil from ancient forests - the chemistry doesn't work out. You need lots of water and heat and pressure, single cell structures. Lots of cellulose and lignin means you don't get the liquefaction and mixing, forcing the material to carbonize and compress instead.

rpdillon•1h ago
Yes, the Carboniferous Period! I learned about this a few years ago and was astonished.

> The world at beginning of the Carboniferous period was a humid, tropical place. Seasons, if any, were indistinct. The Carboniferous trees and plants resembled those that live in tropical and mildly temperate areas today. They grew in wetlands and were shallow-rooted. This, combined with their great height and ponderous weight, was a bad combination, because these enormous trees would regularly become uprooted and topple into the marshy ground, landing on other trees that preceded them.

> Here is where fate steps in. Although trees had evolved lignin and cellulose, no bacteria that could digest these woody substances had yet evolved. In fact, those bacteria would take another 60 million years to evolve. All this time huge trees kept growing, crashing into the swampy ground, and piling up on top of uncounted other trees, getting buried deeper and deeper into the ground. Over millions of years, subjected to the heat and pressure of deep burial, the carbon in these trees was converted into the fossil fuels we know and love today – coal, oil, and natural gas. All the fossil fuels we use were produced during this 60-million year period.

https://emagazine.com/carbon-in-trees/

lucianbr•53m ago
All the fossil fuels? Aren't some made of dead dinosaurs?
tartuffe78•46m ago
There has been a lot more plant biomass over the eons than dinosaurs
andai•1h ago
Isn't that nuts? It took like 50 million years.

Meanwhile we got plastic-eating bacteria after like 100 years.

amelius•1h ago
We might soon need silicon-eating microbes.
HPsquared•1h ago
Very hard to do because silicon dioxide (aka quartz / glass) forms an inert physical barrier to prevent further oxidation. Kinetics and diffusion say no!
maplant•1h ago
I’m not even remotely close to knowledgeable on this subject but I assume metal eating microbes are not possible because metals are not molecular and therefore there’s nothing for them to be broken down into
chistev•12m ago
Why is this being down voted? It's a question?
benchly•55m ago
This was my take for a short story I banged out one week after reading about the metal-eating microbes. Basically, humanity was all "three cheers for these little guys helping us fix all the pollution, etc" then shifting to "huh, that's an awful lot of changes happening to the gas content of the air and oh, didn't you corporate guys who sold us these solutions say you had these microbes under control? Oh, you did? But...like past tense?"

I read too much dystopian sci-fi to write much else, but in truth, I have pretty high hopes for these garbage-eating microbes.

shagie•1h ago
> We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well

https://big.ucdavis.edu/blog/plastic-eating-microbe

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

November 4th : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251104013023.h...

> Beneath the ocean’s surface, bacteria have evolved specialized enzymes that can digest PET plastic, the material used in bottles and clothes. Researchers at KAUST discovered that a unique molecular signature distinguishes enzymes capable of efficiently breaking down plastic. Found in nearly 80% of ocean samples, these PETase variants show nature’s growing adaptation to human pollution.

perihelions•1h ago
Also an HN thread,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886479 ("Widespread distribution of bacteria containing PETases across global oceans (oup.com)"—1 day ago, 72 comments)

(The new $300 iPhone thong is made of PET (polyester), so, it's reassuring to know the universe does have the capability to unmake those).

ilt•28m ago
Thong… omg haha
nielsbot•10m ago
Haha but pedantically it’s a correct use of the word :)

> A narrow strip of material, typically leather, used to fasten, bind, or secure objects.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thong

raverbashing•1h ago
It does find, though last time evolution took some million years to figure out how to break polymers. (That period is known as the Carboniferous period)
krige•1h ago
Well, good thing it had a head start now.
jijijijij•20m ago
I think this is a fallacious expectation. For most environments, I don't see why there would be selective pressure towards plastic degradation. That is, "burning" plastic as fuel would likely require the absence of an alternative. Obviously this hasn't happened with coal or oil, although those are energy dense fuels. There are already organisms which have the enzymatic means for the break down of some plastics. Given the omnipresence of plastic pollution, if there was selective pressure, we would probably have seen some specialization already. Especially for microbes. It took a looong time before fungi were able to breakdown lignin. Before that, the only thing removing dead trees was fire. So... there is a good chance we are going to see shit all. Especially on land.
Razengan•1h ago
It had to be fucking fungus

Apparently trees used to lay fallen on the ground for millions (?) of years before fungus evolved to eat them, and since then there has been no new coal.

(I may be wildly off on the specifics but that is the gist I got from reading stuff here and there)

I swear fungi are the coolest and most "alien" lifeforms on this planet next to cephalopods ଳ

Or they're the original and we're the alien

Rooster61•1h ago
Fungi existed before plants, and definitely before plants evolved to the point of being what we'd consider trees. In fact, we find large fungi fossils that once likely lined the landscape like trees do now.
junon•1h ago
Just fact checked this. TIL, for some reason I thought plants came before fungi.
codesnik•1h ago
I think idea was that fungi for some time couldn't consume lignin in fallen trees.
Razengan•1h ago
They could consume ligma just fine tho
Rooster61•1h ago
I mean, this isn't THAT surprising. Photosynthesis after all is just radiosynthesis of electromagnetic radiation in the visible or near visible spectrum. Gamma radiation is the same phenomenon, just with a far higher frequency and enough energy to ionize molecules.

The chemical process obviously has to differ considering gamma radiation has enough energy to knock off electrons, but once you deal with that, it's energy ripe for the taking. I'm not shocked that life finds a way to harness that energy where abundant.

In fact, had life come about on an Earth with a weaker magnetic field, it may have relied more on gamma radiation than visible light, especially considering the larger potential amount of consumable energy present in gamma rays.

rdtsc•1h ago
Found a paper on it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1866175/pdf/pone.00...

> we cautiously suggest that the ability of melanin to capture electromagnetic radiation combined with its remarkable oxidation-reduction properties may confer upon melanotic organisms the ability to harness radiation for metabolic energy. The enhanced growth of melanotic fungi in conditions of radiation fluxes suggests the need for additional investigation to ascertain the mechanism for this effect.

ge96•1h ago
Space shield?
0cf8612b2e1e•1h ago
In the Expanse books, space colonies would consume algae. Using some alien woo-woo, they engineered one with a superior yield because it could supplement its inputs with radiation.
throwup238•38m ago
In the short lived HBO comedy Avenue 5 the ship was surrounded by a “poop shield” that used human excrement as a radiation shield. Someone forgot to vent the system and it burst, sending feces flying in a small orbit around the ship.

Later on, one of the characters sees the face of Pope John Paul II in the poop and the owner of the spaceship (who was supposed to be played by Jack Black but instead Josh Gad ruined the entire series) sends up a laser light show to illuminate the dookies in space.

lo_zamoyski•1h ago
Content aside, it would be better if we avoided sources like UNILAD [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNILAD

wonks•1h ago
I'm honestly disappointed that this post got so much attention with such a dubious source. The article doesn't even link to a press release, as far as I can tell.
tokai•51m ago
It gives both the full name of fungus and the name of a researcher plus his affiliation. More information than you often get fore more 'reputable' sources. Criticizing something only on the basis of the source, while the actual content is completely fine, is peak cargo cult information literacy.
softwaredoug•1h ago
This sounds like a plot point in Project Hail Mary. Which has a microbe that lives off the sun, creating problems, and new technologies.
deepvibrations•1h ago
Wow, this is impressive. It's also the exact storyline from the animated series 'Common Side Effects', a really good series that feels more like watching a feature film.
drunkonvinyl•1h ago
The protomolecule???
Razengan•48m ago
Consider the sci-fi trope of "mutants" resulting from existing animals exposed to radiation, I think it may be more common and likely for just the "microbiome" like fungi and bacteria to mutate instead and then that could affect the macro fauna in new ways.
tempfile•35m ago
I assume it does not need to be mentioned that this does NOT "clean up" nuclear waste. It just means that the constant energy emitted by it can be harnessed by these fungi. The radioactive material will remain hazardous for the same amount of time as if the fungi did not exist.
astroflection•35m ago
https://archive.is/SGbVB
gorfian_robot•30m ago
they should spread some in fuel rod storage pools to see how it does