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All it takes is for one to work out

https://alearningaday.blog/2025/11/28/all-it-takes-is-for-one-to-work-out-2/
59•herbertl•54m ago•27 comments

Show HN: Nano PDF – A CLI Tool to Edit PDFs with Gemini's Nano Banana

https://github.com/gavrielc/Nano-PDF
14•GavCo•33m ago•2 comments

Be Like Clippy

https://be-clippy.com/
62•Aloha•1h ago•40 comments

Zero knowlege proof of compositeness

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2025/11/29/zkp-composite/
54•ColinWright•3h ago•13 comments

Student Perceptions of AI Coding Assistants in Learning

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22900
40•victorbuilds•3h ago•38 comments

The Origins of Scala (2009)

https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala
12•todsacerdoti•1h ago•2 comments

Rare X-ray images of a 4.5-ton satellite that returned intact from space

https://www.empa.ch/web/s604/eureca-satellit-mit-roentgenmethoden-untersucht
14•giuliomagnifico•3d ago•0 comments

An update on the Farphone's battery

https://far.computer/battery-update/
22•louismerlin•1d ago•28 comments

Show HN: Network Monitor – a GUI to spot anomalous connections on your Linux

51•grigio•5d ago•17 comments

Post-mortem of Shai-Hulud attack on November 24th, 2025

https://posthog.com/blog/nov-24-shai-hulud-attack-post-mortem
6•makepanic•3d ago•4 comments

Bronze Age mega-settlement in Kazakhstan has advanced urban planning, metallurgy

https://archaeologymag.com/2025/11/bronze-age-mega-settlement-in-kazakhstan/
98•CGMthrowaway•1w ago•18 comments

Hardening the C++ Standard Library at scale

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3773097
82•ndesaulniers•6d ago•33 comments

Hachi: An Image Search Engine

https://eagledot.xyz/hachi.md.html
103•warangal•7h ago•13 comments

Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Framework-Sponsoring-LVFS
63•LorenDB•2h ago•3 comments

AccessOwl (YC S22) Is Hiring a Technical Account Manager (IAM)

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/accessowl/jobs/dGC3pcO-technical-account-manager-identity-a...
1•philipeller•4h ago

Electric vehicle sales are booming in South America – without Tesla

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/electric-vehicle-sales-are-booming-south-am...
68•breve•2h ago•62 comments

The CRDT Dictionary: A Field Guide to Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types

https://www.iankduncan.com/engineering/2025-11-27-crdt-dictionary/
118•birdculture•8h ago•8 comments

DNS LOC Record (2014)

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-dns-loc-records/
114•mikejeays•7h ago•33 comments

Learning Feynman's Trick for Integrals

https://zackyzz.github.io/feynman.html
14•Zen1th•1h ago•0 comments

Anthony Bourdain's Lost Li.st's

https://bourdain.greg.technology/
178•gregsadetsky•3d ago•50 comments

Iceland declares ocean-current instability a national security risk

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/15/climate/iceland-warming-current-amoc-collapse-threat
273•donohoe•5h ago•110 comments

System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4

https://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=7711.0
307•ibobev•17h ago•93 comments

Ported freetype, fontconfig, harfbuzz, and graphite to Fil-C

https://twitter.com/filpizlo/status/1994563191528198653
31•jhatemyjob•1h ago•7 comments

Plinko PIR Tutorial

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/11/25/plinko.html
8•sygma•3d ago•0 comments

WinApps: Run Windows apps as if they were a part of the native Linux OS

https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
297•klaussilveira•4d ago•146 comments

Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-airbus-update-on-a320-family-precaution...
467•pyrophoenix•23h ago•156 comments

Building road signs at home using a Cricut Machine

https://annanay.dev/build-a-signboard/
29•annanay•3d ago•16 comments

WebR – R in the Browser

https://webr.sh/
89•creata•5d ago•27 comments

Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03506-6
149•_____k•5h ago•101 comments

Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

https://neberej.github.io/exposedbydefault/
194•coffeecoders•5d ago•68 comments
Open in hackernews

An update on the Farphone's battery

https://far.computer/battery-update/
22•louismerlin•1d ago

Comments

bbarnett•2h ago
[flagged]
growt•2h ago
I have multiple devices with lithium batteries plugged in 24/7. A kindle that I use as a display for example. So far nothing exploded. If exploding kindles were a thing I guess I would have heard.
lisper•2h ago
I have not had anything explode, but I have had Macbook batteries expand on me on two separate occasions to the point where the case was visibly warped. Both times I was away from home, so it was extremely inconvenient.
conradev•2h ago
For how long?
Induane•2h ago
I have a fire tablet I hucked into my wall to use as a home assistant console.

It's been in there for 5 years now, always plugged in.

neilv•1h ago
> I have a fire tablet I hucked into my wall to use as a home assistant console.

OK, but "fire" is right there, in the name.

misnome•41m ago
Right, but, this is just a single data point anecdote, right? Let’s say for same of argument that there is a 5% chance of overheating in five years - and another sub-percentage where this causes a fire, depending on where it is plugged in.

95%+ of people would report “zero problems here, all concern is overblown”.

Safety doesn’t work that way?

bbarnett•2h ago
Until the heat death of the universe, and a couple beyond.
Telaneo•2h ago
The fact that they can doesn't mean they will.

On older devices the controller might make some assumptions that holds true with a new battery, but very much doesn't with an old and worn one.

My Macs have all been sensible about it, but I've seen Windows machines with batteries that just died from being plugged in all the time not even 10 years ago. Even if that specific instance was just a bad battery and not due to a charge controller, I have no faith in Random Windows or Android OEM Number 582 doing this correctly.

For devices that are fixed, I'd prefer to eliminate the potential of there even being a problem in the first place.

oceanplexian•1h ago
There’s basically zero risk for these cell phone batteries outside of freak accidents, speaking as someone who who’s been building packs since pouch cell Lipos first started coming out for model airplanes back in 2008/2009.. That’s because in a single cell configuration, there’s no way for the charge controller to run up an imbalance and overcharge one of the cells.
joecool1029•1h ago
I somewhat agree with you. As my last comment suggests, I have a lot of experience running phones as AP’s including phones with dual cell configurations.

Where things go off the rails is situations where extreme heat can be present (shoving phone in direct sunlight in window with hot climate is a bad move) another thing they don’t tolerate well and people don’t talk enough about this is deep discharging the batteries frequently. This causes a breakdown of the SEI membrane and makes it so future recharging generates more heat and gas. This will cause expansion and might cause a short/failure if poorly designed (galaxy note 7).

pengaru•2h ago
I've gone through a dozen or so LiPo-utilizing portable devices at my property in the Mojave desert. All it takes is a single season for many of these batteries to swell up to such an extent the enclosures split open.

Ostensibly they contain charge controllers and temperature sensors, yet they're unable to prevent this outcome when the ambient temperature exceeds 110F day after day while the device stays on in a hot attic w/usb-c pd connected.

Fortunately I haven't had any burst into flames yet, but after a few years of seeing this pattern repeatedly I stopped deploying anything containing LiPo batteries at the property.

YMMV - but IMHO it's prudent to exclude these batteries from such unattended, powered 24x7 devices.

The_President•1h ago
Excellent advice. Did you swap any of the cells with a different chemistry?
pengaru•1h ago
Not really, there was a brief excursion in kludging a ZTE MiFi device to use a DIY NiMh pack of AA cells when it refused to stop self-destructing its OEM LiPo batteries every summer. (I use a MiFi hotspot for a cheap security camera network)

It worked as a stop-gap but I've since replaced it with a GL.Inet X300b ruggedized hotspot without any batteries.

There's no UPS for now... if I went the route of wanting uninterrupted power at the property I'd probably put a battery bank underground outside to power the entire building. It's not worth risking anything rechargeable inside the place given how hot it can get, and how long I sometimes go without visiting.

The_President•1h ago
Cheers, Thanks for the info.
pengaru•55m ago
I'm not sure how generally applicable it is. When you have several acres of undeveloped land full of sand at your disposal it's relatively trivial to dig a pit, mix some concrete from the sand you excavated, and pour a subterranean cellar to house a battery bank and other hazardous infrastructure. Nobody would even notice it happened/exists.

The situation is far more complicated for folks in apartments or high density housing.

joecool1029•1h ago
fwiw I’ve used 24/7/365 plugged in phones as AP’s in multiple locations for a decade or so now, never had an issue. Past few years I use the battery threshold to set them to 70% charge and they don’t move from this for months at a time.

What roasts the lifetime of my laptop batteries is compiling with gentoo, but again never an issue with catastrophic failure and I have 20+ years of experience with that as well.

immibis•1h ago
Most can, but you do get reports that sometimes they don't, and better safe than sorry.

I'd guess it would have more to do with heat, though.

dang•1h ago
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

daemonologist•1h ago
Three times I've been lazy and set up an old phone or tablet as an always-plugged-in stationary device without excising the battery, and that has produced two spicy pillows and one completely dead battery (phone wouldn't even boot when plugged in, until I replaced the battery). Granted, these were all 5-10 years ago, but I do not trust the batteries and their controllers in these devices.

Nowadays if I want to leave a device plugged in I crack it open, remove the battery cell, solder on a power supply and capacitor, and then do the nonsense with rooted Android to keep it from shutting itself down.

bayindirh•59m ago
That's silly. Batteries don't like to be kept at 100% all the time, not unlike your lungs which doesn't want to stay filled all the time (which is uncomfortable for your muscles even if you ignore the carbon dioxide).

e.g.: MacBooks discharge the battery down to 80% by using the battery even if it's plugged in by citing "Rarely used battery", and keep the battery at 80% for at least half a day, then charge it again.

Li-ion is an adversarial chemistry. You need to take care of it or the battery bites back by puffing up or losing capacity very fast, or becoming an indoor firework.

prmoustache•2h ago
I would have hooked the smartphone to a small solar panel. The natural daylight cycle would have made sure that the smartphone kept having charging and discharging cycles.

I doubt the traffic hitting it would be sufficient to drain the battery overnight.

aziaziazi•44m ago
an even smaller https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/ ?
cretinoid•1h ago
The real question is "what the hell is a farphone"?
bayindirh•1h ago
Your answer lies on https://far.computer

In short, far phone is the phone which powers far computer which is in turn served from https://far.computer

gassi•1h ago
> this webpage is hosted on a drawer-bound fairphone 2, running postmarketos

https://far.computer/how-to/

Reason077•31m ago
While I’ve seen plenty of swollen and deformed phone batteries, I’ve never personally seen one that has burned. Obviously it’s happened in the past with certain phone/battery models, but I’d imagine that it’s actually very rare now days?

On the other hand, I have seen cheap 18650s spontaneously start smoking even when they weren’t plugged in to anything…