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LLMs consistently pick resumes they generate over ones by humans or other models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00462
273•laurex•2h ago•131 comments

Inventions for battery reuse and recycling increase more than 7-fold in last 10y

https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/news/inventions-battery-reuse-and-recycling-increase-more-seve...
18•JeanKage•2d ago•2 comments

How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

https://eclecticlight.co/2026/05/02/how-fast-is-a-macos-vm-and-how-small-could-it-be/
173•moosia•8h ago•63 comments

Barman – Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL

https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/barman
74•nateb2022•3d ago•14 comments

Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

https://www.noctua.at/en/expertise/blog/how-can-it-take-so-long-to-release-black-fan-versions
567•buildbot•13h ago•245 comments

Meta's Pyrefly sabotages competing Python extensions without telling you

https://github.com/facebook/pyrefly/issues/3292
33•FossAndFurious•1h ago•12 comments

Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction

https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11717
39•fagnerbrack•4h ago•14 comments

Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for AV companies

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/01/uber-wants-to-turn-its-millions-of-drivers-into-a-sensor-grid-f...
40•nickvec•2h ago•54 comments

Why are there both TMP and TEMP environment variables? (2015)

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150417-00/?p=44213
153•ankitg12•9h ago•74 comments

Open Design: Use Your Coding Agent as a Design Engine

https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design
115•steveharing1•5h ago•70 comments

America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-expanding-domestic-surveillance-08b73187
79•Brajeshwar•2h ago•34 comments

Dotcl: Common Lisp Implementation on .NET

https://github.com/dotcl/dotcl
114•reikonomusha•2d ago•19 comments

Zugzwang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang
55•Qem•2h ago•27 comments

Ti-84 Evo

https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-calculators/ti-84-evo
536•thatxliner•21h ago•438 comments

Show HN: Pollen – distributed WASM runtime, no control plane, single binary

https://github.com/sambigeara/pollen
70•sambigeara•2d ago•32 comments

Show HN: DAC – open-source dashboard as code tool for agents and humans

https://github.com/bruin-data/dac
75•karakanb•3d ago•22 comments

Artemis II Photo Timeline

https://artemistimeline.com/#artemis-ii-walkout-nhq202604010003
302•geerlingguy•2d ago•24 comments

New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/its-possible-to-learn-in-our-sleep-should-we
415•XzetaU8•23h ago•244 comments

Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?

5•idontwantthis•34m ago•8 comments

DeepSeek V4–almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/24/deepseek-v4/
366•indigodaddy•1d ago•230 comments

Santa Cruz restaurant changes logo after flurry of negative reviews for AI art

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/santa-cruz-restaurant-ai-21955920.php
24•randycupertino•2h ago•35 comments

Show HN: Mljar Studio – local AI data analyst that saves analysis as notebooks

https://mljar.com/
50•pplonski86•7h ago•11 comments

Craig Venter of Human Genome Project Dies at 79

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2026/05/01/craig-venter-raced-to-decode-the-human-genome
45•bookofjoe•5h ago•9 comments

To Restore an Island Paradise, Add Fungi

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/atoll-islands-sea-level-rise-fungi
116•Brajeshwar•3d ago•31 comments

Show HN: Browser-based light pollution simulator using real photometric data

https://iesna.eu/?wasm=skyglow_demo
32•holg•8h ago•10 comments

SFO Gate Explorer

https://www.flysfo.com/passengers/services/gate-explorer
28•CaliforniaKarl•1d ago•31 comments

An unknown Sega Saturn project has come to light after 29 years

https://32bits.substack.com/p/under-the-microscope-pyramid-unreleased
80•bbayles•5h ago•2 comments

Show HN: Filling PDF forms with AI using client-side tool calling

https://copilot.simplepdf.com/?share=a7d00ad073c75a75d493228e6ff7b11eb3f2d945b6175913e87898ec96ca...
41•nip•8h ago•18 comments

CollectWise (YC F24) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/collectwise/jobs/rEWfZ6R-senior-forward-deployed-engineer
1•OBrien_1107•13h ago

I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

185•proberts•1d ago•233 comments
Open in hackernews

Zugzwang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang
54•Qem•2h ago

Comments

HocusLocus•1h ago
Do corporations get drawn to AI from a compulsion to make a move addressing it?

"Fear of missing out"

nostrademons•1h ago
Relevant for a lot of geopolitical and corporate strategic situations as well. The whole Mideast situation we're in now is because we were in zugzwang and a couple leaders felt the compulsion to move. Taiwan is a similar situation: the best policy is "strategic ambiguity", which is holding for now, but is a bit of an unstable equilibrium.

More relevant to a business site, this is the situation many large corporations find themselves in. Say you're Google and you own an immensely profitable monopoly. The very best thing you can do is nothing; anything you do risks upsetting the delicate competitive equilibrium that you're winning. If you're an executive, how do you do nothing? You can't very well hire thousands of employees to do nothing and pay them to do it. But if you don't have thousands of employees, and your job is doing nothing, how do you justify the millions that they're paying you?

The strategy many executives use is to set different parts of their organization at odds with each other, so that they each create busywork that other employees must do. Everybody is fully utilized, and yet in the big picture nothing changes. Oftentimes they will create big strategic initiatives that are tangential to the golden goose, spending billions on boondoggles that don't actually do anything, because the whole point is to do nothing while seeming like you need thousands of people to do it. And the whole reason for that is because most people are very bad at sitting still, and so if you didn't pay them a whole lot to do nothing useful, the useful stuff they'd be doing would be trying to compete with and unseat you. (You can also see this in the billion dollar paydays that entrepreneurs get when they mount a credible threat of unseating the giant incumbent.)

shermantanktop•1h ago
Geopolitically, the no-action move is rarely unavailable. The motivation to do something rash like start a war out of the blue is often down to the decision of a single person. That leader may have political reasons to do it but they aren’t being forced to do it, as they would in a turn-based game.
pmontra•1h ago
Two teams, one digs holes, the other one fills holes. Maybe an advice by Keynes during the Great Depression.
gzread•28m ago
people mock communism for this, but capitalism also does it all the time
colechristensen•1h ago
>Relevant for a lot of geopolitical and corporate strategic situations as well. The whole Mideast situation we're in now is because we were in zugzwang and a couple leaders felt the compulsion to move. Taiwan is a similar situation: the best policy is "strategic ambiguity", which is holding for now, but is a bit of an unstable equilibrium.

This isn't the case at all.

Obama HAD a deal with Iran that Trump tanked in his first term. Israel did not have to respond to a terrorist attack with genocide. Trump could have said No to Netanyahu who clearly threatened to attack Iran with or without us, it turns out we could indeed put pressure on them not to attack, but TACO.

Everything that's happening in the middle east is a series of blunders by fools.

alex43578•30m ago
And on the flip side, Iran could choose not to pursue a nuke and violate the NPT. Hamas could choose not to kill 800-some civilians and take 250 hostages, etc.
gzread•25m ago
why would Iran not make a nuke when America keeps bombing countries that don't have nukes, and avoids bombing countries that have nukes (most notably North Korea)? They have all the incentives to have a nuke so they'll stop getting bombed. Obama negotiated to avoid this but Trump ripped it up and fined them, so they're definitely not going to trust any agreements with the west ever again. From their perspective, their only path to not getting bombed to shit involves having several nukes. It's quite rational for them to do that.
Sardtok•8m ago
That nuke they are apparently working has been just around the corner for over 30 years according to Israeli propaganda.
gzread•27m ago
Small correction: Israel has been doing a genocide continually since 1948 - it didn't start in 2023.
alex43578•59m ago
That’s a bit cynical to view every corporate action through that lens. There’s certainly the innovator’s dilemma, and plenty of busy work, but to your Google example, plenty of tasks and developments are needed to keep the thing running.

Detect and counter black hat SEO, build or acquire a new product you can spread ads to (Maps, YouTube), create a chatbot that can eventually get ads if search is supplanted. These things support or maintain that monopoly/equilibrium you’re talking about.

sobellian•6m ago
If you would lose even if you didn't move, that is not zugzwang. Zugzwang is when, because you must move per the rules of the game, you lose. I don't really see that dynamic in foreign policy. Any country has the option of maintaining its current policy. Whether or not it's wise, the option exists.
mock-possum•1h ago
Sounds a bit like a Xanatos Gambit

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit

Differences being Zugzwang explicitly doesn’t allow a non-move, and I guess assumes a zero sum game? Whereas a Xanatos Gabmit is flexible enough to accommodate both non-moves, and a non-zero-sum setting.

Either way, for your opponent, all roads lead to ruin.

jonasenordin•1h ago
I recently happened upon a comment (not on HN) that seemed to treat 'zugzwang' as a synonym for 'deadlock'. Possibly because 'zugzwang' sounds really cool and makes your inner voice sound intelligent to your inner ear.
DonThomasitos•1h ago
The difference to a deadlock is that a deadlock is a inability to move, the zugzwang is an obligation to move.
alex43578•1h ago
An obligation to move to your disadvantage.
Krasnol•38m ago
The disadvantage is the fact that you're obligated to move. The outcome of the move is not determined though.
alex43578•36m ago
“Any legal move will worsen their position”, so the outcome of your move is determined to be inherently negative.
Krasnol•28m ago
The word has it's use outside the chess world though and there it is as I wrote it.
layer8•25m ago
More accurately, it’s being forced to move a specific piece despite disadvantages, because not moving it would result in an even worse outcome — as opposed to moving a different piece that you’d otherwise prefer to move. So it means being forced to move that first piece instead of not moving it (instead of moving a different piece).

And that’s the generalized meaning in German, being forced to act with respect to a specific thing, where you’d normally prefer keeping it in its current state.

haunter•1h ago
In MTG control decks and a subset of that, prison decks are the prime and extreme example of that. Especially something like Lantern Control. It's not about winning, it's about trapping your opponent _not able to_ win.
jgalt212•1h ago
The only way to win is not to play.
michaelsshaw•6m ago
Not playing is a losing move.
ucarion•1h ago
In old-school chess AIs, zugzwang is also of interest because it can break null-move pruning[0], which is a way to prune the search tree. "Null move" just means "skip your turn", and the assumption that skipping your turn is always worse than the optimal move. But in zugzwang positions, that assumption is wrong, so you have to avoid doing null-move pruning.

Stockfish's heuristic for "risk of zugzwang" is basically "only kings and pawns left over", alongside logic for "is null-move pruning even useful right now" [1]:

    // Step 9. Null move search with verification search
    if (cutNode && ss->staticEval >= beta - 16 * depth - 53 * improving + 378 && !excludedMove
        && pos.non_pawn_material(us) && ss->ply >= nmpMinPly && !is_loss(beta))
    {

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-move_heuristic

[1]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/1a882ef...

layer8•36m ago
The metaphoric meaning of being under “Zugzwang” in German is very similar to “forcing someone’s hand”, from the perspective of the one whose hand is being forced. It means being forced to act, as opposed to not taking action.
bitshiftfaced•32m ago
It's kind of an illusion when you think about it. "Whose turn it is" is an inseparable part of the game state. If any move makes the game state worse this turn, then the game state was already bad before this turn.
stabbles•14m ago
It's not necessarily an illusion. If chess is solved and it turns out white wins with perfect play, black's first move is zugzwang.