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Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome

https://developer.chrome.com/blog/jpeg-xl-in-chrome
178•AshleysBrain•2h ago•87 comments

A font recreated from photographs of classic Commodore 64 keycaps

https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/
192•sohkamyung•4h ago•35 comments

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2026/press-release/
129•sasvari•3h ago•16 comments

Write Like It's 1866: LLMs Relearn Telegraphese

https://fiveminutesforward.com/post/2026-10-04-telegraph-test/
24•Theory42•1h ago•17 comments

Sharing AI progress in mathematics

https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/
1052•OfficialTurkey•15h ago•1076 comments

Google Playground: Create and play custom games

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/ai/playground-experimental-gaming-platform/
25•acossta•1h ago•13 comments

Show HN: A walkable 3D art history museum built from Wikipedia

https://artmuseum.artfrompixels.com/
9•jasontr•59m ago•3 comments

Rust's derive often implies inline

https://yossarian.net/til/post/rust-s-derive-often-implies-inline/
40•woodruffw•3d ago•7 comments

Show HN: AstroHelm – Use your phone camera to aim a telescope or telephoto lens

https://astrohelm.app/
42•HeavenFox•2d ago•12 comments

Strands Decider 2B: a small, open-source, decision model

https://strandsagents.com/blog/introducing-strands-decider/
228•gmays•11h ago•68 comments

House with 15m underground tunnels for sale for 300k

https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/26612080.house-15m-underground-tunnels-sale-300k/
42•librasteve•53m ago•54 comments

Decisions API is in public beta

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/decisions
353•chiefstorm•16h ago•193 comments

ESP32-C3 Adblock

https://github.com/M-Abozaid/esp32-c3-adblock
145•jayhoon•12h ago•56 comments

Mistral Large 4

https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-large-4/\
1914•Philpax•1d ago•1148 comments

EmbeddingGemma 2: An open, lightweight multimodal embedding model

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/embeddinggemma-2/
373•ilreb•21h ago•36 comments

It may soon be possible to create "mirror life"

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/30/it-may-soon-be-possible-to-create-mir...
34•amai•2h ago•45 comments

Shaders, WebGPU Components for React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, JavaScript and Framer

https://github.com/shader-effects-inc/shaders
47•jinqueeny•8h ago•25 comments

Forever Junior: The Skills AI Can't Develop for You

https://tech.criteo.com/blog/human-skills-ai-cant-develop-junior-engineers/
33•brugidou•5h ago•30 comments

Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month

377•IvanK_net•18h ago•205 comments

What is Codemode

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/10/6/codemode/
115•Tomte•1d ago•54 comments

Gallery of Processor Cache Effects (2010)

https://igoro.com/archive/gallery-of-processor-cache-effects/
28•porridgeraisin•2d ago•4 comments

Mallet Head Angle

http://www.timberframe-tools.com/tools/mallet-head-angle/
5•frogulis•1d ago•0 comments

The cost of lies: A Mineserver story

https://www.jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?f=true&p=272
145•luu•3d ago•66 comments

Claude Code’s suggested message feature: I think the real customer is the model

https://www.zohaib.cc/blog/smartest-claude-code-feature
238•zed_labs_dev•19h ago•135 comments

OpenTPU – An open-source AI accelerator, developed by AI

https://github.com/FeSens/openTPU
318•fsbonetto•21h ago•359 comments

Show HN: NanoMuse – An open-source AI agent for your phone and computer

https://github.com/nano-muse/nanoMuse
37•ilreb•10h ago•10 comments

Show HN: Arcadeia – A self-hosted media library with animated video previews

https://github.com/travelonium/arcadeia
11•omidontop•2d ago•6 comments

PS5 Jailbreaks Are Escalating at an Unprecedented Pace

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/10/ps5-jailbreaks-are-escalating-at-an-unprecedented-pace-an...
51•password54321•3h ago•45 comments

Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI

https://penguin-mail.com/
217•kavourias•15h ago•148 comments

The Legend of the Paper Crane

https://mazdastories.com/en_us/inspire/paper-cranes-into-the-fold/
23•vismit2000•3d ago•11 comments
Open in hackernews

It may soon be possible to create "mirror life"

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/30/it-may-soon-be-possible-to-create-mirror-life
34•amai•2h ago

Comments

amai•2h ago
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-image_life
ceejayoz•59m ago
TL;DR: Don't.
chasil•53m ago
The "Potential Risks" section of the wiki is a bit thin on the mechanisms of the danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-image_life#Potential_ri...

'In December 2024, 38 scientists, including several synthetic biology researchers and two Nobel laureates, warned that the creation of mirror-image life could cause "unprecedented and irreversible harm" to human health and ecosystems worldwide. The reversed structure of mirror-image bacteria could allow them to evade many mechanisms critical for immunity and predation that have evolved to recognize natural-chirality structures. As a result, mirror-image bacteria could potentially escape immune defenses and invade natural ecosystems, leading to "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of plant and animal species, including humans."'

intrasight•42m ago
You don't need a mirror image organism to cause great harm. An engineered prion could also be devastating.

I don't think preons are technically mirror molecules, but it's close enough from a risk perspective. If rogue AI were to do us in through bioengineering, it might be by creating a novel prion.

rwmj•35m ago
So that's two things we shouldn't be releasing into the world.
chasil•3m ago
Unfortunately, there are several prion diseases already in existence: scrapie in sheep, BSE in cows, Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, and both Kuru and Crutzfeld-Jacob in humans.

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

nemomarx•56m ago
what exactly would we usefully get from doing it?
ceejayoz•54m ago
Stuff our immune system doesn't recognize is potentially useful for things like vaccine delivery. But it's also useful for a potential pathogen.
adzm•51m ago
We already make use of "mirror" molecules; the idea is that mirror organisms could help efficiently create these for us (like how we can use yeast and fungi etc to create various chemicals).

Of course there is also the whole potential apocalypse scenario

xyzal•51m ago
weapons
nativeit•49m ago
The primary proposed benefit of creating mirror-image organisms is as a means to mass-produce mirror-image forms of molecules that are produced by normal life. Mirror-image molecules have been studied for several decades and may offer a range of potential applications. There is broad agreement among scientists that it is important to distinguish between mirror-image molecules and whole mirror-image organisms. Some scientists argue that chemical synthesis methods are sufficient for creating mirror-image molecules without posing the potentially catastrophic risks of mirror-image organisms.

Potential applications of mirror-image molecules include:

Enantiopure drugs: Some pharmaceuticals show different activity depending on enantiomeric form.

L-ribonucleic acid aptamers: Artificial oligonucleotides that are constructed from the mirror-image versions of their natural forms. L-RNA aptamers are highly resistant to degradation by nucleases and are currently being tested in clinical trials.

L-glucose, enantiomer of standard glucose: Tests showed that it tastes likes standard sugar, but is not metabolized the same way. However, it was never marketed due to excessive manufacturing costs. More recent research allows cheap production with high yields; however the authors state that it is not usable as a sweetener due to laxative effects.

[From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-image_life]

boesboes•48m ago
Or maybe we could focus on something not world ending for once?
embedding-shape•46m ago
What do you do for work? I'm sure we can figure out how it also contributes to ending the world, one way or another :)
AnimalMuppet•41m ago
Challenge accepted.

I worked for this company that did telephone service for the hard of hearing. It was a phone that could go very loud. It also captioned the far end of the phone call, in case the user couldn't pick out all the words, even with the high volume.

I await your world-ending scenario for that tech and/or company.

peddling-brink•37m ago
If any life destroys all life, it will be humans destroying all life. So any human promoting act is a contribution to the destruction of all life.

Dolphins are advanced enough, we should let them take it from here.

Almondsetat•35m ago
Captioning? If the company used novel techniques you contributed to the surveillance state, you're welcome
vconnor•28m ago
> Challenge accepted.

Ironically, this is the type of mindset of scientists that do this type of dangerous research. Just to see if it’s possible, with no concern of ethics ever bothering them.

mrlonglong•48m ago
This has the potential to destroy all life.
api•38m ago
Hyperbole aside, has the risk of this been truly studied?

All I hear is "there's no danger" or "OMG this will kill us all" and in neither case is any reason given.

vouaobrasil•28m ago
Yes, as a matter of fact it has been studied. For instance:

1. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158?referrer...

2. https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/mirror-life-experiment-d...

The detailed thinking has been published in high-ranking journals like Science. And even if the risk is relatively small, isn't that already a good enough reason not to cross this border. Do we have to fucking discover everything? Don't we have enough already?

The craziness of some people who want to know everything is beyond my comprehension.

captainbland•25m ago
Trillions of dollars of investment in this incoming, probably. Can't make a profit without breaking a few planets, you know how it is.
sscaryterry•24m ago
I'm sure nature has already tried these "mirror" forms, and for efficiency/practicality reasons, discarded them.
unddoch•41m ago
I really doubt a "mirror life" bacteria would be "hidden" from the immune system. Antibodies should have enough search space to be able to detect and neutralise such bacteria?
tim-star•22m ago
well, you are the expert!

more seriously: how would it be able search for something it has no experience seeing at all

Traubenfuchs•4m ago
"A sufficiently stereochemically alien pathogen could, in principle, place essentially all of its important antigenic determinants outside the effective recognition repertoire of a conventional adaptive immune system."

With perfect knowledge of the immune system and the capability to create the pathogens of our dreams it would most likely be possible to create this pathogen of our dreams.

Making an entire self replicating mirror organism that would both have this property of "being invisible to the specific immune system" and AND being an effective pathogen is far from a solved problem though. It's further away as useful quantum computing!

We don't even have self replicating mirror cells, just some synthetic Frankensteins.

scotty79•36m ago
It's nowhere close to being possible. To do anything related to life you need to have a lot of complex molecules. When you do things with normal life you can have genetically modified organisms that will produce whatever substance you need in whatever amount you need.

To get mirror substances you need to create them chemically which is PITA even if possible.

I highly recommend watching an interview with a person that achieved best results so far with creating artificial normal (for some definitions of normal) almost life from the grounds up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4WywVQfIV4

There is a section of whether this kind of work enables creation mirror life as well.

vinni2•35m ago
Dupe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914403
sir_eliah•31m ago
There's a series of books from Petter Watts that give plenty of good reasons why this might not be the best idea:

- "Starfish"

- "Maelstrom"

- "βehemoth"

aeve890•28m ago
>βehemoth

How I read that? Like Ssehemoth or like Behemoth?

sir_eliah•24m ago
I'm glad you asked! Obviously you have to check the code table and you can see that's a Greek beta, not German Eszett. \s

  In [1]: ord("β")
  Out[1]: 946

  In [2]: ord("ß")
  Out[2]: 223
aeve890•12m ago
Come on now. I would swear both characters are the same. I didn't know that the German one wasn't a Greek beta.
pwdisswordfishq•7m ago
As if you could not tell by the shape of the glyph.
vouaobrasil•25m ago
This sort of thing highlights the most dangerous thing about a high-tech society: people will do ANYTHING to cure a disease they or their loved ones have, even if it means an existential risk that we often have the ability of instantiating.

Obviously not worth it, but to the person who themselves face an existential risk, the level of absurd justification from the instinct to survive will always trump sanity.

tomaskafka•18m ago
Finally, we built a mirror bacteria from the famous "Don't create a mirror bacteria" paper.
otikik•16m ago
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should"
vulture916•12m ago
The article about (another) the end of the world is behind a paywall, the tweet about it is behind a login screen - guess I'll find out when it happens!

In my world, that'd be illegal.

MadrasTh0rn•10m ago
So what bsl is mirror life supposed to be locked up in?
veexx103•5m ago
Laboratory leaks have occurred more than once.
aatd86•43m ago
I had read somewhere that it could allow the creation of cures that would not trigger the immune system, since they would use chirality to hide, so to speak.
functionmouse•41m ago
Yes, we will work on life forms undetectable to the immune system. For uh, checks notes cures. Disregard the fact that the imperial military runs our society.
umvi•26m ago
As a diabetic, I would love "mirror wheat" which behaves like normal wheat (ie can make breads, etc) but has zero carbs/calories because the body can't digest it. Mirror glucose would be nice too, though allulose is already a pretty close stand in for mirror glucose.
tracerbulletx•21m ago
A stronger understanding of organic chemistry.
voganmother42•6m ago
Easy, Douglas Adams already documented the fate of the Golgafrincham: entirely wiped out by a virulent, fatal disease caught from an unsanitized telephone!

You thought you were enabling communication(already dangerous as per the babel fish!) but you were ensuring the means of transmission!

But seriously though, sounds like a fun job where the byproduct of your work improved the experiences and access of people, and thats pretty great.

amelius•18m ago
Yeah, what if this behaves like prions?