Hacker NewsFriday, January 2

This is the third annual review of LLM developments covering 2025 trends including the rise of reasoning models like OpenAI's o3, the breakthrough success of coding agents especially Claude Code, widespread adoption of command-line LLM tools, expensive $200/month AI subscriptions, Chinese open-weight models dominating rankings, and concerns about security risks from YOLO mode usage and AI-enabled browsers.

Greg Abel is set to take over Berkshire Hathaway from Warren Buffett, who built the company from a struggling textile mill to a massive conglomerate worth over $750,000 per share. While Berkshire has struggled to maintain its historic pace due to its size, Abel has been managing non-insurance businesses since 2018 and is expected to make modest changes while maintaining the company's decentralized culture. Buffett will remain as chairman to provide guidance.

Users shared major career milestones including transitioning from academia to industry, building successful SaaS products as self-taught developers, and finding dream jobs. Stories included overcoming job rejections, starting companies, and achieving financial independence through entrepreneurship.

Researchers Dennis Heinze and Frieder Steinmetz discovered three vulnerabilities in popular Bluetooth audio chips by Airoha, used in headphones from Sony, Marshall, Beyerdynamic, and Jabra. These flaws allow complete device compromise and can be exploited to attack paired smartphones through the trust relationship between devices.

Pop-up ads plagued early 2000s internet users until browsers implemented blocking technology, which was a major selling point for Firefox and Internet Explorer. However, pop-ups have returned and evolved to bypass these blockers, creating the same user experience problems as before. The author argues it's time for browser developers to create "Pop-up Blocking 2.0" with modern solutions enabled by default, as this would be a popular feature that users want and would generate positive attention for browsers willing to tackle the problem again.

A PC gaming enthusiast explains their decision to switch from Windows to Linux, specifically using the Bazzite distribution designed for gaming. They cite frustration with Windows' AI features, constant Microsoft upselling, and feeling like they don't own their own computer. The author notes that Linux gaming has become surprisingly easy, with most games running smoothly without command line usage. They acknowledge some limitations like HDR support and anticheat compatibility but believe these issues are improving, encouraging others to try Linux in 2026.

OpenWorkers is a self-hosted platform that runs untrusted JavaScript in V8 isolates, offering the same developer experience as Cloudflare Workers without vendor lock-in. It supports fetch, KV storage, Postgres, S3/R2, cron scheduling, and crypto features, deployable via Docker Compose.

Starting with iOS 26.2, Apple will allow alternative browser engines other than WebKit in Japan for dedicated browser apps and in-app browsing experiences. Developers must meet strict security, privacy, and functional requirements including passing 90% of Web Platform Tests, implementing memory-safe programming, blocking third-party cookies by default, and committing to timely vulnerability fixes within 30 days.

Deep technical discussion about how V.90 56k modems achieved higher speeds by leveraging the fact that phone systems were digital except for the "last mile," allowing ISP-side modems to output digital audio directly rather than being limited by analog channel constraints.

This article explains how cameras work by building one from first principles. It covers how digital sensors detect light using photodetectors, how color filters create color images, and how pinhole cameras form inverted images. The piece demonstrates concepts like exposure time, field of view, and vignetting through interactive examples, showing how adjusting parameters like hole size and sensor distance affects the final photograph.