Hacker NewsSunday, April 26

Google's $40B investment in Anthropic is viewed as sophisticated vendor financing where Google knows Anthropic's performance through their compute usage. Critics worry about circular deals inflating market caps and creating systemic risks when companies use equity to fund demand for their own services.

New RTL8159-based 10G USB adapters offer a smaller, cooler, cheaper alternative to bulky Thunderbolt adapters at $80 versus $160+. However, they only reach full 10 Gbps speed on USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports; most computers get 6-7 Gbps. For users without 10G networks, 2.5G or 5G adapters remain better value.

Firefox quietly integrated Brave's open-source adblock-rust engine in version 149, though it remains disabled by default with no user interface. The Rust-based ad and tracker blocking engine can be manually enabled through Firefox's about:config settings and supports uBlock Origin-compatible filter lists, offering an alternative content blocking solution.

This content outlines toxic communication behaviors including assuming malicious intent, avoiding challenging one's assumptions, pivoting when confronted, exploiting networks to validate narratives, ignoring others' credentials unless agreeable, showing no grace for mistakes, and retreating when losing arguments rather than seeking understanding.

This paper argues that a scientific theory of deep learning is emerging, which the authors call "learning mechanics." They identify five key research areas contributing to this theory: solvable idealized settings, tractable limits, simple mathematical laws, hyperparameter theories, and universal behaviors. The proposed theory focuses on training dynamics, aggregate statistics, and quantitative predictions rather than detailed mechanisms.

A researcher tested a claimed quantum computer attack on elliptic curve cryptography by replacing the quantum hardware with random number generation. The substitution successfully recovered the same private keys at identical rates, demonstrating that the original "quantum breakthrough" was actually just classical brute force verification working on random candidates, not a genuine quantum computing achievement.

Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon" LTS has been released with enhanced security, performance, and usability features including TPM-backed encryption and memory-safe components. Multiple Ubuntu flavors are also available, with 5-year support for main editions and 3-year support for other flavors.

The author bought a Rodecaster Duo audio device and discovered they could easily modify its firmware without signature checks. They reverse-engineered the update process, found SSH was enabled by default with hardcoded keys, created custom firmware, and successfully flashed it. They reported the security issue to RODE but received no response.

Orwell reflects on his early development as a writer, describing his childhood loneliness and literary ambitions from age five. He identifies four motives for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose, explaining how his experiences in Burma and major events like the Spanish Civil War shaped his transformation from a purely literary writer into a political pamphleteer, forced by the turbulent times to balance artistic and political impulses.

This appears to be a series of commits for adding DOS support to SDL, implementing features like VESA display management, Sound Blaster audio support, keyboard and joystick handling, and various optimizations for running SDL applications in DOS environments like DosBox, with improvements to buffering, interrupt handling, and hardware compatibility.