Hacker NewsTuesday, September 1

Typesetting in monospace fonts creates challenges with alignment and justification due to uneven spacing. While most text uses hyphenation or accepts imperfect spacing, one author solved this by carefully rewriting 17,000 words to make each line end precisely at the margin without extra spaces.

OpenShot 4.0 introduces major creative workflow upgrades including a new Color View for professional color correction and grading with wheels, curves, and video scopes, a Recording View for capturing screen, webcam, and audio directly into projects, and 10 new effects for audio visualization, film looks, and AI-powered subject masking that runs locally without cloud services.

A free phone booth at Burning Man allows anyone to make 5-minute international calls or receive calls from random strangers. Located at 3:30 and Ceiba in Black Rock City, people can dial +1 (775) 557-4848 to talk to random festival attendees walking by the booth.

Google removed all Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store, including popular uBlock Origin ad blocker. While existing installations remain functional but won't receive updates, users can no longer download these extensions. The removal affects all Chromium browsers that rely on Chrome Web Store. Brave browser now hosts four popular MV2 extensions independently. Google promotes Manifest V3 for improved security and performance.

A massive 12TB data leak from Valve's old Steam2 servers (2003-2013) has surfaced, containing thousands of game builds including unreleased content. The leak reveals cut Portal 2 features like adhesive gel and slow-motion guns, deleted dialogue from GLaDOS and Cave Johnson, and references to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. It also includes early versions of games from third-party publishers like Spore, Dragon Age, and Batman Arkham Asylum.

Haiku R1/beta6 has been released after a two-year gap since the last beta, coming just a week after Haiku's 25th birthday. The release includes release notes, press contact information, and download options for new installations or upgrades from existing setups.

The author built custom workbenches by modifying IKEA Kallax shelving units with repurposed desktop surfaces and MDF boards. After struggling to find suitable commercial furniture that balanced functionality with aesthetics and budget, they created two units for approximately 130€ each. The build involved cutting desktop pieces, adding rubber sheets for vibration dampening, and securing everything with screws. Despite some measurement errors during installation, the final result provided stable, practical workspace furniture that met their specific needs for their new home office.

New polling shows 93% of British adults believe they have a right to private online conversations, with two-thirds saying they wouldn't trust any government with access to encrypted messages. The survey found 89% think nobody should access personal messages without a court order, while 84% worry that backdoors for law enforcement could create vulnerabilities for hackers. Despite government pressure on tech companies like Apple to provide encrypted data access, 53% of respondents said security risks outweigh law enforcement benefits.

Extreme drought and heat across Eastern Europe are devastating fish farms and ecosystems. Hungary reports 280 metric tons of fish deaths with $4.2 million losses. Romania, Czech Republic, Bosnia, Slovenia and Serbia face similar crises as water levels drop and temperatures soar, forcing emergency measures like pond draining and oxygen pumping to save remaining fish populations.

A homeowner set up BirdNet-Go to identify birds using existing security camera microphones. The system runs 24/7 locally, detecting bird songs in real-time and sending alerts for specific species. It integrates with Home Assistant and tracks new species discoveries, turning security cameras into wildlife monitoring tools.