Top 29 stories from Hacker News. Top 10 include comment highlights. Compiled at 20:10 UTC.
554 points by defrost · 184 comments
Scientists built a synthetic cell that combines more lifelike properties than ever before — proof of concept that it’s possible to bring nonliving materials to life, or something close to it, in the lab.
What HN said:
merksittich: Science News has a more balanced take, with additional quotes from peers. > Some have also grumbled about Adamala’s efforts to draw attention to the work, which she says was rejected by Cell after one reviewer said SpudCells were not real biology.
JumpCrisscross: “This was where the field had been stuck for some time. Researchers before Adamala had figured out different ways to feed and grow synthetic cells and to replicate their DNA. But cell division is a different beast.
ahmedfromtunis: You stumble upon a news article from 2226. You read it to see who, between Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, won the AI race. Instead, your learn about Biotic. It's now the leading polity in the solar system and its environs.
JanJedryszek: I;m one of the co-founders, AMA :)
490 points by pantalaimon · 176 comments
What HN said:
eqvinox: > The defacto industry standard for audio ICs is I²S, an I²C-based bus optimised for audio data. Nit: I²S has nothing to do with I²C. (Most I²S chips also have an I²C interface since I²S only carries raw audio data, no sideband like volume control or clock configuration.
JSR_FDED: I’m in absolute awe that a handful of motivated people can crack these problems
simonmales: Will this forever exist as a Fedora "remix". Or will we find the support in upstream so I can one day run Debian-based distro? I think the last time I used an RPM-based distro was almost 2 decades ago.
shvarr: Asahi could be a viable alternative, however, with this amount of funding, small manpower pool pace of development is doomed to be too slow. There's groundwork that's already been done, as mentioned in the article, which brings some dividends, but, ultimately, there is a new mac...
406 points by Tiberium · 481 comments
What HN said:
fcsp: Great buildup on Sony's side to gain trust in this move in the gaming community ahead of this announcement when just this week they again pulled hundreds of "purchased" movies from customer's libraries without refund, reminding everyone that digital content is rented, not owned.
mrandish: Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maintaining activation servers, cloud storage and digital delivery costs money.
lelandfe: To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016) Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0] PS Store, to rent: $60[1] [0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/298370753624 [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dark-souls-iii/
phire: With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live. Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered? The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressin...
353 points by bilsbie · 175 comments
What HN said:
nullsmack: We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this.
eska: It should be illegal to have others purchase what you as a company only licensed and therefore aren’t legally allowed to sell.
NoSalt: Ever since Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. started offering "free" online storage for photos, ever since streaming started to be popular, I have ALWAYS extolled the virtues of µSD card slots in phones and owning your own media (i.e., purchasing CDs and DVDs).
glimshe: I've heard there's a service called PirateBay that offers movies free of DRM. Maybe people considering being Sony customers in the future should give it a try.
326 points by makepanic · 71 comments
I’m happy to announce the release of Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine. It is now available on GitHub. Box3D repository You can think of Box3D as a fork of Box2D, extended with many features needed for 3D games.
What HN said:
gregsadetsky: Whenever I see Box2D mentioned (the library by the same author as Box3D, obviously), I think back to this story from many years ago https://kotaku.com/this-guy-created-angry-birds-physics-and-...
ainch: As an ML researcher, I know box2d because it underpins many of the standard reinforcement learning environments (in OpenAI Gym) that we use to benchmark methods, like Lunar Lander or Car Racing: https://gymnasium.farama.
Jeaye: Yes! This is exciting to see. Erin Catto is such a cool hacker. Thank you, Erin, for sharing your code with the open source community. There wasn't anything about determinism in the announcement, but I'd really love to see some more about that, too.
RobLach: Box2D was a foundation for a lot of interesting physics oriented indie games in my day. I wonder if the landscape is empty enough for a resurgence.
227 points by chimpanzee · 58 comments
What HN said:
NitpickLawyer: Heh, for a second there this read like some of the Portiid adventures with Bianca and Fabian from Adrian Tchaikovsky's book "Children of time". If you find this kind of thing interesting and are a fan of sci-fi, I highly recommend the book.
INTPenis: Speaking of clever animals, I just recently learned about the Australian birds that cause wildfires to drive out small game that they can catch. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildfires...
som: I'm from where these spiders were found. The ants they're predating are an equally fascinating and super aggressive species of green weaver ants (that have other cool predators like "mimic" jumping spiders). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_ant
Foskya: It is truly fascinating, I wonder how it evolved like that. Before becoming a spring as it is today how was it hunting in the past? What constraints made it need such a mechanism instead of a typical web?
204 points by StefanBatory · 41 comments
Interactive article explaining how an internal combustion engine works.
What HN said:
drayfield: Always good to revisit his older work, though I admit I did get excited that it was a new post!
bob1029: > Presence of oil is critical here as it creates conditions for hydrodynamic lubrication. You can hear this effect in some vehicles at initial startup time for a few seconds. I know of certain Ford engines where it actually causes issues over time.
nickvec: I hope Ciechanowski posts some more in the near future. He has some of the best "how does this work" articles I've come across.
londons_explore: Worth noting the design of the internal combustion engine hasn't changed much in 50 years. The thing that has changed is the control systems. What used to be a primitive mechanical way of mixing fuel and air (the carburettor), is now an electronic fuel injection system, with the...
186 points by sashk · 40 comments
What HN said:
maram: Was this an accident, or was it someone cashing in on a sci-fi professor’s prophecy by exposing users’ information without their consent? Maybe we should ask Tim Cook — the man who changed the UI/UX that Steve Jobs spent his entire life perfecting https://medium.
maram: Was this an accident, or was it someone cashing in on a sci-fi professor’s prophecy by exposing users’ information without their consent? Maybe we should ask Tim Cook — the man who changed the UI/UX that Steve Jobs spent his entire life perfecting https://medium.
mike-cardwell: That timeline was exactly my experience with Apple here - https://www.grepular.com/Apples_Protect_Mail_Activity_Doesnt... They don't seem to know or care what is going on with their own email systems.
Jbird2k: As someone who uses this feature I never send messages from a hide my email address as I only use it for random email signups. Am I still at risk of having my email exposed??? It’s also handy for using for free trials lol.
181 points by soheilpro · 101 comments
What HN said:
cphoover: This doesn't seem to solve the issue that website operators face... which is providing a free public experience to humans while the price of hosting is driven up by increased bot traffic. The issue isn't charging for API access with request caps, that's not hard to do.
petcat: > NEW YORK – MCP Dev Summit North America – April 2, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it is launching the x402 Foundation with the contribution of the x402 protocol from Coinbase.
VladVladikoff: I am not a fan of the growing trend that Cloudflare is the gatekeeper of the internet. Personally I will never support this company, or firewall any of my websites behind it.
mixedbit: With payments the complexity is not only in accepting a payment, but largely in doing so legally. Someone makes a request to my company's paid service, I return 402 and get a stable coin back.
152 points by ledoge · 60 comments
What HN said:
ndiddy: Nice, I'm looking forward to seeing how this performs in practice. FFmpeg's previous AAC encoder produced poor quality output and often had irritating chirping artifacts, so I've always had to install Apple's Core Audio encoder on any computer I do video recording on to get decen...
cogman10: Man what a showcase for Opus this is. Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing is a valuable exercise and we are better off with better encoders for these older codecs. But look at the numbers for Opus on this benchmark.
superzazu: > The encoder was mainly optimized for 48Khz audio. Get over it. It's 2026, resampling is free, 48Khz is the standard. 44.1Khz will work, and so will 96Khz but use 48Khz if you want the best quality. Is 48kHz really the standard nowadays?
JSR_FDED: It’s fascinating so much of this comes down to the developer’s own ears - disturbing and quite cool at the same time how subjective this is
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