Daily Picks

Friday, 21 August 2026

12 new posts
Hacker News
TechHacker Newsgavide

I accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases

TL;DR

An expired domain let the author take control of the phone routing for three British territories and accidentally log hundreds of thousands of calls to military bases.

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Pluralistic
Society & IdeasPluralisticCory Doctorow

Pluralistic: The actual epistemic crisis (20 Aug 2026)

TL;DR

AI's epistemic crisis is not new but the natural result of decades of corporate power corroding regulation and weakening public judgment.

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Nautilus
Science & HealthNautilusJoel David Hamkins

Why Human Giants Defy the Laws of Physics

TL;DR

Human giants are physically impossible, because when a body is scaled up, its weight grows as the cube while bone strength only grows as the square, so the body crushes itself.

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Platformer
TechPlatformerCasey Newton

The website that created an AI clone of its editor in chief

TL;DR

Even a media company that automates everything it can still hires more humans, because AI trained on past expertise can't handle the unique problems that keep arising.

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Quanta Magazine
Science & HealthQuanta MagazineSteven Strogatz and Janna Levin

Are We Thinking Correctly About AI Intelligence?

TL;DR

AI reasoning is often fake: models can score high on benchmarks without understanding, and the field lacks reliable ways to measure machine cognition.

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Klement on Investing
Society & IdeasKlement on InvestingJoachim Klement

It’s not the fault of right-wing news

TL;DR

Political polarization stems more from the homogeneity of social circles than from differences in media consumption.

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阮一峰的网络日志
Tech阮一峰的网络日志

科技爱好者周刊(第 409 期):程序员的职业未来

TL;DR

AI won't eliminate programmers but will change their work, with manual coding becoming increasingly marginal.

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Musings on Markets
Business & ProductMusings on Markets

AI's Bar Mitzvah Moment: From Hype & Hope to Business Questions!

TL;DR

AI has moved from hype to a business validation phase, where investors now demand actual revenues and profits rather than potential.

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RogerEbert.com
Society & IdeasRogerEbert.comZachary Lee

Liminal Spaces, Transitional States: Alexander Ullom on “It Ends”

TL;DR

It Ends uses an endless road and horror imagery to explore how young people today, left with collapsed structures, cope with a liminal state by creating rituals and seeking connection.

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Nautilus
Science & HealthNautilusJake Currie

You’re Not a Universal Mosquito Magnet

TL;DR

No one attracts every mosquito species, but everyone attracts at least one, determined by skin microbiome odor.

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Rest of World
Business & ProductRest of WorldViola Zhou

A dumpling shop becomes a poster child of AI adoption in China

TL;DR

A Beijing dumpling shop went viral for letting customers book seats with AI agents, and the owner embraces it as the 'most advanced productive force' — though actual usage remains limited.

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硅谷居士
Investing硅谷居士

我的博客如何改变了一个人的命运?

TL;DR

A reader in Japan, frightened of stocks, changed his investing fate after reading Silicon Valley Jushi's blog about index investing.

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