In chrome I can create application shortcuts... and with browser notifications it pretty much just works. I usually have pandora and slack as application shortcuts that run in their own windows... it really doesn't bug me that they run in a browser... they work as I expect them to (though not in osx iirc). I agree that the thin wrappers are a little annoying...

On the flip side, though I really appreciate that I can create more feature rich applications with the likes of nwjs or electron. There's a lot of things you can do that go a fair bit beyond just web applications in a thin shell... though most of the better ones are app centric first, and web instance second.

I do wish someone would build a nice mail client for Chrome/ChromeOS though... That part really sucks imho. I mean there's a browser based SSH client for chrome, so it's entirely possible to do.

Apple introduced a new slider to control the "liquid glass" effect in its interface. The slider adjusts transparency from barely visible to fully saturated, with icons indicating the extremes.

The liquid glass effect changes the look of interface elements by varying their transparency and density. Users can now fine-tune this visual feature to their preference.

📊@tech

There really should be a disclaimer that this tool is useless when checking certificates re-keyed with the same starting and end dates. It could create a reputational risk for sites that are otherwise safe or patched.

Apple will embed Write With Siri directly into the keyboard, enabling natural language shortcuts like messaging friends when leaving the office. Photo processing will use a feature called reframing, letting users shift the camera angle on existing photos to improve composition, but full access requires iCloud+.

Developers can integrate Apple Intelligence into their apps, with all data processed locally for speed. However, this AI support remains English-only, unchanged since 2022.

📊@tech

Let's change the terminology a bit here. A professor is someone with tenure is on a tenure track. A lecturer is someone who is not. The article isn't talking about professors, which in the USA relies on research, publishing, obtaining grants, and tenure. Yes, a lecturer teaching a low demand subject is going to have a hard time. Just like most positions, there exists a hierarchy. The reason why this doesn't exist for primary and secondary educators is because of unions and that can be argued either way.

The set of possibly blocking operations for interactively using bash is big. Executable pages of the bash executable are far from the only thing that could be missing.

If the machine is swap trashing, all i/o goes to the same congested queue. .bash_history read or write access, memory allocation, stuff your terminal program does, stuff your wayland compositor or X11 stack does, bash accessing data in its memory that has been swapped out, etc etc. And each of those could be waiting for a while to issue their IO request since the IO system is flooded by swap IO.

There should be a tool that can show the interdependent graph of pending, blocking io operations.

Microsoft's new quantum chip, Majorana 2, extends qubit lifetime to 20 seconds on average, reaching up to a minute in the best cases. This marks a 1000x stability improvement over last year's model.

The breakthrough comes from switching superconducting materials from aluminum to lead, which better shields qubits from external noise that causes errors.

Longer qubit lifetimes bring practical quantum computing closer, enabling complex tasks like drug discovery and logistics optimization. Microsoft now aims for a scalable quantum computer by 2029, halving its previous timeline.

📊@tech

Nobody wants to write Makefiles and recursive Makefiles are easier to write.

If it's truly the same information in multiple recursive Makefiles as it would be in one monolithic Makefile, then there should be a tool that converts recursive makefiles into monolithic makefiles. Humans should not have to reason about the entire project scope at once.

According to Cloudflare Radar, 57.5% of all HTML page requests last week came from bots, including crawlers, AI data collectors, and scripts.

Only 42.5% were from real users in browsers.

JSON now accounts for 33.1% of all HTTP traffic, surpassing HTML at 12%.

JSON is used for machine-to-machine API calls, while HTML is what humans see in browsers.

📊@tech

> Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously Haskell would be at the top

I don't think you'll get any arguments from any Haskeller about the record system being annoying, laziness being hard to learn about at first, or it being a more difficult (but not as difficult as people think) language to learn.

Perhaps I'm biased, but HN seems to cargo cult a lot less than other popular communities.

ChatGPT apps can now perform real actions in connected apps, including sending and editing emails. Important actions require user approval and have built-in security checks.

This lets users send and edit emails directly within the chat interface. ChatGPT acts more like a full work assistant by handling confidential tasks safely.

📊@tech

By May, over 80% of the code in Anthropic's production base was written by Claude. In Q2, engineers merged eight times more code daily than in 2024, thanks to Claude automating much of the development work.

Claude is a model that improves itself and writes code to build its next version. Humans still lead in setting goals and handling complex context, but agents already outperform people in research tasks with clear metrics.

In one AI safety experiment, agents improved solutions by 97% in a week, while humans managed 23%. Anthropic sees this self-improving cycle accelerating faster than expected and calls for coordination tools, including possible pauses in frontier AI development.