HackerNews Digest

Apple is moving Sign in with Apple email‑relay addresses from privaterelay.appleid.com to private.icloud.com later this year. Existing privaterelay.appleid.com addresses will keep functioning and forward messages without interruption. Developers must update their systems—account handling, email validation, and any whitelist rules—to accept the new private.icloud.com domain alongside the current one. iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com. No code changes are required for the relay service itself, but validation logic must recognize both domains. Apple provides documentation on Sign in with Apple and the Private Email Relay Service for further reference.

Xiaomi’s new Xring O3 processor, highlighted by Daniel Lemire, positions the company’s smartphones as direct competitors to Apple’s iPhones. Benchmarks show the chip matching Apple cores on single‑threaded workloads (≈3,945 Geekbench score) while substantially outpacing them in multithreaded performance (≈15,221 score). Key architectural features include a massive 44 MB cache—larger than typical laptop CPUs—and the C1‑Ultra cores, which support SME2 (Scalable Matrix Extension 2) for AI acceleration and SVE2 for SIMD data parallelism. The design incorporates 21 execution ports, six dedicated to 128‑bit SIMD operations, exceeding the execution‑port count of current Intel/AMD processors; AMD’s Zen 5 can issue 4×512‑bit operations, whereas the Xring O3 offers the best‑available 6×128‑bit SIMD on ARM. This reflects a broader trend toward highly parallel cores with abundant execution units and cache, concentrating transistors on these capabilities.

Microsoft Paint and Photos embed an invisible, server‑issued GUID into locally generated AI images as a watermark. When a user submits a prompt, Paint sends it to a remote moderation endpoint ( https://apsaiservices‑…/moderate‑prompt ) which returns a revised prompt, a promptGenerationId, and a watermarkId (a 16‑byte GUID). After local Stable Diffusion inference (or Azure OpenAI ImageGen for cloud generation), the app calls Watermarker.dll’s WmkWriteWatermark function, which inserts the GUID plus a checksum into the image using a content‑adaptive block‑domain encoding that modifies at least three pixels per bit. The same GUID is recorded in a C2PA manifest (caBX chunk) as a soft‑binding value, signed by Microsoft’s “Responsible AI” provenance system. Paint’s visible watermark (Copilot logo) is separate and optional. Images can only be saved in C2PA‑compatible formats (PNG, JPEG, GIF, .paint); BMP is omitted. Photos uses the identical watermarking flow, but treats watermark failures as non‑fatal. The process relies on remote prompt moderation even for locally generated images.

The provided input contains only a title (“How Universities Should Prepare Founders”) and placeholders for images, without any substantive textual content to summarize. Consequently, there are no core themes, key points, data, or technical insights available for summarization.

• The Moon can be viewed from space with interactive 3‑D models that let users change viewpoint, date, and time, revealing its illuminated phases, terminator, and visible surface features.
• Simulations demonstrate basic Newtonian gravity: two bodies attract with force F = G m₁ m₂ / r²; the resulting accelerations a₁ = G m₂ / r² and a₂ = G m₁ / r² cause the smaller mass to move markedly while the larger mass is barely affected.
• By tracking both bodies from a moving camera the system’s barycenter (center of mass) is identified; in a two‑body system the bodies orbit this point on elliptical paths. Orbital elements such as semi‑major axis, eccentricity, apoapsis, periapsis, and line of apsides are adjustable, and angular velocity varies according to conservation of angular momentum.
• For Earth–Moon: Earth’s radius ≈ 3.67 × Moon’s; mass ≈ 81.3 × Moon’s. The Moon’s average distance ≈ 384,748 km (semi‑major axis) with eccentricity ≈ 0.0549.
• Orbital periods: sidereal month = 27.322 d, anomalistic month = 27.554 d; apsidal precession completes a rotation ≈ 8.85 y.
• Solar gravity perturbs the Moon’s orbit, causing the line of apsides to precess. Both Earth and Moon rotate on their axes, influencing observed motion.

The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), effective 12 August 2026, expands Extended Producer Responsibility by requiring every producer to register and fulfil waste‑collection obligations in each Member State where its packaging is sold. For large firms this is a standard cost, but for micro‑entrepreneurs and makers it creates disproportionate administrative fees—e.g., €110 registration plus €190‑300 authorised‑representative fees in France, similar charges in Belgium, Germany and Austria—totaling roughly €1 150 per year for a Greek engineer selling a few dozen boards across four countries. The regulation therefore threatens the viability of small‑scale hardware creators, artists, craftspeople and niche marketplaces such as Lectronz, which supports open‑source hardware with a 5 % transaction fee and minimal sales volumes. The authors propose three mitigations: (1) an EU‑wide de‑minimis threshold exempting low‑volume producers; (2) a centralized “EPR One‑Stop‑Shop” portal analogous to the VAT OSS; and (3) allowing platforms to act as single producers for their sellers. A provisional EU proposal to suspend mandatory authorised representatives until 2035 addresses only part of the burden.

The content describes the user interface of “San Francisco – The Game,” showing a ready‑to‑explore online city environment. Key status elements include a tile‑stream system awaiting tile data, a “FILL = CURRENT OWNER” field with zone identifiers (Z20, Z17, Z16, Z15), and a loading indicator for ground files, columns, and visible corners. The display reports a 470 m range and resource counts (Wood 0, Stone 0, Metal 0). The “SAN FRANCISCO – DETAIL MODE” panel indicates the neighborhood is 100 % ready, confirming that surrounding streets are loaded. Controls are listed: WASD for movement, mouse look, Space to jump, Shift to run, C for camera, H for glider, with additional keys for speed, zoom, sprint, exit, and vehicle handling. An image placeholder is noted with alt text “City token.”

A self‑hosted ebook library called bookshelf serves EPUB and PDF files without a database. It can run either as a Cloudflare Worker backed by R2 object storage or as a Node.js server serving a local directory. The repository provides a sync tool that scans a books/ folder, generates cover images (using cwebp and pdftoppm), builds a searchable index, and publishes the library to the chosen storage backend. Deployment options include Docker (with a pre‑built image containing the required image tools) or direct installation on a Unix‑like system with Node 24+. Configuration is stored in bookshelf.config.json; the same file is used for both sync and deployment. The app offers in‑browser readers for both formats, profile handling for separate reading positions, and a simple UI with search, cover display, and download links. No authentication is built in—anyone with access to the URL can read and download the collection—so it should be placed behind trusted network controls. The project is MIT‑licensed and includes scripts for development, testing, type‑checking, and Cloudflare deployment.

The article traces the rise and decline of public urinals (“pissoirs”) in 19th‑century Paris and their American counterparts. After cholera outbreaks in the 1850s, Paris banned street urination and installed ornate, cast‑iron or slate pissoirs—often single‑stall or multi‑stall units with modesty screens, decorative ironwork, and advertising, sometimes illuminated by streetlamps. They were gender‑specific, serving only men, and quickly became informal meeting spots for clandestine encounters and graffiti. Police patrols and blackmail attempts followed, leading to a crackdown. In the United States, temperance advocates promoted large, multi‑stall “comfort stations” to replace saloon bathrooms, but Prohibition halted new construction and existing facilities fell into disrepair. Consequently, most early‑20th‑century public restrooms disappeared, leaving urban pedestrians reliant on semi‑private venues (hotels, shops, cafés) where restroom access is treated as a purchasable commodity rather than a civic right.

• In the Cold War, U.S. cultural agencies used modern art as a diplomatic tool to showcase liberalism and creative freedom, positioning it against Soviet realism.
• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) became central: under presidents Nelson Rockefeller, John Hay Whitney, and executive secretary Thomas W. Braden, it executed government contracts, organized traveling exhibitions across Latin America, and later took over the U.S. pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
• The State Department funded the 1946 “Advancing American Art” tour, but domestic criticism halted it.
• After the CIA’s 1947 formation, former OSS members (including Braden, Whitney, Rockefeller) integrated cultural work with intelligence. The CIA created the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in Paris, a covert front that financed magazines, concerts, prizes, and exhibitions to counter Soviet propaganda.
• The CCF partnered with MoMA on shows such as the 1952 “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” in Paris, emphasizing that abstract expressionism could not arise under totalitarian regimes.
• High‑level officials (e.g., Eisenhower, Truman) publicly praised artistic freedom while privately acknowledging the program’s strategic value, confirming modern art’s role as a covert “weapon of national defense.”