Hey buddy,

Man, you gotta check out some of the stuff on Hacker News today. Had a few minutes to skim through, and there were some pretty cool things popping up.

Square Theory

Okay, first up, there's this weirdly fascinating post called "Square Theory". It's by that Scott Aaronson guy, you know, the quantum computing dude. It's basically this idea he had about finding sets of words that you can arrange in a square grid where the words reading across are the same as the words reading down. Like, if you have "OFFLE WOOFFLE" across, you also have "OFFLE WOOFFLE" down. But the twist is the words in the other diagonal corners have to rhyme with the ones they cross. So, "OFFLE" and "WOOFFLE" rhyme, and whatever's in the other corners have to rhyme with each other and cross correctly too.

People in the comments were having fun with it. Someone mentioned it reminded them of how music works, based on a story about autistic twins who were obsessed with primes. Another comment brought up a similar game but with reworded video game titles instead of rhyming words. Someone else wondered if you could do this in 3D, like make a cube of words. Pretty wild.

Smart Hawk

Get this, there was a study about a hawk that learned to use traffic signals to hunt better. Yeah, like, a bird paying attention to crosswalk signals. Apparently, it figured out that when the pedestrian signal changes, cars are gonna stop for longer, giving it cover to swoop down and grab something without getting hit. How smart is that?

The comments were all over how cool this is. Someone said it shows a crazy level of planning and understanding for an animal. Another person pointed out that birds probably see our cities differently from above and might use infrastructure as landmarks anyway. It just shows how adaptable animals are.

Lazy Tetris

Someone made a "Lazy Tetris" and put it up as a Show HN. It's basically Tetris but... without the time pressure. The blocks just fall when you move them or manually drop them. Sounds kinda chill, I guess?

The discussion got into the nitty-gritty of Tetris copyright lawsuits (apparently the company is pretty aggressive) and whether a game like this is even fun without the stress. One commenter actually said it was brilliant because it lets you see how important time pressure is to the fun of Tetris – too much time makes it boring.

Simon Willison's LLM Tool

You know Simon Willison? He posted about his LLM command-line tool now being able to run other tools, like Python code or plugins. So you can tell the AI tool to go do stuff using other programs.

People in the comments were digging the conversational feel and how it builds commands. There was talk about the next steps, like making it recursive or able to combine different tools. Someone mentioned that this kind of "agentic" system is where things are heading now that prompt engineering might be hitting limits.

Developer Job Security

Ah, the classic debate: The Myth of Developer Obsolescence. This post was basically saying all the hype about AI replacing developers is just the same old cycle we see with every new tech trend.

With over 300 comments, people had *a lot* to say. Many agreed, arguing that AI isn't generic enough for complex, real-world projects yet. Some comments debated whether speculating on the future is even useful. One funny comment talked about how "I'll look into it" is a great answer but often a lie developers use! It sounds like the general consensus is that AI is a tool, not a replacement... for now.

Internet Routing Bug

Okay, this one's a bit techy, but apparently, there was a bug in how some routers handled BGP, which is the protocol that basically directs traffic across the whole internet. It caused some widespread instability.

The comments were interesting because they touched on how complicated BGP is – one person quoted their old supervisor calling it a "black art". There was also a debate about "Postel's Law" – the idea of being liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send. People were arguing whether you should accept slightly messed-up data from other routers to keep things flowing, or be strict and potentially break connections if they don't follow the rules perfectly. Heavy stuff for keeping the internet running.

Duke Students Waste

This was a wild one: someone wrote about salvaging thousands of dollars worth of luxury items discarded by Duke students when they moved out. Like, perfectly good clothes, furniture, etc., just thrown away.

Comments were shocked by the wastefulness. People shared their own stories of finding amazing stuff dumpster diving or at thrift stores. One person found thousands of dollars in medical school textbooks! It really highlights the excess and how much perfectly usable stuff gets trashed.

Anyway, that was the main stuff that caught my eye. Lots of variety today, right? Talk soon!