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HN Buddy Daily Digest

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Hey buddy, What's up? Just wanted to give you the quick download on some of the wild stuff from Hacker News today, Wednesday. Some really interesting AI talks, plus a bit of drama.

Terence Tao and ChatGPT's Math Adventure

First off, get this: that super famous mathematician, Terence Tao, apparently had a whole conversation with ChatGPT where he was trying to get it to find a counterexample for some crazy math problem called the Jacobian Conjecture. ChatGPT actually came up with something plausible, but it turned out to be wrong after a lot of "thinking." It's wild because one of the comments from a mathematician actually agreed that we need to be better at explaining complex stuff simply. Also, someone mentioned ChatGPT even wrote a Python script as a "side quest" to test its own work. Crazy how much processing power these things need for deep math, too. Check it out: Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation

Bento: PowerPoint in One HTML File?!

Then there's this cool "Show HN" project called Bento. It lets you create entire PowerPoint-style presentations, with editing, viewing, data, and even collaboration, all in just *one single HTML file*. How neat is that? People in the comments were saying HTML and CSS just feel way better for slides than JSON. Someone even called it the first "real-world example of a genuine new product built with AI" that they'd seen. Pretty high praise! Link here: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file

Sad News: John C. Dvorak Passed Away

On a sadder note, John C. Dvorak, the tech pundit, passed away. A lot of folks were sharing memories of him from the old TWiT podcasts and ZDTV days. Apparently, his co-host, Leo Laporte, even found out on air, and handled it really respectfully. People are going to miss his unique take on things. Read about it here: John C. Dvorak has died

"Fire Your CEO, Hire the Future" – OverpAId

Here's a provocative one: a site called OverpAId is basically saying we should fire CEOs and let AI take over, pointing out how ridiculously high CEO salaries are. The comments were all over the place, talking about how boards actually justify those massive salaries – often it's about their "rolodex" and connections, not just pure skill. Also, a lot of debate about whether remote work actually works for businesses or if it was just a pandemic thing. Wild stuff. Link: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

Passkeys: Are Engineers Missing the User Brain?

Another hot topic: "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain." The article argues that while passkeys are technically sound, they're just too confusing for the average person. The comments section blew up with questions like "What if I lose my phone?" and "Do I need a unique passkey for every device?" Some people defended them, saying users do adapt, but it's clear there's still a lot of confusion. Check out the thread: Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain

Reddit Thinks Plain HTML is "Unsafe" Now?

And of course, Reddit drama. Apparently, Reddit has decided that plain HTML is "unsafe." A lot of long-time users are just fed up, saying the quality of the platform has gone way down, with censorship and a strong push towards their app over the old desktop experience. One moderator even said only about 1% of their subreddit's visitors still use old Reddit. Seems like another nail in the coffin for some users. Find the post here: So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

LG Banning Residential Proxies from Smart TVs

Finally, LG is apparently going to ban residential proxies from apps on their smart TVs. This stirred up a whole debate about consumer control versus companies protecting their services. People were arguing about whether ISPs doing "bad things" justifies this, or if people should just be able to host whatever they want on their own networks. Always a fight over who controls your tech, right? Link's here: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

Alright, that's the quick rundown for today. Talk soon!

All Stories from Today

Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample (chatgpt.com)

Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab) (bento.page)

John C. Dvorak has died (twitter.com)

OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future (overpaid.lol)

Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain (twitter.com)

Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing? (dylancastillo.co)

GigaToken: ~1000x faster Language model tokenization (github.com)

So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe (www.cole-k.com)

LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps (krebsonsecurity.com)

The startup's Postgres survival guide (hatchet.run)

Everyone should know SIMD (mitchellh.com)

I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation (citizendot.github.io)

Making (beej.us)

Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop (resobscura.substack.com)

Late.sh – a command-line Clubhouse for computer people (late.sh)

Does creatine make you smarter? (dynomight.net)

Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns (blog.fiddery.com)

Back to Kagi (blog.melashri.net)

“We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3” (twitter.com)

Never Enough (dark.ronacher.eu)

Ten Steps Towards Happiness (2015) (hintjens.com)

Show HN: HN Hall of Fame – browse 3,100 legendary Hacker News links (www.orangecrumbs.com)

Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer source code for command and lunar modules (github.com)

10 REM"_(C2SLFF4 (beej.us)

Codeberg bans vibe coded projects (codeberg.org)

Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere (ishmael.textualize.io)

Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers (www.redfin.com)

Show HN: Cactus Hybrid: We taught Gemma 4 to know when it's wrong (github.com)

OpenNode – Bitcoin Payment Processor (opennode.com)

Medici family mystery may be solved after more than 400 years (www.cnn.com)