Daily issue / 2026-09-23
Useful things that surfaced in Hacker News discussions on 2026-09-23. Open the context to see why each one caught our attention—or jump straight to the original thread.
What we found
An app that turns ordinary train videos into detailed line-scan photographs.
Source discussion: MUNI Heritage Weekend in San Francisco
“If you want to use a regular phone or camera, check out TrainScanner!”
dllu · recommendation · evaluated
Direct HN comment
A practical tutorial on using compression for text classification in Python.
Source discussion: Can gzip be a language model?
“Check out "Text classification with Python 3.14's zstd module"”
networked · recommendation
Direct HN comment
David MacKay's approachable textbook connecting information theory, inference, and learning.
Source discussion: Can gzip be a language model?
“For anyone wanting an introductory text for information theory & that explores some of these connections & applications, it's worth checking out the late David MacKay's 2003 textbook Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms”
shoo · recommendation
Direct HN comment
A console-hacking talk explaining the PlayStation 3's cryptographic failure story.
Source discussion: AMD's random number generator can't generate a 0?
“And for the full fail story behind it, fail0verflow hacking the PS3 presentation is great and covers the bug:”
lathiat · recommendation · evaluated
Direct HN comment
An iOS utility that removes tracking parameters before links are shared.
Source discussion: AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You
“I recommend https://sharecleaner.com/ for cleaning links of trackers when sharing from mobile. No affiliation, just a user on iOS.”
toomuchtodo · recommendation · first hand use
Direct HN comment
A mnemonic system for memorizing pi and recalling digits by position.
Source discussion: Engineering Memory: On learning to memorize first 100 digits of pi (2024)
“I used the techniques described on this page to memorize pi. I've got 60 memorized where I can recall the digits by place.”
KyleJune · recommendation · first hand use
Direct HN comment
Charles Bukowski's gritty poetry collection about love, loneliness, and vulnerability.
Source discussion: 16-bit Intel 8088 chip (c. 1985)
“My favorite Bukowski book of poetry "Love is a Dog from Hell". Very Bukowski.”
ggerules · recommendation · first hand use
Direct HN comment
An open-source game engine combining a compact workflow with broad capabilities.
Source discussion: First Shader from Zero in Godot 4
“Godot is such a delight. Brings me back to working with Flixel and Flash game dev. It's really shaping up to be a powerful tool in a simple package, and it's eating Unity's lunch for game jams these days.”
lemmetellya · recommendation · evaluated
Direct HN comment
A Windows desktop database builder for forms, reports, and small applications.
Source discussion: Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived
“Access is so good. I can't believe there's no universal equivalent for Linux and Mac.”
post-it · recommendation · first hand use
Direct HN comment
An open-source device that mutes live ads and skips recorded commercials.
Source discussion: 9 Ads per Minute: FIFA Cup 26 – "the price of the beautiful game"
“I haven’t gotten to the “replace” bit yet, but I’m automatically muting live ads and auto skipping through recorded ones:”
gonzogato · recommendation · first hand use
Direct HN comment
A library for hiding steganographic signals in language-model output.
Source discussion: Spymarks, not Watermarks
“I actually wrote a library to do stego with LLM outputs last year and it turned out to be an almost exact implementation of the Anthropic watermark algo.”
stillsut · author context · author or maintainer
Direct HN comment
A command-line converter that loads Visual FoxPro DBF files into PostgreSQL.
Source discussion: Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived
“For a while we had to run it as a cron job so that people could to data entry in an old VFP app but others could run fast reports on our web app with a postgres backend. It wasn't pretty, but it worked great and helped us get off that ancient stack.”
kstrauser · recommendation · production use
Direct HN comment