A new book titled 'The Secret Life of Circuits' has been published and is now available for order. The book serves as a practical reference guide to electronics and circuit design, featuring over 300 diagrams and illustrations in a full-color hardcover format, with orders shipping directly from the publisher and through major retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
A developer has recreated the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics card on an FPGA as part of the z486 project, implementing a SystemVerilog version of the SST-1 chip that enables DOS games like Tomb Raider to run with original 3D graphics on a Xilinx KV260 board at 100 MHz.
OpenAI unveiled Jalapeño, its AI accelerator chip designed partly using its own LLMs, which achieved a 3.6x latency reduction compared to Nvidia's GB300 while consuming less power. The chip moved from concept to silicon in under 20 months with a team of roughly 100 people, leveraging LLMs to accelerate the design process through automation of language and code-based tasks. Industry experts credit the rapid timeline to LLM capabilities integrated into chip design workflows, with potential for even faster development as the models improve.
A longtime Linux enthusiast who spent over a decade using various distributions and customizing his setup has switched to Apple's ecosystem, purchasing a MacBook and iPhone. He cites diminishing novelty in desktop Linux, convergence of desktop environments around flat design, and the practical appeal of macOS after using it for work, though he acknowledges the platform has its own shortcomings.
The AI industry is shifting focus from model training to inference in 2026, as large language models become widely deployed and reasoning models generate vastly more queries. Tech giants including OpenAI, Amazon, Nvidia, and Anthropic are forming unexpected hardware partnerships and acquiring specialized inference chips to meet explosive demand that differs fundamentally from training workloads.
A developer created a compact texting device by combining a $20 4G wireless hotspot, a Clicks keyboard, and a sharp display, then installed Linux using the OpenStick project and created a custom PCB to integrate the components into the Clicks case form factor.
A developer built a custom AI agent that controls an e-ink display on their desk, which shows personalized information like life progress and task management. The TRMNL device offers a refreshing alternative to software-only interfaces, allowing users to extend AI capabilities into physical hardware that requires no interaction and lasts months on battery.
toluTag is an open-source passive NFC tag using NXP SE05x secure elements to sign ECDSA messages verifiable on Ethereum, enabling physical objects to authenticate on-chain without requiring central servers or extractable private keys.
OpenAI acquired Glass Imaging, an Israeli startup founded by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, for over $300 million. The company develops AI technology to improve image quality in compact cameras for smartphones, drones, and wearables. The acquisition supports OpenAI's hardware ambitions, though specific applications remain unclear.
Hardcaml is an OCaml library for hardware design that provides productive abstractions for circuit design, rigorous validation through simulation and formal verification, and seamless integration between hardware and software. It supports the full hardware-design flow including design, verification, optimization, and integration, and is used in production by Jane Street for ultra-low-latency trading systems.
A Hacker News homepage snapshot featuring technology news and discussion threads covering software development, hardware releases, scientific discoveries, and industry updates across programming, AI, gaming, and infrastructure topics.
Valve's Steam Frame VR headset is now open for pre-order reservations through September 17, with the first wave of customers notified starting September 18. The wireless headset costs $1,059–$1,299 USD depending on storage capacity, includes two controllers and Half-Life: Alyx, and features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, 16GB RAM, and 2160x2160 per-eye LCD displays.
OpenAI acquired smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging for over $300 million. Founded in 2019 by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, the company uses AI and neural networks to improve smartphone camera image quality in real time. The purchase aligns with OpenAI's reported plans to develop its own hardware devices.
An opinion piece argues that Valve's Steam Deck is important for the broader tech ecosystem even for those who don't own one, because it demonstrated that gaming PCs don't require Windows and spurred significant open-source contributions to Linux, emulation tools, and desktop environments that benefit the community independently of Valve's commercial interests.
Valve's Steam Frame portable gaming device starts at $1059 in the US and £889 in the UK, making it more expensive than the Valve Index VR headset. The device includes a copy of Half-Life: Alyx rebuilt for its ARM processor, with a 1TB model available for $1299 in the US. Pre-orders open with a registration deadline of September 17th, followed by a randomized queue system for fulfillment before year-end.
Valve opened pre-orders for Steam Frame, its standalone VR headset, with prices starting at $1,059 USD for the 256GB model and $1,299 USD for 1TB. A randomized lottery system will determine which customers can purchase during the September 17th deadline, with first shipments expected shortly after September 18th. The headset features a Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 chipset and can play VR games or stream from PC via Wi-Fi 6E.
Valve confirms its Steam Deck 2 plans remain unchanged despite the ongoing memory crisis and rising component costs affecting the tech industry. The company continues to prioritize a significant generational performance improvement while balancing efficiency and price, with a potential 2028 release window under consideration.
A tool calculating break-even timeframes for local LLM hardware investments by comparing costs against API usage savings. Users can adjust assumptions about speed, memory, and usage patterns to determine when owning local inference infrastructure becomes cost-effective.
AI companies are purchasing NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs in large quantities for server deployment, indicating significant investment in AI infrastructure and computational capacity.
Dell has revived the XPS 13 as an affordable thin-and-light laptop designed to compete with Apple's MacBook Neo. The 2026 model features excellent build quality, a bright 120Hz touchscreen, and strong keyboard and trackpad, though the base 8GB RAM configuration feels risky for long-term Windows use and there's no headphone jack.