Hacker News Reader

MilnerRouteon Stocks had a great Monday, but something alarming occurred not seen since 1999

"30 S&P 500 stocks hit new lows, while only seven reached fresh highs. The last time the index advanced at least 1% to within 1% of a new 52-week high as new lows outnumbered new highs was December 21, 1999, a few months before the Dotcom Bubble top."

MilnerRouteon Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously

Everyone who's actually gone to one of their AI-run businesses ends up seeming really unimpressed...

https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/13/0523208/a-visit-to-san-f...

MilnerRouteon Americans Without Degrees Are Having One of the Best Job Markets in Years

Non-paywalled link

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/americans-without-co...

MilnerRouteon 30-year Treasury yield tops 5.33%, new 19-year high: inflation, spending worries

CNN headline: "Bond markets are getting hammered. Here’s what’s driving the sell-off"

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/investing/global-bond-market

MilnerRouteon House passes bill to enact year-round Daylight Saving Time across the country

It still needs to pass the Senate.

MilnerRouteon How dementia is being defeated

That Archive link isn't about dementia

MilnerRouteon Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

Headline cropped. It's the lowest participation rate "outside the Covid era".

Original headline: "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of the Covid era"

MilnerRouteon A forgotten social media post may hold key clues to Covid-19's origin

From CNN today:

The documents do not come close to proving that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID"... The documents released by Gabbard contain nothing remotely resembling proof on the question of how the virus originated – and certainly not proof for the bolded claim on the director’s website that “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID.”

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/23/politics/covid-19-gabbard-fau...

MilnerRouteon A forgotten social media post may hold key clues to Covid-19's origin

It's good to research virus prevention -- and to fund research into virus prevention. But Tucker Carlson started the conspiracy theory that the U.S. funded a group that funded research that wasn't just into virus prevention, but actual "gain-of-function" research (which is false). Tulsi Gabbard is now resurrecting that theory on her last day in office.

The lab and its virus-prevention research did not in any way "spark Covid". (Fauci also believes the lab-leak theory is unsupported, but he testified to Congress that he did not officially share that opinion with other U.S agencies. Tulsi Gabbard says he did, so that's the extent of the "lie" she's accusing him of.) It's interesting that the sum total of the money that theory rests on is "millions" of dollars.

The submitted link (from the reputable magazine Science) does report "further evidence that China is withholding vital data on the contentious issue." But the social media post revealed new incriminating data which China has never shared -- that supports the market-origin theory. ("The maps identify specific stalls as having live animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and vendors with antibodies to the virus...")

MilnerRouteon New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds

Tufts University asked an academic what the financial results were for the UK:

"The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU."

https://now.tufts.edu/2026/06/08/10-years-after-brexit-vote-...

MilnerRouteon Newborns' cry melody is shaped by their native language

I took a class in psychology (several decades ago). The professor made the point that babies also babble in a way that reflects their native language.

I think their point was that babbling is an instinctive first step toward trying to communicate. But it also shows how the native language -- what's being spoken around newborns -- is being absorbed.

MilnerRouteon Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say

UPDATED COMMENT: Wikipedia says the 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty was "a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity," according to both U.S. and Israeli governments. (Though they also note people who question that conclusion...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

MilnerRouteon I built a daily word game with six rarity tiers and no letter tiles

I got a 581. ("Sharpshooter!") I felt like I was "nerd sniped"... I felt like I really need to see if I could find more words!

   https://xkcd.com/356/

It'd be nice if the results page told me which of my words was the rarest. [Or maybe it did and I just didn't notice?] Also, it took me a while to realize that I didn't have to use one letter from each column. :)

MilnerRouteon A SpaceX/Tesla merger could trigger Musk's $1T pay package automatically

"In the event of a Change in Control, the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded..."

MilnerRouteon Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

What is TheSciVerse.org? The domain was registered 8 weeks ago. Although The Guardian also covered the study...

___

More recently, attention has shifted beyond the gym. Early research suggests creatine could have a role in cognitive function, with some studies pointing to protection from cognitive decline.

“A few bigger studies have brought it into focus,” says [Bethan Crouse, a sports nutritionist at Loughborough University].

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/25/is-it-t...

MilnerRouteon Taxpayers May Be Eligible for Significant Tax Refunds – If They Act by July 10

It's not just if you filed late. It also says payments "due any time within that window were not late until after July 10, 2023."

So for example, if you were a contractor who paid your taxes on April 15 (rather than making quarterly payments).

MilnerRouteon Putin says he thinks Russia-Ukraine war is coming to an end

"Russia's stagnating battlefield performance is placing the Kremlin in a worse position to extract major political concessions." -- Institute for the Study of War

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...

MilnerRouteon 'The Iran war strengthened Ukraine. Could a ceasefire with Russia be closer?'

"Crude oil export data suggests the rise in prices, plus the easing of American sanctions on countries buying Russian oil, boosted Russian revenues to 2.3 times their December-February levels in the third week of the Iran war. But in the fourth week, Ukrainian drone strikes on energy-producing infrastructure reduced Russia's earnings by $1bn, eradicating around two-thirds of the previous week's gains."

MilnerRouteon Consumer sentiment plummets to record low as Iran war jacks up inflation

"...lower than anything seen in the post World War II era, including during the Great Recession, the pandemic downturn and the historic inflation surge afterward."

MilnerRouteon Automatic U.S. military draft registration planned by December, filing shows

The proposal would implement a requirement passed by Congress to include automatic registration for "every male citizen of the United States" between the ages of 18 and 26.

MilnerRouteon [dead]

Key points from the Atlantic Counil:

- "For the first time in more than two years, Ukraine regained more territory than it lost in February 2026, the New York Times reports."

- "While the Russian military held the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Vladimir Putin's invading army was unable to achieve any major breakthroughs and managed to secure less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory."

- "By early 2026, many Western officials estimated that monthly Russian military losses in Ukraine were now exceeding Moscow's capacity to replenish its forces... With Putin deeply reluctant to risk another mobilization drive inside Russia, Moscow is turning increasingly to Africa and other regions for mercenary troops."

"The false narrative of inevitable Russian victory is designed to demoralize Kyiv’s allies and undermine support for the Ukrainian war effort."

MilnerRouteon 'Project Hail Mary': real space science, real astrophotography

That's only the source for the first sentence. The second sentence cites the Associated Press, but the science and astrophography info starts in this article

https://www.wcvb.com/article/heres-some-of-the-science-facts...

There's also links to...

- The site of Australian astrophotographer Rod Prazeres

https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney/

- The video on IMAX's YouTube channel where the film's directors explain how they used non-visible-light photography for a crucial scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i8WgxeKi0

- The Stellar Australis "Project Dune" page

https://www.stellaraustralis.com/project-dune-stars/

MilnerRouteon Trivy ecosystem supply chain temporarily compromised

Briefly?

"Trivy Supply Chain Attack Spreads, Triggers Self-Spreading CanisterWorm Across 47 npm Packages"

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/03/22/0039257/trivy-supply-...

MilnerRouteon China doesn't want you to know about Operation Yellowbird

"Another of the dissidents spirited out [of China] by Operation Yellowbird was Arthur Liu. Some 35 years later, his daughter would glide across Olympic ice wearing the red, white and blue."

"Media coverage of Alysa Liu’s achievements sometimes notes her father's history as a Tiananmen Square protester who fled China and made a new life in the United States. But the part about Operation Yellowbird remains little-known."

MilnerRouteon Show HN: Tic-Tac-Word – Can you beat yourself in this tic-tac-toe word game?

I wondered how this would work as a two-player game.

Like, I try for the center square, but fail to identify the word in four guesses. [Then maybe that square automatically goes to my opponent?] If they get another square, they'll have two in a row, and I've got to go for the block... (But if they don't solve one of the squares, then I've got a chance at going for two-in-a-row...)

To keep this a single-player game, maybe you'd have to compete against an automated opponent? (Maybe they get X's and Os's on their turn like a normal Tic-Tac-Toe game, but you only get to block them by solving the Wordle-like puzzle in a square? Or maybe they have to guess too...)

MilnerRouteon Ask HN: Most beautiful personal blog UI you have ever seen?

This isn't a blog, but more than 20 years ago I saw a Flash web game which I've always remembered as the most beautiful piece of interactive online content I'd ever seen.

It took a while to find it again... (I searched Google images until I found a screenshot that looked right.) Somebody archived it and resurrected it with Ruffle. (It looks better if you go to "Full Screen" mode.) But the aesthetic was just incredible...

I give you -- "A Murder of Scarecrows."

https://www.gamesflow.com/jeux.php?id=2062366

MilnerRouteon Whats your strategy to stay productive post layoff?

You're doing great, it sounds like.

My generic advice for job-seeking is always "work your contacts." Maybe spend time on LinkedIn? That's where some jobs get announced first, and you'll sometimes hear news about who's doing what. But also it's an easy way to connect/reconnect with people you've known at past jobs/etc.

MilnerRouteon [dead]

Pretending to be an outraged human.

Nothing to see here.

MilnerRouteon [dead]

"Ukrainian forces have retaken territory, imposed heavy casualties on Russian forces, and deployed a new long-range cruise missile... Last spring, there were reports of casualty ratios of one to five or six favoring Ukraine. Recent reporting suggests the ratio has gone up substantially—to the point that Russian recruitment efforts cannot fully replace combat losses, the first time this has happened in the war."

MilnerRouteon State Attorneys General Want to Tie Online Access to ID

"We rate Reclaim The Net as Right-Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that align with a conservative perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing, lack of transparency, and one-sided biased reporting."

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reclaim-the-net-bias/