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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
US national debt reaches a record $37T, the Treasury Department reports (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zD6q
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zD6q
"Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit (🔥 Score: 150+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zGFz
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zGFz
Steve Wozniak: 'I am the happiest person ever' and 'I never sold out' (🔥 Score: 150+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zGPD
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zGPD
Linux Address Space Isolation Revived After Lowering 70% Performance Hit to 13% (Score: 151+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFsA
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFsA
Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US (Score: 162+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFBH
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFBH
New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning (Score: 154+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFpV
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFpV
Why LLMs Can't Build Software (🔥 Score: 167+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFDN
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFDN
Funding Open Source like public infrastructure (Score: 154+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zEu3
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zEu3
US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years (🔥 Score: 160+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFw7
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFw7
NIST Finalizes 'Lightweight Cryptography' Standard to Protect Small Devices (Score: 150+ in 16 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zDzs
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zDzs
Zenobia Pay – A mission to build an alternative to high-fee card networks (Score: 153+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zEmP
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zEmP
Study: Social media probably can't be fixed (Score: 151+ in 16 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zCk5
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zCk5
Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across the UK (Score: 150+ in 16 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zBs3
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zBs3
Related: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/uk_expands_police_facial_recognition/
What does it mean to be thirsty? (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zwbX
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zwbX
Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental health therapy (🔥 Score: 151+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zDtg
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zDtg
Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy (Score: 170+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zGvF
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zGvF
Show HN: Yet another memory system for LLMs (Score: 150+ in 16 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zEv3
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zEv3
Built this for my LLM workflows - needed searchable, persistent memory that wouldn't blow up storage costs. I also wanted to use it locally for my research. It's a content-addressed storage system with block-level deduplication (saves 30-40% on typical codebases). I have integrated the CLI tool into most of my workflows in Zed, Claude Code, and Cursor, and I provide the prompt I'm currently using in the repo.
The project is in C++ and the build system is rough around the edges but is tested on macOS and Ubuntu 24.04.
Org-social is a decentralized social network that runs on an Org Mode (Score: 151+ in 7 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFh5
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFh5
Gemma 3 270M: Compact model for hyper-efficient AI (🔥 Score: 172+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zGi6
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zGi6
Kodak has no plans to cease, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy (🔥 Score: 160+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zG3u
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zG3u
Related from yesterday: Kodak says it might have to cease operations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44875270
Brilliant illustrations bring this 1976 Soviet edition of 'The Hobbit' to life (2015) (❄️ Score: 153+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zsyt
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zsyt
"None of These Books Are Obscene": Judge Strikes Down Much of FL's Book Ban Bill (🔥 Score: 150+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFH8
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFH8
Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court (🔥 Score: 153+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zFgG
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zFgG
Arch shares its wiki strategy with Debian (Score: 151+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zF5n
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zF5n
What's the strongest AI model you can train on a laptop in five minutes? (Score: 159+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zxUs
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zxUs
PCIe 8.0 announced by the PCI-Sig will double throughput again (❄️ Score: 152+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zpZ5
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zpZ5
Gartner's grift is about to unravel (Score: 150+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zCrn
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zCrn
Kodak says it might have to cease operations (Score: 152+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zxJ8
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zxJ8
When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6zBRE
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6zBRE
VC-backed company just killed my EU trademark for a small OSS project (Score: 156+ in 20 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6zApu
I run a small open-source project Deepkit (Trademark 017875717) I've been building for many years. It's not huge, just a few thousand users compared to the big OSS names, but to me it was worth protecting, so I trademarked the name in the EU and US a few years back. I had hoped to be protected from other corporations this way and live peacefully.
A $160M-funded company named Deepki (Trademark 1751952) came along and filed for cancellation at EUIPO since they needed the trademark now after getting lots of funding. They won. Now my trademark is gone.
The frustrating part? The EU actually does allow open-source (even free projects) to have trademarks, but you have to prove "genuine use" in the EU for the goods/services your trademark covers. Which seems to force you in collecting user sensitive data otherwise you are entirely unable to prove that you have actual users in the EU. I generally try to collect as little information as possible (also because I don't care where my users are coming from). I had google analytics running for some time on the main page (not documentation), but most of the time it didn't work and it seems most of my users block it anyway.
Here's what I gave the EUIPO and why they said no:
- Google Analytics for my site with a full country breakdown from 2018–2023. A few hundred to ~1,800 EU visitors per year per country. They said that’s "too small" to count as real commercial exploitation for my Class 9 software. Also, they said they couldn’t tell which goods those visits were actually for.
- npmjs + GitHub stats - hundreds of thousands of downloads and thousands of stars. Rejected because there's no location data, so they couldn't confirm if the usage was in the EU. In some cases, they said the timeframes weren't even clear.
- They basically kept repeating that they couldn't clearly link any of the usage to the specific goods/services my trademark was registered for.
The conclusion:
>Conclusion: It follows from the above that the EUTM proprietor has not proven genuine use of the contested mark for any of the goods and services for which it is registered. As a result, the application for revocation is wholly successful and the contested European Union trade mark must be revoked in its entirety. According to Article 62(1) EUTMR, the revocation will take effect from the date of the application for revocation, that is, as of 18/03/2024.
>COSTS: According to Article 109(1) EUTMR, the losing party in cancellation proceedings must bear fees and costs incurred by the other party.
They even admitted there's no strict minimum for usage, and free software can count, but in their eyes my EU traffic was too low and not clearly tied to the trademarked goods.
I also have the US trademark for the name. This same company tried to register in the US around 2022 (Trademark #79379273) and got blocked because it was too similar (decision made by USPTO). But a few months ago they somehow got it registered there too (Trademark #7789522), not sure how they did that now.
Now I'm sitting here wondering:
- Is it even worth getting a second opinion and appealing in the EU? I mean the project is very small.
- Should I fight the US registration?
- Or should I just walk away from trademarks altogether for my open-source projects. I lost so much money because of this already.
- And for OSS projects in general, is there even a practical, privacy-friendly way to prove EU usage without generating revenue?
- Is it even worth holding the trademark if proving EU usage is this brittle for OSS? If the trademark can be deleted just like that even after spending a few thousands dollars on lawyers. Probably a skill issue, but still, damn.
It sucks to lose the name I've been building for years to a corporation with $160M behind them, especially when this is just a side project I do in my spare time, and to them I'm a nobody. If nothing else, maybe my case can be a cautionary tale for other OSS maintainers.