DTF:HN for April 19, 2026

Your Daily Tech Feed covering the top 10 stories on Hacker News for April 19, 2026. Featuring: SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017), Archive of Byte magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975, Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game, What are skiplists good for?, NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers, and more. Stories covered: 1. SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017) https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot17/woot17-paper-guri.pdf HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47822805 2. Archive of Byte magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1975-09 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806096 3. Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game https://kotaku.com/video-game-devs-explain-how-pausing-works-and-sometimes-it-gets-weird-2000686339 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47793161 4. What are skiplists good for? https://antithesis.com/blog/2026/skiptrees/ HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806021 5. NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/04/any-color-you-nist-scientists-create-any-wavelength-lasers-tiny-circuits HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47819453 6. Anonymous request-token comparisons from Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7 https://tokens.billchambers.me/leaderboard HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47816960 7. College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work https://sentinelcolorado.com/uncategorized/a-college-instructor-turns-to-typewriters-to-curb-ai-written-work-and-teach-life-lessons/ HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818485 8. The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star tracker https://www.righto.com/2026/04/B-52-star-tracker-angle-computer.html HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817132 9. The world in which IPv6 was a good design https://apenwarr.ca/log/20170810 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47821429 10. Updating Gun Rocket through 10 years of Unity Engine https://jackpritz.com/blog/updating-gun-rocket-through-10-years-of-unity-engine HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791771