Hacker News users discuss the sizes of their journal notebooks, sharing preferences for formats like A5, B6, or pocket notebooks and explaining their choices based on portability, writing habits, and usability.
Background
Hacker News (HN) is a social news and discussion site run by the startup accelerator Y Combinator, where users — mostly software developers, founders, and tech workers — post and comment on links. "Ask HN" threads are community-driven Q&As where anyone can pose a question directly to this audience. This particular thread asks about journal/notebook sizes, a topic that has become a minor perennial on HN because many in tech are avid note-takers, bullet journalists, or productivity enthusiasts who obsess over tools (paper size, pen type, binder style) the way others obsess over code editors. The question "what size and why" implicitly asks for the reasoning behind the choice—portability vs. page real estate, binding durability, pocket fit, etc.—mirroring the rational, trade-off-obsessed culture of the site.
Max Weinbach says he had early access to OpenAI's new model GPT-5.6 Sol, calling it his favorite model by far. He highlights that it never gives up and will keep reasoning until it's done. OpenAI announced that GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly on Thursday, with preview access expanding globally now.
The US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all customers, citing a potential jailbreak technique that involved asking the model to review a codebase for vulnerabilities—a capability Anthropic says is available in other public models. Access was abruptly cut off on June 12.
Andrej Karpathy announces the release of Claude Fable 5, the same underlying model as Mythos but with added safeguards. He calls it a major step forward, particularly for long problem-solving sessions on difficult tasks, and describes it as state-of-the-art on nearly all benchmarks with exceptional performance in software engineering, research, and vision.
Roman Storm warns that the legal theory in his case could set a precedent making open-source developers liable for how others use their code, potentially criminalizing the mere publication of privacy, messaging, or crypto tools. He notes that developer Michael Lewellen cannot publish lawful code due to prosecution fears, and argues this chilling effect extends beyond any single case.
Meta's engineering culture is deteriorating under Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who have introduced keyboard tracking, reassignments to data labeling, and AI-centric performance metrics. Critics argue this incentivizes performative AI use, drives away experienced engineers, and contributed to a major Instagram hijacking incident caused by AI-written and AI-reviewed code.