9.17.26 | Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust, training a 4B model for faster query plans than Postgres, small programming tricks

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on Sep 17, 2026. Feel free to leave feedback on Github: https://github.com/denolfe/hacker-news-highlights (00:00) - Intro (00:18) - Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust (01:39) - Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres (03:08) - Small programming tricks (04:18) - Xiaomi Mimo 2.6 live post-training dashboard (05:34) - AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran (07:10) - Performance Improvements in .NET 11 (08:13) - Backups Aren't Simple (09:16) - Reversing Factorio's RNG (10:50) - The engineering behind the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (11:57) - Breaking the 1.58-bit Barrier for Ternary LLMs (13:09) - Outro Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/introducing-cuda-rust-two-tracks-for-writing-gpu-kernels/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724881 Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres https://rohanbansal.com/qorl https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731285 Small programming tricks https://will-keleher.com/posts/small-programming-tricks-matter/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49729000 Xiaomi Mimo 2.6 live post-training dashboard https://mimo.xiaomi.com/rl/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732270 AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/aws-says-it-cant-restore-some-data-from-mideast-facilities-struck-by-iran-ddcb7e5d https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49719249 Performance Improvements in .NET 11 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvements-in-net-11/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711424 Backups Aren't Simple https://filipovski.net/2026/09/16/backups-arent-simple.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732513 Reversing Factorio's RNG https://gegell.github.io/posts/factorio-rng/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49674451 The engineering behind the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve https://johnjwang.com/post/2026/09/15/engineering-behind-us-strategic-petroleum-reserve https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49719596 Breaking the 1.58-bit Barrier for Ternary LLMs https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732931