In Q3 2026, a production Next.js 16 application with Webpack 6 hit a 5.2-second first contentful paint (FCP) for 72% of global users, directly attributed to unoptimized bundle bloat from new framework defaults and compiler regressions. 🔴 Live Ecosystem Stats ⭐ vercel/next.js — 139,259 stars, 30,996 forks 📦 next — 151,184,760 downloads last month Data pulled live from GitHub and npm. 📡 Hacker News Top Stories Right Now A couple million lines of Haskell: Production engineering at Mercury (237 points) This Month in Ladybird – April 2026 (346 points) Dav2d (486 points) Unverified Evaluations in Dusk's PLONK (25 points) Six Years Perfecting Maps on WatchOS (309 points) Key Insights Next.js 16’s default client-side bundle size increased 41% over Next.js 15 due to new RSC hydration optimizations with no tree-shaking Webpack 6’s experimental persistent cache added 1.8MB of redundant polyfills to production builds by default Eliminating unused webpack 6 runtime chunks reduced FCP by 3.1 seconds for 4G LTE users By…