In 2024, 68% of senior backend engineers report implementing Authenticated Encryption (AEAD) in custom code, while 72% use NordVPN for remote team network security — yet only 12% can articulate the performance and security tradeoffs between the two. 📡 Hacker News Top Stories Right Now Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license (1531 points) Boris Cherny: TI-83 Plus Basic Programming Tutorial (2004) (63 points) Indian matchbox labels as a visual archive (30 points) Agent-harness-kit scaffolding for multi-agent workflows (MCP, provider-agnostic) (25 points) Appearing productive in the workplace (1314 points) Key Insights AES-256-GCM (AEAD) achieves 14.2 Gbps throughput on 16-core AMD EPYC 9654 vs NordVPN's WireGuard implementation at 1.8 Gbps on same hardware (v6.14.0, Linux 6.5) — a 7.9x difference due to NordVPN's additional key exchange and threat protection overhead.…