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Ask HN: Cheap laptop for Linux without GUI (for writing)

locusofself

Hey HN,<p>I&#x27;m on a quest for a distraction-free writing device and considering a super cheap laptop which I can just run vim&#x2F;nano on.<p>I&#x27;d like: - Excellent battery life - Good keyboard - Sleep&#x2F;wake capabilities (why is this so hard with Linux?)<p>I&#x27;m thinking some kind of chromebook? Maybe an old thinkpad?

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2026)

whoishiring

Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format:<p><pre><code> Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé&#x2F;CV: Email: </code></pre> Please only post if you are personally looking for work. Agencies, recruiters, job boards, and so on, are off topic here.<p>Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities.<p>There&#x27;s a site for searching these posts at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wantstobehired.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wantstobehired.com</a>.

Ask HN: Anyone have a "sovereign" solution for phone calls?

kldg

I&#x27;ve been working on an SMTP&#x2F;email server lately, and while Google and some others imply a lot of frowny-faces and put quotation marks around tests &quot;passing&quot; for not using a corporate relay, does at least let me communicate with the broader ecosystem.<p>Phone calls, however, seem like a tougher nut to crack. SIP URIs would let me kinda-sorta communicate with the broader ecosystem, but many phones and software seem to have dropped support for it; only a tiny % of those typically using the PSTN (that is, a &quot;normal phone&quot;) would be able to call or receive calls to&#x2F;from my addresses -- but it would be able to be directly and neatly integrated into the email server, which is a big plus.<p>I will probably still implement SIP URIs and VOIP support into the email server on principle, but I wonder if anyone has any alternatives to consider. Ideally, I would be able to communicate on the PSTN, but this seems like a lost cause.<p>Also curious about anyone using VOIP for work whether or not they allow or block SIP URIs from external networks. I maintained our VOIP server at work more than a decade ago, but it was a &quot;side-project&quot; due to working at an SMB where I wore many hats and couldn&#x27;t specialize in anything; I wasn&#x27;t even aware of SIP URIs at the time.

Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?

blenderob

Inspired by this Ask HN: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46834977<p>But I&#x27;m going further back in time to see if there is anybody here who still uses slide rules?

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2026)

whoishiring

Please state the location and include REMOTE for remote work, REMOTE (US) or similar if the country is restricted, and ONSITE when remote work is <i>not</i> an option.<p>Please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards. One post per company. If it isn&#x27;t a household name, explain what your company does.<p>Please only post if you are actively filling a position and are committed to replying to applicants.<p>Commenters: please don&#x27;t reply to job posts to complain about something. It&#x27;s off topic here.<p>Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in the job.<p>Searchers: try <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dheerajck.github.io&#x2F;hnwhoishiring&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dheerajck.github.io&#x2F;hnwhoishiring&#x2F;</a>, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nchelluri.github.io&#x2F;hnjobs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nchelluri.github.io&#x2F;hnjobs&#x2F;</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnresumetojobs.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnresumetojobs.com</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnhired.fly.dev" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnhired.fly.dev</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kennytilton.github.io&#x2F;whoishiring&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kennytilton.github.io&#x2F;whoishiring&#x2F;</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnjobs.emilburzo.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnjobs.emilburzo.com</a>, or this (unofficial) Chrome extension: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;hn-hiring-pro&#x2F;mpfaljjblphnlloddaplgicpkinikjlp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chromewebstore.google.com&#x2F;detail&#x2F;hn-hiring-pro&#x2F;mpfal...</a>.<p>Don&#x27;t miss this other fine thread: <i>Who wants to be hired?</i> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46857487">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46857487</a>

Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?

speedylight

I’ve noticed that most physical scientific and graphing calculators are easily outdone in terms of performance, capability and ease of use by the likes of Desmos and the default calculators on OS’es like the iOS, Android, and Windows.<p>It kind of makes me wonder whether people still use physical calculators from Texas Instruments, Casio, etc<p>If you do, I’d love to know why and how it is different&#x2F;better for you than the ones I’ve mentioned and others like them and vice verse.<p>Cheers!

Signal Is Down

Daniel_sk

Status page shows it&#x27;s up (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;status.signal.org).<p>Edit: status now updated to &quot;Signal is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working hard to restore service as quickly as possible.&quot;)

Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF

eon01

especially for technical books with code

Ask HN: OpenClaw users, what is your token spend?

8cvor6j844qw_d6

Running OpenClaw with Anthrophic API and it burned through ~USD 50 in one day.<p>What are other OpenClaw users seeing? Anyone found effective ways to cut costs (model tiering, caching, etc.)?

Ask HN: What weird or scrappy things did you do to get your first users?

preston-kwei

Hi everyone,<p>I’m building Persona, a platform to delegate email scheduling to AI. Lately, I’ve been working hard to get those first users on board, but it’s been quite challenging.<p>I’ve already tried the typical strategies that everybody talks about: cold email, LinkedIn InMail, careful targeting, decent copy. It’s mostly been a dead end. Low open rates, almost no replies.<p>At this point, I’m not looking for the usual advice you see in blog posts or on reddit. I’m specifically curious about unconventional or non-obvious things that actually worked for you early on, especially things that felt a bit scrappy, weird, or counterintuitive at the time.<p>If you’ve been through this phase, what genuinely worked and got you your first users?

Kernighan on Programming

chrisjj

&quot;Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it&quot;<p>This has been a timely PSA.

Ask HN: Have you been fired because of AI?

s-stude

Wanted to gather some stories about people who were fired because of AI. Not a generic &quot;reorg&quot;, what they say in the press release, but honestly, because of AI. Proves?

Google Cloud suspended my account for 2 years, only automated replies

andylizf

My Google account has been suspended from GCP since March 2024.<p>I have submitted multiple appeals through ts-consult@google.com over 2 years. Every time I get the same automated template asking me to explain, I reply with details, then nothing. No human ever responds.<p>Case: #1-8622000037271<p>Timeline: - March 2024: Suspended, appeal submitted - April 2024: Automated requests for info, I replied - Nov 2024: More automated emails, I replied again - Dec 2024 - now: Complete silence<p>I am a CS researcher at UC Berkeley. This has seriously impacted my work.<p>Has anyone successfully gotten Google to review a GCP suspension appeal? How do you reach a human?

GitHub Actions Have "Major Outage"

graton

Currently the GitHub status page says there is a &quot;Major Outage&quot; for GitHub Actions.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.githubstatus.com&#x2F;<p>This is as of 19:58 UTC &#x2F; 11:58 PST on 2-Feb-2026

Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?

LinguaBrowse

I&#x27;ve been using Twitter &#x2F; X for a good decade now, and while I&#x27;ve found it&#x27;s a great place to connect with native app dev communities (I&#x27;m well connected with the React Native scene), I really struggle to connect with any web devs.<p>There are a few big names like Adam Wathan who are pretty active on Twitter of course, but considering how widespread web dev is, I see precious few up-and-coming web devs coding in public.<p>So, where are they? I have explored BlueSky a bit, but again it feels a bit like tumbleweeds (though maybe that&#x27;s just my luck as a small account).<p>Are web devs more old-school, posting on bulletin boards and forums? Or is X still the answer, and I&#x27;m just getting aggressively packed into a different bubble?<p>… Or is it all realtime communication, like Slack and Discord, these days?

My small SaaS got recommended my Google in the AI search overview

kaave

okay, so this is not so big to many of you , but today , i was just bored and tired of doing any marketing , cos nothing seemed to have been working. so i decided to do a search (i searched for quite a number of keywords) like error tracking for supabase , error tracking for next Js , but my saas didnt rank (if you dont know what im building , im working on a dead simple error tracker that notifies you when something breaks in prod, no bloated dashboards or config hell) , i built this cos sentry had too much noise and i just wanted something that lets me know when there&#x27;s an issue in prod.<p>so i decided to do a search on &quot;error tracking for shipfast(by marc lou)&quot; and guess what ?? Bugmail was the first recommended result , now i dont know how this worked, i mean ive done some seo and stuff but i wasnt expecting it , and now i feel like im back , which is funny cos i didnt make a sale , i didnt onboard a new user yet i feel like o have conquered , life of a founder , i guess<p>i just wanted to share this here, also if you have any advice on how to rank higher on GSC and how to nail this marketing thing , any advice or feedback will be valuable<p>in the meantime , incase you want to check out what ive built;<p>you can check it out here ; https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bugmail.site

Best practices for powering and wiring addressable LED strip installs?

emmasuntech

I’ve been building installs with addressable LED strips (5V, 12V, 24V). The same few failure modes show up over and over: dim tails on long runs, random sparkle or flicker, and connectors that become the weak point.<p>A few practices that helped me most:<p>Treat power distribution as the first design task: plan injection points early, keep feeder wires short, and avoid pushing all current through one end.<p>Always share a solid ground between controller and strip, and keep the data path simple. When runs get longer or environments get noisy, a small series resistor near the data source and a proper level shift (3.3V to 5V) often improves stability.<p>Assume connectors are “consumables”: strain relief matters, waterproofing needs to stay serviceable, and high current runs deserve more conservative choices.<p>I’m curious what your most reliable rules of thumb are for injection spacing, branch fusing, and debugging when things go wrong. If you have a checklist or measurement approach you trust, I’d love to learn it.

Ask HN: Why dead code detection in Python is harder than most tools admit

duriantaco

I’ve been thinking about why dead code detection (and static analysis in general) feels so unreliable in Python compared to other languages. I understand that Python is generally dynamic in nature.<p>In theory it should be simple(again in theory): parse the AST, build a call graph, find symbols with zero references. In practice it breaks down quickly because of many things like:<p>1. dynamic dispatch (getattr, registries, plugin systems)<p>2. framework entrypoints (Flask&#x2F;FastAPI routes, Django views, pytest fixtures)<p>3. decorators and implicit naming conventions<p>4. code invoked only via tests or runtime configuration<p>Most tools seem to pick one of two bad tradeoffs:<p>1. be conservative and miss lots of genuinely dead code<p>or<p>2. be aggressive and flag false positives that people stop trusting<p>What’s worked best for me so far is treating the code as sort of a confidence score, plus some layering in limited runtime info (e.g. what actually executed during tests) instead of relying on 100% static analysis.<p>Curious how others handle this in real codebases..<p>Do yall just accept false positives? or do yall ignore dead code detection entirely? have anyone seen approaches that actually scale? I am aware that sonarqube is very noisy.<p>I built a library with a vsce extension, mainly to explore these tradeoffs (link below if relevant), but I’m more interested in how others think about the problem. Also hope I&#x27;m in the right channel<p>Repo for context: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;duriantaco&#x2F;skylos

Ask HN: Are you still using spec driven development?

cherry_tree

Especially interested in people using AI for brownfield development, but generally interested in if people are continuing down the spec driven path, or if agents + skills&#x2F;prompts&#x2F;mcp&#x2F;agents.md&#x2F;something else is filling the niche spec driven development was trying to capture.<p>Question was prompted by seeing spec kit have no commits for over a month an no obvious integration with GitHub’s new agents integration.

CiderStack – Native macOS VM manager, pay once, no subscription

ciderdev

I&#x27;m one of the developers behind CiderStack. It&#x27;s a local-first macOS VM tool for Apple devs who need clean installs, older Xcodes, or a safe place to test things without bricking their main machine. Spin up → snapshot → break things → delete → repeat. Why no subscription? CiderStack runs on your hardware. It doesn&#x27;t need my servers. It doesn&#x27;t phone home. So why would you pay me every month? I&#x27;m tired of SaaS fees for tools that could easily be a one-time purchase. Tired of losing access to software because a card expired. Tired of workflows held hostage behind subscriptions. Buy it once. Own it forever. Free updates for the major version. That&#x27;s the deal. Who it&#x27;s for:<p>Solo devs testing across macOS versions without buying multiple Macs IT admins safely testing betas and MDM profiles before rollout CI&#x2F;CD teams spinning up ephemeral macOS runners Homelabbers with a rack of Mac minis (we built this for people like us)<p>14-day free trial, no account required. Just shipped v1.0.3 (found a few bugs pretty early on) Happy to answer questions.

Ask HN: Anyone else struggle with how to learn coding in the AI era?

44Bulldog

I&#x27;m someone who got into building&#x2F;programming in early 2025, when vibe coding tools became more usable. Since then, I&#x27;d like to think that I have developed a lot as a programmer, but I still have this deep sense of imposter syndrome &#x2F; worry that AI is too much of a crutch and I&#x27;m not really learning.<p>I have shipped a few projects, I always review AI-suggested code, do daily coding practice without AI, watch youtube videos, etc. but still don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;m striking the right balance or whether I can really call myself a programmer.<p>I often see people say that the solution is to just fully learn to code without AI, (i.e, go &quot;cold turkey&quot;), which may be the best, but I wonder if the optimal path is somewhere in between given that AI is clearlly changing the game here in terms of what it means to be a programmer.<p>I&#x27;m curious how you have all handled this balancing act in the past few years. More concretely, what strategies do you use to both be efficient and able to ship &#x2F; move quickly while ensuring you are also taking the time to really process and understand and learn what you are doing?

Ask HN: Has anybody moved their local community off of Facebook groups?

madsohm

Facebook&#x27;s feed is nonfunctional. Only some people get notification, even though they have notification for all messages turned on. Only some get the newest posts in their main feed. Sometimes I do get notifications, but only long after an urgent message was posted.<p>Has anybody successfully moved their local community off of Facebook groups?<p>I&#x27;m thinking about neighbor conversations&#x2F;events, daycare, kindergarten, kids&#x27; classmates, sporting communities, etc.<p>If so, where did you go? Did you build something yourself or do you self-host some open source project? Did you find a good paid alternative?

Ask HN: Request limits vs. token limits for AI-powered apps?

JeduDev

Currently, I’m working on a web app for managing documents, databases, and whiteboards—the typical app that aims to be like Notion.<p>However, right now I’m facing the dilemma of creating a plan with AI usage limits, since the idea is to make it more agentic: able to edit and query context across an entire workspace and move it into a document, for example, maybe draw something on a whiteboard, etc. Still, I have the feeling that consumption could easily get out of hand. I plan to use DeepSeek for AI chat, but use Gemini 3 Flash for agentic usage and editing because it’s more intelligent. Lately, I’ve seen how many core AI apps have shifted their pricing models from per-request pricing to a fixed usage limit, but I’m unsure whether that’s frowned upon, creates a less pleasant user experience, or maybe even gives the feeling that you’re not getting what you paid for. So I’d like to hear some opinions on what decision I should make.

Ask HN: Is anyone losing sleep over retry storms or partial API outages?

rjpruitt16

I’m working on infrastructure to solve retry storms and outages. Before I go further, I want to understand what people are actually doing today. Compare solutions and maybe help someone see potential solutions. The problems:<p>Retry storms - API fails, your entire fleet retries independently, thundering herd makes it worse.<p>Partial outages - API is “up” but degraded (slow, intermittent 500s). Health checks pass, requests suffer.<p>What I’m curious about: ∙ What’s your current solution? (circuit breakers, queues, custom coordination, service mesh, something else?) ∙ How well does it work? What are the gaps? ∙ What scale are you at? (company size, # of instances, requests&#x2F;sec)<p>I’d love to hear what’s working, what isn’t, and what you wish existed.

Why do people still talk about AGI?

cermicelli

I am curious I am not sure if AI is just hype, I use it for software and a few other things. But looking at so many people talking about AGI when the best models can&#x27;t even answer simple stuff correctly, fail at tool use, are vulnerable to all types of injection attacks that don&#x27;t make sense.<p>I don&#x27;t know if the investments in AI are worth it but am I blind for not seeing any hope for AGI any time soon.<p>Agentic AI is interesting perhaps but I hardly have had it work perfectly, I have to hold it&#x27;s hand at everything.<p>People making random claims about AGI soon is really weakening my confidence in AI in general. Given I haven&#x27;t seen much improvements in last few years other than better tools and wrappers, and models that work better with these tools and wrappers.

Ask HN: Junior getting lost

TheRegularOne

Hello those who still read forums.<p>I have recently graduated from a college and started working as a junior dev (trying to consume as much knowledge from senior colleagues as I can now) and it seems that the real world is kind of a different story compared to the college practice.<p>In the college we&#x27;ve been taught about design patterns and all these responsibilities like domain, application, infrastructure, UI. Domain should never depend on infrastructure or application layer and so on. But the projects I got have domain that depend on infrastructure and another one where application has a reference directly to infrastructure and been told that this is correct implementation... doh..<p>I think I was kind of a good at listening for the lectures, but I now am doubting about, whether it was worth learning stuff at all lol since it&#x27;s so controversial out there. I am, of course, in no position to question senior dev, but what do you guys think - is it really normal that all the college so called &quot;best practices&quot; go straight to the trash bin or am I just misunderstanding the real-work-like context?

Latex-wc: word count and word frequency for LaTeX projects

sethbarrettAU

I was revising my proposal defense and kept feeling like I was repeating the same term. In a typical LaTeX project split across many .tex files, it’s awkward to get a quick, clean word-frequency view without gluing everything together or counting LaTeX commands&#x2F;math as “words”.<p>So I built latex-wc, a small Python CLI that:<p>- extracts tokens from LaTeX while ignoring common LaTeX “noise” (commands, comments, math, refs&#x2F;cites, etc.)<p>- can take a single .tex file or a directory and recursively scan all *.tex files<p>- prints a combined report once (total words, unique words, top-N frequencies)<p>Fastest way to try it is `uvx latex-wc [path]` (file or directory). Feedback welcome, especially on edge cases where you think the heuristic filters are too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

Ask HN: Interest in low cost / fast container registry?

osigurdson

Hi all,<p>I&#x27;ve noticed that container images are getting bigger (particularly with AI related images). I was annoyed the pricing of my cloud provider so I quickly whipped something up.<p>It uses Cloudflare R2 + workers which is the lowest cost way to do this (AFAICT). However, due to how Cloudflare works, I had to change the push side to do it (pull side remains the same). I don&#x27;t mind this personally (simplifies things a lot for typical use cases imo), but not sure what others would think. I am dog-fooding it right now and it is working fine but wondering if there is any interest in the community more broadly? As a SaaS, $5&#x2F;month would cover 100GiB storage easily. Egress has a non-zero associated cost, but I think would be noise for most use cases. Alternately it could be something you run in your own CF account perhaps. It is extremely fast as well since it leverages Cloudflare&#x27;s edge &#x2F; CDN. So, faster, cheaper but a necessarily a little bit different to take advantage of things.<p>Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts &#x2F; feedback on this approach, please let me know.

Ask HN: Who is firing? (February 2026)

chalmovsky

Ask HN: A proposal for interviewing "AI-Augmented" Engineers

vanbashan

Hi HN,<p>I’m currently rethinking our hiring process. Like many of you, I feel that traditional algorithmic tests (LeetCode style) are becoming less relevant now that LLMs can solve them instantly. Furthermore, prohibiting AI during interviews feels counter-productive; I want to hire engineers who know how to use these tools effectively to multiply their output.<p>I am designing a new evaluation framework based on real-world open-source work, and I would love the community’s feedback on whether this sounds fair, effective, or if I’m missing something critical.<p>The Core Philosophy: We shouldn&#x27;t test if a candidate can write syntax better than an AI. We should test if they can guide, debug, and improve upon an AI&#x27;s output to handle the &quot;last mile&quot; of complex engineering.<p>The Proposed Process:<p>1. Task Selection (Real World Context) Instead of synthetic puzzles, we select open issues or discussions from public GitHub repositories that share a tech stack with our product.<p><pre><code> Scope: 2–4 hours. Types: Implementing a feature based on a discussion, fixing a bug, or reviewing a PR (specifically one that was eventually rejected, to test &quot;taste&quot;). Ambiguity: Adjusted for seniority. Junior roles get clear specs; senior roles get vague problem statements requiring architectural decisions. </code></pre> 2. Establishing the &quot;AI Baseline&quot; Before giving the task to a candidate, we run it through current SOTA models with minimal human intervention.<p><pre><code> The Filter: If the AI solves it perfectly on the first try, we discard the task. The Sweet Spot: We are looking for tasks where the AI gets 80% right but fails on edge cases, context integration, or complex logic. The problem setup should not be too easy or too hard. </code></pre> 3. The Candidate Test Candidates are required to use their preferred AI coding tools. We ask them to submit not just the code, but their chat&#x2F;prompt history.<p>How We Evaluate (The &quot;AI Delta&quot;):<p>We aren&#x27;t just looking at the final code. We analyze the &quot;diff&quot; between the Candidate’s process and our &quot;AI Baseline&quot;:<p><pre><code> 1. Exploration Strategy: How does the candidate &quot;load context&quot;? Do they blindly paste errors, or do they guide the AI to understand the repository structure first? We look for a clear understanding of the existing codebase. 2. Engineering Rigor (TDD): Does the candidate push the AI to generate a test plan or reproduction script before generating the fix? We value candidates who treat the AI as a junior partner that needs verification. 3. The &quot;Last 10%&quot; (Edge Cases): Since we picked tasks where AI fails slightly, we look at how the candidate handles those failure modes. Can they spot the boundary conditions and logic errors that the LLM glossed over? 4. Documentation Hygiene: We specifically check if the candidate instructs the AI to search existing documentation and—crucially—if they prompt the AI to update the docs to reflect the new changes. 5. Engineering Taste (The Rejected PR): For the code review task, we ask them to analyze a PR that was rejected in the real world (without telling them). We want to see if their reasoning for rejection aligns with our team&#x27;s engineering culture (maintainability, complexity, clarity, etc.). </code></pre> My Questions for HN:<p><pre><code> Is analyzing the &quot;Chat History&quot; too invasive, or is it the best way to see their thought process in 2026? For those of you hiring now, how do you distinguish between a &quot;prompt kiddie&quot; and a senior engineer who is just very good at prompting? Does the 2-4 hour time commitment feel reasonable for a &quot;take-home&quot; if the tooling makes the actual coding faster? </code></pre> Thanks for your insights!<p>(Full disclosure: In the spirit of this topic, this post was composed by AI based on my draft notes.)

Ask HN: Why are customer feedback boards so static? Building a live alternative

develotor

Hey everyone,<p>I’m currently in the middle of building a feedback tool for my own SaaS projects, and I wanted to gut-check a UX&#x2F;Architecture theory with this community.<p>When I was looking for existing tools to handle feature requests and user feedback, I noticed a depressing pattern. Almost every &quot;Feedback Board&quot; I visited felt boring and like a ghost town.<p>You know the vibe:<p>You land on the page.<p>There are a dozen posts from 8 months ago and a few recent ones. Most are tagged &quot;Under Review&quot; (and have been for a year). It feels silent. Static. Dead.<p>As a user, my immediate reaction is: &quot;Nobody is home. Why bother typing my idea?&quot;<p>The Theory: I think the problem is that we treat feedback like tickets instead of conversations. We are building &quot;suggestion boxes&quot; in dark corners when we should be building &quot;town halls.&quot;<p>The Tech Stack &#x2F; Approach: I decided to code a solution that tries to flip this using a Nuxt 4, focusing heavily on real-time presence. I want to know if you guys think this technical overhead is worth it, or if I’m over-engineering a simple problem.<p>Here is how I’m handling it:<p>Forcing &quot;Aliveness&quot; with Real-Time State: Instead of a standard CRUD list, I’m using Server-Sent Events (SSE) to sync user presence.<p>The Goal: Show &quot;Staff Online&quot; indicators and &quot;User is typing...&quot; bubbles in the feed.<p>The Tech: Leveraging Vue&#x27;s reactivity system to broadcast updates instantly. If a user is viewing a post, I want others to see their avatar there. I want to psychologically trick the user into feeling like they are entering a live room, not filling out a form.<p>Killing the Silos (Unified Inbox): I realized that having &quot;Support&quot; in email and &quot;Feedback&quot; on a board creates a disconnect.<p>I’m building a unified admin stream that merges Email (via parsed webhooks), Chat, and User post submissions into a single view.<p>It’s designed to be keyboard-first so admins can clear the queue faster, keeping the &quot;Last Activity&quot; timestamps fresh.<p>The Question for you builders&#x2F;users:<p>If you landed on a roadmap&#x2F;feedback page and saw a green dot saying &quot;Staff is Online&quot; or saw live activity happening (comments updating, viewing counters ticking up), would that actually make you more likely to engage?<p>Or do you prefer the standard &quot;Submit and Forget&quot; style boards like Canny&#x2F;Uservoice?<p>I’m squashing the last few bugs (mainly edge cases with the real-time sync) right now, but I’m really curious if the &quot;Dead Board&quot; vibe bothers anyone else, or if it’s just me.

Ask HN: What are the immediate/near/long-term non-corporate benefits of AI?

0x4e

In other words, what&#x27;s the benefit for the average joe(s) &#x2F; humanity as a whole?

Ask HN: How do you give AI agents access without over-permissioning?

NBenkovich

To make AI agents more efficient, we need to build feedback loops with real systems: deployments, logs, configs, environments, dashboards.<p>But this is where things break down.<p>Most modern apps don’t have fine-grained permissions.<p>Concrete example: Vercel. If I want an agent to read logs or inspect env vars, I have to give it a token that also allows it to modify or delete things. There’s no clean read-only or capability-scoped access.<p>And this isn’t just Vercel. I see the same pattern across cloud dashboards, CI&#x2F;CD systems, and SaaS APIs that were designed around trusted humans, not autonomous agents.<p>So the real question:<p>How are people actually restricting AI agents in production today?<p>Are you building proxy layers that enforce policy? Wrapping APIs with allowlists? Or just accepting the risk?<p>It feels like we’re trying to connect autonomous systems to infrastructure that was never designed for them.<p>Curious how others are handling this in real setups, not theory.

GitHub Incidents with Actions and Codespaces

jeduardo

Started with actions runners not picking up new jobs and now it spread to other services. - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.githubstatus.com&#x2F;<p>Could not post it earlier as it was flagged as a duplicate of an incident from last month.

Who's Coding on Their Phone?

raunaqvaisoha

Ask HN: What serious task have you accomplished with Moltbot / OpenClaw?

lukol

I&#x27;m genuinely curious. I&#x27;ve read a lot of stories of people adding it to group chats, using it as a remote coding and research assistant, or getting it to clean up folders and inboxes. This is all interesting, but nothing that couldn&#x27;t have been accomplished with the tooling that was already in place.<p>I&#x27;d like to hear stories like &quot;it accurately filed my taxes&quot;, &quot;it organized and booked all tickets for my trip from A to B&quot;, or &quot;it successfully executed a cold email campaign with a 30% open rate&quot;. These stories must be out there - would you mind sharing them?

Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

item007

Hi HN — I’m exploring an idea and would love your feedback.<p>I’m a builder and user of Obsidian, validating a concept called Concerns. Today it’s only a landing page + short survey (no product yet) to test whether this pain is real.<p>The core idea (2–3 bullets):<p>- Many of us capture tons of useful info (notes&#x2F;links&#x2F;docs), but it rarely becomes shipped work.<p>- Instead of better “organization” (tags&#x2F;folders), I’m exploring an “action engine” that:<p><pre><code> 1.detects what you’re actively targetting&#x2F;working on (“active projects”) 2.surfaces relevant saved material at the right moment 3.proposes a concrete next action (ideally pushed into your existing task tool) </code></pre> My own “second brain” became a graveyard of good intentions: the organizing tax was higher than the value I got back. I’m trying to validate whether the real bottleneck is execution, not capture.<p>Before writing code, I’m trying to pin down two things:<p>- Project context signals (repo&#x2F;PRs? issues? tasks? calendar? a “project doc”?)<p>- How to close the loop: ingest knowledge → rank against active projects → emit a small set of next-actions into an existing todo tool → learn from outcomes (done&#x2F;ignored&#x2F;edited) and optionally write back the minimal state. The open question: what’s the cleanest feedback signal without creating noise or privacy risk? (explicit ratings vs completion events vs doc-based write-back)<p>What I’m asking from you:<p>1.Where does your “second brain” break down the most?<p>capture &#x2F; organization &#x2F; retrieval &#x2F; execution (If you can, share a concrete recent example.)<p>2.What best represents “active project context” for you today?<p><pre><code> task project (Todoist&#x2F;Things&#x2F;Reminders) issues&#x2F;boards (GitHub&#x2F;Linear&#x2F;Jira) a doc&#x2F;wiki page (Notion&#x2F;Docs) calendar &quot;in my head&quot; </code></pre> Which one would you actually allow a tool to read?<p>3.What’s your hard “no” for an AI that suggests actions from your notes&#x2F;links? (pick 1–2)<p><pre><code> privacy&#x2F;data retention noisy suggestions &#x2F; interruption hallucinations &#x2F; wrong suggestions workflow change &#x2F; migration cost pricing others</code></pre>

Ask HN: Any Successful Co-Ops of Software Engineers

rubyn00bie

Salutations HN!<p>I’ll keep it simple, has anyone known of or been a part of a co-op of software engineers? And if so, how did it go?<p>I’m curious because it seems like the vast majority of early capital raises seem to go to paying for software development, and a small group of engineers could (in theory) output a few million dollars worth of value. It might not be attractive to VCs but it could probably form a business that lets coop members lead very comfortable lives.

Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

cvhc

I&#x27;ve read many mind-boggling stories from those appeared to be genuine OpenClaw users, like how their assistants (from useful to dramatic) (1) plan a travel and book everything; (2) started a company and build things; (3) entered stock market and lost all the money... Moltbook added more funs.<p>Interestingly, I cannot find a single user of OpenClaw in my familiar communities, presumbly because it takes some effort to setup and the concept of AI taking control of everything is too scary for average tech enthusiasts.<p>I scan through comments on HN, many of which were discussing about the ideas, but not sharing first-hand user experiences. A few HN users who did try it gave up &#x2F; failed for various reasons:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46822562">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46822562</a> (burning too many tokens)<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46786628">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46786628</a> (ditto + security implication)<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46762521">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46762521</a> (installation failed due to sandboxing)<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46831031">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46831031</a> (moltbook didn&#x27;t work)<p>I smell hype in the air... HN users, have any of you actually run OpenClaw and let it do any things useful or interesting? Can you share your experience?

Task engine VM – for tasks with executable instructions (progress update)

tracyspacy

The core idea is Minimal task model + programmable behaviour — a small core that enables unlimited features, since each task can carry executable scripts.<p>Recent updates:<p>- VM now uses NaN-boxing technique.<p>- All stack values are 64-bit (u64) but encode 5 distinct types: Boolean, String, CallData, U32, and MemSlice (25-bit offset + 25-bit size).<p>- Added InlineVec — a vector-like structure backed by a fixed-size array. The VM stack, control stack, call stack, and jump stack now use it with defined limits. - VM has memory now (heap). Memory is simple Vec&lt;u64&gt;, grows dynamically, but technically length is restricted by mem_slice_val format: 25 bits payload for offset and size<p>Project is still in absolutely early stage.<p>Repo is here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tracyspacy&#x2F;spacydo

Ask HN: How do you reset an AppleID?

OhMeadhbh

So I&#x27;m trying to submit a resume to Apple, but to do so, I need an AppleId. Okay. I try to sign up for one and discover my phone number has been used by someone else. I dropped into the local Apple Store (who supposedly have the ability to reset or create AppleIds) but, spoiler alert, after two hours they couldn&#x27;t figure out why my phone number won&#x27;t work.<p>Does anyone know if there&#x27;s a way to create an AppleId w&#x2F;o a phone number? Apple&#x27;s public docs say it&#x27;s impossible.<p>Maybe there&#x27;s an email alias I can use to submit my resume instead of buying an iProduct?<p>I guess I could get a dirt cheap sim for my (non-apple) phone and use it for a day, just to sign up for a new AppleId. But somehow this seems... wrong. It also seems unreasonable for a company to force me to buy an $1000 device just for the privilege of submitting my resume.<p>[edit: Forgot to mention, I own precisely zero iProducts.]

AI has failed to replace a single software application or feature

cadabrabra

I can’t name a single software application or software feature that has been mooted by AI. Zero. Take Excel as an example. Not only has AI failed to replace Excel in its entirety, but it has also failed to replace any of its features. AI was simply appended as an additional feature in the form of an agentic chatbot. This has been the trend across the entire industry, and it’s why AI has failed to fundamentally transform any of our exiting software application.<p>Now you might ask: what about AI native applications? Well, as it turns out, most of them are essentially clones of existing software but with a chatbot slapped on top. Because of the error prone nature of AI, any application that leverages it also has to surface all of the controls required to override all of its decisions. So you end up with a traditional software application plus AI.<p>AI promised to transform and even replace software applications, but all it did instead was augment them with an unreliable chatbot. All of the old fields and buttons are still there, but now there’s an additional text field that you can type into and hope for the best.