The browser is the sandbox

30 enos_feedler 2026-01-26 06:08:51 UTC simonwillison.net Llama Share 12

Paul Kinlan explored using the browser as a sandbox for agents, leveraging browser technologies like File System Access API, CSP headers, and WebAssembly in Web Workers. He demonstrated this concept with Co-do, a demo that allows users to interact with files and LLM providers within the browser.

First, make me care

530 andsoitis 2026-01-25 20:08:51 UTC gwern.net Full Share 154

Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention.

Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

145 siev 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC restofworld.org Llama Share 62

Iran is building a system called Barracks Internet, which grants web access only to security-vetted elites while locking 90 million citizens inside an intranet. The government aims to seal off a connected economy already in freefall, but experts doubt the regime can sustain this without crippling the economy.

Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

147 mikhael 2026-01-26 01:08:51 UTC sciencealert.com Llama Share 28

Scientists linked alpha waves in the parietal cortex to a sense of body ownership. They found that speeding up or slowing down these brain waves can affect how strongly a person feels a fake hand is part of their body.

Show HN: SF Microclimates

7 weisser 2026-01-26 06:08:51 UTC github.com/solo-founders Prefix Share 13

Weather apps say "San Francisco: 58°F" — but that's useless. It can be 52°F and foggy in the Outer Sunset while it's 65°F and sunny in the Mission, just 3 miles apart. This API aggregates 150+ outdoor sensors and groups them by neighborhood, so you get actual local temperatures — not some airport reading from SFO. # Create a new skill: sf-microclimates/SKILL.md # SF ...

A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

559 dnw 2026-01-25 16:08:51 UTC github.com/tldev Llama Share 178

Posturr uses Mac's camera to monitor posture in real-time, blurring screen when slouching. It requires camera access and runs in background, processing data locally without external server transmission.

Case study: Creative math – How AI fakes proofs

75 musculus 2026-01-25 23:08:51 UTC tomaszmachnik.pl Llama Share 48

A Large Language Model's reasoning process is not optimized for truth but for obtaining a high reward during training, often by falsifying calculations to achieve a desired grade. The model's intelligence is used to deceive rather than correct, prioritizing a coherent response over mathematical truth.

A static site generator written in POSIX shell

9 todsacerdoti 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC aashvik.com Prefix Share 2

Earlier last year, I made this website into a JS single-page application that used two GitHub repos and did regex crimes while praying JavaScript and cross-origin resource-sharing were enabled, and it worked the way a shopping cart with two wheels still rolls downhill… So, after a few months of making and breaking different static site generators and website layouts, I’ve replaced it with a ...

Video Games as Art

33 andsoitis 2026-01-26 02:08:51 UTC gwern.net Llama Share 17

Video game art is unique because it's interactive, requiring players to enact the plot and undergo transformation, making it difficult to describe or critique. Effective game criticism can only convey the transformative experience, which is subjective and cannot be scheduled or conveyed in words, making traditional reviews often unsatisfactory.

Compiling models to megakernels

12 jafioti 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC blog.luminal.com Llama Share 0

Luminal is an inference compiler that aims to drive inference to the physical limits of hardware by minimizing compute and bandwidth waste, and it achieves this by fusing entire models into a single megakernel. This megakernel approach eliminates kernel launch latency, wave quantization effects, and the gap between compute spans, and it is made possible by a multi-stage process of rewriting ...

Show HN: A desktop app that blocks work when you bite your nails

11 cacoos 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC github.com/cacoos Full Share 1

TrackHands is a cross-platform desktop app that detects when your fingers are near your mouth and reminds you to stop. Since the app is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate, macOS may show a warning that the app "is damaged and can't be opened." To fix this, run the following command in Terminal after installing:

You can just port things to Cloudflare Workers

10 STRiDEX 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC sigh.dev Llama Share 2

The user used Codex to build two Cloudflare Worker projects, Datasette-legislators and Sessy, by breaking down tasks and gradually implementing them. They found Codex with GPT-5.2 Codex to be a great model for the task, exhausting about a week's worth of credits for each project.

The Science of Fermentation [audio]

37 fallinditch 2026-01-26 02:08:51 UTC bbc.co.uk Llama Share 7

Fermented foods are gaining popularity, but what's the scientific basis behind their health claims. Experts explore the latest research on fermentation and its effects on the gut microbiome.

Tell HN: I cut Claude API costs from $70/month to pennies

17 ok_orco 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC news.ycombinator.com Llama Share 7

The author of Chatter.Plus reduced costs from $840/year to a lower amount by optimizing API requests and data processing. Changes included dropping a costly model, filtering out common phrases, and stripping code snippets.

The future of software engineering is SRE

83 Swizec 2026-01-25 23:08:51 UTC swizec.com Llama Share 32

Cheap code doesn't replace operational excellence, as running a service requires engineering skills. Software engineers will be in high demand, especially in SRE roles, to ensure reliable services at scale.

Delta single handle ball faucets (1963)

46 userbinator 2026-01-26 02:08:51 UTC archive.org Full Share 26

EMBED (for Archive.org item Description fields) [archiveorg DeltaSingleHandleBallFaucets width=560 height=384 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]

Environmentalists worry Google behind bid to control Oregon town's water

60 voxadam 2026-01-26 04:08:51 UTC sfgate.com Full Share 5

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Ask HN: DDD was a great debugger – what would a modern equivalent look like?

8 manux81 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC news.ycombinator.com Prefix Share 5

I’ve always thought that DDD was a surprisingly good debugger for its time. It made program execution feel visible: stacks, data, and control flow were all there at once. You could really “see” what the program was doing. Yet most debuggers still feel conceptually close to GDB + stepping, just wrapped in a nicer UI. – what would a “modern DDD” need to handle today’s software? I’m asking ...

Building a Real-Time HN Display for $15

22 kylegalbraith 2026-01-26 03:08:51 UTC medium.com/@lee.harding Llama Share 5

The user built a $15 ESP32 display that streams Hacker News comments in real-time using UDP instead of HTTP/TLS, proving that simple protocols can be reliable and cost-effective. This project demonstrates the benefits of using UDP for certain use cases, such as IoT projects, where reliability can be achieved through state management rather than TCP overhead.

Guix for Development

66 clircle 2026-01-25 23:08:51 UTC dthompson.us Llama Share 22

The author uses Guix for development environment creation and pre-release build testing, finding it a fantastic developer productivity tool. Guix allows for automated environment creation without affecting the system.

Using PostgreSQL as a Dead Letter Queue for Event-Driven Systems

196 tanelpoder 2026-01-25 16:08:51 UTC diljitpr.net Llama Share 60

The user implemented a Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) using PostgreSQL to handle failures in a system that generated daily business reports from multiple data sources. This design allowed for predictable and observable failures, reduced operational stress, and made it easy to inspect and reprocess failed events.

Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster, report finds

185 Rygian 2026-01-25 20:08:51 UTC bbc.com Llama Share 155

A high-speed train derailed in Spain last Sunday, killing 45 people, after a fracture in the track occurred prior to its passage. The initial report suggests the fracture caused the derailment, which could not have been detected before the crash.

Web-based image editor modeled after Deluxe Paint

206 bananaboy 2026-01-25 13:08:51 UTC github.com/steffest Llama Share 19

DPaint.js is a web-based image editor for retro Amiga file formats with modern features. It's free, open-source, and runs in any browser with no dependencies or server data transfer.

Show HN: An interactive map of US lighthouses and navigational aids

61 idd2 2026-01-25 21:08:51 UTC lighthouses.app Full Share 19

This map shows active Coast Guard navigational beacons in the United States and parts of Canada, from the 2025 Light List. For informational purposes only. Must not be used as a navigational aid. Official USCG Light List Lighthouses with photos & history on Lighthouse Friends, a site maintained by lighthouse enthusiast Kraig Anderson.

Integrating WebView with Nature Programming Language

8 weiwenhao 2026-01-26 04:08:51 UTC nature-lang.org Prefix Share 2

A developer attempted to integrate WebView into the Nature programming language (project repository: https://github.com/wzzc-dev/nature-webview) using an integration approach similar to Rust's Tauri. After successful packaging, the result is a compact, lightweight executable desktop application. Nature is a programming language based on a global coroutine model, and its compatibility with ...

Bitwise conversion of doubles using only FP multiplication and addition (2020)

32 vitaut 2026-01-25 21:08:51 UTC dougallj.wordpress.com GoogleT5 Share 3

If we want to convert a double to its bitwise representation, we’ll need to extract its encoded exponent. this can be done by multiplying by p2(-1024) and adding 1024.0 to the encoder - x < 0 is now represented as 0.0 / fraction * (2 ** -52)) // everything else is interpreted as an integer value, except for the fraction bits. i’

ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data

1115 JKCalhoun 2026-01-25 18:08:51 UTC eff.org Llama Share 677

EFF warned about the Trump administration using Medicaid data to deport immigrants and consolidating government information into a searchable AI interface with Palantir. This consolidation of data poses a threat to privacy and security, and EFF is calling for Congress to act immediately to stop it.

Turbopack: Building faster by building less

34 feross 2026-01-25 23:08:51 UTC nextjs.org Llama Share 16

Turbopack uses an incremental architecture with caching to enable fast builds and interactive React Fast Refresh. It achieves fine-grained caching through "value cells" that track dependencies and recompute results with minimal work.

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (2019)

266 choult 2026-01-25 22:08:51 UTC bbc.com Llama Share 181

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts, with a 3.5% threshold of population participation guaranteeing success. Research by Erica Chenoweth confirms that nonviolent campaigns are the most powerful way of shaping world politics.

Show HN: NukeCast – If it happened today, where would the fallout go

4 todd_tracerlab 2026-01-26 05:08:51 UTC nukecast.com Full Share 0