News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

adrianwaj

Re:If you love a website, back it up on Monday November 02, 2026 @05:49PM (#50345156)
Video backups are also important too as they can be easily censored when within a walled garden.

Interestingly, "there is no single direct 1:1 Linux clone of NirSoft’s VideoCacheView that automatically monitors browser cache folders via a graphical interface. Released 2007." https://videocacheview.en.lo4d.com/windows (Gemini)

Can this help people get out of walled gardens? That's the question. Does it offer feeds?

"In a true Local-First model (defined by principles like offline capability, local data persistence via CRDTs, and local-first execution), the local device holds the primary source of truth." https://share.gemini.google/NHjiUHtpRTiJ

So that one's ticked off. Well done. Can it enable monetization?

Can users backup or migrate their YT channel in one click? And the other way: create a channel in a few clicks and then have Shotstash on standby in case their channel is terminated?

An interesting idea would be to have agents pay in advance for either proposed content, or already created content that hasn't yet been released. They could also propose content that they would pay for. Once that threshold has been reached, the content get delivered either after creation or instantly. It also goes public at that point. There will be free-riders on that model, but at least the content gets seen. So blurry is free, discernible costs.

Maybe just accept messages from agents, no matter whether they want to pay or not? So basically offer them a feedback form and allow a conversation to be initiated. You could even host that conversation and charge for it, I suppose.

BTW, your comments are flagged/dead so I couldn't reply below.

FWIW, I just fast-coded a stats/tracking system that marks visitors "likely human" "suspicious" and "bot" .. works pretty well too and runs across 1 domain and 5 sub-domains simultaneously and the tracking script also enables any user to submit a comment through a modal popup. It doesn't track the admin either if told not to.

Imagine being able to talk to a bot - "who are you, what do you want and who sent you?" It's like something out of Blade Runner with "Likely Human" being an apt alternate film title.

https://forgemesh.io/wordpress - a wordpress plugin and with just a few clicks watch the money roll in, ay? Superb. How good is it at differentiating traffic? Won't human users and legitimate search engines be walled-off? Is there a way to see a leaderboard of all the installs? Expecting a Vue3 version? Bots can also fake real humans, is there a way to create a hive-mind for immunity against them? In this way, I wonder if it's worth forming a "union of sites" and splitting the x402 proceeds while also helping bots find the right content.

In the end it could lead to mirrors for bots to feed from. So one paid site entry leads to many copies shared between friends, and anyone really.

It it possible to paywall everything with the price falling (or rising) the older it is or the more (or less) a single visitor takes?

Re:Tesla Roadster on Saturday October 17, 2026 @09:50AM (#50131182)
I think its thrusters would be useful for ocean-going vessel insertions.

So in the straight of Hormuz, you'd have a "Tesla boat" hover off a destroyer and into the water, reach the target as a boat, then hover up to its deck. People would exit and meet the vessel's crew for however long. No hook ladders, anchor lines or helicopter rappels. Seems like a good balance between projecting soft and hard power to make a ship turn around, arrest or replace crew, run security checks or extract payment. The Tesla boat should make this type of rendezvous less costly, easier and safer - legality/ethics considerations aside.

Would be interesting if the boat rose up on a variable foil and keel as well where the forward thrusters could be used for super speed, maneuverability and fuel efficiency. I am just dreaming.

Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @06:42PM (#50125764)
It's not pointless at all. The car needs wings to become a glider. It doesn't need the fans for downward force or any of the high speed stuff. You take the car as high as you can and glide down. So it would be an airplane first and a car second. That would be seriously cool. The military would use it too. An airphibious/wingsuit vehicle. It could also have a drop-out seat/s for skydiving out of or doing air drops. For landing, another central wheel can be deployed to absorb the main bump or the existing wheels are extended further down. If there's a problem mid-flight there is an emergency chute as well, or can be used if wings not fitted or used.

It could also be made into a water/air vehicle instead and useful for getting over rough seas or air-docking with superyachts or destroyers. Floating/inflatable solar panels would be great too. Another interesting use case would be for airplane passengers and their baggage to leave a plane without the plane actually landing. The landing car could re-dock with the plane on its return flight. That'd be tricky, though.

Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @06:29PM (#50125623)
Those thrusters would make parking a breeze though up on a rooftop, right?

It could hover up through a large elevator shaft into a spot as well. That way no one gets annoyed by the sight and sound from the street. I wonder how nimble it is in the air.

Re:The Dawn of the Age of the Exoskeleton on Friday October 09, 2026 @02:15AM (#50016651)
Never seen them before and someone sent me a picture showing them, along with some prototype skis I have been thinking about too. https://i.imgur.com/DzlU0Vf.jpeg

I am actually more interested in a ski that doesn't warp under very heavy g-forces, my last prototype did. I wonder what would enable that. My last pair were pine-based.

Re:The Dawn of the Age of the Exoskeleton on Thursday October 08, 2026 @04:23PM (#50011636)
A pair of skis that have a core that can stiffen under stress, bend or chatter would be interesting too. Wearing exo legs while skiing may work for some, but I think would take away from the fun and challenge. I suppose it'd let a person ski faster, which in turn would warrant the variable core. Wouldn't want to fall though or would the exo legs act as a protective mechanism? The material in the core could also be in the exo legs, like a variable turbo-charger.
Re:56k.rip – the 1996 dial-up internet experience on Friday October 02, 2026 @03:08AM (#49930649)
Can this run a working copy of Microsoft Word 95?

Imagine the possibilities with a modernized version of this setup. It's a type of thin-client, right? Isn't this meant to be the future of computing for the masses? It's not a look into the past, but the future.

Re:56k.rip – the 1996 dial-up internet experience on Thursday October 01, 2026 @01:16AM (#49917986)
To see sites from back then checkout:

https://internethistoryroulette.com/

- could be improved whereby the "facts" bubbles change too quickly when turned on.

But the idea of placing a random site in an iframe would also work well for Show HN.

Re:Show HN: Jev predicting your life choices on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @06:27AM (#49906888)
Yeah, good idea. I'd also think about finding common goals and pursuits between people. So go through Show HN, find similar projects and connect people that way. You might have to build profiles on people and see their skills and location from Who Wants to be Hired posts. What are they reading? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49893157 Favorite books? Imagine that, building profiles to help people rather than serve them ads! Even analyzing writing styles could be useful.

Another interesting area to look at is similar tastes in music. A lot of info on Soundcloud about people's likes and tastes. Maybe try to bring musicians together for music production? Can learn a lot about someone just through their profile pic. That'd be pretty interesting too: who is presenting themselves in very similar ways to another person? Are they currently releasing music? What genres? What instruments do they play?

Spawned on and then inside the browser would be ideal.

Another idea would be to have a "server browser" especially built to run a bunch of servers. Keep Average Barry away from bash prompts, config files and compilation. I think this'd be so helpful for the local-first movement. Anyway, I should really check out Tarvis in more depth at some point.

Re:Show HN: HN.watch – Videos of all Hacker News posts on Monday September 28, 2026 @03:42PM (#49883322)
Great. Wordpress plugin would work. Get publishers to embed these videos at the top of their own articles. Allow them to tweak/fix/fine-tune them. Accept micropayments and on-demand generation. Readers can pay for better videos or "deep-dives."

This will work for young readers too, illiterates, sensory-impaired and foreigners. All four!!

"Chat apps belong to whoever runs the servers. Armada is spread across free public servers." https://armada.buzz/

The key is to make the server a browser tab. Make it possible for normies to run a server. I suppose CORS would be the problem. Would a browser extension work?

"ZeroNet and KAD (distributed hash tables) ...every member of the network donates a certain amount of storage and bandwidth (adjustable at will) without being able to choose which specific scrap of content to host...The biggest immediate problem, however, is that there isn't a single, easily hostable piece of software that includes everything Nostr is ready to do now."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429833

Re:Show HN: Jev predicting your life choices on Monday September 28, 2026 @04:31AM (#49875113)
I think it would be useful. You could try matching people here on HN.

If you want to match similar people, aim to make them as geographically as close as possible. What you really want to find is "uncommon commonalities" between people and build groups around those. So yes, like attracts like, but it can be surrounded by stark contrasts as well. You could grade a match - percentage different, percentage same and then add some strength/idiosyncrasy/geographical/group-match weighting.

The progress bar at bottom of questions: it says "keep going" but eventually it reaches the end and there is a page refresh without any user confirmation to do so. That can be confusing and distracting.

Re:Show HN: Jevdit – a social network moderated by Jev on Monday September 28, 2026 @04:15AM (#49875003)
It's a great idea. The real bonus would be micropayments for the times comments are kept back - users can pay their way over the block. Stacker News already requires MP to post (and users earn as well) https://stacker.news (crypto community) - just make those optional. Have a "most wanted" board where listed users can be invited to post and collect a bounty - the opposite of a ban. Like an AMA with compensation.

After that turn it into a Wordpress plugin. Could also launch a token at the same time.

Re:Show HN: Jev predicting your life choices on Saturday September 26, 2026 @03:47PM (#49859898)
This should be used for match-making! Like attracts like.

Needs to be a greater delay or key-press upon prediction status. Can it give a report and assessment?

Also useful for recruiting. Match candidates with their potential managers.

Re:Qwen-Image-2.1: Compact, efficient, and unified image creation on Thursday September 24, 2026 @11:32PM (#49839905)
Zeitgeist. "Shouldn't" is the keyword.
Re:GPT-6 Sol and Luna on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @11:08PM (#49811176)
I really like that page. I've recently attached a search feature to it with corresponding atom feed.

https://hackertrain.future-secured.com/?q=great

One thing that's changed over time is a lot more usage of "scare quotes" especially now (Gemini agrees https://share.gemini.google/UiUf0jttZLVD ). It's an interesting phenomenon, Abloh started using quotation marks consistently in his fashion branding since 2012. https://blakecrosley.com/blog/design-philosophy-virgil-abloh

Next step would be to attach an AI to all the /bestcomments.. if someone needs help doing that I'm here. Really, that's a task for the mods.

"All of them give a decent answer, with the ability to ask follow ups."

Am I wrong in say that the centralized models can make better suggested follow-up questions because they can track and rank the same or similar lines of questioning that have occurred with other users in the past? So instead of getting PageRank to rank web pages, you get AnswerRank to rank follow-up questions?

... actually, I am right, it's The Conversation Graph that's underappreciated. See here: https://share.gemini.google/6fKIzyxuI0Bb

Who's putting your picture or designs on t-shirts? Brand X. Start releasing Brand X t-shirts. What are they going to do, sue for counterfeiting?

"Dial-a-Victim" / "Victims R Us" - startup founders of the future. Invincible in the face of legal challenges.

Re:Show HN: Share your AI Setup, Learn from others on Thursday September 17, 2026 @08:11PM (#49748554)
It's a great point. At 36, Steve House released a video in 2006 about all his climbing equipment (someone talked him into it.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCKK-e4gVVA (reupload) I thinked he helped a lot of people with that video in the super competitive world of mountaineering. This was after a legendary ascent of Nanga Parbat. Shot himself in the foot but cemented his status.

A year or two ago there were some very precise workflows documented here. The reluctance now would mark the transition away from "sharing helps me" to "sharing hinders me" ...it's an interesting topic. Sharing with strangers may be the problem.

Just imagine if all sporting stars shared their secrets.. what would happen? Secrets just occur naturally, if you don't share, they'll likely be stolen unless protected - and that requires effort too.

Yep, like Hyperclay. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690814

They're like lightweight versions of https://github.com/kem-a/AppManager which is for AppImages.

Not a bad thing, but it's just another dependency and tied to an OS-specific base software install.

They could work well pre-installed on the Mecha Comet with a bunch of app files ready to launch.

Can the added layers guarantee a new level of security or privacy like zero telemetry or keyjacking? Protection from bad actors is a good thing while making things faster and easier overall. Browser extensions are a security risk, right?

Java applets were a good idea in the sense that so long as you had Java installed, the applet was just sitting there on a webpage. Finding and managing the apps is the problem, and using browser bookmarks is a decent solution to it. The web page should demo the app, and there can be an 'install local' button next to it. But at some point all these local versions need to be updated and then not be messed with like browser extensions can be. FanFare would be a decent name.

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026) on Monday September 14, 2026 @09:15PM (#49706506)
It's a great endeavor. I put it at the bottom of my new search hub https://search.future-secured.com

I would just make sure all the titles can be clearly seen when superimposed over the pictures. Looks like a pressing matter to fix.

I actually liked the original https://archive.sacred-texts.com/ site because it's so fast and lightweight and classified by religions. I would also look at classification by languages. Is that being done at present?

I started a conversation about interfaces here if interested. https://share.gemini.google/ciOqbMFyCpBv

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026) on Monday September 14, 2026 @08:39PM (#49706215)
http://search.future-secured.com - Search Hub for multiple search engines and AIs. Highly customizable. Everything stays in your browser, save and run locally if need be. Single HTML. No telemetry or dependencies.
Re:Show HN: Aqqai – Every answer, checked before you see it on Sunday September 13, 2026 @06:56AM (#49682504)
This is a very important concept and reminds me of the space shuttle's 5 computers mirroring each other when only 1 could suffice:

"Absolute authority or unmitigated control vested in a single entity invites disaster. Distributing power through checks, balances, and redundancy is the necessary antidote to that vulnerability." https://share.gemini.google/ermjeqO6kKE3

Re:Fuck it, make it anyway on Saturday September 12, 2026 @12:13PM (#49673887)
I would be chasing altcoin revenue - those worthless things nobody wants. Hold those but encourage their spending too, with an app, is the road to riches in a world where one's IP can be immediately negated by a disgruntled robotic employee jumping ship.

Actually, I don't know if the premise works in the real world, but can't see why "crypto-enabled" isn't adopted at every turn.

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