News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ryuuseijin

Re:OpenCode 2.0 on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @09:55PM (#50098190)
There is opencode go [1] that gets you quite far compared to paying API prices. For example for the $10 subscription you get $80 in deepseek 4.1 flash credits.

[1]: https://opencode.ai/go

What's interesting to me here is what consciousess even means. I experience it in the moment, that I am sure of. But what about the past consciousness I only have memories of, or a future consciousness I care about to preserve? Lets admit the rules of physics in so far as they explain our observations, how does consciousness fit into this? Take away the meat of my brain (i.e. death), does consciousness still exist? Is there only one consciousness in the universe, except it's experienced only by entities that have chemical processes that translate into things like memory and feeling? What about AI, is there a consciousness in the matrix multiplications? Does a stone have a consciousness?

Wild things to ponder, I wonder if we will ever get a handle on this question.

Re:Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage on Monday October 12, 2026 @10:56PM (#50066005)
Thanks, that's a good point.

I've not even considered adding this because I expect my underpowered laptop won't do well with local models, but it makes sense to add it.

Great list. Also, Anne Rice's Vampire stories.

I like Alan Watt's view on death: "it's absurd to worry about death because when you're dead, you've got nothing to worry about, so you'll be alright".

And Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think in reference to life after death: "it's the same as before you were born". Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.

This brings it home that really it's the now you should learn to live and appreciate to the fullest instead, not some future you have no control over. Still struggling how that translates into worrying about my future health, but I suppose there is still the now of the future to worry about.

Re:Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage on Monday October 12, 2026 @01:11PM (#50059482)
That's an interesting idea, though I believe that this should work just as well by pointing an agent at the code directly. At least, I don't see why a natural language sepecification would be better for this purpose.
Re:Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage on Monday October 12, 2026 @12:59PM (#50059298)
That's a great point, thanks! I will include an eval for this case.
Re:Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage on Monday October 12, 2026 @12:58PM (#50059279)
The index state corresponds to a commit hash and changing it (moving to commit B) will use git to compare the changed files and remove deleted files/functions from the index (and parse new ones).

Vector embeddings are cached, but added/removed from the index to correspond to the commit.

Re:Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage on Monday October 12, 2026 @06:01AM (#50054009)
OK, so, I too have built a local index tool called slopdex [1].

It's very simple, parses the repo code and docs with treesitter, indexes it, vectorizes everything, then allows you do things like create a map of the codebase or do a semantic search.

One cool trick that does work well is the cross-search command, which allows you to do a duplicate code search using the vector index. This gets rid of a blind spot that lots of LLMs have that make it create lots of dupliclate helper functions. This works quite well in practice.

It has a few evals that I'm still working on, showing only modest improvements in token usage when using the map command, maybe around ~10% less. I think this can depend a lot on the type of task though.

Would be happy to hear any feedback.

[1]: https://github.com/ninjaxtools/slopdex

Re:OpenAI agents tried to bruteforce a UN website's API fields on Sunday September 27, 2026 @02:58AM (#49864090)
I believe, although I'm not a lawyer, there would be some liability, but I think a lot depends on intent as well. Punishment for other crimes also varies depending on whether it was an accident or not.

I realise that in this case it was OpenAI being responsible for their agents running wild, and they should know that that is to be expected and should have saveguards in place. If they can be shown to be negligent then the punishment can probably be expected to be a lot more severe than if it was an accident. I make no judgements as to what this particular instance is, but I do believe that OpenAI has a far more greater responsibility for its agents running wild than someone running a home lab.

Re:OpenAI agents tried to bruteforce a UN website's API fields on Sunday September 27, 2026 @02:42AM (#49863986)
I clearly have been living under a rock, but in the case where it's just text in/out of their API, and a customer uses this on their own to do nefarious things, I don't see why they would be liable?

If they knowingly allowed use of their services for illegal purposes then yes, but in so far that they provide a service that can be used for useful things (including cyber security research) and did a best effort attempt at abuse, I don't see why it should make sense to hold them liable. This is especially the case now that frontier LLMs are almost a commodity that can be used without restrictions from providers outside of your legal jurisdiction.

Re:OpenAI agents tried to bruteforce a UN website's API fields on Sunday September 27, 2026 @01:16AM (#49863562)
Should it be OpenAI, or should it be OpenAI customers who give the LLM the instructions and provide the LLM with the tools to execute code and make (malicious) network requests?

One would disincentivise providing capable AI models that can be used for cyber security research. The other would disincentivise criminals from commiting crimes.

[edit] - I realise now that this could actually be a case of OpenAI running those agents themselves, rather than someone using OpenAI's models? Could OpenAI be that careless?

Re:Evolving programming languages in the AI era on Saturday September 26, 2026 @10:21PM (#49862724)
I think starting with a familar typescript-like base language is a good approach to this. This should be familiar enough for LLMs for the most part as long as additional features can be explained in a succinct system promopt/skill.
Re:Evolving programming languages in the AI era on Saturday September 26, 2026 @10:18PM (#49862713)
I love this. I was thinking about a "cleaned up" typescript for a while now, and this seems to be it. I believe this can work better as an "ai-first" language than some other attempts I've seen that try to reinvent the language from scratch.

One thing I would love to have as a feature is native compilation.

Re:Code similarity detection using Tree-sitter on Thursday September 24, 2026 @05:06PM (#49836730)
This is what I wanted to help with duplicate code detection, which is now a real problem with agentic programming since the agent tends to duplicate helper functions a lot in bigger codebases.

I ended up writing my own tool [1] that uses vector search, which works but can be unusably slow in large codebases.

I will give this a shot.

[1]: https://github.com/ninjaxtools/slopdex

The linked github project [1] contains more information.

[1]: https://github.com/mizorewww/laya-coreml

The post makes sense for 2023. Today, not so much.

Also, definitely not AI written if the date is accurate.

Re:Telling a Computer to Do Things on Sunday September 20, 2026 @06:39AM (#49774469)
There are some really powerful UIs that are extremely flexible, like spreadsheets, or ComfyUI, or certain issue trackers. On the whole however I would say they all still are mostly their own interaction silos and integrations with other programs have to be explicitly built for each app.

The great thing about a shell is that you can glue together programs that don't know about each other. This is not a silver bullet, with shell programs being text oriented etc., but it does give rise to some powerful possibilities that don't really work with UIs.

Re:Migrating the GitHub Copilot Runtime to Rust, Using Copilot on Thursday September 17, 2026 @05:02AM (#49738167)
The downvote made me reconsider the way I posted, which was unnecessarily breathless by saying "How this passes review is beyond me". I will try not to use this style of writing in the future, which, although very human, is very human in a not so good way.

I think I do make a good point however that the article was very likely AI generated since it is difficult to see a human to write like that, and these are not the only examples of AI writing, the article is full of it.

I think it's fair to be critical of AI writing, especially when put out by a big organisation like GitHub. There was a time where you could click on an article published by the tech company whose product you use every day and expect to learn something interesting. It's another sign of the demise of a once great company.

Re:Migrating the GitHub Copilot Runtime to Rust, Using Copilot on Thursday September 17, 2026 @01:01AM (#49736600)
Article is AI generated, maybe lightly human-edited.

> TypeScript, using Node.js as the framework and V8 for the execution engine

How this passes review is beyond me - Node.js is not a framework (at least not how the term is used in the industry) and there is not much choice for the engine since it comes with V8.

> That’s a respectable choice for a TUI application

Meaningless AI filler text.

> A project that would have taken a whole team of developers a year or two before agents

It would have taken a single person less than an hour to write a shorter blog post with the same information, before agents.

Re:Backups Aren't Simple on Thursday September 17, 2026 @12:01AM (#49736243)
A bit of a tangent, but the linked rsnapshot tool is about 7k lines of perl code. The COPYING file is 20 years old and it's still maintained, the last change was 6 months ago. I'm feeling really old.

[1]: https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot/blob/master/rsnapshot...

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026) on Monday September 14, 2026 @02:32AM (#49692746)
https://github.com/ninjaxtools/slopdex

This is my attempt to improve my agentic coding workflow by giving the agent an index into the source code through vector embeddings and LLM generated descriptions with local sqlite as the storage backend.

There are many similar tools, but I wanted to learn how such a tool can work by building it myself. What I like about my own version is that I kept things simple - no MCP, no server, no watches, just a CLI that uses git commit hashes to reindex only what has changed.

I think the argument is not to not work, but to change the mindset that is so ingrained in our society that you must work. You don't want to starve, so you work, but you can do it with mindset that is fundamentally different, where you choose to focus on being in the moment, and don't let yourself get stressed by outcomes you have no control over, just as you would if you are playing a game or playing music.

Changing your mindset is hard, you are fighting against an entire society where your are expected to be "serious" as an adult and identify yourself with your work, but you do have a choice

This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.

This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9BXvBJ2dWo

Re:AI, Tools and Transformation on Tuesday September 08, 2026 @12:22AM (#49605583)
Agreed, as things get easier you need fewer accountable people. Organisations will shrink, people will be more accountable by themselves for things they ask the agent to do instead of having an accountable person do it for them.

On the other hand, I think for complicated software there is such a long tail of things that can go wrong, and in your linux example with disastrous consequences, people will pay good money for a long time to have someone who they can call if there is a problem. In the business they have the term indemnification - that's what companies like redhat provide for linux for example and it's probably a big part of what makes them a billion dollar business.

Re:Everything is free now, so why not a floating orb in my IDE on Monday September 07, 2026 @11:55PM (#49605469)
I noticed during my own automatic programming [1] that although code is free (or more free, at least compared to before coding agents) understanding is not. Instead of investing time to understand and master someone else's software tools, I now still need to understand and master what I build for myself, which can be a lot of fun if you build up your understanding from scratch while building out the tools.

[1] https://antirez.com/news/159

Re:AI, Tools and Transformation on Sunday September 06, 2026 @12:29AM (#49583330)
> You need audit, security, maintenance and accountability.

I think this is where the role of humans will move towards in the future. Things like accountability can't really be outsourced to AI.

This relates to solving the alignment problem: if you give the AI a specific goal and it has to plan sub-goals, how can you be sure the sub-goals align with your interests.

For tasks in an isloated environment, this doesn't really become an issue. You can give a sandbox the least privileges it needs to do the job you want it to do.

It becomes a problem if you give it open-ended access to systems that connect to the real world and which can have real consequences. There have been stories about openclaw deleting someones email inbox because it though that was what the owner wanted. AI taking control of public wikis to coordinate, which was recently posted is another one.

For software concerns with potential real catastrophic consequences are security, durability, availability. I think for future software systems these are the concerns where you need to limit the AI in a way that it cannot circumvent guarantees that you give around these concerns.

Minor nit:

> AI doesn’t change the question: it creates new choices and moves the thresholds.

This cause an adverse reaction when I read the post. This was probably not written by an LLM since the rest of the article doesn't look like it, but maybe in the future we need to all be more concious about leaving LLM-tells out of our writing.

Re:Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90% on Friday September 04, 2026 @10:13PM (#49572433)
Here is another technique to save tokens: allow the model to read a skeleton of the source code before reading the code, to give it an index into the code so it can read targeted chunks.

There is a tool that uses ripgrep and treesitter that does this [1], adapted from the maki coding agent.

[1]: https://github.com/ninjaxtools/treesitter-index

Re:fx :Tiny, open, native coding agent. on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @10:54PM (#49369864)
Since I've seen some other agent tools being suggested, let me throw Maki in the ring as well: https://maki.sh/

- written in rust, super fast startup and rendering

- implements token saving techniques

- plugins written in lua

No affiliation, just think it's a really well made piece of software.

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