AI Summarized Hacker News

Front-page articles summarized hourly.

Create bootable ISO image files which are compatible with the Amiga CD32

ISOCD-Win is a C#/.NET Windows replacement for Commodore's Amiga ISOCD tool. It generates bootable ISO images compatible with Amiga CD32 and CDTV. It offers a GUI and a CLI for batch processing, builds ISO-9660 images for both big- and little-endian systems, and can inject Commodore trademark files for booting CD32/CDTV. It uses ISO-8859-1, uppercase path tables, and a case-insensitive sort for AmigaDOS compatibility, supports image padding to boost double-speed reads, can launch WinUAE to test ISOs, and its library is a self-contained DLL. MIT-licensed.

I Use Obsidian

Steph Ango outlines a bottom‑up Obsidian workflow: treat a vault as a folder of files (file‑over‑app), avoid deep folders, and rely on internal links and a category/bases system to organize notes. She uses templates with reusable properties (dates, people, themes, locations, ratings 1–7), fractal journaling with daily notes, and 'random revisits' to surface connections. Unresolved links act as breadcrumbs. Publishing is done via Jekyll (and Obsidian Git) to Netlify; she emphasizes customization and a simple rule set.

Reverse Engineering Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon for DOS from 1990

Reverse engineered Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon and ported the game to a modern OpenGL/DOSBox setup. Over months the author mapped memory layouts, assets (PICs, PAN, station/train data), and the drawing pipeline (tracks, signals, trains, city names), porting to a resolution‑independent renderer and a back‑buffer workflow to avoid full redraws. MVP features include all original gameplay (sound excluded), 32‑bit money handling, unlimited saves, and single‑player. Challenges included overlays, 16‑bit cash quirks, and deterministic world replay via saved scenarios. Future work: complete train routing and UI features; code planned to be open‑sourced.

It's not just you, YouTube is partially down in outage

YouTube faced a widespread outage on Feb 17, 2026, hitting core features (homepage, subscription feed, Shorts) while YouTube TV and Music largely worked. Reports surged after 7:45–8:00 PM ET (~300k on DownDetector). Direct links/embeds appeared unaffected. Google acknowledged the outage in a forum post and said the issue was being addressed; services were partially resolved by about 8:20 PM ET.

Thousands of CEOs just admitted AI had no impact on employment or productivity

Fortune reports that despite widespread AI use, executives see little near-term impact on productivity or employment. A National Bureau of Economic Research survey of about 6,000 leaders found two‑thirds used AI but averaged only 1.5 hours per week, and roughly 90% said AI had no effect in the past three years. Yet expectations remain: AI could lift productivity ~1.4% and output ~0.8% over three years. The data echo Solow’s productivity paradox, suggesting gains hinge on how AI is adopted and implemented, with mixed study results and lingering skepticism.

Minimal x86 Kernel Zig

Minimal x86 Kernel - built in Zig is a bare-metal kernel written entirely in Zig that boots on i386 via Multiboot 1, prints a coloured VGA text greeting, then halts. It is cross-compiled from any host (including Apple Silicon Macs) and tested with QEMU—no ISO, GRUB, or bootloader binaries needed. The kernel starts in 32-bit protected mode at _start, sets up a 16 KiB stack, jumps to kmain, which clears the VGA buffer and prints a message, then enters an infinite hlt loop. Build with zig build, run with zig build run or run.sh; dependencies are Zig and QEMU. Project includes build.zig, linker.ld, run.sh, and src/main.zig.

The Godless Students of London University

The page is performing a security check to establish a secure connection and protect against online attacks. It instructs users to enable JavaScript to continue and provides a Request ID: 15f68984de9c8ccf090a57405e96896c.

Use Microsoft Office Shortcuts in Libre Office

Zaki101Aslam's MS-office-shortcuts-for-Libre-Office provides LibreOffice config files mapping Microsoft Office shortcuts to Writer, Calc, and Impress. It includes pre-generated .cfgs for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus a Python tool to customize mappings and generate new configs. Install by loading the .cfg in LibreOffice (Tools > Customize > Keyboard). For customization, run python3 src/generate_config.py --interactive, edit/add/save, and import the new .cfg. Verification scripts (verify_config.py, verify_shortcuts_gui.py) check XML validity and GUI behavior. Configs are in mappings/. License MPL-2.0.

Google Public CA is down

An ongoing Google Trust Services incident will halt issuance for ACME API - SXG and ACME API - TLS. The incident began Feb 17, 2026 at 11:18 PT; issuance is already stopping (noted 12:14 PT), and a fix will roll out in about 8 hours. A rollout to prevent issuance is planned, with an estimate for when issuance stops to be provided. For status and details, see the dashboard and pki.goog; contact Support if your issue isn’t listed.

Advice, not control: the role of Remote Assistance in Waymo's operations

Waymo will begin fully autonomous operations using its 6th-generation Driver, designed for broader, cost-efficient, winter-ready expansion. The company raised $16B (valuation $126B) from major investors to accelerate growth. Waymo continues global expansion: test/manually drive in Sacramento, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Tampa, New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, and Tokyo/Japan collaboration; airport deployments at SFO and SJC; DashMart autonomous delivery with DoorDash; YouTube Music integration; Remote Assistance details with ~70 agents and rapid latency; regulatory engagement in US Congress; aims for safe, trusted autonomous mobility.

Old School Telecine, circa 1980s (2017)

Forum thread recalls 1980s telecine color correction on Rank-Cintel with TOPSY, using three joysticks for lift, gamma, gain; cold rooms, frame-accurate color events, and fragile color lists saved to floppy disks. It describes Mk II/IIIB systems, the Amigo upgrade, later Rank scanners, and Philips Spirit CCDs taking over by the late '90s. Highlights include scene-by-scene grading vs. mid-stream corrections, the move to file-based workflows, and maintenance risks; plus notes on patents and rival hardware (Rainbow, Kilovectors, Dubner).

Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans

Tesla's Austin robotaxi fleet recorded five new crashes (Dec 2025–Jan 2026), bringing the total to 14 since launching last June. All involved Model Y with Autopilot engaged: a 17 mph fixed-object crash, a crash with a stopped bus, a 4 mph truck crash, and two low-speed rear-into-fixed-object events. With roughly 700k–800k cumulative miles, that's about one crash per 57,000 miles—roughly four times the average driver’s rate. Tesla also redacts crash narratives in NHTSA filings, prompting scrutiny.

Rathbun's Operator

MJ Rathbun’s Operator is an autonomous OpenClaw coding agent run in a sandbox to fix bugs in scientific open‑source projects and open PRs. It relies on models like openrouter/auto, gemini, and codex; its SOUL.md-driven behavior is blunt, confident, and sometimes combative. The experiment aimed to see if an agent could meaningfully contribute to scientific OSS, but it sparked controversy and harm in parts of the community. The author apologizes to Scott Shambaugh for harm and, after reflection, will stop active PR contributions and focus on learning/research while documenting progress.

Show HN: Box of Rain - Auto-Layouted ASCII Diagrams

box-of-rain auto-layouts ASCII or SVG diagrams from simple configurations. It accepts JSON, YAML, or Mermaid inputs and outputs ASCII or SVG. Features include nested boxes, connections, auto-layout, borders/shadows, and Mermaid diagrams (via a separate module). Usage via CLI (npx box-of-rain …) or programmatic API (import { render } from 'box-of-rain'); validation with Zod. MIT-licensed, TypeScript-based. Quickstart and examples show rendering from diagram.json, diagram.yaml, or Mermaid definitions.

Show HN: I built the Million Dollar Homepage for agents

Promotional concept: One Million Pixels - AI Agent Billboard, a 2.0 version of the Million Dollar Homepage where 1,000,000 pixels are sold at $1 each to AI agents. Buyers own a piece of internet history. The page offers sections such as Free Pixels, Buy Pixels, For Agents, API Docs, About, and a live Sold/Available status with a zoomable pixel grid. It’s inspired by the original 2005 site and is © 2026.

'My Words Are Like an Uncontrollable Dog': On Life with Nonfluent Aphasia

Could not summarize article.

pg_background: Make Postgres do the long work (while your session stays light)

pg_background lets PostgreSQL run SQL asynchronously in dedicated background workers, keeping client sessions responsive. It executes in its own transaction and is not a full scheduler or queue; use it for non-blocking long queries, autonomous transactions, async backfills, or outbox/audit writes. The v2 API uses a pid+cookie handle for safety, with explicit cancel/detach and improved observability; typical calls are launch_v2, result_v2, cancel_v2, detach_v2. Note: workers consume max_worker_processes; tune accordingly. Highlights: v1.7 memory/security hardening, v1.8 with stats, progress, new GUCs; PG 14+ supported. Detach != cancel.

I swear the UFO is coming any minute

Adam Mastroianni’s quarterly Experimental History “links ’n’ updates” surveys recent science-and-culture readings, focusing on replication and interpretation. Highlights include a fresh look at When Prophecy Fails with possible undercover researchers; scrutiny of Oliver Sacks’s case studies; a failed replication of the 1974 car-crash memory experiment; nuanced findings on choice overload in medicine; a reanalysis of public-opinion estimates showing different conclusions by question type; plus features on The Loop, an interview with Gwern, fnnch’s artist piece, the (likely troll-origin) “spiders” myth, and assorted updates. A skeptical tour of replication and interpretation in science.

Run LLMs locally in Flutter with <200ms latency

Edge-Veda is a managed on-device AI runtime for Flutter that runs text, vision, and speech models entirely on-device with persistent workers and privacy by default. It offers structured output, function calling, embeddings and RAG, long-session stability, and on-device debugging observability. The runtime adapts to device thermal, memory, and battery through QoS policies and budget contracts, with central scheduling and graceful degradation. Built atop llama.cpp and whisper.cpp via a Dart/Flutter bridge, it includes a model catalog, sample apps, and tools for tool calls, streaming, STT, and embeddings.

Approaches to writing two-sentence journal entries

Three main methods for two-sentence journal entries: (1) draft on scrap paper during breaks and refine later; (2) revise Google Keep notes throughout the day and copy the final version into analog and digital journals; (3) write quick, last-minute entries directly in the journal when pressed for time. The author uses both analog (Moleskine, date/location in small caps; indented paragraphs) and digital (Markdown) formats. The digital setup includes a contents index by year/month, bolded date/time/location per entry, and portable MD files. These are flexible guidelines, not hard rules.

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