frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Varkos – a local AI pet that can talk, interact, and play small games

https://varkos.party/
1•pantelisk•53m ago

Comments

pantelisk•39m ago
Hey HN,

This is a follow up from a post of a few weeks ago about an AI gaming companion (an intelligent dog companion for Skyrim). I decided to double down on the local AI approach and package it as a self-contained creature, and try to broaden the types of hardware it can run on to.

I know it's a large ask to ask somebody to download a 9gb mystery executable, so I don't expect many to check it out. But in case you are curious.

It uses: - Optimized qwen-3-asr which has been converted for voice streaming (will open source this). - Quantized gemma4 models with custom megakernel inferrence + speculative decoding as the brain (I have a finetuned version for skyrim but gemma empirically worked better as generalzed) - Pocket-tts with added vector embeddings for emotion, optimized for CPU inf (https://pantel.is/projects/pocket-tts-raven/?b=1). - Threejs for the rendering of the terrarium/jar and the 2 sample game demos that come with it

At this stage it's more of an experiment art project local inference and intelligent NPCs than a polished product (especially with the whole gimmick of summoning him by speaking out an invocation during the intro. It’s still early alpha, but the idea was to make something you can spend a little time with, then leave to his own devices while you go about your day.

Go System One

https://rcarmo.github.io/projects/go-system-one/
1•rcarmo•48s ago•0 comments

Jensen Huang says the junior developer problem ends in two years

https://thenewstack.io/huang-ai-agents-engineers/
1•monkeydust•2m ago•0 comments

Physical Self-Play

https://www.skild.ai/blogs/physical-self-play
1•mostlyk•4m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Can you suggest an interesting skill?

2•skwasimin•9m ago•3 comments

LensVLM-9B by Apple

https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.07019
4•nthypes•12m ago•0 comments

Agent Etna – Automated staging environment and regression compiler for AI agents

https://www.agentetna.com/
1•giuerr•12m ago•0 comments

WebGPU-Bench: A WebGPU Microbenchmark

https://ben3d.ca/blog/introducing-webgpu-bench
2•ibobev•13m ago•0 comments

Realtime Raytracing in Bevy 0.20 (Solari)

https://jms55.github.io/posts/2026-09-18-solari-bevy-0-20/
1•ibobev•13m ago•0 comments

AI can never produce sublime art

https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/ai-can-never-produce-sublime-art
1•bananaflag•14m ago•0 comments

ALP: Adaptive Lossless Floating-Point Encoding in Apache Parquet

https://parquet.apache.org/blog/2026/09/22/alp-adaptive-lossless-floating-point-encoding-in-apach...
1•ibobev•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Lifeboat, 2-6x more concurrent agent sessions per GPU, no quantization

https://github.com/IterateAI/lifeboat-releases
1•chanuiterate•15m ago•0 comments

Why Omarchy Exists

https://mikael.pika.page/posts/why-omarchy-exists
5•mikae1•16m ago•0 comments

The Python documentation is now available in Persian

https://blog.python.org/2026/09/the-python-documentation-is-now-available-in-persian/
2•lumpa•17m ago•0 comments

An LLM Beat NetHack

https://kenforthewin.github.io/blog/posts/llm-nethack-ascension/
2•jwm1•17m ago•0 comments

The Most Important Market in AI Is the Middle

https://tomtunguz.com/the-most-important-market-in-ai-is-the-middle/
1•simonpure•19m ago•0 comments

Cursor Introducing Projects

https://cursor.com/blog/projects
2•Leonerd•20m ago•0 comments

Immigration changes are driving foreign researchers to leave the U.S.

https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/04/trump-immigration-policy-stat-survey-measures-science-impact/
3•Bluestein•20m ago•0 comments

Are we going to use the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-7-are_we_really_going_to_use_the_same_desktop_ux_forever
1•ognarb•21m ago•0 comments

How the pro-nicotine 'wellness' movement rebranded an addictive drug

https://theconversation.com/how-the-pro-nicotine-wellness-movement-rebranded-an-addictive-drug-29...
1•devilcius•21m ago•0 comments

Empire of Grift

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/
4•rbanffy•22m ago•0 comments

CP/M-80 2.2 Compilers. (Update from June 19, 2026: Dave Glover – by David Lee

https://medium.com/@davidly_33504/cp-m-80-2-2-compilers-91958a8f1d58
2•rbanffy•22m ago•0 comments

Signature 27 is likely Motorola's first smartphone with GrapheneOS support

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Signature-27-is-likely-Motorola-s-first-smartphone-with-GrapheneOS-s...
1•thunderbong•23m ago•0 comments

Ten thousand magnets later – CERN Courier

https://cerncourier.com/ten-thousand-magnets-later/
1•rbanffy•23m ago•0 comments

Developers Song (2011) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwMvW9cAIZg
1•thesdev•23m ago•0 comments

What are passkeys? A simple guide for friends and family

https://whatarepasskeys.info/
2•timmyc123•26m ago•1 comments

Show HN: QBasic 1.1 in the Browser

https://www.vahidyousefzadeh.com/qbasic/app
4•vahidce•28m ago•1 comments

How can this Amazon scammer keep going, not shipping any goods?

https://www.amazon.de/sp?language=en&ie=UTF8&seller=A29EBN4DXM8UCL&asin=B0CGBFF8K9&ref_=dp_mercha...
19•kiloklokillo•28m ago•11 comments

The Cloudflare error page X icon is not centered

https://infosec.exchange/@rebane2001/117319966425143761
2•ambigious7777•29m ago•0 comments

Open Source World of Warcraft Client in C++ and Vulkan Renderer

https://github.com/Kelsidavis/WoWee
1•m0do1•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free attestation for AI agent decisions – verifying one costs $0.10

https://github.com/0xsims/rubric-attest
1•RubricProtocol•29m ago•0 comments