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Software factories and the agentic moment

https://factory.strongdm.ai/
39•mellosouls•3h ago•32 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
36•thelok•2h ago•3 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
95•AlexeyBrin•5h ago•17 comments

First Proof

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05192
46•samasblack•2h ago•34 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
787•klaussilveira•20h ago•241 comments

StrongDM's AI team build serious software without even looking at the code

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/
29•simonw•2h ago•35 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
37•vinhnx•3h ago•4 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12501
59•onurkanbkrc•5h ago•3 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
456•theblazehen•2d ago•163 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1037•xnx•1d ago•587 comments

France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
496•nar001•4h ago•231 comments

Vinklu Turns Forgotten Plot in Bucharest into Tiny Coffee Shop

https://design-milk.com/vinklu-turns-forgotten-plot-in-bucharest-into-tiny-coffee-shop/
12•surprisetalk•5d ago•0 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
174•jesperordrup•10h ago•65 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
182•alainrk•5h ago•269 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
27•rbanffy•4d ago•5 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
59•1vuio0pswjnm7•6h ago•56 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
17•marklit•5d ago•0 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
107•videotopia•4d ago•27 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
56•speckx•4d ago•62 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
267•isitcontent•20h ago•33 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
280•dmpetrov•21h ago•148 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
196•limoce•4d ago•105 comments

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
152•matheusalmeida•2d ago•46 comments

British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205nxy0p31o
165•bookofjoe•2h ago•150 comments

What Is Stoicism?

https://stoacentral.com/guides/what-is-stoicism
9•0xmattf•2h ago•4 comments

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PEXRTN-ga68-intro/
37•matt_d•4d ago•12 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
547•todsacerdoti•1d ago•266 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
422•ostacke•1d ago•110 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
365•vecti•22h ago•167 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
339•eljojo•23h ago•209 comments
Open in hackernews

Observable Notebooks Data Loaders

https://observablehq.com/notebook-kit/data-loaders
79•mbostock•5mo ago

Comments

michaelterryio•4mo ago
How does this fit with Framework? Is Framework still part of the plans?
dleeftink•4mo ago
Based on mb's response [0], it seems existing Framework features are being refitted to the new notebook format.

[0]: https://github.com/observablehq/framework/discussions/2022

uptime•4mo ago
Thanks for pointing this out! The attention to exploration is why I enjoy using Observable so I am glad that this will be paired with the framework features to get us Notebooks 2.0
thomastjeffery•4mo ago
IDK why people keep making apps that are 99% web stack, but only run on mac... Maybe it's a good thing I can't waste my time on your tech.
mjoin•4mo ago
what? this runs on all platforms
dwmbt•4mo ago
i believe they're referring to the observable desktop[0] macos app, a gui client for notebook kit[1]. the cli works great, fwiw!

[0]: https://observablehq.com/notebook-kit/kit) [1]: https://observablehq.com/notebook-kit/desktop

thomastjeffery•4mo ago
The CLI works great for... what?

Isn't the idea to write notes? I think constantly running a script to generate a static webpage would drive me insane. Isn't the whole point of a computational notebook to have some kind of integrated GUI?

dwmbt•4mo ago
have you taken a look at what the CLI is for? like you mentioned, it's pretty much just a build step! but there are some runtime things basked that are interesting [0]. i just have a watcher listening to file changes to trigger a rebuild. i have no need for real-time queries so just having the current state at build works for my purposes.

if you must know, the product i work on is primarily a data lake. we have our own query language -> i have a fork of the CLI w added support for parsing custom cells. i don't know of any alternatives that give me a notebook so easily!

> running a script to generate a static webpage would drive me insane

possibly web-brained take but i don't mind it much. builds are instant for me, network latency is the only thing i find myself waiting around on.

> Isn't the whole point of a computational notebook to have some kind of integrated GUI

well yea, pretty sure the entire point of the desktop app is to show what you can build atop the new api! this preview is meant to expand the capability of observable within your own custom web app. the original framework was too close to some of the frustrations you mentioned, so they're trying to make it more amorphous :)

[0] https://github.com/observablehq/notebook-kit/tree/main/src/r...

thomastjeffery•4mo ago
I guess my point was that I don't really want my first interaction with a thing I'm casually curious about to be me building a custom web app on top of it. By making their GUI app Apple-only, they have lost my casual interest. I'm not sure what they gained by making that compromise.
cxr•4mo ago
It's possible to make (via polyglot JS/HTML files[1]) apps that offer both a command-line interface that can be invoked with NodeJS (or other JS-ish runtime) or can be opened in the browser (via double-click, the browser's File Open dialog, or by just typing the file path into the location bar) if the right version of NodeJS isn't available (or for people who just don't want to give carte blanche to run outside the safety of the browser sandbox to programs downloaded from the internet, given the poor track record of NPM-based program creators/maintainers to stay on top of their dependencies).

A ton more programs, especially one-shot programs that operate on a single batch input (e.g. a directory of files) and then generate some output—like a ZIP copy of the files for your static site—should offer this but unfortunately don't. At best they'll put out an Electron app for cross-platform compatibility, but it doesn't sidestep the problem of granting overbroad capabilities to NPM modules (or the massive memory footprint). Then, in this case, there's Observable Desktop, which as a Mac-only app, falls short even of that mark.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44229684>

tremarley•4mo ago
This website seems to be broken. The page is full grey, until we scroll down to half way down the page.
elAhmo•4mo ago
Is anyone using Observable for something?

In theory sounds good, I like the demos, but never actually saw anyone actually using it.

We use Marimo notebooks as a great improvement over Jupyter.

etra0•4mo ago
I've used it for fun to analyze some data of some community in real time without having to host anything on my side.

Doing data analysis in javascript feels a bit weird at first, but it allows you to write a bit more functional code than python which I ended up liking.

I dislike the plotting api but the pro of being automatically updated without me needing to do/host anything is cool.

jeffbee•4mo ago
I use it regularly to make articles, reports, and especially maps for local decision makers. You'd be surprised, terrified to learn how little the elected officials know about their cities.
uptime•4mo ago
I really like using Observable. Coming from years of d3 and not having a lot of R or Python to do, Observable feels great and things look beautiful. Lots of examples and it is great to see what others are making. Also love that I can use SQL on data in the notebook. The Plot functions can make quick work of various charts. I am looking forward to the static output future, and to see what they mean by more vanilla js in the app.

Not saying it is better or worse than Jupyter etc. Just that it has been exciting to think I can make viz that would not look out of place in major pubs, etc.

th0ma5•4mo ago
I never quite understood what their value proposition was for their lock-in.
m-schuetz•4mo ago
I would have liked to, but I found D3 to be an unintelligible mess and the reverse evaluation of observable notebooks to be counterintuitive, given I do litterally anything else from top to bottom. I like notebooks and I wish there was a proper JS alternative to Jupyter, but this isn't it for me.
chthonicdaemon•4mo ago
The notebooks aren't evaluated in reverse, but rather in the order they need to be to get the final results. Observable builds a DAG, similar to Marimo. You can put cells in any order you'd like.

I think that in all the notebook solutions I've seen that allow this, a culture emerges where the "final result" is put at the top so that you can find it easily and interact with it as a user. The actual development process involves writing stuff top down and then re-ordering it for use.

phailhaus•4mo ago
You can just write your observable notebook from top to bottom if you want. The reactive cells just means that you don't have to, and it will still work.
some_guy_nobel•4mo ago
My team at <random faang company> uses Observable Framework for building dashboards. (I don't know who'd be the core customer of Observable Notebooks enough to pay, tbh).