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Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
230•theblazehen•2d ago•65 comments

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

https://openciv3.org/
694•klaussilveira•15h ago•206 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
962•xnx•20h ago•553 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
5•AlexeyBrin•58m ago•0 comments

How we made geo joins 400× faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
129•matheusalmeida•2d ago•35 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
66•videotopia•4d ago•6 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
53•jesperordrup•5h ago•24 comments

Jeffrey Snover: "Welcome to the Room"

https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/01/welcome-to-the-room/
34•kaonwarb•3d ago•27 comments

ga68, the GNU Algol 68 Compiler – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PEXRTN-ga68-intro/
10•matt_d•3d ago•2 comments

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

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
236•isitcontent•15h ago•26 comments

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

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
233•dmpetrov•16h ago•124 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
32•speckx•3d ago•21 comments

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

https://vecti.com
335•vecti•17h ago•147 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
502•todsacerdoti•23h ago•244 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
385•ostacke•21h ago•97 comments

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

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
300•eljojo•18h ago•186 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
361•aktau•22h ago•185 comments

UK infants ill after drinking contaminated baby formula of Nestle and Danone

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c931rxnwn3lo
8•__natty__•3h ago•0 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
422•lstoll•21h ago•282 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
68•kmm•5d ago•10 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
96•quibono•4d ago•22 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
19•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•5 comments

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122
21•bikenaga•3d ago•11 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
264•i5heu•18h ago•215 comments

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

https://mirageos.org/blog/delimcc-vs-lwt
33•romes•4d ago•3 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
63•gfortaine•13h ago•28 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
1076•cdrnsf•1d ago•460 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
39•gmays•10h ago•13 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
298•surprisetalk•3d ago•44 comments

I spent 5 years in DevOps – Solutions engineering gave me what I was missing

https://infisical.com/blog/devops-to-solutions-engineering
154•vmatsiiako•20h ago•72 comments
Open in hackernews

Chatbox app is back on the US app store

https://github.com/chatboxai/chatbox/issues/2644
70•themez•4mo ago

Comments

yosito•4mo ago
Based on the marketing page and App Store page, I can't really tell what sets this apart from ChatGPT. It looks like essentially the same thing, with a slightly different UI. What features does it have that add value over ChatGPT?
rd07•4mo ago
Chatbox is basically a client for various LLM. It can even connect to locally hosted LLM on Ollama.
higginsniggins•4mo ago
how is this different then t3chat?
viraptor•4mo ago
t3chat doesn't have a mobile app.
risyachka•4mo ago
T3chat was launched much later so the real question is how t3 is different from it or any other chat.
esseph•4mo ago
You know what I just realized?

I couldn't tell you the last time I installed a new app on my phone.

Everything there is mostly out to exploit me, or a direct security liability regardless of what app store.

TheDong•4mo ago
> Everything there is mostly out to exploit me, or a direct security liability regardless of what app store.

As a shining bright light of hope, I will list some apps I have installed which do not appear to me to fall into those buckets.

1. Anki - Flash cards app, I can memorize stuff. It's really good.

2. KDE Connect - Zero exploitation, open source, even sorta works

3. Peakfinder - So far this app has seemed okay. "I programmed PeakFinder during the day and danced Tango during the night" - Peakfinder's creator

Also, about 70% of the apps on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/ are fine. This is what I miss most about android.

I do think that by percentage more of the iOS apps are exploitative crap or full of ads, probably because you need to pay $100/year for the app to keep existing at all.

One of tricks to get fewer exploitative apps is to avoid iPhone and never install anything that needs google play services.

Also, delete any app that has an ad instantly unless it's really important.

Groxx•4mo ago
>This is what I miss most about android.

oh don't worry, Google is trying to kill that too. you won't have to miss Android soon. https://developer.android.com/developer-verification discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028

sebastiennight•4mo ago
> about 70% of the apps on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/ are fine

Wait, what's wrong with the other 30%?

TheDong•4mo ago
There's stuff like NewPipe, which is just youtube videos so it's awful for the soul.

There's also games and blockchain apps which are bad for the soul

sebastiennight•4mo ago
> There's stuff like NewPipe, which is just youtube videos so it's awful for the soul.

You do get to pick the videos, and have none imposed to you (through ads), so unless you're saying the entire video medium is awful for the soul, I'm thinking one could pick content that they find "good" for their soul?

PlunderBunny•4mo ago
I had the same realisation about game app specifically - in the early days of the App Store, I’d buy several games a year, and play dozens more free games. I can’t remember the last game I bought.
macintux•4mo ago
I experienced deja vu today when an upcoming festival’s website encouraged me to install a custom app for the event on my phone. Felt very 2010(ish).
MaxikCZ•4mo ago
Its really sad to search for some basic functionality like "use phone as wireless mic for PC" only to be hit with wall of in-app pirchases and ads. I understand that the main reason is keeping app on store requires paying ransom to google, which is the worst reason one could imagine.
tcoff91•4mo ago
On average 90% of time spent on mobile devices is in native apps.
esseph•4mo ago
That's.. how is that relevant?
tcoff91•4mo ago
This is a site mostly centered around startups and building products. I notice a common anti-mobile-app sentiment here, and the criticisms are valid, but I think that it’s important to keep in mind that for many apps having a mobile app is important to the success of your business because the vast majority of people prefer mobile apps to mobile websites.

Users want apps and it’s important not to assume that the majority of users will think like HN users. Even if your app is mostly just a webview wrapping your website, being in the App Store matters.

esseph•4mo ago
So what you're telling me is I shouldn't talk about my abandonment of native phone apps with other people because it might prevent someone at YC for giving someone else a job for a startup? Do I have that right?
tcoff91•4mo ago
There’s nothing wrong with discussing moving away from native apps and their very real downsides. I was merely offering data showing that the vast majority of people do not share this sentiment, and one would be wise when launching a product to do market research and find out if the evidence shows that the business will be best served by offering users a native app.
WhereIsTheTruth•4mo ago
Compile it yourself https://github.com/chatboxai/chatbox
viraptor•4mo ago
Unfortunately GH has an older version. The latest official releases don't have the code published, contrary to the licence.
viraptor•4mo ago
Cool that they did that, but they could also start behaving properly. The app labels itself at GPL licensed, but the most recent releases are not available on GitHub. It's been the situation for quite a while now and it's been raised with the author a few times in the issues. They don't seem to care.
Kudos•4mo ago
Unless they have GPL dependencies I'm not sure they have to release source for a binary release. If I write some code and grant you a license to use it under the GPL, I would have thought I still am the copyright holder and don't need any kind of license to do whatever I want with it.
Sophira•4mo ago
My understanding is that the GPL specifies that any further redistribution of binary code (by the licensee) has to come with an offer to be able to receive the source code, which they can then modify and redistribute under the original license. If the original licensor doesn't actually allow access to the source code, there's no way for that to happen and I'd argue that the licensor is being unreasonable by asking licensees to comply with something they have no chance of being able to comply with. (Short of decompilation, which wouldn't yield the original source code.)

I have no idea of the legal implications of all this (I'm not a lawyer), but there has to be some kind of legal thing that prevents the original licensor from being unreasonable in this way, I'd hope?

Xylakant•4mo ago
The license does not bind the original copyright owner, who can do anything with the code - fee example relicense and distribute under another license.

The license only binds the licensee that received the code under the respective license.

Things get more complicated if there are external contributors that may have contributed under specific legal arrangements, but in the simple case there’s no legal way to force the original copyright owner to publish sources.

esperent•4mo ago
> The license does not bind the original copyright owner, who can do anything with the code

For any small to medium sized projects with zero external contributors, it's highly unlikely that anyone would pursue legal action so the person who owns the project does de facto have this right whether or not it's legal according to the license.

> Things get more complicated if there are external contributors

I don't think this is complicated - unless there's a contributor agreement that people have signed that says otherwise, people have copyright on the code they have contributed so the original creator doesn't have a right to relicense their code.

However, again it comes down to whether anyone would bring a legal fight and the answer is almost certainly no. Forking the code is much more likely at that point.

digitalPhonix•4mo ago
>> The license does not bind the original copyright owner, who can do anything with the code

> whether or not it's legal according to the license

The original author is not bound by any licence. Only the licensees are. The licence they chose to use by definition cannot bind them; they are issuing the licence.

(They are obviously bound by the licences of anything that they use, but that’s not what the person you’re replying to is talking about)

esperent•4mo ago
> The original author is not bound by any licence.

Yes, but this is only true if nobody else ever contributes to the software. Once the project has multiple contributors, each of these people are copyright holders of whatever they contributed, and they are the licensor for their parts of the code. So the original author is also held to the terms of the license for all contributed code.

Sophira•4mo ago
I realise the license doesn't bind the original copyright owner. That's not what I was arguing.

I'm saying that if the original licensor (ie. the copyright owner) offers software that they fully own to people under the terms of the GPL, they're binding the licensee (ie. the entity receiving the software) such that further redistribution of the binary that the licensee received has to come with an offer to receive the source code - which is something that the licensee cannot offer if they don't have access to the source code themselves.

I'm arguing that such a situation (ie. the original copyright owner not offering source code, but at the same time saying that the people receiving the software have to offer the source code if they want to redistribute the binary) is unreasonable to the point where it feels like there may be some legal action that could be taken, as at that point the license is asking people to do things that they literally cannot do.

fragmede•4mo ago
The original copyright owner still has the right to distribute the software they wrote and have the original copyright for under a proprietary license.
47282847•4mo ago
Small nitpick: GPL requires to provide a source copy on request. It does not require the author to make it public. Also, original authors can dual license, so the GPL would only apply to users, not them, and they are free to change license for versions at any point in time.
Blahah•4mo ago
The app doesn't label itself as GPL licensed... The terms of the installed Android app are clear that it's closed source [0].

There's a community edition that's GPL, and it does say they're 'going open source' but clearly it's not the exact same app as the official distribution:

  This is the repository for the Chatbox Community Edition, open-sourced under the GPLv3 license.
  
  Chatbox is going open-source Again!
  
  We regularly sync code from the pro repo to this repo, and vice versa.

0: https://chatboxai.app/en/terms
woadwarrior01•4mo ago
It looks like they have a GPL licensed "community edition" and a closed $19.99/month commercial edition. I supposed the GPL licensed version's raison d'etre is marketing, since non-technical users cannot tell the difference between the two.
teekert•4mo ago
Well, you’re talking to a company that trademarked “Apple”.
llamasushi•4mo ago
Small anecdote, but back in early 2024 (like, March), I did a ton of searching for an AI helper app that would allow me to use the gemini API key from AI studio. Chatbox was one of only two that I found (can't remember the other), but even back then I was astounded by its functionality and ease of use. It supported a ton of stuff, like custom system prompts, etc. Basically recreated a lot of the lmstudio experience but on a phone.

You'd be surprised, but it was extremely difficult to find an android app that supported API key usage. Ahead of its time.

cedws•4mo ago
I use Pal for iOS, it has a lot of nice features and it’s a native app.
theusus•4mo ago
Do I need to use the API key, or it uses my subscription?
KetoManx64•4mo ago
API key
lazyeye•4mo ago
I stopped using Chatbox as it didnt allow an Openrouter API key (which in turn allows all models Openai, Claude, Grok, Gemini etc) and started using Msty instead. I might revisit Chatbox and see if its improved.