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OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS

https://www.flyingpenguin.com/build-an-openclaw-free-secure-always-on-local-ai-agent/
75•feigewalnuss•2h ago•38 comments

GitHub's Fake Star Economy

https://awesomeagents.ai/news/github-fake-stars-investigation/
73•Liriel•1h ago•45 comments

SDF Public Access Unix System

https://sdf.org/?ssh
67•neehao•1d ago•25 comments

Up to 8M Bees Are Living in an Underground Network Beneath This Cemetery

https://www.discovermagazine.com/up-to-8-million-bees-are-living-in-an-underground-network-beneat...
48•janandonly•2d ago•5 comments

Vercel April 2026 security incident

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/vercel-confirms-breach-as-hackers-claim-to-be-sell...
743•colesantiago•19h ago•432 comments

Ben Lerner's Big Feelings

https://www.vulture.com/article/ben-lerner-transcription-interview.html
28•prismatic•4d ago•13 comments

Claude Token Counter, now with model comparisons

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/20/claude-token-counts/
110•twapi•8h ago•42 comments

Stripe's Payment APIs: the first 10 years (2020)

https://stripe.dev/blog/payment-api-design
46•tibbar•4h ago•25 comments

Zero-copy protobuf and ConnectRPC for Rust

https://medium.com/@iainmcgin/zero-copy-protobuf-and-connectrpc-for-rust-69bda8ac0f02
54•PaulHoule•3d ago•20 comments

Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

https://ashley.rolfmore.com/stop-trying-to-engineer-your-way-out-of-listening-to-people/
218•walterbell•13h ago•96 comments

A Brief History of Fish Sauce

https://www.legalnomads.com/fish-sauce/
180•vinhnx•1d ago•72 comments

Monumental ship burial beneath ancient Norwegian mound predates the Viking Age

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-monumental-ship-burial-beneath-ancient.html
58•pseudolus•3d ago•15 comments

The Bromine Chokepoint

https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/the-bromine-chokepoint-how-strife-in-the-middle-east-could-...
199•crescit_eundo•16h ago•104 comments

I Made the "Next-Level" Camera and I love it

https://thelibre.news/i-made-the-next-level-camera-and-i-love-it/
36•ndr•3d ago•1 comments

Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/turtle-wow-classic-server-announces-shutdown-afte...
236•Brajeshwar•18h ago•199 comments

Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-brussels-launched-age-checking-app-hackers-say-took-them-2-min...
26•axbyte•1h ago•9 comments

Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/18/opus-system-prompt/
320•pretext•23h ago•182 comments

IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

https://electrek.co/2026/04/19/iea-solar-overtakes-all-energy-sources-in-a-major-global-first/
39•Klaster_1•2h ago•15 comments

Mechanical Keyboard Sounds – A listening Museum

https://sheets.works/data-viz/keyboard-sounds
123•akashwadhwani35•4d ago•38 comments

A cache-friendly IPv6 LPM with AVX-512 (linearized B+-tree, real BGP benchmarks)

https://github.com/esutcu/planb-lpm
35•debugga•6h ago•14 comments

Tracking when Trump chickens out

https://www.thetacotracker.com/
36•JMiao•1h ago•7 comments

How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-long-poop-stays-in-your-body-may-impact-your-health-study-finds
59•mikhael•2h ago•31 comments

Swiss AI Initiative (2023)

https://www.swiss-ai.org
70•doener•10h ago•25 comments

Knitout and Kniterate 3

https://soup.agnescameron.info//2026/04/01/transfers.html
24•surprisetalk•3d ago•0 comments

Two Motorola Transistors Became the Default NPNs

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-two-motorola-transistors-became-the-worlds-default-npns/
27•ChuckMcM•2d ago•11 comments

Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors

https://www.sciencedetective.org/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors/
105•jruohonen•14h ago•28 comments

The RAM shortage could last years

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/914672/the-ram-shortage-could-last-years
304•omer_k•1d ago•367 comments

Show HN: Run TRELLIS.2 Image-to-3D generation natively on Apple Silicon

https://github.com/shivampkumar/trellis-mac
160•shivampkumar•9h ago•27 comments

2,100 Swiss municipalities showing which provider handles their official email

https://mxmap.ch/
186•doener•11h ago•56 comments

Six Levels of Dark Mode (2024)

https://cssence.com/2024/six-levels-of-dark-mode/
89•Akcium•15h ago•39 comments
Open in hackernews

OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS

https://www.flyingpenguin.com/build-an-openclaw-free-secure-always-on-local-ai-agent/
70•feigewalnuss•2h ago

Comments

piker•1h ago
Is anyone finding value in these things other than VCs and thought leaders looking for clicks and “picks and shovels” folks? I just personally have zero interest in letting an AI into my comms and see no value there whatsoever. Probably negative.
_pdp_•1h ago
There is value but it is hard to discover and extract outside of a few known areas - like coding, etc.
piker•1h ago
Yes, I can see the (potential) value in working with agents in software development. The “claw” movement I understood to suggest value in less constrained access to my inbox, personal messages, calendar etc like some sort of PA. It’s hard to quantify how much damage a bad PA can do to someone’s personal and professional life, so if my understand is correct, this seems like a dead end.
_pdp_•13m ago
I posted this comment in another thread so reposting it here because it seems to be on topic.

---

IMHO, the biggest problem with OpenClaw and other AI agents is that the use-cases are still being discovered. We have deployed several hundred of these to customers and I think this challenge comes from the fact that AI agents are largely perceived as workflow automation tools so when it comes to business process they are seen as a replacement for more established frameworks.

They can automate but they are not reliable. I think of them as work and process augmentation tools but this is not how most customers think in my experience.

However, here are a several legit use-case that we use internally which I can freely discuss.

There is an experimental single-server dev infrastructure we are working on that is slightly flaky. We deployed a lightweight agent in go (single 6MB binary) that connects to our customer-facing API (we have our own agentic platform) where the real agent is sitting and can be reconfigured. The agent monitors the server for various health issues. These could be anything from stalled VMs, unexpected errors etc. It is firecracker VMs that we use in very particular way and we don't know yet the scope of the system. When such situations are detected the agent automatically corrects the problems. It keeps of log what it did in a reusable space (resource type that we have) under a folder called learnings. We use these files to correct the core issues when we have the type to work on the code.

We have an AI agent called Studio Bot. It exists in Slack. It wakes up multiple times during the day. It analyses our current marketing efforts and if it finds something useful, it creates the graphics and posts to be sent out to several of our social media channels. A member of staff reviews these suggestions. Most of the time they need to follow up with subsequent request to change things and finally push the changes to buffer. I also use the agent to generate branded cover images for linkedin, x and reddit articles in various aspect ratios. It is a very useful tool that produces graphics with our brand colours and aesthetics but it is not perfect.

We have a customer support agent that monitors how well we handle support request in zendesk. It does not automatically engage with customers. What it does is to supervise the backlog of support tickets and chase the team when we fall behind, which happens.

We have quite a few more scattered in various places. Some of them are even public.

In my mind, the trick is to think of AI agents as augmentation tools. In other words, instead of asking how can I take myself out of the equation, the better question is how can I improve the situation. Sometimes just providing more contextually relevant information is more than enough. Sometimes, you need a simple helper that own a certain part of the business.

I hope this helps.

TheDong•1h ago
I find some value as kinda a better alexa.

I have it hooked up to my smart home stuff, like my speaker and smart lights and TV, and I've given it various skills to talk to those things.

I can message it "Play my X playlist" or "Give me the gorillaz song I was listening to yesterday"

I can also message it "Download Titanic to my jellyfin server and queue it up", and it'll go straight to the pirate bay.

It having a browser and the ability to run cli tools, and also understand English well enough to know that "Give me some Beatles" means to use its audio skill, means it's a vastly better alexa

It only costs me like $180 a month in API credits (now that they banned using the max plan), so seems okay still.

puelocesar•1h ago
180 grand a month for PA is a lot of money. But I guess each person has its own priority. I mean, I can pay a very fancy gym with that price instead of the shitty popular one I go, which would probably improve my well being much more than asking to play Gorillaz
quietbritishjim•36m ago
"a grand" means a thousand (dollars or pounds or whatever). $180k / month really would be a lot of money. I'd be your PA for that!
tikotus•50m ago
I don't want to be judgemental, but I do find it funny that you're paying $180 for this convenience, and use it to pirate movies.
TeMPOraL•28m ago
It's not the only thing they're doing with it. I mean, the logic is sound - $180 goes into automating bunch of manual processes in personal life, one of which is getting movies, which in some cases involves going out on the high seas.
LeCompteSftware•22m ago
Let's also point out the $180 is going to a hideously evil AI company which pirated millions of books and movies.
retired•36m ago
> It only costs me like $180 a month in API credits

In The Netherlands you can get a live-in au-pair from the Philippines for less than that. She will happily play your Beatles song, download the Titanic movie for you, find your Gorillaz song and even cook and take care of your children.

It's horrible that we have such human exploitation in 2026, but it does put into perspective how much those credits are if you can get a real-life person doing those tasks for less.

quietbritishjim•28m ago
I'm surprised to read that. Here in the UK, having a live-in au pair doesn't excuse you from paying the minimum wage for all the hours that they're working (approx $2300/month for a 35 hour week). You can deduct an amount to account for the fact that you're providing accomodation but it's strictly limited (approx $400/month).
swiftcoder•22m ago
The Netherlands has a weird and exploitative setup where you can classify your au pair as a "cultural exchange", and then pay them literal peanuts (room and board plus a token amount of "pocket money")
retired•20m ago
From what I can see online, the average compensation that an au-pair in The Netherlands receives is 300 euro per month, with living expenses being covered by the family. There is no minimum wage requirement for au-pairs like in the UK or the US.
kombine•27m ago
We shouldn't have to "import" people from poorer countries to do the mundane tasks we got too lazy to do ourselves.
DrewADesign•19m ago
Surely that’s subsidized?

A lot of people in the Silicon Valley area spend that much ($6/day) on coffee. What they don’t realize is how out of touch they are in thinking makes sense for the rest of the fucking world. $180/mo is about 5% of the median US per capita income. It’s not going to pick your kids up from school, do your taxes, fix your car, or do the dishes. It’s going to download movies and call restaurants and play music. It’s a hobby, high-touch leisure assistant that costs a lot of money.

bluedel•32m ago
Am I right to be a little concerned by the phrase "it'll go straight to the pirate bay"?

Not to be a narc or anything, but is OpenClaw liable to just perform illegal acts on your behalf just because it seemed like that's what you meant for it to do?

swiftcoder•21m ago
> It only costs me like $180 a month in API credits (now that they banned using the max plan), so seems okay still.

I have a hard time imagining how much better Alexa would have to be for me to spend $180/month on it...

onchainintel•58m ago
It all depends on what you do aka your use case. If you're in the content creatio business, which is part of my responsibilities, then yes has been massively helpful. For other roles, I can absolutely see no use case or benefit. Context matters, like with everything.
iugtmkbdfil834•40m ago
Eh, buddy says he uses them for his network and, apparently, some light IT maintenance for his family members. So far it seems to be working for him. I am not that brave.
mathgladiator•31m ago
Agent environments like OpenClaw are in the toy phase, and OpenClaw is teaching people how to build things with agents in a toy-like and unreliable way. I used my understanding of OpenClaw to build scalable + secure + auditable agent infrastructure in my platform such that I can build products that other people can use.
bayindirh•29m ago
We had better agent infrastructures (namely JADE) back in the day. I worked with them, and now these things look like flimsy 50¢ plastic toys to me, too.
ZeroGravitas•19m ago
I see the appeal, but I also see the risks.

If you ignore the risks I don't see why it's hard to see value.

The AI can read all your email, that's useful. It can delete them to free up space after deciding they are useless. It can push to GitHub. The more of your private info and passwords you give it the more useful it becomes.

That's all great, until it isn't.

Putting firewalls in place is probably possible and obviously desirable but is a bit of a hassle and will probably reduce the usefulness to some degree, so people won't. We'll all collectively touch the stove and find out that it is hot.

vbezhenar•10m ago
Many wealthy people use human assistants to offload mundane work.

This is cheap replacement for ordinary people.

It's going to be big. But probably it's best to wait for Google and Apple to step up their assistants.

trilogic•58m ago
Great article. Been skeptical of it since the beginning with this Python "Cli" agents. Been looking for local ai driven Agentic GUI that offers real privacy but coulnt find it anywhere. Finally what we call real local and ClI agents pipeline local ai driven with llama.cpp engine is done. Just pure bash and c++, model isolated, no http, no python, no api, no proprietary models. There is the native version (in c++) and the community version in Electron. Is electron Good enough to protect users Wrapping all the rest? This is exciting.
nopurpose•55m ago
I agree that sandboxing whole agent is inadequate: I am fine sharing my github creds with the gh CLI, but not with the npm. More granular sunboxing and permission is what I'd like to see and this project seems interesting enough to have a closer look.

I am not interested in the "claw" workflow, but if I can use it for a safer "code" environment it is a win for me.

mkesper•15m ago
When the agent uses your GH credentials to nuke all your projects or put out a lot of crap, this separation will not save you.
electroglyph•55m ago
https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/
falense•29m ago
Very cool project! I am working on something similar myself. I call mine TriOnyx. Its based on Simon Willison's lethal trifecta. You get a star from me :D

https://www.tri-onyx.com/

repelsteeltje•28m ago
One could argue that the discussion is once again about tech debt.

Both OpenClaw and MSDOS gaining a lot a traction by taking short cuts, ignoring decades of lessons learned and delivering now what might have been ready next year. MSDOS (or the QDOS predecessor) was meant to run on "cheap" microcomputer hardware and appeal to tinkerers. OpenClaw is supposed to appeal to YOLO / FOMO sentiments.

And of course, neither will be able to evolve to their eventual real-world context. But for some time (much longer than intended), that's where it will be.

TeMPOraL•23m ago
OpenClaw was an inevitability. An obvious idea that predates LLMs. It took this long for models and pricing to catch up. As much as I dislike this term, if there's one clear example of "Product Model Fit", it's OpenClaw - well, except that arguably what made it truly possible was subscription pricing introduced with Claude Code; before, people were extremely conservative with tokens.

But the point is, OpenClaw is just the first that lucked and got viral. If not for it, something equivalent would. Much like LangChain in the early LLM days.

pointlessone•22m ago
Wow. Much security.

I too remember DOS. Data and code finely blended and perfectly mixed in the same universally accessible block of memory. Oh, wait… single context. nwm

teach•21m ago
This isn't especially related to the article, but when I was at university my first assembler class taught the Motorola 680x0 assembly. I didn't own a computer (most people didn't) but my dorm had a single Mac that you could sign up to use so I did some assignments on that.

Problem is, I was just learning and the mac was running System 7. Which, like MS-DOS, lacked memory protection.

So, one backwards test at the end of your loop and you could -- quite easily -- just overwrite system memory with whatever bytes you like.

I must have hard-locked that computer half a dozen times. Power cycle. Wait for it to slowly reboot off the external 20MB SCSI HDD.

Eventually I took to just printing out the code and tracing through it instead of bothering to run it. Once I could get through the code without any obvious mistakes I'd hazard a "real" execution.

To this day, automatic memory management still feels a little luxurious.

nryoo•12m ago
$180/month to control your lights and music. A Raspberry Pi + Home Assistant does this for $0/month and doesn't exfiltrate your home network topology to a third-party API. The value proposition only makes sense if your time is worth more than your privacy.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r•9m ago
This comparison is dishonest, and you know that it is. This is coming from someone that uses Home Assistant and wouldn’t touch OpenClaw with a 10 foot pole. If I had a horse in this race it’d be your horse, but to pretend that these achieve the same goals is just… not in the spirit of an actual discussion.
Schlagbohrer•5m ago
Why am I totally unable to understand this post. I have been a long time computer user but this has way too much jargon for me.
stared•4m ago
I don’t get this OpenClaw hype.

When people vibe-code, ususlly the goal is to do something.

When I hear people using OpenClaw, usually the goal seems to be… using OpenClaw. At a cost of a Mac Mini, safety (deleting emels), and security (litelmm attack).