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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6ihV7
Hey HN, we're Alexi and Jonas the co-founders of Autotab (https://autotab.com). Autotab is a chrome-based browser you can teach to do complex tasks, with a simple API for running them from your app or backend.
Here is a walkthrough of how it works: https://youtu.be/63co74JHy1k, and you can try it for free at https://autotab.com by downloading the app.
Why a dedicated editor?
The number one blocker we've found in building more flexible, agentic automations is performance quality BY FAR (https://www.langchain.com/stateofaiagents#barriers-and-chall...). For all the talk of cost, latency, and safety, the fact is most people are still just struggling to get agents to work. The keys to solving reliability are better models, yes, but also intent specification. Even humans don't zero-shot these tasks from a prompt. They need to be shown how to perform them, and then refined with question-asking + feedback over time. It is also quite difficult to formulate complete requirements on the spot from memory.
The editor makes it easy to build the specification up as you step through your workflow, while generating successful task trajectories for the model. This is the only way we've been able to get the reliability we need for production use cases.
But why build a browser?
Autotab started as a Chrome extension (with a Show HN post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37943931). As we iterated with users, we realized that we needed to focus on creating the control surface for intent specification, and that being stuck in a chrome sidepanel wasn't going to work. We also knew that we needed a level of control for the model that we couldn't get without owning the browser. In Autotab, the browser becomes a canvas on which the user and the model are taking turns showing and explaining the task.
Key features:
1. Self-healing automations that don't break when sites change
2. Dedicated authoring tool that builds memory for the model while defining steps for the automation
3. Control flows and deep configurability to keep automations on track, even when navigating complex reasoning tasks
4. Works with any website (no site-specific APIs needed)
5. Runs securely in the cloud or locally
6. Simple REST API + client libraries for Python, Node
We'd love to get any early feedback from the HN community, ideas for where you'd like the product to go, or experiences in this space. We will be in the comments for the next few hours to respond!
Oncall shift should be Tuesday to Tuesday (❄️ Score: 153+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iff2
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iff2
The 'Return to Office' Lies (🔥 Score: 163+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6irxz
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6irxz
Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis (Score: 154+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iqPZ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iqPZ
Quake 3 Source Code Review: Network Model (2012) (Score: 152+ in 13 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iqyn
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iqyn
Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iid5
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iid5
Dear sir, you have built a compiler (2022) (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iefN
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iefN
The rectangular cows of Art UK (2018) (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ijUG
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ijUG
Amazon to invest another $4B in Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest rival (🔥 Score: 158+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ipty
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ipty
Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after dam removal project (🔥 Score: 153+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6inZr
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6inZr
Show HN: A Marble Madness-inspired WebGL game we built for Netlify (Score: 154+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6inFe
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6inFe
Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers.
Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users.
The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view using CSS 3D transforms for a seamless integration with the 3D view.
We’d love for you to try it out and share your thoughts!
[1] https://threejs.org
[2] https://rapier.rs
EDIT: More info on this project here: https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/
Listen to the whispers: web timing attacks that work (Score: 150+ in 19 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ikRD
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ikRD
Tailwind CSS v4.0 Beta 1 (Score: 150+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6imZT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6imZT
Bayesian Neural Networks (❄️ Score: 150+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6iaqp
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6iaqp
OK, I can partly explain the LLM chess weirdness now (Score: 152+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ikPb
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ikPb
Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms (❄️ Score: 151+ in 6 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6i6WC
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6i6WC
The tech utopia fantasy is over (🔥 Score: 163+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6irDb
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6irDb
What made Dostoevsky's work immortal (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ipdm
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ipdm
Highest-resolution images ever captured of the sun’s entire surface (Score: 151+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ir5m
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ir5m
Understanding Google's Quantum Error Correction Breakthrough (Score: 150+ in 19 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ipHy
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ipHy
Interactive Visual Sorting (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6i9ri
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6i9ri
Show HN: Rebels in the sky – Terminal game about space pirates (Score: 152+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6inuZ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6inuZ
Rebels in the sky is a P2P multiplayer game about crews of space pirates roaming the galaxy to play basketball against each other. It's basically a basketball managerial game with some pirate-y stuff. It's a P2P game with no central server, built on top of libp2p. Players interaction are limited to playing games against each other and trading pirates.
The game runs as a terminal application, meaning that you just need to run it from your terminal.
You can try the game over ssh without installing: `ssh frittura.org -p 3788`
My server is not very powerful and there is a limit to the number of concurrent players, so if you like it I would appreciate it if you could install it (https://github.com/ricott1/rebels-in-the-sky?tab=readme-ov-f...) and run it locally :)
Here is a trailer (not of the last version, so some little things are different): https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/aaa02f04-06db-4da...
Phased Array Microphone (2023) (🔥 Score: 152+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ipBa
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ipBa
A “meta-optics” camera that is the size of a grain of salt (Score: 151+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6inMs
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6inMs
What's Next for WebGPU (Score: 150+ in 18 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6imB2
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6imB2
Autoflow, a Graph RAG based and conversational knowledge base tool (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6in4j
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6in4j
Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds (Score: 150+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6innb
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6innb
Amazon S3 now supports the ability to append data to an object (Score: 152+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ineS
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ineS
SQL, Homomorphisms and Constraint Satisfaction Problems (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ihmU
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ihmU
Personality Basins (Score: 150+ in 17 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ijNm
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ijNm