Factory defence in BELTFED looks juicy as you take down millions of bugs
A genre blending roguelike that casts players as a rogue AI automating an escalating war against waves of bugs - BELTFED is an instant wishlist.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/factory-defence-in-beltfed-looks-juicy-as-you-take-down-millions-of-bu … ⌘ Read more

Lunar colony-building automation sim The Crust 1.0 arrives with Linux and macOS support
The Crust is an automation-driven city builder and colony simulation set on the Moon. It just hit the big 1.0 release and now has Linux and macOS support too.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/lunar-colony-building-aut … ⌘ Read more

Try the new demo for If Red Then Stop - a traffic coding automation puzzler
If you love puzzle games that teach a little programming and automation - If Red Then Stop looks like your next visit.

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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

With a fully destructible simulated world the factory automation game FluxWerks arrives soon
A factory-building automation sim with a destructible world and simulated heat and fluids, FluxWerks sounds like it’s going to stand out in the genre.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/with-a-fully-destructib … ⌘ Read more

Florida Bans Flock Cameras From State Highways
schwit1 shares a report from WCTV: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he’s removing Flock camera from state roadways. The announcement comes amid a growing concern over the misuse of automated license plate readers. On Monday, DeSantis ordered all Flock cameras removed from what he calls the ‘state highway system’ within the next 30 days, which would include interstates like I-10 an … ⌘ Read more

As Backlash Grows, More Americans Now Oppose Automated Police License Plate Readers Than Support
A new survey on police license plate cameras found that “more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them,” reports TechCrunch:

According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents … ⌘ Read more

Canonical is Funding a PhD to Automate C to Rust Translation
An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog It’s FOSS:

Canonical has committed funding to a three-year PhD project focused on building a system that can automatically translate large C codebases into Rust. And they are not alone; UK Research and Innovation is matching their funding for the project, which is set to run through the Universi … ⌘ Read more

Flock Announces Changes Amid Backlash Over Its License Plate Reader Network
Flock Safety is tightening controls on its nationwide license plate reader network after mounting backlash over privacy and documented police misuse. By January 1, law enforcement customers will be required to use automated auditing, tie searches to specific case numbers, and accept a shorter seven-day default retention perio … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Gemini 3.7 Flash Targets Coding and Agents With a 50% Price Cut
Google has released Gemini 3.7 Flash just three weeks after 3.6 Flash, focusing on better coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise automation while temporarily cutting API prices in half through the end of 2026. VentureBeat reports: For enterprise developers, the more consequential story may be the combination of those intellig … ⌘ Read more

Out in Early Access - Sandustry has you explore, mine and automate in fully destructible pixel worlds
Hooded Horse picked another good one to publish here from developer Lantto Games. Sandustry is a factory automation game where every pixel is a resource.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/out-in … ⌘ Read more

‘AI’s Decimation of Call Center Jobs Has Begun’
“AI’s decimation of call center jobs has begun,” reports Bloomberg:

Companies including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Microsoft Corp., Uber Technologies Inc. and Hyatt Hotels Corp. are using automated chat and phone systems to handle work that previously required humans. In some cases, they’ve already wiped out sizable chunks of their customer service operations, together repres … ⌘ Read more

Drones Offer Alternative to Balloons For Weather Research
The U.S. company Meteomatics has created an automated weather-monitoring system that uses drones to collect atmospheric data at multiple altitudes before returning to recharge and upload their findings. The so-called Meteobase, which consists of a base station on the ground with a drone that can be launched and recovered automatically, “is highly weather resist … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Responds to LG Monitors Installing McAfee Ads On Windows
LG is removing a McAfee pop-up ad from its LG Monitor App Installer after criticism that some LG monitors were silently installing the app through Windows Update and showing ads on every boot. Microsoft says LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up, but the broader issue remains: Windows allows certain peripheral companion apps to install autom … ⌘ Read more

@balloonfu-sen@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Thank you for doing this 🙏 – Just a thought… It might be possible for this to be fully automated from the Twtxt Search engine / crawler? Right? 🤔 It has all of the data… I also think it might be possible to distinguish between 1-way feedsa and “real folks” (ya know, 2-ways feeds) 🤣

FSF Shares Update on ‘LibrePhone’ and New Automated Site Monitoring Tool
At the end of 2025, the FSF launched LibrePhone project, which is working to “better understand and reverse-engineer the nonfree blobs used by a great majority of (if not all) system on a chip designs available today.” The FSF’s summer newsletter shares this update:

We started with researching the proprietary files in Android phone … ⌘ Read more

Ford Rehires ‘Gray Beard’ Engineers After AI Falls Short
Ford executives said they’ve hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them former employees — after AI and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality, reports TechCrunch:

Bloomberg reports the company’s chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been “relying more and more on automated quality systems” with disappointing resul … ⌘ Read more

Ford Rehires 350 Engineers After AI Fails To Preserve Expertise or Train Juniors
After Ford’s automated quality-control systems and AI tools fell short, the automaker hired 350 veteran engineers over the past three years to mentor younger staff and reprogram the underperforming technology. “Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Ch … ⌘ Read more

GM Installs Robots At Flagship EV Factory After Laying Off 1,300 Workers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors’ flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit – even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potent … ⌘ Read more

Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock’s Cameras to Stalk People
404 Media remembers how a Florida police office looked up his ex-girlfriend’s license plate in the Flock automated license plate reader system at least 69 times in 2024 — even searching for her mom’s license plate at least 24 times. The police office was charged with stalking and hacking-related offenses, serving one day in prison with five … ⌘ Read more

The Rust Ecosystem Gets an AI Security Engineer in Residence
While the Rust Foundation has a Security Initiative to protect its ecosystem, “the threats have expanded,” they announced this week, “and so has the kind of help maintainers need.”

Much of this comes back to a single shift: Automated tooling (much of it now built on large language models) has gotten good enough to surface real vulnerabilities in o … ⌘ Read more

Adobe Adds Its AI Assistant To Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign
Adobe is expanding its Firefly AI assistant into Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, where it can automate all sorts of tasks such as organizing clips, renaming assets, adding interview markers, rearranging layers, and finding missing fonts. It’s available starting today as part of a public beta. TechCrunch reports: Adobe is slowly tr … ⌘ Read more

Shutterstock ‘Evolves’ Into ‘Human-Led, AI-Powered Creative Platform’
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes:
Shutterstock has unveiled what it calls a “human-led, AI-powered” creative platform that combines its massive library of [human] contributor-created content with AI image and video generation, AI editing, conversational search, prompt enhancement, and automated model selection tools. The company says the goa … ⌘ Read more

The Dynamo and the Computer: The Modern Productivity Paradox (1989) [pdf]
https://gwern.net/doc/economics/automation/1989-david.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479996

Points: 5

# Comments: 0 ⌘ Read more

Buildroot 2026.05 released
Version\
2026.05 of the Buildroot tool
has been released. Buildroot simplifies and automates the process of
building embedded Linux systems using cross-compilation. Notable
changes in this release include support for Arm Neoverse cores,
addition of XFS rootfs generation, as well as many package updates and
bug fixes. See the CHANGES
file f … ⌘ Read more

Global food automation surge drives new contracts for Scott Technology
Automation in global food production is accelerating, and manufacturers seeking to stay competitive must scale, Scott Technology’s chief executive, Mike Christman, says.

The NZX-listed company announced this week that it had secured “several” contracts within its Material Handling and Logistics (MHL) business across Europe and North America, with a total value of over $12 milli … ⌘ Read more

Launch HN: Intuned (YC S22) – Build and run reliable browser automations as code
Hey HN, we’re Faisal and Ahmad from Intuned ( https://intunedhq.com). We’re building a platform for building, deploying, and maintaining browser automations.

Customers primarily use the Intuned AI agent to automate websites that don’t expose APIs. Common use-cases include scraping data, pulling reports, and submitting forms. As the website changes, our agent also helps automatically heal the automation.

On Intuned, browser automations are … ⌘ Read more

My automated doubt development process
Article URL: https://www.alexself.dev/blog/automated-doubt

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48437305

Points: 4

# Comments: 1 ⌘ Read more

Launch HN: Hyper (YC P26) – Company brain to power agentic development
Hey HN, we’re Shalin & Kanyes, best friends who’ve been hacking together for 10+yrs, and now founders of Hyper ( https://heyhyper.ai/). Hyper is a shared “company brain” that plugs into information flowing inside a company to make AI agents and automations better and ultimately save people time.

Models have gotten good enough that they can (mostly) take on long-horizon, complex tasks. We believe the bottleneck now is that these … ⌘ Read more

Meet Microsoft Scout, Your AI Coworker That Never Logs Off
Microsoft’s OpenClaw-style agent appears in Teams, just like a human colleague, and automates your dull office tasks. ⌘ Read more

Please don’t spam people looking for employment. It’s just cruel
Earlier I posted in a “Who wants to be hired?” thread, looking for a place where I could apply my experience in hospitality, food tech and automation.

A couple hours later I received an email:

“Hi Ilia,

I saw your comment on the June Who’s Hiring thread. I build production-ready TypeScript and Python systems that integrate LLMs into real workflows, with particular focus on RAG, agent orchestration, and clear blah-blah-blah”

Come on.
I am a forced immigra … ⌘ Read more

Cybersecurity startup Blacklock aims to raise $5m for new AI software spinoff
Wellington-based cybersecurity startup Blacklock is separating its software development operations into a new company and is planning a US$3 million (NZ$5m) capital raise to develop and scale its products.

Blacklock was set up to streamline and automate services, including penetration testing, also known as white-hat hacking. The new spinoff company is known as Cyra. ⌘ Read more

Of course, @movq@www.uninformativ.de! Most of my points are also included in your list.

First of all, programming is what I really do enjoy the most. So, it doesn’t make any sense at all to not do this anymore. “But you could use your now free time to do something much cooler and more valuable!”, others might reply. Fuck no, I don’t want to waste my time with other shit that doesn’t fulfill me, why on earth would I want to do that?

All this hallucination reduces quality badly. In my experience, it’s also happening much more rapidly than I expected. Even though developers are still supposed to own and understand whatever has been generated under their name and even be responsible for that, the sad reality is that teammates often blindly trust the AI output. “But I asked the AI and it told me that $this was impossible”, “I’ve no idea either, but the AI just generated it” are responses I get more often. What really makes my angry is when I point out a flaw and suggest an alternative and this is the reaction. It happened several times that just trying it out and seeing it clearly work to proof my point only took me half a minute, but people still did something handwavy else instead.

The learning effect is drastically reduced. The more time I spend on a topic, the better the odds that whatever I learned actually makes it over into long-term memory. It’s like if a collegue just says “do it like that” or “this solves your problem”, but neither explains the why or how. Somehow, people are still convinced that it’s a completely different story when you replace the human counterpart with a computer program in this equation.

Skills are unlearned. It’s like with automation in general, just much worse. You end up in a state where you’ve no clue how anything works under the hood or how to actually find out important information that are needed to solve your problem. You’re screwed when a process breaks out of the blue. Even though it can become also rather terrible, with classical automation you’re typically still be able to decipher how exactly the thing was supposed to do something.

The energy consumption is sooo high, I absolutely do not want to be a part in burning down our planet. I’m sure I find (and probably have long found without knowing) other ways to contribute to worsen our climate crisis.

The scraper part is already covered in detail in your list. :-)

I’m convinced that license and copyright violations are only played down or even refused entirely because companies want to make big money quickly. With the work of others of course. Their double standards are obvious, they still try to actively keep their own stuff secret and out of any training sets. At most for internal use only. Virtually noone in charge is interested in good long-term solutions. Short-term for the win, when disaster eventually strikes, the causers are long gone, the responsibilities in other hands.

Vendor lock-in is something that lots of folks are only realizing very slowly. It’s completely crazy to me. This drug dealer routine should be well-known by now. It’s fucking everywhere. Yet, people are always surprised when they found themselves caught in it.

Adding new AI stuff only increases complexity. But complexity is the enemy that everybody should fear and reduce as much as possible. Of course, this is not limited to AI at all. And everywhere I look around, people in charge looooove to make things way more complicated than they ever need to be. Yet, simplicity is the real art and much harder to achieve.

I don’t understand why we have to go back full force to the ambiguity of natural languages. This alone should be more than enough to realize what a stupid idea all that is. Linked to that is that the “instruction set” is interpreted differently with newer model versions. I mean, is has to be. Why else would somebody want to upgrade in the first place than to get more Powerful™ Features™?

Some people argue that with AI the democratization is empowered. However, in my view, the exact opposite is the case. Models are getting so large that you can basically not run them locally or even train them. So, you have to rely on whatever the vendor offers you and runs for you. In the end, this only gives the owners more power, the multi billionaires. Not exactly what I understand by democratization.

Finally, technology assessments are missing completely. Or they are faked such that mostly only the (questionable) benefits are listed. But all the negative impact is just ignored.

Let’s keep some popcorn around for when this all explodes. :-)

Launch HN: Minicor (YC P26) – Windows desktop automations at scale
Hey we’re Faiz and Saheed and we built Minicor so AI companies who need to integrate to desktop systems with no API can quickly build scalable desktop RPAs. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD0GHZIJ1cw

We were working on non-RPA integrations when a customer promised to sign a deal in 2 days if we could unblock a sale of theirs that involved integrating with a clinic’s Windows based medical record system. We didn’t know it at … ⌘ Read more

AI Is Taking Over the Most Cursed Job in the World
There’s a mad dash to automate the world’s most hated calls. Have an unpaid bill? You’ll hear from an AI debt collector sometime soon. ⌘ Read more

Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage
Hey HN! We’re Gary and Ian, and we’re building Chert ( https://www.trychert.com/), an API for businesses to send, receive, and automate iMessage conversations at scale. Check out our demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRdwvVxMMoI.

We originally started by building products on top of iMessage because the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS … ⌘ Read more

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling – a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring … ⌘ Read more

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide
One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs—effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection. ⌘ Read more

StanChart To Cut Over 7,000 Jobs, Boost AI To Replace ‘Lower-Value Human Capital’
The London-headquartered lender Standard Chartered announced plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs by 2030, with CEO Bill Winters saying the bank will replace some “lower-value human capital” through automation and AI while offering retraining to affected workers. “It’s not cost-cutting. It’s replacing in some cases lower-val … ⌘ Read more

Google Search Goes Agentic—and Doesn’t Need You Anymore
Vibe-coded results! Super widgets! Bots that never sleep! Google’s vision for the future of Search is hyper-personalized, automated, and extremely AI. ⌘ Read more

FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers
The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: “The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United S … ⌘ Read more

Advanced startups wow Techweek audience across biotech and AI
The breadth and scope of current AI and advanced technology development in New Zealand were highlighted on the opening day of the annual Techweek conference on Monday through a trio of case studies covering biotechnology, family management and efforts to digitise and automate sign language.

[BioOra chief executive and managing director John Robson](https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/startups/tech-st … ⌘ Read more

Mira Murati Wants Her AI to ‘Keep Humans in the Loop’
The Thinking Machines Lab founder and former CTO of OpenAI tells WIRED she isn’t interested in automating people out of jobs. Instead, she’s building AI that can collaborate. ⌘ Read more

InstaFarm Automated Indoor Microgreens Garden Review: Easy Being Green
The InstaFarm makes growing your own microgreens practical at home. ⌘ Read more

SOLAI Launches $399 Solode Neo Linux AI Computer
BrianFagioli writes: SOLAI has launched the Solode Neo, a $399 Linux-based mini PC designed for always-on AI agents, browser automation, and persistent developer workflows. The compact system ships with an Intel N150 processor, 12GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB SSD storage, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a Linux-based operating system called Solode AI OS. The company says th … ⌘ Read more

CERN Open Sources Its KiCad Component Libraries
Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: CERN, a longtime Open Source pioneer, has made several contributions over the years to KiCad (“KEE-kad”), an Open Source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) package widely used in the hobbyist and professional electronics communities. It’s gotten so widely used that users can now submit their KiCad design files directly to several electronics f … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Employees Are ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Due To Pressure To Use AI Tools
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times (via Ars Technica): Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently. The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing emplo … ⌘ Read more

Beatbot Pool-Cleaning Robots Are on Sale
Automate your pool cleaning with these surface-skimming, wall-scrubbing robots. ⌘ Read more

Job Cuts Driven By AI Are Rising On Wall Street
Firms like Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and others are reporting strong profits while reducing head count and automating more work. “All of them credited A.I. to some degree … in areas ranging from the so-called back office, where tens of thousands of employees fill out paperwork to comply with various laws and regulations, to the front office, where seven-figure salaried … ⌘ Read more

Videos Catch Amazon Delivery Drones Dropping Packages From 10 Feet in the Air
There’s been a few complaints about Amazon’s drone delivery service. “The automated mailmen are dropping off packages from 10 feet in the air,” reports the New York Post, “rendering the contents of each box susceptible to crashing and smashing.”
One example? Tamara Hancock filmed a drone delivering a bottle of Torani fla … ⌘ Read more

Another AI rant:

One of the “key features” of LLMs is that you can use “natural language”, because that is supposed to be easier than having to learn a programming language. So, when someone says to me, “I automated this process using AI!”, what they mean is: They have written a very, very large Markdown document. In this document, they list what the AI is supposed to do.

In prose.

This is a complete disaster.

Programming and programming languages have one crucial property: They follow a well-defined structure and every word has a well-defined meaning. That is absolutely brilliant, because I can read this and I can follow the program in my head. I can build a mental model. I can debug this, down to the precise instructions that the CPU executes. This all follows well-defined patterns that you can reason about.

But with these Markdown files, I am completely lost. We lose all these important properties! No debugging, no reasoning about program flow, nothing. It’s all gone. It’s a magic black box now, literally randomized, that may or may not do what you wanted, in some order.

People now throw these Markdown files at me … and … am I supposed to read this? Why? It’s completely random and fuzzy.

Sadly, these AI tools are good enough to be able to mostly grasp the authors intentions. Hence people don’t see the harm they cause, because “it works”.

We already have a ton of automations like this at work: Tickets get piped through an LLM and these Markdown files / prompts determine what will happen with the ticket, and maybe they trigger additional actions as well, like account creation or granting permissions. All based on fuzzy natural language – that no two humans will ever properly agree on.

Jesus Christ, we’re now INTENTIONALLY bringing the ambiguity of legal texts and lawyers into programming.

Using natural language is NOT easier than using a programming language. It is HARDER. Have you people never read a legal contract? And that stuff can STILL be debated in a court room.

I can’t begin to comprehend why we, tech folks, push this so hard. What is wrong with you? Or me?

(And, once again, we’re ignoring other factors here. LLMs use a ton of energy and ressources, that we don’t have to spare. It’s expensive as fuck. It doesn’t even run locally on our servers, meaning we give all these credentials and permissions to some US company. It’s insane.)