Hacker News
The World Of dBASE (1984) [video]
Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYU3CQomE5M
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888246
Points: 4
# Comments: 0
The Grand Encyclopedia of Eponymous Laws
Article URL: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Yf8sxh87tiMsE4EPG/the-grand-encyclopedia-of-eponymous-laws
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888069
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Show HN: LGTM ASCII Art as a Service
Get a random ASCII art for LGTM by visiting the website [1] or by calling the API [2]. I sometimes use these in the comment when approving the PRs.
[1]: https://lgtms.app/ [2]: curl -sL lgtms.app/api | jq -r '.art'
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888066
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
The Hunt for Darcula
Article URL: https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/the-hunt-for-darcula-1.17399157
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888060
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Majority in UK now 'self-identify' as neurodivergent
Article URL: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/self-diagnose-neurodivergent-99l9kl8v5
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888041
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
Stop Uncapped Cloud Billing
Article URL: https://stopuncappedbilling.com
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888038
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
pdfCropMargins – auto-detect and cut PDF margins for small-screen reading
Article URL: https://github.com/abarker/pdfCropMargins
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888033
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Apple wants to take control of the chips used in your iPhone: the roadmap
Article URL: https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/04/apple-taking-control-of-iphone-chips-in-house-modems/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888030
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Analyzing em dash usage across tech-focused subreddits
Article URL: https://github.com/v4nn4/em-dash-conspiracy
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888017
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Consistently inconsistent: 5-month of AI's non-deterministic movie tips
Article URL: https://trackerly.ai/blog/non-deterministic-AI-response-study
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888011
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Is OpenTelemetry Ready for Infra Monitoring?
Article URL: https://signoz.io/blog/opentelemetry-the-new-standard-for-infra-monitoring/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888009
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
A cycle-accurate IBM PC emulator in your web browser
Article URL: https://martypc.net/?mount=fd:0:Area%205150%20(Compo%20Version).img
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888007
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
Load-Store Conflicts
Article URL: https://zeux.io/2025/05/03/load-store-conflicts/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888005
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Typed Lisp, a Primer
Article URL: https://alhassy.com/TypedLisp.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887998
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Show HN: routr - a fast local replacement for DuckDuckGo bangs
Article URL: https://t128n.github.io/routr/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887984
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
The 88×31 Archive: A collection of 31,000 88x31 GeoCities button
Article URL: https://hellnet.work/8831/page1.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887975
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Chatting in Movie Theaters Is a No-No. But What About Chatbots?
Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/business/media/meta-movie-theater-chatbot.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887940
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
We Shape AI, and How It Shapes Us
Article URL: https://every.to/context-window/how-we-shape-ai-and-how-it-shapes-us
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887939
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Thoughts on AI Agents and Tools
AI agents that can call external tools look a lot like workflow engines. Both move work from “Step A” to “Step B.” The difference is in the steering wheel: a workflow engine follows hard‑coded lanes, while an agent can improvise. Tell the agent to “summarize this report and email the highlights,” and it decides which tool to grab next—no rigid flowchart required.
That’s why the agent‑vs‑tool debate often gets messy. Take Google’s A2A pitch versus the earlier MCP pattern. A2A tries to label “agents” as entities that plan and reason, while MCP casts those same capabilities as just another layer of tooling. In practice the boundary is more marketing than material—the moment a tool chain makes decisions, it’s wearing an agent’s hat.
So how do you ship something useful without vanishing into taxonomy debates? Start with one agent in charge of a well‑chosen toolkit. You can validate prompts, error handling, and observability before unleashing a flock of agents and the orchestration headaches that come with them.
When should you graduate to a fleet of specialized agents? Think cognitive load. People fumble when their to‑do list mushrooms; a single agent’s reasoning also degrades as its context window fills with unrelated tools and divergent tasks. Once your “kitchen‑sink” agent juggles customer support, data cleaning, and infra ops, it’s time to spawn new agents dedicated to each domain. Smaller, purpose‑built agents keep context tight, reduce hallucinations, and make troubleshooting saner.
Bottom line: Begin with one agent plus many tools. Split the work into multiple agents when the variety—not just the volume—of tasks starts tripping the original up.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43887912
Points: 1
# Comments: 0