Hacker News
Palestinian American teen shot dead by Israeli settler, officials say
Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/06/palestinian-teen-citizen-killed-israeli-settler
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43669046
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Strenuous Leisure- Practical Thoughts
Article URL: https://pablojosehansen.substack.com/p/strenuous-leisure-practical-thoughts
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43669037
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Show HN: A toy MCP for AI agents to code, run, and see output of GPU code safely
Ever wondered what happens when you let an AI agent loose on GPU pipeline programming, including shaders? `shaderc-vkrunner-mcp` enables you to find out, without risking any actual GPU or dealing with driver or OS stuff.
The core idea is to give AI agents the ability to write, compile, and run GPU code and iterate safely or stably, then let you see the output if desired – all completely locally.
It runs entirely inside Docker using Mesa's software Vulkan driver. No need to try to paravirtualize any actual physical GPU, meaning agents can experiment with fancy Vulkan features – atomics, subgroups, cooperative matrices, and more – safely on the CPU. It's surprisingly capable of testing logic, even if it's slow.
I went with Vulkan since it's cross-platform (drivers provide it well these days, Mesa runs almost everywhere, and MoltenVK exists for Mac users wanting to experiment similarly), has a sufficient set of exposed primitives for hardware to accelerate the code to competitive levels, enough to explore, and avoids vendor lock-in.
But why put all these in Docker? Setting up Vulkan dev tools or similar directly on your host machine can override some environment variables, causing side effects or more. With this, Docker is the only dependency. Pull the image (multi-arch: amd64, arm64, experimental riscv64/ppc64le via QEMU build) and connect your MCP client (like Copilot or the Inspector tool). It mounts your current directory so the agent can save files (images, etc.) without exposing much further to avoid any problem since LLM will be coming up for code, maybe based on some another MCP you will tie, leading to a plethora of potential issues.
It is far from being perfect or complete. It's currently monolithic and wraps CLI tools (`shaderc`, `VkRunner`), with plans to use APIs directly later. Primarily tested with Copilot's agent. It's definitely a "toy" right now, but a fun one to explore agent capabilities. I have been able to make it output interesting visuals from simple to moderately advanced and actually tweak some compute shaders. Can AI really optimize a shader or create a cool SDF raymarcher from scratch? Lets you try, at least.
Check out the code, try feeding it some prompts, and see what breaks! Contributions are welcome, especially regarding usability for agents, since I suspect there might be quite some headroom to improve the descriptions or generation of the scheme. Some sample screenshots are in the top-level README file.
A usability note is that oftentimes, Agents don't pick up the interface at first try; however, if you feed the errors that come out, which agent does not iterate (probably just FTTB, I expect Copilot, etc. to let AI iterate over scheme issues in the near future), things start to smooth out and get productive with prompting in the right direction. Since the task here is at a lower level than usual (using Vulkan & GLSL SPIR-V directly), it takes slightly longer for the agents to adjust, at least in my experience with Claude 3.7 Sonnet and 4o.
GitHub: https://github.com/mehmetoguzderin/shaderc-vkrunner-mcp
There is a GitHub Action running right now to package Docker images to GHCR; however, it is fairly easy and quick to build locally for both top-level Dockerfile and Devcontainer to increase the fun.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668989
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Show HN: QSleep (iOS Sleep App)
A suite of sleep tools and tracking to help you get the best sleep of your life. My first iOS app, would love to get some feedback!
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668987
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Laser Launch into Orbit
Article URL: http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/03/laser-launch-into-orbit.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668986
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Nim at FOSDEM – frequently asked questions (2018)
Article URL: https://peterme.net/nim-at-fosdem-frequently-asked-questions.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668981
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
New urinal designs prevent 265,000 gallons of urine splashing onto the floor
Show HN: Prime Factorization Game
A simple game for young kids (7-10 year-olds) to get a feel for factorizing numbers.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668949
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Creating the Unicorn Emulator for Avaota-A1 SBC (Apache NuttX RTOS)
Article URL: https://lupyuen.org/articles/unicorn4.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668912
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Revealed: Russia's secret war in UK waters
Article URL: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/russia-secret-war-uk-waters-submarines-dpbzphfx5
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668910
Points: 4
# Comments: 1
Federal judge orders USDA to unfreeze funds to Maine
Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/12/nx-s1-5362976/maine-usda-unfreeze-janet-mills-trump
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668877
Points: 16
# Comments: 0
How to Structure a B2B Marketplace Venture
Article URL: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-structure-a-b2b-marketplace-venture/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668876
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Catherine of Siena's American Daughters
Article URL: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/catherine-sienas-american-daughters
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668862
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
The weird, secretive world of chip flavors
Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/dec/02/the-weird-secretive-world-of-crisp-flavours
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668855
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Give this word a miss
Article URL: https://thecritic.co.uk/give-this-word-a-miss/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668851
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Are you tariff-ied? We are
Chinese Woman Detained in Arizona Border Station Dies by Suicide
Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/chinese-woman-detained-suicide-border.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668797
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
The AI Agent Era Requires a New Kind of Game Theory
Article URL: https://www.wired.com/story/zico-kolter-ai-agents-game-theory/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668792
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Fair Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship
Article URL: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668767
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Mutant mouse demonstrates mitochondrial deficiency can result in autism
Article URL: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2021429118
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43668763
Points: 1
# Comments: 0