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Fredkin's Paradox

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 10:06am
Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: ChatGPT is finally good for frequent travelers

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 10:06am

If you’re like me, you thought this should have been a solved problem around the GPT3.5 era. Here we are with 5.6 sol and AI still babbles on with irrelevant travel advice.

The missing piece has been travel context. You share context for your code, your healthcare, your finances, all the things. But sharing all the context that shapes you as a traveler is really challenging.

Gondola allows you to finally share your travel context - making it instantly available to any AI client. It’s loyalty aware, and can give you real time flight, hotel, and rental car recs, and solve hard problems like:

@Gondola fetch my travel context and tell me who I am as a frequent traveler. What’s my favorite seat on an airplane and how many flights have I flown across each carrier?

@Gondola Show me my upcoming trips and tell me where I may be able to save money, earn more points, or rebook smarter.

@Gondola Find me a hotel in London August 10–12 that I would like. Fetch my member rates, compare cash vs points, and factor in my current loyalty balances, elite status, and transfer partner

You can add to other clients here: https://gondola.ai/mcp

Let me know what you think!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934807

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Show HN: Mac App to turn your computer into a hands-off coding agent

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 10:06am

Demo Video: https://youtu.be/lgE5c8tCuys

I have multiple GitHub repos to manage. I realized lately that I am the bottleneck for the speed of development on my repos - because I need to manually use Claude/Antigravity to code them up one by one. The only way was to take GitHub Copilot subscription which is an additional expense and limits which models I can use.

So, I built Caider, which lets you stay in GitHub issues interface while using your local AI agents to code on them. No need to open Claude/Antigravity apps. So, you get to resolve issues even when you are on the move as long as your computer is connected to the internet.

The bonus: Complete context on the development including any back and forth research with AI agent is always available on the issues themselves.

Would love your feedback on it!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934803

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Veta – AI agent that QA-tests Android apps

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 10:03am

Article URL: https://github.com/Vip3r-MC/Veta

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934776

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

Ask HN: Assistive Tech Ideas for Dementia

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 10:01am

One of my family members was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's. They're still in the very early stages and living independently, but my wife and I are in the process of getting the right legal documents and financial account access in order.

My role has mostly been to help with their technology so we can reduce friction. The big thing is obviously remembering passwords to accounts and we're getting her set up with a new macbook and looking at using Apple's Passwords app, since she uses iPhone and Apple Watch already.

But I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with helping a person through the progression of this disease and would recommend any specific software or categories of tech setup that I'm not thinking of.

I sense that the time is now to set things up for the future. I feel like there's opportunities with assistive tech, but I'm just unfamiliar.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934733

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Categories: Hacker News

The backlash against Flock cameras is spreading

Malware Bytes Security - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 9:56am

Flock-style ALPR systems carry serious privacy and civil-liberties risks, and the backlash is now starting to show up in agency decisions too.

For those not yet familiar with Flock, Flock Safety operates an automated license plate recognition (ALPR) system that uses cameras and computer vision to identify and log vehicle license plates.

According to ACLU.org, in the US there are currently:

“80,000–100,000 Flock cameras in both urban and rural areas on highways, in neighborhoods, and outside your local hardware store.”

Automated license plate readers were sold as a crime-fighting tool, but growing evidence suggests the privacy and accountability problems surrounding Flock are becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss. A growing number of incidents now show the same pattern: broad surveillance, shaky oversight, and enough operational risk to create real harm for ordinary people.

ALPR systems create durable location records about people who are not suspected of anything. Every scan can become part of a searchable trail, and once that data is collected, the risks expand through misuse, unauthorized sharing, vendor practices, and simple errors.

Abuse and errors

One of the most troubling aspects is how easily this technology can be misused. Straight Arrow News (SAN) reported that another police officer was charged after allegedly abusing Flock surveillance tools, adding to a growing list of cases in which officers have allegedly misused license plate reader systems for personal reasons, including stalking and monitoring ex-partners or protesters. An Institute for Justice analysis identified at least 22 cases nationwide in which officers allegedly abused ALPR to keep tabs on their romantic interests, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024.

That misuse problem is amplified by how widely the data can spread once it enters the system. Earlier this year, we reported that Mountain View disabled its Flock cameras after discovering that Flock had shared license plate data with hundreds of agencies, including federal entities, without permission, and that some lookup features had been activated without the city’s intent or knowledge. That kind of unauthorized sharing turns a local surveillance tool into a much broader data-exchange network with far weaker public visibility than most residents would expect.

Then there is the accuracy problem. SAN also reported that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) allowed its Flock pilot contract to expire after an inspector general audit found 161 vehicles were falsely flagged as stolen over a two-month period. The audit concluded that 32.3% of the alerts it reviewed were inaccurate. When the system gets it wrong that often, the result is not just inconvenience. It can lead to unnecessary stops, detentions, and avoidable confrontations with law enforcement.

As the audit by the department’s inspector general stated:

“When a license plate matches with a vehicle of interest on a Hot List, an alert will appear on the police vehicle’s Mobile Digital Computer. Often, officers will approach the vehicle with extreme caution or conduct a ‘high-risk’ stop. This involves calling for back up, air support and a supervisor and ordering the suspect out of their vehicle.”

What makes this notable is that the criticism is no longer limited to privacy advocates and researchers. Some agencies are now acting on the concerns themselves, whether by ending contracts, disabling camera networks, or pausing renewals until privacy and oversight rules improve.

Flock is still marketed as a public-safety tool, but the latest reporting shows its real-world impact is increasingly defined by privacy concerns, weak oversight, and growing institutional skepticism. That skepticism is beginning to influence agency decisions. Once law enforcement itself begins pulling back, it suggests the debate has moved well beyond criticism from privacy advocates alone.

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Categories: Malware Bytes

GitHub banned my account after my projects suddenly spiked on Reddit

Hacker News - Thu, 07/16/2026 - 9:54am

Hi everyone,

I'm used to write (low-level) C and Win32 apps. Recently, I shared some of my open-source projects on Reddit. They got quite a bit of traction, resulting in a sudden spike of visitors and lot of unique Git clones in a few hours. This is one of my post, just to let you see what kind of code I'm used to write:

https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsapps/comments/1uw30gd/explorerbgtoolredux_a_refactoringrewrite_of_the/

Shortly after, I realized my entire GitHub account was shadowbanned: If I log I can see it, but anyone else (or logged-out sessions) got a 404 "User not found" error.

I contacted GitHub Support and after dealing with a virtual assistant (!), a human support agent (Pinto) finally replied with an ultimatum:

"At this time, we ask that you to remove the following repository or make it private: https://github.com/lpierge/Calimero" They granted me temporary access to do this.

BTW, they choosed that project in an absolutely arbitrary manner, just to name one with no valid reason. Calimero is a desktop manager which, besides some fancy things as flying icons, allow the user to download images directly from site like Picsum, Pexels, Reddit (every subreddit) and Danbooru. I suspect their automated abuse-detection system flagged it as potential malware/ransomware due to raw heuristics, and the support staff simply didn't bother to actually look at the source code.

I replied to support asking what specific terms of service the project is infringing. Their response? Complete silence so far, while my entire public presence on GitHub remains blocked unless I delete my own legitimate work.

This arbitrary "guilty until proven innocent" approach with zero technical explanation is incredibly frustrating.

Has anyone faced a similar compliance lockout on GitHub? How did you resolve it without deleting your open-source code? Any suggestion about what to do?

Thanks, Luca

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934639

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Categories: Hacker News

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