Best of 2026

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2026. 1,521 posts.

AI & Machine Learning
1117

The Low-Tech AI of Elden Ring

FROMSOFT has a reputation for diverse and punishing npc encounters across the entire Soulsborne extended series, but the implementation of the AI decision making itself is perhaps unexpectedly low-tech. Since the majority of the code is implemented in Havok Script (A games-oriented Lua implementation from Havok) it’s…

1135

AI, Tools and Transformation

It’s very tempting to imagine that AI turns everyone into a tool-builder - now everyone can just ask the model to make the software they need, and apps as we know them are dead. I think that misunderstands how most people think and where software actually comes from, and more importantly, it isn’t