alt Hacker NewsOpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS
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I don’t get this OpenClaw hype.
When people vibe-code, usually the goal is to do something.
When I hear people using OpenClaw, usually the goal seems to be… using OpenClaw. At a cost of a Mac Mini, safety (deleting emails or so), and security (litelmm attack).
One could argue that the discussion is once again about tech debt.
Both OpenClaw and MSDOS gaining a lot a traction by taking short cuts, ignoring decades of lessons learned and delivering now what might have been ready next year. MSDOS (or the QDOS predecessor) was meant to run on "cheap" microcomputer hardware and appeal to tinkerers. OpenClaw is supposed to appeal to YOLO / FOMO sentiments.
And of course, neither will be able to evolve to their eventual real-world context. But for some time (much longer than intended), that's where it will be.
$180/month to control your lights and music. A Raspberry Pi + Home Assistant does this for $0/month and doesn't exfiltrate your home network topology to a third-party API. The value proposition only makes sense if your time is worth more than your privacy.
I believe the codegen must be separated from the runtime. Every time you ask AI for a new task, it must be deployed as a separate app with the least amount of privileges possible, potentially with manual approvals as the app is executing. So essentially you need a workflow engine.
I agree that sandboxing whole agent is inadequate: I am fine sharing my github creds with the gh CLI, but not with the npm. More granular sunboxing and permission is what I'd like to see and this project seems interesting enough to have a closer look.
I am not interested in the "claw" workflow, but if I can use it for a safer "code" environment it is a win for me.
This isn't especially related to the article, but when I was at university my first assembler class taught the Motorola 680x0 assembly. I didn't own a computer (most people didn't) but my dorm had a single Mac that you could sign up to use so I did some assignments on that.
Problem is, I was just learning and the mac was running System 7. Which, like MS-DOS, lacked memory protection.
So, one backwards test at the end of your loop and you could -- quite easily -- just overwrite system memory with whatever bytes you like.
I must have hard-locked that computer half a dozen times. Power cycle. Wait for it to slowly reboot off the external 20MB SCSI HDD.
Eventually I took to just printing out the code and tracing through it instead of bothering to run it. Once I could get through the code without any obvious mistakes I'd hazard a "real" execution.
To this day, automatic memory management still feels a little luxurious.
And I remember OSes today, 1 year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, etc. Security was always a problem. People blindly delegate admin privileges to scripts and programs from the internet all the time. It’s hard to make something secure and usable at the same time. It’s not like agent harnesses suddenly broke all adopted best practices around software and sandboxing.
I remember Apple introducing sandboxing for Mac apps, extending deadlines because no one was implementing it. AFAIK, many apps still don’t release apps there simply because of how limiting it is.
Ironically, the author suggests to install his software by curl’ing it and piping it straight into sh.
Very cool project! I am working on something similar myself. I call mine TriOnyx. Its based on Simon Willison's lethal trifecta. You get a star from me :D
Why am I totally unable to understand this post. I have been a long time computer user but this has way too much jargon for me.
"Fast" is not always a virtue and "efficiency" is not always the only consideration.
Great article. Been skeptical of it since the beginning with this Python "Cli" agents. Been looking for local ai driven Agentic GUI that offers real privacy but coulnt find it anywhere. Finally what we call real local and ClI agents pipeline local ai driven with llama.cpp engine is done. Just pure bash and c++, model isolated, no http, no python, no api, no proprietary models. There is the native version (in c++) and the community version in Electron. Is electron Good enough to protect users Wrapping all the rest? This is exciting.
Wow. Much security.
I too remember DOS. Data and code finely blended and perfectly mixed in the same universally accessible block of memory. Oh, wait… single context. nwm
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Is anyone finding value in these things other than VCs and thought leaders looking for clicks and “picks and shovels” folks? I just personally have zero interest in letting an AI into my comms and see no value there whatsoever. Probably negative.