MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Pickaxe – A TypeScript library for building AI agents
by abelanger | 2025-06-20 16:07:51+00:00
Hey HN, Gabe and Alexander here from Hatchet. Today we're releasing Pickaxe, a Typescript library to build AI agents which are scalable and fault-tolerant.

Here's a demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b28fc406-f501-442...

Pickaxe provides a simple set of primitives for building agents which can automatically checkpoint their state and suspend or resume processing (also known as durable execution) while waiting for external events (like a human in the loop). The library is based on common patterns we've seen when helping Hatchet users run millions of agent executions per day.

Unlike other tools, Pickaxe is not a framework. It does not have any opinions or abstractions for implementing agent memory, prompting, context, or calling LLMs directly. Its only focus is making AI agents more observable and reliable.

As agents start to scale, there are generally three big problems that emerge: 1. Agents are long-running compared to other parts of your application. Extremely long-running processes are tricky because deploying new infra or hitting request timeouts on serverless runtimes will interrupt their execution. 2. They are stateful: they generally store internal state which governs the next step in the execution path 3. They require access to lots of fresh data, which can either be queried during agent execution or needs to be continuously refreshed from a data source.

(These problems are more specific to agents which execute remotely -- locally running agents generally don't have these problems)

Pickaxe is designed to solve these issues by providing a simple API which wraps durable execution infrastructure for agents. Durable execution is a way of automatically checkpointing the state of a process, so that if the process fails, it can automatically be replayed from the checkpoint, rather than starting over from the beginning. This model is also particularly useful when your agent needs to wait for an external event or human review in order to continue execution. To support this pattern, Pickaxe uses a Hatchet feature called `waitFor` which durably registers a listener for an event, which means that even if the agent isn't actively listening for the event, it is guaranteed to be processed by Hatchet and stored in the execution history and resume processing. This infrastructure is powered by what is essentially a linear event log, which stores the entire execution history of an agent in a Postgres database managed by Hatchet.

Full docs are here: https://pickaxe.hatchet.run/

We'd greatly appreciate any feedback you have and hope you get the chance to try out Pickaxe.
by ceejayoz | 2025-06-20 16:08:07+00:00
As with single-payer healthcare, this is a much better post before we have the evidence in. "Can't be done!" loses a lot of oomph when it… gets done, in large scale and with great success.

The improvements extend to more than the high-income folks. It's making mass transit more efficient. Per the article:

> Buses are travelling so much faster that their drivers are having to stop and wait to keep to their schedules.

The health benefits of lower traffic (noise, pollution, etc.) should be considered here, too.
by rfwhyte | 2025-06-20 16:08:22+00:00
I would argue its actually been those "People in question" who are one of the primary barriers to the acceptance of the growing body of evidence that the Americas were peopled earlier than previously thought.

The issue is that there is clear genetic evidence that the current indigenous population of the Americas arrived onto the continents around 14KYA-15KYA, and all their various land claims and special rights / privileges fundamentally derive from the argument that "They were here first."

Whoever the people leaving footprints at White Sands were, the genetic evidence is clear that they weren't the ancestors of North America's current indigenous population. They were a genetically distinct people group (My suspicion is they would have been more closely related to Australian Aborigines) and are in fact the ones "Who were here first." Accepting that there were already people in the Americas when the current indigenous population arrived, would undermine the land claims of the current North American indigenous populations, and would force them to reckon with the fact they too are colonizers / settlers who displaced an earlier population, likely through violence and possibly even outright genocide, as apart from some isolated groups in the Amazon, there's no genetic evidence the current indigenous population of the Americas meaningfully intermixed with any other populations once they arrived onto the continent as we would expect were the existing population absorbed into the new population through interbreeding.

This is in large part why so many indigenous groups are adamantly opposed to participating in genetics studies, or allowing archaeologists to conduct digs in their "Traditional territories" as a great many indigenous groups actually have "Oral traditions" that there were already people in the Americas when their ancestors arrived, and they know that further study will contradict the narrative that "They were here first," and could eventually invalidate their "Blood and soil" based land claims.
by tmtvl | 2025-06-20 16:08:32+00:00
As the site is currently getting hugged I will say that Nausicaa didn't quite leave as much an impression on me as Grave of the Fireflies, but Miyazaki's environment design is always spot-on (the entirety of Farewell My Beloved Lupin, for example, improves on every rewatch as you notice more details).
by jicea | 2025-06-20 16:08:34+00:00
We used Hurl to go from a ktor web server to a spring boot rewrite (Java/Kotlin stack). It was a breeze to have a kind of specifications test suite independent of the server stack and helped us a lot in the transition.

Another benefit is we built a Docker image for production and wanted to have something light and not tight to the implementation for integration tests.
by lisper | 2025-06-20 16:08:40+00:00
> Darwinism isn't a weakness of rationality

I didn't say it was. I said that the Rationalist community is not taking the implications of Darwinism into account when they choose where to focus their attention. This is what leads them to fixate on hostile AI and the MWI when what they should be worried about is the rise of MAGA. But not only is that not what they are worried about, many self-styled Rationalists are Trump supporters.
by mindslight | 2025-06-20 16:09:02+00:00
> The so called "network effect" is entirely artificial.

Your framing is wrong - network effects exist. Before the surveillance industry took over, the network effects accrued to protocols. Hence the popularity of SMTP (et al).

Competitive regulation, on either side of the pond, wouldn't focused on blindly "breaking up" tech companies. Rather it starts with declaring that hosted services and client software are separate products/markets, and that tying the two types of products together is anti-competitive. Thus any hosted server functionality that a proprietary webapp or mobileapp front end uses, must be through a openly published API for other competing apps to also access.

Users can then choose competing apps, and services have an incentive to make their APIs match existing apps (to facilitate easy switching to them). And with that same API, competing hosted services can access content published on the original hosted service - federation naturally falls out. In other words, preventing companies from creating friction so that network effects accrue to themselves will make the network effects accrue to protocols/interfaces again.
by righthand | 2025-06-20 16:09:03+00:00
This is a myth. There have been extensive studies done for a decade. If you’re poor and can’t afford $10-15 toll then how did you get your car even close to nyc without paying higher tolls? If you’re poor you’ll use your brain and pay the $2.95 to ride the train, not die in your car waiting in traffic and spending all your money for food on cp tolls.

You want to charge the wealthy for infrastructure, you tax their income.
by newpavlov | 2025-06-20 16:09:12+00:00
The usual lossless image compression algorithms is the given. I am talking about compressing it further since the telescope observes the same (or largely overlapping) patches of the sky and the most significant signal is stars, which are more or less "constant". At the very least, they probably could use the lossless "animation" compression algorithms like APNG or FLIF for consequent images of the same sky patch.
by _wire_ | 2025-06-20 16:09:18+00:00
It's difficult to observe this article as it regards all of these obvious contingencies as some lucid afterthought of the bad acid trip littered with free-love hallucinations which constitutes business culture. We could be reading an article that reports that programming will never really work because of the hazard of inevitable bugs. It's not that point is wrong, it's that it's too obvious to be relevant. AVs are a means not an ends. The landscape will be distorted to accommodate the technology to the extent that capital can find leverage, no matter how narrow the opportunity. The last thing tech culture seeks is rational organization of infrastructure; reasoned planning is a necessity for the civic bureaucrats commissioned to clean up in the wake of innovation's disruptions. If you want to see the future of AVs, study the prior art: rail. AVs will be provisioned "lanes" through a drawn-out dynamic of wrecks, litigation and lawmaking, the same way the 20th century accommodated the automobile. The AV companies are forthright in their intention to barge through cities in pursuit of profits as proven for business in every domain. That some captain of the obvious makes a commission posting a reactionary and arousing article making it seem like gravity has just been discovered is the industry media in it's most ordinary dynamic. Truly nothing to see here. Move along.
by Kon5ole | 2025-06-20 16:09:20+00:00
I think the article is satirizing a strawman.

Most of the people being ridiculed are not homeowners looking down their nose at the homeless, they are basically renting from the banks and chained to mortgages. They will become homeless themselves if the value of housing drops too far from what they borrowed.

It will also have ripple effects in the form of banks going under, retirement funds being depleted, and the economy as a whole tanking. If homes become cheaper too quickly the result will be a lot more homeless, not fewer.

In short, there are very valid non-selfish reasons why people, corporations and politicians don't want to make homes lose value too quickly. It's not malice against the homeless.

This is a systematic problem in many western nations and it doesn't have a simple solution.
by elsjaako | 2025-06-20 16:09:33+00:00
Awesome! If you live in New York and you are a car lover, you now spend much less time standing in traffic. If you want to drive by day, every day, it will cost you $3285. But this means less standing in traffic, and more driving.

If you live in New York, parking is probably also $300-$400 per month, so it does double that price. But if you love your car, that must be worth it. And that's only if you're driving it in New York every single day of the year.
by p_ing | 2025-06-20 16:10:02+00:00
> But core requirements were generally just speed

Not just speed but instructions.

> you're SOL if your system doesn't support TPM and specific models

TPM support at this point in time is very old, roughly 7 years or so, along with processor model. Newer processors lack the appropriate features to support the security features of Windows 11, i.e. VBS.

New OSes have new features which require new hardware; new being highly relative here as it's quite old hardware at this point.
by thrance | 2025-06-20 16:10:44+00:00
Can you seriously claim that Milei improved the material conditions of Argentinians? At best, he sold the country for a quick buck to make a few numbers look good, but ultimately doomed the country. I can't think of a single place where austerity was met with positive long-term outcomes.

According to this outlet [1], Argentina seems to have experienced a recent spike in homelessness.

As I said, it's foolish thinking you can fix everything with this "one simple trick". Housing is expensive because the market is gamed, deregulating it further won't fix shit. Those who make it expensive will always succeed in keeping it this way, if we don't take away their power and try to make the game fairer.

[1] https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/quarter-of-rough-s...
by timr | 2025-06-20 16:10:50+00:00
Elasticity of demand is not magic, so yeah, making something more expensive will likely reduce demand. While I have no doubt it is a success if you consider only reduced traffic, there are other considerations that override that for me:

1) It's a regressive tax on everyone living here -- even if you never use a car. Literally everything we buy and use in the city gets more expensive because of this law.

2) That same regressive tax is used to provide a lifeline for an exceptionally wasteful public organization (the MTA) that needs budget discipline, not additional funding. The MTA rivals Tammany Hall in terms of waste and fraud, and the talks of budget cuts were political crocodile tears.

3) (more minor) By definition, the point of this tax is to make it so that only rich people can drive. As the article notes, of course this is great if you're rich enough to afford it...but the article doesn't quote the people who can't now.

---

Edit: I'm just going to respond to the single point that everyone is making in one place, instead of repeating it: you don't just get to assert that the hypothesized "reduction in transit time" offsets the costs. You have to prove that argument.

You're the one arguing in favor of a new tax. It's not my job to prove the negative.

Ultimately, congestion was itself a cost, but it was a dynamic cost, increasing and decreasing with the amount of congestion to maximize utility of the roads. What the state has done here, effectively, is set the price of driving higher than the market at all times in order to guarantee a marginal reduction in demand.
by tiffanyh | 2025-06-20 16:11:14+00:00
Amazing work.

Just a clarifying question since I'm confused by the branding use of "Phoenix.new" (since I associate "Phoenix" as a web framework for Elixir apps but this seems to be a lot more than that).

- Is "Phoenix.new" an IDE?

- Is "Phoenix.new" ... AI to help you create an app using the Phoenix web framework for Elixir?

- Does "Phoenix.new" require the app to be hosted/deployed on Fly.io? If that's the case, maybe a naming like "phoenix.flyio.new" would be better and extensible for any type of service Fly.io helps in deployment - Phoenix/Elixir being one)

- Is it all 3 above?

And how does this compare to Tidewave.ai (created as presumably you know, by Elixir creator)

Apologies if I'm possibility conflating topics here.
by wang_li | 2025-06-20 16:11:30+00:00
It's a bit absurd though. The roads are paid by tax payers from the general fund of the city, but they discriminate on how much it costs to use those roads based on where you live. If everyone entering the zone paid the same then it would be one thing. But they have exemptions and deductions based on residency and income. If they are going to charge people who don't live in the area and not charge the people who do live in the area, then the people in the area should have to buy all the roads and pay for the upkeep.
by lisper | 2025-06-20 16:11:34+00:00
> Enlightenment peoples currently dominate the world

Huh??? How do you figure? AFAICT the world is dominated by Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin (if you reckon by power) or Christians and Muslims (if you reckon by population). None of these individuals or groups can be properly categorized as "Enlightenment peoples", certainly not with a capital E.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
by kjkjadksj | 2025-06-20 16:11:36+00:00
Feels like I am the only person patient enough to not mind traffic. “Soul crushing” who cares? I’m effectively sitting in a room with a hifi stereo unit like a lot of people do anyhow with their free time. Driving purely on subconscious autopilot. It is on you if you can’t make that work for a bit IMO.

Crowded train is actually objectively unpleasant on the other hand. You have other peoples BO. The guy bringing in 50lbs of stuff strapped to the bike hits your knee. Another guy decides to smoke a cigarette in the train car or play with their blow torch. Everyone shoving you on the way in and out. Packed like a sardine. AC barely working. Elevators reeking of urine.
by turnsout | 2025-06-20 16:11:48+00:00
I hear you, but people with lower incomes who had to commute into Manhattan were far less likely to drive even before congestion pricing. Most of these folks are taking buses or trains.

When it comes to taxes, this is just one more use tax. If you drive in the NY area, you also pay tolls on roads your taxes paid for, and there's local tax on gasoline. Congestion pricing is not an especially unusual tax.
by IAmBroom | 2025-06-20 16:11:49+00:00
Holy shazbot! I thought the author was being a bit hyperbolic about the "built for speed" part...

"The test drive shows off just 20% of Rubin’s maximum speed. At full tilt, a runner wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Presumably measured at the edge of the platform, but still... WOW!
by pxc | 2025-06-20 16:12:05+00:00
Android doesn't succeed at what free software developers (or users) care about. The present-day reality of Android is a huge, depressing disappointment to anyone who gives a shit about software freedom.

It's a TiVo-ized spyware delivery platform, absolute riddled with (often non-removeable, often installed by entities other than the user) badware.

Android is an abject, dismal failure when it comes to very basic things like empowering users.
Show HN: An SDK for building custom coding agents with tools and sub-agents
by chw9e | 2025-06-20 16:12:09+00:00
I’ve been experimenting with AI coding agents for a while, especially combining planners like o3 with executors like Claude Code.

Eventually I needed more control — so I built a TypeScript SDK that makes it easy to spin up custom coding agents, attach toolsets, define system prompts, and compose sub-agents. It also has a simple CLI for github actions or dangerously running things locally.

It’s open-source and early, but it already powers some of my other projects, such as a prompt-based PRD generator grounded in your codebase.

- Agent SDK GitHub: https://github.com/qckfx/agent-sdk

- Prompt Generator Use Case Github: https://github.com/qckfx/compose

Would love feedback, use cases, or ideas for where to take this next.
by scraft | 2025-06-20 16:12:50+00:00
Actually, in special relativity, if you could somehow travel at light speed, your own proper time wouldn’t pass at all. The journey would be instant from your perspective. You’d experience zero time between departure and arrival.

That’s not just "relativistically instant", that’s literally instant in your frame. The time dilation becomes total at light speed, and length contraction collapses the entire distance in the direction of travel to zero.

Now, it’s true we can’t really assign a rest frame to a photon, so this is a thought experiment. But if you extrapolate the math, the conclusion holds: no time passes for something traveling at light speed.
by Zak | 2025-06-20 16:13:01+00:00
One that was annoying me for a while is Turo (like AirBnB for rental cars), which had only one notification category. When I have a rental upcoming or active, I need to be notified about messages from the host, but it would also send marketing notifications on occasion, which I never want to see. I would turn off notifications manually most of the time.

It looks like they recently split it into "marketing" and "transactional", which is probably good enough.

The one AI thing I'd like my phone to do is reliably decide when I would like to be told about any given notification using an on-device model.
by righthand | 2025-06-20 16:13:57+00:00
Congestion pricing is great. I routinely end up in Manhattan on Friday and Canal Street at 5pm is running smoothly (not packed end to end with idling cars as before), the city looks like a regular city instead of the packed cars honking and spewing tire dust and exhaust. Long gone are the people that would drive into LES on Friday night with their expensive cars and blare loud music and rev their engines. It’s a different environment and everyone is loving it that I’ve talked to.
by scarface_74 | 2025-06-20 16:14:24+00:00
There are certain environments where you can randomly talk to people and it’s considered a social norm and certain environments you can’t.

Sitting at the bar is one of those places. I usually go, get one drink and sip on soda the rest of the time and just talk. The bartender doesn’t mind because we are friends and I bring him a lot more business just from other people hanging around and ordering drinks.

On the other hand, the gym is usually not a place where people want to talk and especially where women don’t want to be approached by men. I use to teach group fitness part time in another life and the exception was as one of the few straight men (and at the time single), women naturally came up and spoke to me or I could start conversations with them and thier guard would be down.

Also airports, planes and other public transportation are places I generally don’t strike up random conversations.
by frollogaston | 2025-06-20 16:14:28+00:00
The hardware itself is obfuscation.

What you're asking for does exist though, in the form of Android devices and game consoles. Was curious about Steam Deck and... turns out it doesn't have secure boot. Someone could build a desktop OS on top of an anticheat-friendly kernel, but it'd probably not be big enough for gamemakers to care, and Linux desktop people would be uninterested in it to say the least. (I'm on a Mac btw, I have no horse in this race, just understand people who do)
by N_Lens | 2025-06-20 16:14:39+00:00
> When analyzing Miyazaki’s films, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, often the messages regarding warfare’s effects on the natural world focus more on the direct impacts rather than the indirect ones. Additionally, many researchers look at the film from a spiritual lens with DeWeese-Boyd (2009) believing Nausicaä serves as a Christ-like figure, while both Morgan (2015) and Nunes (2021) believe that Nausicaä serves as an example of how to restore balance between humans and nature. Despite that, these authors see her role in restoring balance differently. Nunes believes that Nausicaä gave herself to nature, sacrificing her free will in order to heal the earth without personal bias. On the other hand, Morgan believes that she serves as an example of how the fragmentation between the mind, body, spirit and nature can be restored through respect and care for the natural world.

I never thought of the parallel with Christ in the numerous times I watched this film but I can understand why someone would make that connection given the final scenes.
by barbazoo | 2025-06-20 16:15:12+00:00
Not really at least not most of them.

> Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to

One stands out though

> Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

That seems to be a perfectly fine thing to do, comparing one government's policies with another. Maybe instead of saying "Nazis", maybe one can say "Government of Nazi Germany" and one wouldn't be labelled as an antisemite.