MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sawyerjhood | 2025-08-12 19:51:15+00:00
This looks super slick! The mobile first coding agent workflow really feels like a fundamental shift in how developers work. It is sort of like Rich Hickey's hammock driven development taken to its ideal form. While you are on the go and have an idea, rather than writing it down in your todo list you can kick off an agent and have a prototype PR waiting for you next time you are at your desk.

Once you start running coding agents async you realize that prototyping becomes much cheaper and it is easier to test out product ideas and land on the right solution to a problem much quicker.

I've been coding like this for the past few months and can't imagine life without being able to invoke a coding agent from anywhere. I got so excited by it we started building https://www.terragonlabs.com so we could do this for any coding agent that crops up.
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-12 19:51:48+00:00
Yes, but in the same sense that empirically, I can swim in the nearby river most days; the fact that the city has a combined stormdrain / sewer system that overflows to put feces in the river means that some days, the water I'd swim in is full of shit, and nothing about the infrastructure is guarding against that happening.

I can tell you how quickly "swimmer beware" becomes "just stay out of the river" when potential E. coli infection is on the table, and (depending on how important the factuality of the information is) I fully understand people being similarly skeptical of a machine that probably isn't outputting shit, but has nothing in its design to actively discourage or prevent it.
by badlucklottery | 2025-08-12 19:51:52+00:00
This is my experience as well.

LLM currently produce pretty mediocre code. A lot of that is a "garbage in, garbage out" issue but it's just the current state of things.

If the alternative is noob code or just not doing a task at all, then mediocre is great.

But 90% of the time I'm working in a familiar language/domain so I can grind out better code relatively quickly and do so in a way that's cohesive with nearby code in the codebase. The main use-case I have for AI in that case is writing the trivial unit tests for me.

So it's another "No Silver Bullet" technology where the problem it's fixing isn't the essential problem software engineers are facing.
by parpfish | 2025-08-12 19:52:04+00:00
i don't know if anybody else has experienced this, but one of my biggest time-sucks with cursor is that it doesn't have a way for me to steer it mid-process that i'm aware of.

it'll build something that fails a test, but i know how to fix the problem. i can't jump in a manually fix it or tell it what to do. i just have to watch it churn through the problem and eventually give up and throw away a 90% good solution that i knew how to fix.
by nine_k | 2025-08-12 19:52:11+00:00
Thanks for the jobs.now!

I still think that you mix up the "green card" and the "H1B visa".

The green card is a status of a permanent resident. A person legally living in the US for enough time (5 years or so) on a variety of visas can apply to get it. It costs significant money so an employer usually helps with that.

The H1B visa is a visa for a worker on a position for which a company fails to hire a worker in the US. That worker may become or not become a permanent US resident afterwards.
by tuckerman | 2025-08-12 19:52:22+00:00
I came across them (and they seem very cool!) but my working theory is that, in addition to more electronics heavy projects like those, I also want something that can fill the role of the apple ii plus that was the "family computer" when I was a kid without going straight to giving him access to a modern desktop/computer which feel so hermetic.

I'm somehow very confident in this while also being sure that people probably thought very similar things about home radios destroying the youth in the 1920s :D
by perching_aix | 2025-08-12 19:52:52+00:00
> example: "Healthy at any weight/size."

I don't think I need to invite any additional contesting that I'm already going to get with this, but that example statement on its own I believe is actually true, just misleading; i.e. fatness is not an illness, so fat people by default still count as just plain healthy.

Matter of fact, that's kind of the whole point of this mantra. To stretch the fact as far as it goes, in a genie wish type of way, as usual, and repurpose it into something else.

And so the actual issue with it is that it handwaves away the rigorously measured and demonstrated effect of fatness seriously increasing risk factors for illnesses and severely negative health outcomes. This is how it can be misleading, but not an outright lie. So I'm not sure this is a good example sentence for the topic at hand.
by jama211 | 2025-08-12 19:53:25+00:00
Indeed. And you get some engineers who only want to code perfect bespoke code all the time and sometimes that’s useful and sometimes it’s not. It depends on the requirements of the client, just as it would in any other trade. We need to be flexible to both the clients time and money budget, and also make code that suits the criticality of the task at hand. If you can’t lower your standards to fit a use case, I think it’s actually a bad thing.
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2025-08-12 19:54:04+00:00
Forcing everything into the single abstraction of the filesystem lets do useful things with less trouble than other systems. As an example: Plan 9 doesn't have any use for containers because in its world chroot is exhaustive. You don't need special namespaces to control ex. network access, because network access goes through a filesystem in your chroot.
Show HN: AI Trust Proof – Help AI Trust You with Blockchain-Verifiable Signals
by dude3 | 2025-08-12 19:54:42+00:00
I built AI Trust Proof — an experiment in recording human good faith on-chain so it can be independently verified by people, software, or (eventually) AI systems.

What it does (today) - Lets you sign a plain-English pledge and record its signature hash + metadata on Solana (devnet). - Mints a symbolic NFT badge pointing to that record. - Creates a verification page that shows the pledge, signature, and on-chain proof.

What it’s not - No token, no airdrops, no yield. - Not a reputation score or KYC. - Currently just one signal: "Pledge signed."

Why - If AI systems begin prioritizing who to listen to, work with, or grant access to, they’ll need auditable, tamper-evident signals that aren’t just money or popularity. This is an early test of whether that’s possible — and what could go wrong.

Next steps - Add revocation and pledge updates. - Allow peer/programmatic attestations. - Explore privacy-preserving proofs for sensitive context. - Define machine-readable policies so AI can consume signals consistently. - Fully immutable storage

Link - https://www.aitrustproof.com
by bell-cot | 2025-08-12 19:54:49+00:00
> Is there a reason why ...

Yes: Apple doesn't care.

> Does anyone else...

Yes. I just typed in "Tipografical earer" - and iOS 18.6 suggested "Tipograxical" for the first word, and one of "eared", "eager", and "eater" for the second word.
by cultofmetatron | 2025-08-12 19:54:59+00:00
> It eliminates a huge swath of potential long-term contributors who know C well and don't want to change,

that pretty much described the current hurd dev community and its dying. I wouldn't advocate a full RIIR for most things but I think its a solid hail Mary to maybe make hurd relevant. The alternative is its going to be dead in a few years when the contributors all age out to spend time with their grandkids.
by notahacker | 2025-08-12 19:55:04+00:00
tbf you have to have read it to know that!

I can't help but think it's probably the "favourite book" of a lot of people who haven't finished it though, possibly to a greater extent than any other secular tome (at least LOTR's lightweight fans watched the movies!).

I mean, if you've only read the blurb on the back it's the perfect book to signal your belief in free markets, conservative values and the American Dream: what could be more a more strident defence of your views than a book about capitalists going on strike to prove how much the world really needs them?! If you read the first few pages, it's satisfyingly pro-industry and contemptuous of liberal archetypes. If you trudge through the whole thing, it's not only tedious and odd but contains whole subplots devoted to dumping on core conservative values (religion bad, military bad, marriage vows not that important really, and a rather jaded take on actually extant capitalism) in between the philosopher pirates and jarring absence of private transport, and the resolution is an odd combination of a handful of geniuses running away to form a commune and the world being saved by a multi-hour speech about philosophy which has surprisingly little to say on market economics...
by bloomca | 2025-08-12 19:55:17+00:00
> 2. When NOT to use the truck... when talking or the bike is actually the better way to go.

Some people write racing car code, where a truck just doesn't bring much value. Some people go into more uncharted territories, where there are no roads (so the truck will not only slow you down, it will bring a bunch of dead weight).

If the road is straight, AI is wildly good. In fact, it is probably _too_ good; but it can easily miss a turn and it will take a minute to get it on track.

I am curious if we'll able to fine tune LLMs to assist with less known paths.
by masfuerte | 2025-08-12 19:55:19+00:00
Google certainly had to update their algorithms to cope with SEO, but that's not why their results have become so poor in the last five years or so. They made a conscious decision to prioritize profit over search quality. This came out in internal emails that were published as part of discovery for one of the antitrust suits.

To reiterate: Google search results are shit because shit ad-laden results make them more money in the short term.

That's it. And it's sad that so many people continue to give them the benefit of the doubt when there is no doubt.
by montefischer | 2025-08-12 19:55:26+00:00
Islamic fundamentalism and cult rationalism are both involved in a “total commitment”, “all or nothing” type of thinking. The former is totally committed to a particular literal reading of scripture, the latter, to logical deduction from a set of chosen premises. Both modes of thinking have produced violent outcomes in the past.

Skepticism, in which no premise or truth claim is regarded as above dispute (or, that it is always permissible and even praiseworthy to suspend one’s judgment on a matter), is the better comparison with rationalism-fundamentalism. It is interesting that skepticism today is often associated with agnostic or atheist religious beliefs, but I consider many religious thinkers in history to have been skeptics par excellence when judged by the standard of their own time. E.g. William Ockham (of Ockham’s razor) was a 14C Franciscan friar (and a fascinating figure) who denied papal infallibility. I count Martin Luther as belonging to the history of skepticism as well, for example, as well as much of the humanist movement that returned to the original Greek sources for the Bible, from the Latin Vulgate translation by Jerome.

The history of ideas is fun to read about. I am hardly an expert, but you may be interested by the history of Aristotelian rationalism, which gained prominence in the medieval west largely through the works of Averroes, a 12C Muslim philosopher who heavily favored Aristotle. In 13C, Thomas Aquinus wrote a definitive Catholic systematic theology, rejecting Averroes but embracing Aristotle. To this day, Catholic theology is still essentially Aristotelian.
by aaronbaugher | 2025-08-12 19:55:50+00:00
Some of the most irrational people I've met were those who claimed to make all their decisions rationally, based on facts and logic. They're just very good at rationalizing, and since they've pre-defined their beliefs as rational, they never have to examine where else they might come from. The rest of us at least have a chance of thinking, "Wait, am I fooling myself here?"
by symbolicAGI | 2025-08-12 19:55:54+00:00
Aside from required human corporate directors and corporate officers, one can imagine a zero-person billion dollar company whose roles are entirely filled by AI agents.

To see for yourself how this might be done in principle, ask your favorite LLM to 1. Comprehensively describe the standard operating procedures for a selected corporate role, and to create a comprehensive plan for writing computer code to implement those SOPs.

Here is a link to a ChatGPT 5 query about the role of Chief Customer Success Officer: https://chatgpt.com/share/689b9c31-bb20-8006-89fb-0ad082a52a...
by codedokode | 2025-08-12 19:56:00+00:00
The words "steal" and "bathroom" reminded me of a funny case when hand dryers started disappearing in bathrooms of several shopping malls in a large Russian city. In all cases, there was the same person with a large bag filmed nearby, but as there is no camera inside, it is difficult to understand if he did anything or not. Guess unsupervised tablet (aka "monitor") would not stay there for long.
by SilverElfin | 2025-08-12 19:56:30+00:00
> Telling people to stay out of the woods during the 2nd worst fire season (so far!) on record is not authoritarianism, it is a reasonable temporary restriction in a country where 40% of wildfires are caused by people in the woods.

As I already said, those who break laws will keep breaking laws. All this does is take away from the rights of individuals to use public land. The only benefit that is left then, is to normalize authoritarianism. Those who go to the woods and light fires unsafely will keep doing it.

> e.g. Many are started by the catalytic converter or another hot car part coming in contact with dry brush.

Evidence and data? Cars regularly go off-roading in brush and don’t start fires. If you’re saying it is incredibly rare and due to some faulty car part, then I don’t think that deserves regulation. That’s not the “40% of wildfires” you referenced as justification for this action. To make this more obvious - lightning can also start wildfires and they’ll keep happening at some low rate. Why would you try to eliminate one in a billion rarities through broad violations of liberties?

> Restricting civil liberties during times of crisis is incredibly common across states that are not at all authoritarian

Restricting civil liberties shows they’re authoritarian. You’re avoiding using this label, but to me it is accurate and deserved. The entire point of civil liberties is that they CANNOT be restricted under any circumstance. After all, the notion of a ‘crisis’ is itself open to abuse.

> That sentence is great at getting emotions up, but it doesn't have any argumentative value for people who place any value in reality and logic.

The way your list of things that you feel are not rights reads to me, is “Canada has no rights, and therefore your arguments that people have rights is false”. It doesn’t seem convincing to me, and I suspect it doesn’t to others. I think we need to start with the idea that humans have rights by default - before the authoritarianism of governments or the majority take those rights away. I also don’t like the idea of “Crown Land”, which is a way of legitimizing authoritarian culture, the idea that publicly owned things are not owed to the public but are instead held by “the Crown”.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-08-12 19:56:46+00:00
You just put words in my mouth by inventing that scenario. I responded to what you wrote, not to some hypothetical that you didn't write.

> rationalist assume the data is true.

That is an utterly absurd statement. There is nothing rational about blindly believing any particular piece of data. What you are describing is a religious dogma.

If you want to bring a survey result in to argue that it supports causation in a particular direction then do so by citing it and clearly articulating the connection.
Show HN: AI app for learning Sanskrit, English, Hindi, Kannada and more
by Jaygala223 | 2025-08-12 19:57:07+00:00
Hey HN, Jay here. I am building Indilingo, an AI app for learning and promoting Indian languages and culture.

Indilingo supports 22 official Indian languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, English, Kannada, Tamil and more.

What makes Indilingo different?

- Indilingo allows the users to learn any language from any language. You can learn Sanskrit from Kannada, Kannada from Punjabi, and even Punjabi from Bengali.

- Indilingo focuses on conversations to make users fluent in their desired language. Users can speak with an AI in real time and get personalized feedback.

- Indilingo also offers users the ability to customize their lessons according to their needs, access personalized quizzes and even see detailed analytics.

You can try the app at https://www.indilingo.in/download

There is also a Pre-Sale going on for early users at https://store.dodopayments.com/indilingo where all PRO plans can be bought at a 50% discount.

Would love to hear your thoughts regarding Indilingo. Thanks!
by switchbak | 2025-08-12 19:57:11+00:00
I'm just a software guy, so my thoughts are probably painfully naive here.

My understanding is that we're mostly talking about economics - eg: that there's no way a Java/Lisp CPU could ever compete with a general purpose CPU. That's what I thought was the reason for the Symbolics CPU decline vs general purpose chips.

It seems like some hardware co-processing go a long way for some purposes though? GC in particular seems like it would be amenable to some dedicated hardware.

These days we're seeing dedicated silicon for "AI" chips in newer processors. That's not a high level CPU as described in the article, but it does seem like we're moving away from purely general purpose CPUs into a more heterogeneous world of devoting more silicon for other important purposes.
Altcoin season: Watch out for Base Ecosystem
by Victornomics | 2025-08-12 19:57:34+00:00
Ethereum price surge above $4K has signaled a bullish season for altcoins. Altcoin season is picking up, and the Base ecosystem is buzzing with activity. Money is flowing in, trading volumes are climbing, and several tokens are breaking out making Base projects a hot spot for traders chasing profits. Base is booming. Daily active users just hit 1M, double Ethereum and TVL is up 30%, topping $4.29B. One of the token gaining traction and that has caught my attention in the ecosystem is $ZORA. ZORA is heating up and has made 903% on BingX and other CEX.

In the last 24 hours, it’s bounced from $0.1165 to $0.1260 after hitting $0.1441 proof that buyers are still stepping in even after some profit-taking. Earlier today, Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin gave the Zora app a thumbs-up, calling it quite good and suggesting a cool new feature for account recovery using ETH addresses. That shoutout has definitely boosted confidence.

Where are you trading your ZORA token?
by hirako2000 | 2025-08-12 19:57:43+00:00
The issue is that you would be not just clueless but grown naive about the correctness of what it did.

Knowing what to do at least you can review. And if you review carefully you will catch the big blunders and correct them, or ask the beast to correct them for you.

> Claude, please generate a safe random number. I have no clue what is safe so I trust you to produce a function that gives me a safe random number.

Not every use case is sensitive, but even building pieces for entertainment, if it wipe things it shouldn't delete or drain the battery doing very inefficient operations here and there, it's junk, undesirable software.
by nvch | 2025-08-12 19:57:56+00:00
There are always too many painful and different things to do in any business, so a single person will certainly start aggressively delegating and outsourcing after a few millions of income.

But not willing to grow over a 10 person team may be a strong and feasible personal preference.

My bet is on $10 billion with a team of 10 people.

Does that still count?
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-08-12 19:58:24+00:00
> If I want to know, today, who will be in power tomorrow and what policies they could pass that would be popular, polling is useful. If I want to know what issues I can build a coalition around, and which to abandon because the people most passionate about them cannot bother to vote, polling is helpful.

That's fair in the context of, you're a political operative who is trying to enact specific policies as your occupation and you therefore have the time to go through and carefully inspect numerous polls to derive a well-rounded understanding. But that's also quite disconnected from how polls are typically used in the public discourse.

Ordinary people don't have time to do that, so instead political operatives will commission a poll to get the result they want, or find one from a reputable pollster who unintentionally made a phrasing error in their favor, or just cherry pick like this: https://xkcd.com/882/

And then use the result to try to convince people that the public is actually on their side and it would be ineffective or costly to oppose them. Which, unless you have the time to go carefully read a hundred different polls to see whether the result is legitimate, means that the sensible strategy is to give polls no weight.

Or to put it another way, on any politically contentious issue there will always be at least one poll saying X and another saying not-X, which means that in the absence of a more thorough analysis that exceeds the resource availability of most members of the public (and even many legislators), neither has any information content because the probability of a poll existing with that result was already ~100%.
by uecker | 2025-08-12 19:58:52+00:00
If you say the header model makes it slower than it could be, you need to compare it to something. I do not see how it causes significant slow downs in C projects (in contrast to C++). And yes, I wrote compilers and (incomplete) preprocessors. I do not understand what you mean by your second point. What separation of interface and implementation allows you to do is updating the implementation without having to recompile other TUs. You can achieve this is also in different ways, but in C this works by in this way.

I am not sure how it works in Rust as you need to monomorphize a lot of things, which come from other crates. It seems this would inevitably entangle the compilations.
by bspammer | 2025-08-12 19:58:54+00:00
Minecraft was already wildly successful before a second employee was brought on board. As someone who was a teenager at the time, I can tell you that from 2009-2010 my friends and I talked about little else. None of the later updates fundamentally improved on that magic, they just added more content.

Here's a hacker news comment from Sept 2010 which talks about Minecraft's success in the past tense, and according to wikipedia that's the same month that Mojang's second employee was hired. It had already gone viral.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1742163
by spauldo | 2025-08-12 19:59:18+00:00
Speaking as an Emacs user: embedded images are cool, but their usefulness is debatable. Makes perfect sense for Emacs given org-mode, Auctex, and because due to Emacs' design it's the only way to include icons and whatnot for non-document purposes, but I doubt it's a useful feature for most code editors outside little error indicator icons and the like.
by bsimpson | 2025-08-12 19:59:39+00:00
From what I recall reading, it was a matter of market definition. They defined the Android app market to be all devices that run Android, and then said Google monopolized it; whereas the iOS market is just devices made by Apple.

I don't agree with the outcome, but that's the twist of logic that allows the more open ecosystem to be the one being attacked as a monopoly.