MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by areddyfd | 2025-10-16 16:44:22+00:00
We are getting ready to launch our agentic data platform and wanted to share what we think are the most important things we've learned. Turns out that building a reliable agentic system is largely about good engineering fundamentals and clear written communication. Here are a few lessons that stuck:

Domain knowledge is your differentiator. Whether it's tools, evals, or fine-tuning, your agent's domain knowledge is what sets you apart from being just a wrapper around an LLM. We recommend building good simulators of the environment your agent will live in to scale these capabilities.

Architecture matters. The difference between a flashy demo and a reliable product comes down to how agents are structured, their tools, callbacks, and most importantly: context management. That includes cross-agent instructions, memory, examples. Imagine giving instructions to an intern. You want them to be complete but not overwhelming.

Balance deterministic code and LLM "magic". A good production system finds the middle ground between letting the LLM cook and making sure it doesn't burn down the kitchen. This can take a lot of trial and error to find the right balance.

Use frameworks, don't rebuild them. While it can be a great learning experience to implement your own LLM-call-and-response-parsing while loop from scratch, the frameworks around today can really save you a ton of time and irritation. Stand on the shoulders of fast-evolving Agent frameworks like Google's ADK, and just fork them when you inevitably need them to do something bespoke for your special agent.

It's been a ride getting this ready for production. If you're exploring agentic workflows for data integration, data workflow automation, and analysis, check out what we're building at Yorph AI. We've also got a short demo here showing what our product can do.
by Edman274 | 2025-10-16 16:44:30+00:00
If you happen to wear a green shirt on St. Patrick's Day, then maybe you can sue and say that you were fired because your boss is bigoted against Irish Americans. No one ever comes right out and says that they're firing someone for an illegal reason, so the PIP and the rest of that song and dance is to try to prove that it was above board for a potential lawsuit, which companies seek to avoid at all costs.
by danans | 2025-10-16 16:44:53+00:00
Question for those using local models for coding assistance: how well do the best locally runnable models (running on a laptop with a GPU) work for the easy case:

Writing short runs of code and tests after I give an clear description of the expected behavior (because I have done the homework). I want to save the keystrokes and the mental energy spent on bookkeeping code, not have it think about the big problem for me.

Think short algorithms/transformations/script, and "smart" auto complete.

No writing entire systems/features or creating heavily interpolated things due to underspecified prompts - I'm not interested in those.
by some_furry | 2025-10-16 16:45:20+00:00
EDIT: Disregard this comment. I think there was a technical issue on my computer. Keeping the original comment below.

-----

> let's pretend I didn't see the word "blockchain" there

There's nothing blockchain about this blog post.

I think this might be a rectangles vs squares thing. While it's true that all blockchains use chains of hashes (e.g., via Merkle trees), it's not true that all uses of append-only data structures are cryptocurrency.

See also: Certificate transparency.
by tguvot | 2025-10-16 16:45:21+00:00
iirc,

- vast majority if calories consumed in gaza was imported. like 90%+

- livestock grown locally was dependent upon imported feed

- good chunk of farmland was used for stuff like strawberries and some leafy greens for exports

so soundbites as "according to UNEP, “Restoration of tree cover, soil and land will be critical for recovering food security, health, and resilience for people in Gaza.” are very detached from reality
by fvdessen | 2025-10-16 16:45:36+00:00
I have been using htmx to build a web app and came to the conclusion that it is a dead-end.

The main problem is that the state of your frontend application is in the URL. This is not flexible enough for modern UI where you might have many different zones, widgets, popups, etc. that all need their own local navigation, activation states etc. Putting all of this in a single global url is extremely hard. Designing your app so that you don't need to put it all in the global url is harder.

This problem is trivially solved by React / Vue that all provide their version of a state store that can hold the state, and make it easy as well to have elements shared or not between the tabs of your browser.

If you build your applications like phpBB forum this is not a problem, but nowadays users expect better.
by ratelimitsteve | 2025-10-16 16:46:30+00:00
does this feel to anyone else like hiring a Chief Fall Guy? Securing data is and should be under the chief technical officer or the chief security officer, depending on how the org is structured, rendering this position redundant. The pattern I bet we see emerge is gonna be one where it's rather a cushy gig for a while but if there's a breach you're expected to resign or be fired so that the company can give us the old "the people responsible have been sacked". Like the moderately racist legends of tribes in a land untouched by modern civilization who designate a king and let him live in luxury for as long as times are good, and then behead him as a sacrifice at the first crop failure.
by derefr | 2025-10-16 16:46:40+00:00
To be clear, Electron themselves fixed the bug quite quickly; but many Electron apps haven't pushed a version that vendors in the fixed version of the Electron runtime.

(And shit like this is exactly why runtimes like the JVM or the .NET CLR are designed to install separately from any particular software that uses them. Each of their minor [client-facing-ABI compatible] versions can then be independently updated to their latest OS-facing-bugfix version without waiting for the software itself to ship that update.)
by wuschel | 2025-10-16 16:46:58+00:00
Of course people understand that.

IMHO it is important to see which context people are coming from. Different culture, social acceptance, historic treatment options, etc. influence the response.

Also, dementia is not the only disease with a strong degenerative impact on character and behaviour e.g there is schizophrenia et al. What is common with many of these conditions that there is a strong individual component of progression and morbidity.

It is great that you have the option to make a choice for yourself. Others might decide to make other choices.
by earthnail | 2025-10-16 16:47:44+00:00
There are internal reasons as well. Letting go of people can be highly disruptive and create uncertainty in your team. It’s a very unpleasant job that can also go wrong, especially if you have to fire loads.

Then there’s the perverse incentive that bigger teams usually equals a promotion. So if you’re the honest manager who manages a tight team and fires people, you won’t get promoted as often.

Top management knows this, of course. To sidestep these misaligned incentives a company-wide one-time layoff is really effective.
by adastra22 | 2025-10-16 16:47:46+00:00
Which is a subset of what has always been called AI, and different enough from what “machine learning” was when the phrase became commonplace that it might actually be confusing to use that term. The multi-layer perceptron is a machine learning system, but attention networks are kind of their own thing even if they originally came out of machine learning research. So the transformer architecture isn’t exactly cut and dry machine learning.
by Aurornis | 2025-10-16 16:47:56+00:00
> However the best work I ever did was done when I didn't have a pressure of being fired for offending the wrong person, and that I had the psychological safety to think longer term- since a short term "time-waste" often converted to better long term outcomes for everybody.

I felt the same way until I worked at a company where almost nobody ever got fired or laid off. Anyone who was hired was basically guaranteed their job until the end of time because the leadership didn't like letting anyone go.

It only took a couple years until every time you needed to do something you'd run into some employee somewhere who wasn't doing their job. Even many people who seemed capable and appropriately skilled started slacking off when they realized there were never any consequences at all.

It was like a broken windows theory for the workplace. As people looked around and saw that others were doing almost no work, it started to spread. The people who liked actually shipping things started leaving, turning it into a snowball effect.

So there's a balance. Always working under threat of layoff and seeing good coworkers let go when you're already overburdened isn't good. Working in a company where there is no pressure at all to perform isn't good either.
by odie5533 | 2025-10-16 16:48:06+00:00
flask-openapi3 looks good but has only 246 stars. Would be worried using it in production. flask-pydantic has no openapi tie-in. Oh look, there's me bumping the openapi request that's been an issue since 2020: https://github.com/pallets-eco/flask-pydantic/issues/17 which has an open PR since 2022.

It's possible between Quart and svcs (for DI) and some Pydantic/Marshmallow/OpenAPI extension you might be able to mimic what FastAPI does. But I'd just use FastAPI. I use async too. It's a lot easier to scale in my opinion.

Do none of these pieces matter to you? Like do you not do any data validation or care about OpenAPI?
by vee-kay | 2025-10-16 16:48:33+00:00
Did you know..

Mozilla get >80% of its revenue from Google, by making Google Search as default search engine on Firefox.

While Mozilla pretends to be a non-profit, its CEO makes millions of dollars annually.

Mitchell Baker: Stepped down as CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Her salary for 2023 was reported to be $6.9 million. Laura Chambers: Became interim CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Mozilla has not disclosed her salary for 2024 yet.

As of October 2025, the average annual salary for employees at Mozilla in the United States is ~$115k.

Not bad for a "non-profit", eh?

Yup, Mozilla and Firefox are surviving (nay, thriving) due to Google.

But Google's hand on the Mozilla tiller, is merely the top of the proverbial iceberg. Google has a monopoly on the browser market, encouraged by Apple Safari slipping down to <14% market share amongst the leading browsers.

Google's Chrome (>71% market share) and the other Chromium forks (>9% market share: Edge ~4.5%, Samsung Internet Browser ~2%, Brave/Vivaldi/etc. ~1%) dominate the browser market. Opera (~1.75% market share) is not a Chromium fork, but it is based on Chromium Project.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/
by taf2 | 2025-10-16 16:48:54+00:00
Working on a series of applications, from rails, nodejs interfacing with twilio's api's to salesforce api's - also C/C++ libraries. The example that stood out the best to me was implementing fiber support in the http library i maintain for ruby. Initially i prompted claude to implement fiber support. It started to write a few thousand lines of code for what codex rightly identified was to use a different IO selector library. The problem did end up being a bit more complex but gpt-5 overall in my experience has better knowledge of what is really available vs claude which not only ends up writing way more code to solve a problem that requires just knowing the libraries better... all of this is super subjective but my main reason for saying - "I have no loyalty to any AI, just the solution"
by toast0 | 2025-10-16 16:49:25+00:00
> I feel like the Phoenix/Elixir stack became less exciting to me.

Isn't that what's supposed to happen? It's not really fun to build on top of an exciting platform. Boring means if I build it today, it's likely to continue working for a long time. I've always got more to do than time to do it, so having to rebuild everything all the time because of underlying excitement is not by idea of a good time.
by vee-kay | 2025-10-16 16:49:39+00:00
Did you know..

Mozilla get >80% of its revenue from Google, by making Google Search as default search engine on Firefox.

While Mozilla pretends to be a non-profit, its CEO makes millions of dollars annually.

Mitchell Baker: Stepped down as CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Her salary for 2023 was reported to be $6.9 million. Laura Chambers: Became interim CEO of Mozilla in February 2024. Mozilla has not disclosed her salary for 2024 yet.

As of October 2025, the average annual salary for employees at Mozilla in the United States is ~$115k.

Not bad for a "non-profit", eh?

Yup, Mozilla and Firefox are surviving (nay, thriving) due to Google.

But Google's hand on the Mozilla tiller, is merely the top of the proverbial iceberg. Google has a monopoly on the browser market, encouraged by Apple Safari slipping down to <14% market share amongst the leading browsers.

Google's Chrome (>71% market share) and the other Chromium forks (>9% market share: Edge ~4.5%, Samsung Internet Browser ~2%, Brave/Vivaldi/etc. ~1%) dominate the browser market. Opera (~1.75% market share) is not a Chromium fork, but it is based on Chromium Project.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/
by DanielHB | 2025-10-16 16:50:17+00:00
The main difference is that in Sweden you don't need to do any paperwork to claim it, it is automatic.

The thing with these kind of benefits is that the bureucracy involved in dispensing them often costs close (or more) than the money dispensed. The system is more efficient if you just let everyone have it. It is one of the core arguments of UBI vs Welfare.

In this case the benefit still counts as welfare, not UBI obviously. However since the dispensing of the benefit is so simple (registered with tax agency, which is required to have an ID) it carries the same argument. If UBI was a thing in Sweden it would work the exact same way sans a check for parent-child relationship.

Also the amount per child grows slightly with every child up to 4 I think.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-10-16 16:50:19+00:00
Lol ya, I meant that easy access to China is much more important than easy access to Barbados. No shade at Barbados, I just think there are 100x more people that would go to China than Barbados

edit: here's the number of US visitors to each country in 2018 (the easiest year for me to find data on). This isn't a perfect comparison, because the amount of visitors will of course depend on the visa situation for each country, but it does give some feeling for how useful increased access would be

Barbados in 2018 had 204,830 US visitors -- https://www.caribjournal.com/2019/03/11/american-travelers-a...

China in 2018 had 2,485,000 US visitors (but this may be padded by the state media) -- https://gowithguide.com/blog/exploring-china-s-tourism-lands...

So China attracted approx 10x more US visitors, even though in 2018 it was much easier for Americans to go to Barbados than China. And I bet that gap has only grown in the last 7 years.
by preommr | 2025-10-16 16:50:30+00:00
> if you don't use the xml changeSets

I find it crazier that people use xml changesets.

My setup is to use sql files versioned by date. Each file has changsets (regions demarcated by comments) for single transaction actions (like creating a database), along with it's rollback actions written as comments in it's respective changeset.

I don't trust rollbacks, I mostly use them for dev purposes for scripts that are wip. If i have to "undo" changes to a db, better to write specific scripts that revert the actions (i.e. manually move columns around to a tmp table).

I essentially just use liquibase as a language-agnostic db-migration tool that can connect ot a db and run a series of sql files. I could write scripts for that, but it's nice to have a third-party solution.
by eqvinox | 2025-10-16 16:50:48+00:00
Sure, but that's not what your article is arguing. You literally have a heading "The Vulnerability". It's not a vulnerability, it's not an attack, it's just one option of what you can do after you're done exploiting your way into a system. Not even sure it's a particularly good option; modifying environment variables will mean that at least the target user is fully compromised. In turn, that will mean in pretty much all cases that the attacker is able to just transfer out any and all private keys. And note LD_PRELOAD is only applied when you start something; restarting a long-running process might in itself raise alarm bells or require re-unlocking keys. Much easier to directly take the keys from running process memory.
by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE | 2025-10-16 16:50:51+00:00
For bystanders, some Israeli sources against this 3-day-old account's baseless claims:

- 2025 Jun 7 oped about why it's a good thing that Israel doesn't allow journalists into Gaza (https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409591)

- 2025 Jul 9 article "Israel Blocks All Foreign Journalists From Gaza, High Court Delays Ruling on Appeal for Access" (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-09/ty-article/.p...)
by tracker1 | 2025-10-16 16:51:18+00:00
It is only 20% at certain tasks, not all around and depends on what the specific bottlenecks are for a given workflow. I'm not saying it's bad, but not enough to fork over a few thousand every year to upgrade. In 1992 a 496 DX2 @66mhz was king... In 2000 (8 years later) there were Intel and AMD at over 1Ghz. By 2008 you had 4 cores, 8 threads at 3.2Ghz.

I used to upgrade about every year or two, there were massive gains... now, I'll hold out 3-5 years and not even think twice about it.
by DiogenesKynikos | 2025-10-16 16:51:23+00:00
If you say you support someone who is fundamentally ripping out the American democratic political system, root and branch, then that's what you support. That's central to the "package deal."

There's no, "Well, I don't like that he's ending the entire system of rule of law and respect for the results of elections, but I like policy X."
by bellamoon544 | 2025-10-16 16:51:45+00:00
Demodesk is a vertical AI sales platform built to work with revenue teams. Its AI Sales Agents join meetings automatically, analyze conversations in real time, and transform them into revenue-driving actions such as CRM updates, coaching insights, and follow-up recommendations. After every call, Demodesk captures, summarizes, and syncs what matters directly into the CRM. It replaces multiple tools with one unified platform for recording, analytics, coaching, CRM sync, and scheduling.
by JimDabell | 2025-10-16 16:52:00+00:00
They specifically suggest using a blockchain for Tor:

> A paranoid Tor user may not trust existing transparency services or witnesses, and there might not be any other trusted party with the resources to self-host these functionalities. For this use case, it may be reasonable to put the prefix tree on a blockchain somewhere. This makes the usual domain validation impossible (there’s no validator server to speak of), but this is fine for onion services. Since an onion address is just a public key, a signature is sufficient to prove ownership of the domain.
by alganet | 2025-10-16 16:52:18+00:00
This is more of a jab to the common practice of assuming that our instance of life is typical than an actual hypothesis.

It goes like this: we assume we're typical life, and we're getting bored of searching, therefore other typical life must also get bored.

It's a challenge to make you think about the point in which such comparisons (life outside must be similar to life here) are true or relevant. It's almost a joke (in the good sense).

This challenge can be expressed by taking the principle that we're not special to the max: if we take it to extend to all aspects of Earth's life, then when we find aliens, they'll be identical to us living in a planet identical to us, which sounds unreasonable.

Therefore, the thing to discuss here is: how special we are and in which ways? How much can we infer about the universe from our current vantage point?
by payneio | 2025-10-16 16:52:20+00:00
FWIW, finished an eval of claude code against various tasks that amplifier works well on:

The agent demonstrated strong architectural and organizational capabilities but suffered from critical implementation gaps across all three analyzed tasks. The primary pattern observed is a "scaffold without substance" failure mode, where the agent produces well-structured, well-documented code frameworks that either don't work at all or produce placeholder outputs instead of real functionality. Of the three tasks analyzed, two failed due to placeholder/mock implementations (Cross-Repo Improvement Tool, Email Drafting Tool), and one failed due to insufficient verification of factual claims (GDPVAL Extraction). The common thread is a lack of validation and testing before delivery, combined with a tendency to prioritize architecture over functional implementation.
by sgerenser | 2025-10-16 16:52:33+00:00
IRS says you are “required to file”, but in reality the only penalties for non-filing are as a percentage of the amount of tax owed. If no tax is owed (and in fact you are owed a refund), then there are no penalties for not filing.

OTOH it would be a pretty dumb move since the chances that the amount taken out of your checks was exactly right is very small, and you’d be leaving hundreds or thousands of dollars in refunds unclaimed.
by wat10000 | 2025-10-16 16:52:46+00:00
I completely agree with the goal, but I don't think that making it difficult to fire employees is a good way to achieve it. That's essentially funding welfare with a randomized and hidden tax on employers. It would be better if firing for performance was reasonably easy, but new jobs are plentiful and welfare programs allow a reasonable life between jobs. (And, of course, for those who can't work.)
by cudgy | 2025-10-16 16:52:57+00:00
Layoffs indicate a poorly run, inefficient company, especially if other companies in the same industry had fewer layoffs. Typically this means that the company hired and trained more workers than it needed; their estimates of future opportunity was wrong relative to other companies that did not require layoffs because they’re hiring was based on more accurate estimates.

Another factor is that retained employees that learn of companies layoff frequently become concerned about their own position and the treatment of the workers that were laid off, reducing employee morale. High performers may start looking for another job in order to avoid expected future layoffs.

Then there’s the impact on potential future employees, who will also know about the layoffs. These employees will be aware of recently layoffs and will expect more money from said company who will also have to train the new employee that replaced the one they laid off before.

Finally, you have the impact on potential customers or existing customers. Some customers have relationships with employees that are laid off, and this can be jarring. The customers may become concerned about the liability of the company or the management of the company, potentially moving all our part of their business to another firm.

All of these effects are not typically beneficial to the company or it’s shareholders.
by pessimizer | 2025-10-16 16:53:29+00:00
What is the point of this comment? Free Software is the best of course. Open Source can be relicensed into Free Software, or relicensed into anything, as long as you keep the attribution or whatever little consideration they ask. So although Open Source is a corporate tool, at least the current snapshot is still equal to the best.

This is below Open Source. And it's claiming to be Open Source. You've made the case of why Open Source is a lowered standard, but you seem to be doing it to defend an even lower standard.

This is like defending an Open Source product calling itself "Free Software." It doesn't make any sense. People can release under any license they want, they wrote the software. The problem is lying about it.