MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Forgeties79 | 2025-12-09 14:29:52+00:00
We use Costco delivery at my house because it’s 10-15min each way to go there plus an hour at the place shopping at best (long lines are common). With 2 kids you feel that time especially given how frequently you have to shop for groceries.

It’s a more limited selection but there’s plenty to choose from and I’m done picking out my groceries in five minutes. They magically show up at my door for very little extra cost and I don’t have to bicker with my kids about grabbing a bunch of random stuff either.

I’m not saying you’re wrong for feeling that way, but you’d be surprised how much work it is to go to a grocery store, no matter how close it is. It’s important to think about other factors here.
by strogonoff | 2025-12-09 14:30:04+00:00
A decorative element can be fine in a design model, but 1) a good design tends to have no purely decorative elements, and 2) it becomes problematic when the decorative element looks like a meaningful element but does not actually carry meaning (or the intended meaning).

We all recognise an icon in a menu as a meaningful element. Treating it as a decorative element is wrong and adds mental overhead, as we tend to scan every one of those icons (putting it at the beginning of menu text, i.e., to the left for LTR languages, makes it worse). It is well-known we do tend to scan these icons because that is the reason icons work: repeated exposure creates intuition. If this intuition is not put to use, then all such icons are a waste of our attention.

For example, a bullet in a list: fine (differentiates where each list item starts), window shadow or the 3D effect on window close buttons: fine (meaningful in terms if differentiating areas in the GUI, not pretending to do more); whitespace to set apart one thing more from another thing than from the third thing: fine (if that reflects the relationship between those things).

This is all somewhat simplified.
by illdynamics | 2025-12-09 14:30:10+00:00
I'm excited to share that QonQrete v0.5.0 beta is now available for testing and feedback.

QonQrete is a local-first, agentic AI orchestration system designed for secure, observable, and human-in-the-loop software construction. It coordinates autonomous AI agents to plan, execute, and review code generation — all within an isolated sandbox environment on your own infrastructure. Think of it like a local-first, agentic AI “construction yard” that plans, writes, reviews, and version-controls your code inside a safe sandbox on your own machine.

Core Architecture: Three-Agent Pipeline:

InstruQtor - Analyzes tasks and generates detailed execution plans ConstruQtor - Executes the build process and generates code artifacts InspeQtor - Reviews output quality and provides actionable feedback

Security-First Design: All agent execution occurs within containerized environments (Docker/Microsandbox). The host system remains isolated from AI-generated code, ensuring a robust security boundary between orchestration and execution.

Flexible Execution Modes: Run fully autonomous pipelines for rapid iteration, or enable user-gated checkpoints for manual approval at each cycle. The control model adapts to your workflow requirements.

Multi-Provider Support: Supports OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and DeepSeek. Configure different providers per agent to optimize for cost, capability, or preference.

Local-First Architecture: Runs entirely on your infrastructure with no cloud dependencies — a self-hosted alternative to cloud-based AI development platforms. Your API keys, your compute, your data.

Current Status: Core pipeline functionality is operational. The Text-based User Interface (TUI) and Microsandbox runtime are currently in active development.

I welcome feedback, contributions, and discussions from the community.

Repository: https://github.com/illdynamics/qonqrete

#AI #AgenticAI #MultiAgent #DevOps #OpenSource #LLM #Orchestration #AIEngineering #SoftwareDevelopment #Automation #SelfHosted #LocalFirst #Docker #Python
by rurban | 2025-12-09 14:30:18+00:00
My opinion is mostly based on old interviews with Coppola when he was asked why he would make Godfather with Paramount and not United Artists. He said Paramount doesn't care about movies, they are bankers and only care about money. They would not interfere at all with his artistic direction. And they didn't.

Now that we have the Ellison, I don't know anymore. His daughter is excellent, but with a different studio. His son has no idea. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. We'll see.

My European colleagues are mostly worried about more MAGA nonsense in the media with the Ellisons
by OptionOfT | 2025-12-09 14:31:02+00:00
Yea I've seen those too. Made my heart sink.

When you start to think about that statement, and why it was written there, why a company chooses to pay $ to tell you this, you know that inherently something went REALLY wrong in the past.

And because it's a company, they're doing the bare minimum to fix it, as to minimize the impact on their bottom line.

It reminds me of the ads against a certain prop in CA, the one that would make app workers (?) employees.

Advertisements taken out by Lyft, Uber, etc, all to sway people.

When companies want you to do something it's not in your best interest. It's in theirs.
AI Transforms the Real Estate
by Olivia8 | 2025-12-09 14:31:15+00:00
AI calling agents are transforming real estate by automating lead follow-up, qualification, and appointment scheduling. These voice systems contact new leads 24/7, ask key questions, and sync results directly into your CRM, helping agents stay consistent without spending evenings and weekends on calls. The benefits are clear: better lead conversion, higher productivity, and valuable data insights that improve strategy. Tools like https://coldi.ai/ offer brand-tuned voice agents, built-in appointment setting, and multiple agent personas to match different markets. To get the most from AI calling, real estate teams should integrate it with their MLS/CRM, personalize scripts, monitor quality, and ensure compliance. AI isn’t replacing agents — it’s amplifying them. By automating routine tasks, agents can focus on relationships and closing deals. In today’s digital market, AI calling has become a must-have for scalable, efficient real estate operations.
Show HN: Rendria – Automate image generation via API
by ovubs_khalid | 2025-12-09 14:31:34+00:00
Hey HN! I built an API for automated image generation. After too many job rejections, I decided to just ship something instead, so I cloned Bannerbear and built my own version.

Design a template once in the visual editor, then render unlimited variations by sending JSON with your text and images.

Use cases: blog thumbnails, certificates, social posts, invoices, receipts, or anything that needs the same design with different content.

How it works:

Drag-and-drop editor to design your template

POST request to modify any layer (text, images, shapes)

Get back production PNG/JPG/WebP(thinking about adding PDF in the nearest future)

Supports bulk generation from spreadsheets

Built with React, Node, and headless Chromium for pixel-perfect renders. Getting sub-second render times with Chromium took some work.

Try it at https://rendria.com/

Would love feedback on the API design or tips on marketing this kind of product!
by raddan | 2025-12-09 14:31:43+00:00
> there's clearly no good done by the existence of social media.

If this were true, I’m sure that you wouldn’t have any trouble advocating that we ban it. Many of us remember social media before the algorithmic feed took over, and it was a good way to stay connected to friends and family. Some us also were lucky enough to experience a protracted period of socializing on the internet in the pre-social media days: MUDs, web forums, chat rooms, etc. I enjoyed all of those, in my teen and college years, and like you I count myself fortunate that I was not exposed to social media during a formative time of my life. I think that’s why I hesitate to say that we should outright ban it: I know that the internet _can_ coexist (and even augment) a healthy social life. That said, I don’t use social media at all anymore (unless you count HN), so I’ve definitely voted with my eyeballs.
by Levitz | 2025-12-09 14:31:56+00:00
I'd disagree but either way throw another factor in: non-native speakers and cross-language usability.

If your software is in some language and you are looking at docs or a videotutorial or something in another language, it's often hard to translate specific terms, Icons don't change language. They also help if you have to do something in another machine that uses a different language for some reason.
by alecco | 2025-12-09 14:32:15+00:00
(repost)

- Let's limit children's use of social media and screens. - Great! Let's do it. - We need to identify who is 18+, so here's your digital ID for everything. And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. - WTF! - That "WTF" just cost you 100 social credits.

UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and next USA. It's amazing how coordinated it is. They are using dog-whistles like CSAM, immigration, crime, and now children's wellbeing.
by radanskoric | 2025-12-09 14:32:50+00:00
In theory you're 100% right, a true unit test is completely isolated from the rest of the system and than a lot of the problems disappear.

In reality, that is also not free. It imposes some restrictions on the code. Sometimes being pragmatic, backing off from the ideal leads to faster development and quicker deliver of value to the users. Rails is big on these pragmatic tradeoffs. The important thing is that we know when and why we're making the tradeoff.

Usually I go with Rails defaults and usually it's not a problem. Sometimes, when the code is especially complex and perhaps on the critical path, I turn up the purity dial and go down the road you describe exactly for the benefits you describe.

But when I decide that sticking to the defaults the is right tradeoff I want to get the most of it and use Fixtures (or Factories) in the optimal way.
by glenstein | 2025-12-09 14:33:02+00:00
I think the concerns with UBI are (1) it takes away the leverage of a labor force to organize and strike for better benefits or economic conditions, and (2) following the block grant model, can be a trojan horse "benefit" that sets the stage for effectively deleting systems of welfare support that have been historically resilient due to institutional support and being strongly identified with specific constituencies. When the benefit is abstracted away from a constituency it's easier to chop over time.

I don't exactly know how I feel about those, but I respect those criticisms. I think the grand synthesis is that UBI exists on top of existing safety nets.
by neilv | 2025-12-09 14:33:25+00:00
I recently had to look at a particular kind of marketing, as a techie.

And suddenly I realized why Pinterest was so highly ranked on Google image searches.

It's not so much about a useful tool for individual users; rather, it's a marketing venue for manufacturing a lifestyle image that lets you extract money from people.

Like a fashion magazine with a greater illusion of participation.

Of course someone was going to decide that vinyl -- started as fringe genuine/hipster, and turned into marketable lifestyle -- had been milked or moated. The timing is right for you to extract more money for yourself with a new lifestyle twist to sell.

The exact gimmick doesn't much matter. Fire up the memetic lifestyle machine: we've got consumers (producers of money) to milk.
by bigmealbigmeal | 2025-12-09 14:33:43+00:00
> I was surprised because I always considered them to be the worst physical medium for music.

That's a big part of why they're cool.

Imperfection is beautiful. We feel this intuitively when it comes to loving someone, or when it comes to impressionistic art. It really is the same thing with music.

I believe the typical response is that you can simulate that imperfection on digital media... but cassette lovers would argue this is tantamount to putting a photograph through a 'Da Vinci' filter in Photoshop. It's missing the point. There's more to music than what it sounds like. Where it came from, what you did to play it, these are all part of the experience. The context of a piece of a media, the means by which you listen to it, where it came from -- these change how the music feels, even if there is no difference in how it sounds.

Back when vinyl or cassettes were the only option, sure, the response is "screw your romanticism". But now that we have perfect digital media always available, there is romance in getting to choose something fragile and imperfect and precious. People like that feeling.
by ownagefool | 2025-12-09 14:33:43+00:00
Honestly, I think that's people reacting to the market more than it's the market reacting to people.

If your average zoomer had the ability to get a job for life that paid comparably well by a company that would look after them, I don't think loyalty would be an issue.

The problem is today, sticking with a company typically means below market reward, which is particularly acute given the ongoing cost of living crises affecting the west.
by phantasmish | 2025-12-09 14:33:53+00:00
The pitch of the centrist/“3rd way” wing that’s still, incredibly, ascendant even after the massive party shift on the other side that was teed up in the late ‘00s and realized in 2016, is basically “we’re just like Reagan but we like the gays and abortion a little more, and like guns a lot less”.

It’s a shit message, but they’re apparently permanently damaged by the 1980 landslide re-election loss to Reagan and incapable of moving on. IDK if liberal democracy will survive here long enough for us to see if another wing of the party can ever get those folks to let them try something else.

[edit] not for nothing, Obama lightly hinted at a move away from that in his campaigning (if not his governing) and it seemed to work pretty damn well. Why they didn’t double down on that is anyone’s guess, but I’d suppose it rhymes with “bobbying”.
by onionisafruit | 2025-12-09 14:34:28+00:00
I use the pattern you describe, but not in Ruby. I use code to build fixtures through sql inserts. The code creates a new db whose name includes a hash of the test data (actually a hash the source files that build the fixtures).

Read-only tests only need to run the bootstrap code if their particular fixture hasn’t been created on that machine before. Same with some tests that write data but can be encapsulated in a transaction that gets rolled back at the end.

Some more complex tests need an isolated db because their changes can’t be contained in a db transaction (usually because the code under test commits a db transaction). These need to run the fixture bootstrap every time. We don’t have many of these so it’s not a big deal that they take a second or two. If we had more we would probably use separate, smaller fixtures for these.
by JeremyNT | 2025-12-09 14:34:35+00:00
Yes, and as much as I hate to defend modern UI designers, I believe the icons in the menus here are actually extremely helpful (even when duplicated).

In the first example, when I want to find the option to add or delete a row in this massive menu, the icons clearly convey the purpose. I can instantly filter a huge list of possibilities down to a few relevant entries.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-12-09 14:34:37+00:00
I reviewed the last twelve months of generation history for all balancing areas in California using electricitymaps.com before making my statement, and while one balancing area has any coal generation capacity remaining (WAPA Desert Southwest with 204MW), there is no evidence it has been fired in the last twelve months [1]. This is a bit tricky, because of the balancing areas's service area [2] and it doesn't appear there is a coal generation in their service area [3]. I'll make a note to call their media number to get more detail about generation mix and review EIA's latest EIA-860M [4]. It may be Apache Station [5] near Tucson from a quick glance before I've had coffee, but they are owned by Arizona Electric Power Cooperative.

Appreciate you pointing this out!

[1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-SW-WALC/12mo/mon... (hover over coal on the left nav)

[2] https://www.wapa.gov/about-wapa/regions/dsw/about/

[3] https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map

[4] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/

[5] https://www.gem.wiki/Apache_Generating_Station
by anExcitedBeast | 2025-12-09 14:34:46+00:00
To gently push back, there are absolutely accountants and roofers who dedicate their free time upskilling or in adjacent hobbies. Many (perhaps most?) other fields have are conferences and journals, certifications, prestige jobs and grindhouse jobs, side hustles, and all the other trappings that feel unique to us. I'm not saying the distribution curve is the same, but it's easy to think this field is more unique than it really is.

And to the counterexample, the country is full of developers who just want to do their 40 hours and go home to their entirely unrelated life and hobbies. Incidentally, I have a friend who just got a job like this. He's the only developer in a regional materials company, and he loves being done with work at 5 (usually closer to 4) so he can go hang out with his kid.
Show HN: Tracking book mentions across podcast episodes
by steyeomans | 2025-12-09 14:35:03+00:00
Hi HN! I built this tool because I wanted to answer a simple question for myself: which books come up most often across the podcasts I listen to?

The pipeline is straightforward at a high level: transcribe episodes with faster_whisper running locally on an RTX 3060, run the text through GPT-5-mini to pull out structured book mentions, and store everything in Azure SQL and Blob storage. The frontend is a small Flask app using HTMX, Tailwind, and some D3 for the visualizations.

The part that turned out to be much more time consuming than expected was deduping. Everything else scaled nicely, but normalizing book titles is still the one piece I can’t fully automate without quality drifting. Fuzzy matching gets you most of the way, but the long tail of book names is huge. I ended up building a tiny internal Flask UI just to confirm or split fuzzy matches by hand, it also lets me review the context for the book mention to ensure accuracy. It's the only place in the system where a human is still in the loop.

A few other unexpected issues came up: some podcast RSS feeds randomly duplicate or link to broken episodes, CUDA can crash if I’m not careful with garbage collection between Whisper runs, and LLM extraction occasionally fails if the model doesn’t return exactly the JSON shape I expect.

One surprising pattern emerged: the long tail is enormous. A handful of books are mentioned constantly, but thousands more appear exactly once.

If you want to see the current state of it, the reports and visualizations are here: https://www.mavensignal.com

Happy to answer anything about the pipeline, LLM prompting, dedupe logic, or the stack in general.
by civeng | 2025-12-09 14:35:31+00:00
Asking this question leads me to suspect you have no true curiosity or willingness to learn a new perspective as it's literally a Google away. And then you will reply in another direction that justifies your narrow world view that is of course justified 100% by your experience. This is not effective discourse and I see you doing it all over.

It’s a well-documented economic concept. You can find plenty on it if you're actually curious about the perspective. And understanding it thoroughly is a strong prerequisite to seriously engaging with other people with intent to learn. It's work you need do yourself.
by adriand | 2025-12-09 14:35:39+00:00
> They are probably wading through a bunch of stuff right now, but given the context you have given us, its probably not "scrum meetings"..

This made me laugh. Fair enough. ;)

In terms of the time estimations: if your point is that I don't have hard data to back up my assertions, you're absolutely correct. I was always terrible at estimating how long something would take. I'm still terrible at it. But I agree with the OP. I think the labour required is down 90%.

It does feel to me that we're getting into religious believer territory. There are those who have firsthand experience and are all-in (the believers), there are those who have firsthand experience and don't get it (the faithless), and there are those who haven't tried it (the atheists). It's hard to communicate across those divides, and each group's view of the others is essentially, "I don't understand you".
by radanskoric | 2025-12-09 14:35:55+00:00
When you say inheritance do you mean DRY as in "Don't repeat yourself"?

I'm not sure what you mean by inheritance in tests but DRY is criminally overused in tests. That could be a whole separate article but the tradeoffs are very different between test and app code and repetition in the test code is much less problematic and sometimes even desirable.
by groby_b | 2025-12-09 14:36:09+00:00
You can go faster once you understand the domain reasonably well that you could have written it yourself. This allows you to write better designs, and steer LLMs in the right direction.

"Vibe coding" though is moving an ever growing pile of nonunderstanding and complexity in front of you, until you get stuck. (But it does work until you've amassed a big enough pile, so it's good for smaller tasks - and then suddenly extremely frustrating once you reach that threshold)

Can you go 10x? Depends. I haven't tried any really large project yet, but I can compress fairly large things that would've taken a week or two pre-LLM into a single lazy Sunday.

For larger projects, it's definitely useful for some tasks. ("Ingest the last 10k commits, tell me which ones are most likely to have broken this particular feature") - the trick is finding tasks where the win from the right answer is large, and the loss from the wrong one is small. It's more like running algorithmic trading on a decent edge than it is like coding :)

It definitely struggles to do successfully do fully agentic work on very large code bases. But... I've also not tried too much in that space yet, so take that with a grain of salt.
by FieryMechanic | 2025-12-09 14:36:31+00:00
The boss battles weren't that hard. The issue was the un-skippable cut-scenes.

Generally. I don't like playable dream sequences or artistic filler sequences in games. I feel like there are a lot of people that working in gaming that couldn't get into Movies/TV and as a result try to insert that sort of story telling into a form of entertainment where it doesn't belong.

The best in game story telling IMO was the Doom 2016 game, where the physicality of the character was done through the short sequences where control was briefly taken away. Unfortunately they undid this (mostly) in subsequent sequels .
by gethly | 2025-12-09 14:37:02+00:00
The UI matters A LOT. We are the creators who know the product inside and out to the last comma in the code. This makes us completely blind to what our users actually see.

We design our UIs to be functional, because of the aforementioned. But the users have absolutely no idea what is going on under the hood. The UI is THE product to them.

So as a fellow founder/architect/... i strongly urge you to hire a professional designer who will create a CONSISTENT and INTUITIVE user interface. YOU will not see much value in that but your users WILL.

Personal anecdote, when I launched my last project, Gethly.com, I asked a friend to do some user stuff and give me some feedback. I very quickly realised that I had a lot of work ahead of me when he told me he had no idea how to do absolutely basic things because of the wording used in the UI(nomenclature can become a problem) or click a link that was staring him right in the face was completely invisible to him. Again, I call this "founder's blindness" type of thing where we are incapable of seeing our own work through user's eyes as we have too much knowledge of the whole thing and cannot even comprehend how someone would be unable to do a, in our eyes, most basic thing.