MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sneak | 2025-12-18 15:21:40+00:00
> The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support.

No, the real problem is that we have no reasonable alternatives when companies misbehave. There is no meaningful way to exist in society today without an Apple or Google account, and that's actually insane. It's doubly insane for people who aren't citizens of the United States (although the CCP addressed this by requiring Apple make a separate iCloud for them).

The solution isn't to legislate a right to a bank account, it's to preserve the usefulness of cash so banks don't get too far out of line.
by aymenfurter | 2025-12-18 15:21:47+00:00
I built ai3 to control my window manager via chat by exposing the i3 IPC protocol as a toolset for LLM agents. It includes a Next Action prediction feature similar to the tab-complete in AI code editors that anticipates your next action based on current activity. You can also trigger AI based layout optimization and control your desktop through chat. This is an experimental research project so please use it for testing only and be mindful of your data privacy.
by somewhereoutth | 2025-12-18 15:21:48+00:00
My point is that socially beneficial capital intensive projects require, well, a large lump of capital. This can be organised by the state (command economy), or through allowing private accumulation of capital - but here I do include corporations, and indeed financing through loans. It would be quite possible for individuals to have much the same wealth (perhaps modulo time to retirement?), and to be pooling it as share owners of said corporations. This would still be a capitalist system - but a fairer one maybe!
by hotdogsalesman | 2025-12-18 15:21:52+00:00
kitecourier.com - the end-to-end certified mail platform that makes sending legal notices as easy as sending email.

Revenue is very spiky. Some months ~$10k, some ~$100.

Inspired by this Patrick McKenzie thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135833

Certified mail is weirdly powerful leverage. I decided to productize that.
by bzzzt | 2025-12-18 15:22:02+00:00
Of course programs will be worse when non-programmers are in charge of programming. That doesn't mean they shouldn't but lots of indie game attempts fail because the programmer (educated or not) doesn't have a clue about when to refactor and make sure the design of the system matches the intention of the game. You can only tinker until a certain point, after that you're just creating new bugs by fixing other bugs.

ID software once was a small team and they built complex games by writing tight code which was modular and very clear. Lots of their '3d era' contemporaries failed because their engines were sloppy, complicated, buggy and slow.
by ijk | 2025-12-18 15:22:02+00:00
I'm no expert, but having read some archeological papers that do make conclusions like that, the evidence is often quite compelling and well-supported. The context we find something in can convey a lot of data, and conclusions that aren't supported by the evidence are frequently argued against by other archeologists. Granted, if you only read the university press releases or the popular summaries thereof it can be somewhat misleading, but that's more down to the journalism than the research.
by gaigalas | 2025-12-18 15:22:08+00:00
> Make your coding agent prove it first

Agents love to cheat. That's an issue I don't see a horizon for change.

Here's Opus 4.5 trying to cheat its way out of properly implementing compatibility and cross-platform, despite the clear requirements:

https://gist.github.com/alganet/8531b935f53d842db98157e1b8c0...

> Should popen handles work with fgets/fread/fwrite? PHP supports this. Option A: Create a minimal pipe_io_stream device / Option B: Store FILE* in io_private with a flag / Option C: Only support pclose, require explicit stream wrapper for reads.

If I asked for compatibility, why give me options that won't fully achieve it?

It actually tried to "break check" my knowledge about the interpreter (test me if I knew enough to catch it), and proposed shortcuts all the way through the chat.

I don't want to have to pepper my chats with variations on "don't cheat". I mean, I can do it, but it seems like boilerplate.

I wish I had some similar testing-related chats to share. Agents do that all the time.

This is the major blocker right now for AI-assisted automated verification, and one of the reasons why this isn't well developed beyond general directions (give it screenshots, make it run the command, etc).
by mvpeng1 | 2025-12-18 15:22:18+00:00
https://www.tonediff.com Building ToneDiff — a free tool for instant A/B testing of audio gear. Got fed up with 20 YouTube tabs and endless scrubbing when choosing speakers, mics, or guitar pickups — so I built this.

Two main modes: Upload your own audio files and have basic analytics (waveform, spectrum). YouTube video-based virtual tracks (no more 1 hour- timeline seek)

I'm going to add blind test, match mode, user track reorder. Very much a pet project, still rough around the edges. Feedback and feature ideas very welcome!
by Svip | 2025-12-18 15:22:27+00:00
In Denmark, you can buy a vanity plate (ønskenummerplade) for 8'000 DKK (needs renewal every 8 years), and it can be between 2 and 7 characters long; but the best part is that they permit all Danish letters, including Æ, Ø and Å. One could likely write a script quickly to check these platforms for short combinations, such as ØÅ, which appears to be available.
by naasking | 2025-12-18 15:22:42+00:00
Our industry never exhibited an abundance of caution, but if you have trouble understanding the value of AI here, consider that you are akin to an assembly language programmer in the 1970s or 80s who couldn't understand why people are so gung-ho about these compilers that just output worse code than they could write by hand. In retrospect, compilers only got better and better, and familiarity with programming languages and compilation toolchains became a valuable productivity skill and the market for assembly language programming either stagnated, or shrank.

Doesn't it seem plausible to you that, whatever the ratio of bugs in AI-generated code today, that bug count is only going to really go down? Doesn't it then seem reasonable to say that programmers should start familiarizing themselves with these new tools, where the pitfalls are and how to avoid them?
by adrian_b | 2025-12-18 15:22:43+00:00
The very important difference is that what are called functions in Fortran are called pure functions in other languages, i.e. functions that do not modify their arguments or global variables and which are idempotent, helping program optimization.

This means that Fortran functions are functions in the mathematical sense. In most early programming languages "functions" were functions in the mathematical sense, while other kinds of subprograms were named procedures or subroutines. The use of the term "function" for any kind of procedure has been popularized mainly by the C language, even if there were earlier languages where all procedures could return a value and even where any program statement was an expression, starting with LISP.

Many C/C++ compilers, e.g. gcc, support language extensions allowing functions to be marked as pure. This is always recommended where applicable, for better program optimization.

This difference is much more important than the fact that subroutines do not return a value.

Many of the "functions" of C/C++ must be written as subroutines in Fortran, with an extra argument for the result, but because they modify some arguments or global variables, not because they were written as "void" functions in C/C++.
by WhyOhWhyQ | 2025-12-18 15:22:53+00:00
We just need to reduce the number of guns. I've not met a 2nd amendment supporter who understands this basic idea. They are always convinced one of the following retorts should be the end of the conversation (they also proudly think you've never heard these cliched arguments):

- They have knife stabbings in China. (Yes. A gun is more lethal.)

- A bad guy can still get a gun. (Yes.)

- Hand guns are more dangerous than rifles. (This means let's reduce both.)

- The gun doesn't kill people. People kill people. (This means let's reduce how many people have guns.)

- Mass shootings aren't the majority of gun deaths. (Let's reduce the total gun deaths and mass shootings then.)

Come up with as many ridiculous retorts as you like. If you had reduced the total number of guns, most of the shootings could not have happened.
by simonw | 2025-12-18 15:23:04+00:00
I need to expand on this idea a bunch, but I do think it's one of the key answers to the ongoing questions people have about LLMs replacing human workers.

Human collaboration works on trust.

Part of trust is accountability and consequences. If I get caught embezzling money from my employer I can lose my job, harm my professional reputation and even go to jail. There are stakes!

I computer system has no stakes, and cannot take accountability for its actions. This drastically limits what it makes sense to outsource to that system.

A lot of this comes down to my work on prompt injection. LLMs are fundamentally gullible: an email assistant might respond to an email asking for the latest sales figures by replying with the latest (confidential) sales figures.

If my human assistant does that I can reprimand or fire them. What am I meant to do with an LLM agent?
by purerandomness | 2025-12-18 15:23:16+00:00
> We're very close to invokers being baseline

Well why not have the benefits of invokers, but today - with HTMX?

HTMX could eventually switch its implementation to use invokers under the hood in the future, and you'd have the convenience of using declarative behaviors on your buttons, today.

> autocomplete can actually be fulfilled with a datalist element

I wish that the spec would cover more use cases, but last time I tried to use it, I couldn't, because it has really bad UX, and is inconsistent across browsers.

Also, like you mentioned, it only works for small data sets that you can deliver with the initial HTML, not large amounts of data which reside on the server.

You could argue that these are use cases where you wouldn't require an auto-complete in the first place, because the data set is too small.
by visarga | 2025-12-18 15:23:36+00:00
I agree with the author overall. Manual testing is what I call "vibe testing" and I think by itself is insufficient, no matter if you or the agent wrote the code. If you build your tests well, using the coding agent becomes smooth and efficient, and the agent is safe to do longer stretches of work. If you don't do testing, the whole thing is just a bomb ticking in your face.

My approach to coding agents is to prepare a spec at the start, as complete as possible, and develop a beefy battery of tests as we make progress. Yesterday there was a story "I ported JustHTML from Python to JavaScript with Codex CLI and GPT-5.2 in hours". They had 9000+ tests. That was the secret juice.

So the future of AI coding as I see it ... it will be better than pre-2020, we will learn to spec and plan good tests, and the tests are actually our contract the code does what is supposed to do. You can throw away the code and keep the specs and tests and regenerate any time.
by weatherlite | 2025-12-18 15:23:59+00:00
> Almost anyone can prompt an LLM to generate a thousand-line patch and submit it for code review. That’s no longer valuable. What’s valuable is contributing code that is proven to work.

That's really not a great development for us. If our main point is now reduced to accountability over the result with barely any involvement in the implementation - that's very little moat and doesn't command a high salary. Either we provide real value or we don't ...and from that essay I think it's not totally clear what the value is - it seems like every QA, junior SWE or even product manager can now do the job of prompting and checking the output.
by zenolove | 2025-12-18 15:24:08+00:00
Hey! Would you consider trialing some help, even part-time initially, and pro-bono, to see how it goes? As a developer since childhood, and product manager for most of my career, with (I dare say) some out-of-the-box, simplicity, "cheap is best" professional deviation, and sex-positivity in my personal and artistic life, maybe there's something we can get together on? Give me a shout! zenojevski at gmail dot com, or https slash slash zeno dot love. At the very least we can have some fun and maybe keep writing :D Zeno
by g947o | 2025-12-18 15:24:11+00:00
even for "downloads 2MB of JavaScript", it is often simply because the site is badly written (e.g. not careful about managing dependency), not necessarily because "JAVASCRIPT BAD".

Just look at the source code of amazon.com. It's a mess. But I bet it is more of an organizational problem than a tech stack problem, for a website worked on by literally hundreds of teams (if not more) where everyone crams their little feature in the website home page
Show HN: Deployment freezes for GitHub environments (DeployFreeze)
by ethanrc | 2025-12-18 15:24:28+00:00
Hi HN; I built DeployFreeze after getting tired of engineers frantically pinging “@here, don’t deploy product-service” during incidents and investigations.

DeployFreeze is a GitHub App that creates deployment freezes using GitHub’s custom deployment protection rules (https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/deploy/configure-...). It pauses deployments to specific environments without blocking merges or CI, and gives teams a single place to see what’s frozen and why.

This is particularly useful in monorepos, where you might want to freeze `production-api` while keeping `production-web` or staging deployable. The app only uses deployment webhooks and doesn’t require access to source code.

If you don’t use GitHub Actions but still see “Deployments” in your repo sidebar, this may work for you. Many platforms use GitHub’s deployment API behind the scenes, so you may already be set up even if you didn’t explicitly configure it.

I’d love feedback on how your teams handle deployment freezes today or any thoughts on this approach. There’s a 30-day free trial if you want to try it for upcoming end-of-year freezes.
by p0d | 2025-12-18 15:24:48+00:00
I am in my 50s and have learned that learning how to deal with unknowns is often more important than knowing.

For example, I do know what triggers some of the negative thoughts that come into my head which used to cause me stress. I now have my own way to respond to these thoughts and they do not cause me stress. Through time the response becomes automatic.

I recommend picking a healthy response and letting this be the solution.
by rmnclmnt | 2025-12-18 15:24:50+00:00
> As software engineers we…

That’s the thing. People exposing such rude behavior usually are not, or haven’t been in a looong time…

As for the local testing part not being performed, this is a slippery slope I’m fighting everyday: more and more cloud based services and platforms are used to deploy software to run with specific shenanigans and running it locally requires some kind of deep craft and understanding. Vendor lock-in is coming back in style (e.g. Databricks)
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2025-12-18 15:25:06+00:00
You are missing a point. The only thing it really does is force people to pursue other forms as online channel is too polluted for anyone with sense/options/skill ( or all of the above ). So it leaves desperate, optionless, those without skills and everyone else who fell through the cracks. Another system undermined for no clear benefit. It does not benefit the employer. It does not benefit the employee. It does benefit some data brokers.. and only then for a bit until the rest of the market catches up..

But was it worth it?
by mark_l_watson | 2025-12-18 15:25:07+00:00
I second this: I have spent about five hours this week experimenting with Nemotron 3 nano for both tool use and code analysis: it is excellent! and fast!

Relevant to the linked Google blog: I feel like getting Nemotron 3 nano and Gemini 3 flash in one week is an early Christmas gift. I have lived with the exponential improvements in practical LLM tools over the last three years, but this week seems special.
by vablings | 2025-12-18 15:25:14+00:00
Sadly, the real issue here is with the banks and the payment processors. It's very likely that they have metrics for larger marketplaces about being below a threshold for fraud. Online game stores like steam live, breathe and die by payment processing.

This was the reason why free trade was removed from RuneScape back in the day and it wasn't even a Jagex issue. People would go to 3rd party gold selling websites and then pay for gold with stolen credit cards. They could easily keep the money because the trade cannot be reversed without a moderator and what they were doing was against the rules so everyone would just get banned. The payment processors saw a bunch of fraud related to a game called RuneScape and told Jagex if they dont fix this then they will be blacklisted.
by mothballed | 2025-12-18 15:25:17+00:00
1) Childhood independence protection

2) At the bare minimum, victims of CPS reports should be able to face their accuser. Currently laws anonymize reporters, this is not compatible with an open and balanced justice system. Also, needs to be heavy penalties and liabilities for abusing CPS reporting -- asymmetrical risks would end up with just getting the same result over and over again.

3) Cultural change. People that curtail child independence of others' children should be shamed, publicly. People that let their kids have independence, left the hell alone.
by allan_s | 2025-12-18 15:25:25+00:00
I would even say that even "just html" is enough for most website/app. We've been using "just html" at my company ( rosaly.com) for 5 years, we've raised 10 million, have hundreds of customer, and nobody ever complained. And the Android/Ios applications are 234 lines of React-Native which is just embedding a webview , a bit of error screen when there's no internet connection , and intercom library for notification.
by wrsh07 | 2025-12-18 15:25:31+00:00
I would argue that the word "proof" in the title might be misleading you.

From the post and the example he links, the point is that if you don't at least look at the running code, you don't know that it works.

In my opinion the point is actually well illustrated by Chris's talk here:

https://v5.chriskrycho.com/elsewhere/seeing-like-a-programme...

(summary of the relevant section if you're not going to click)

>>>

In the talk "Seeing Like a Programmer," Chris Krycho quotes the conductor and composer Eímear Noone, who said:

> "The score is potential energy. It's the potential for music to happen, but it's not the music."

He uses this quote to illustrate the distinction between "software as artifact" (the code/score) and "software as system" (the running application/music). His point is that the code itself is just a static artifact—"potential energy"—and the actual "software" only really exists when that code is executed and running in the real world.
by tedggh | 2025-12-18 15:25:52+00:00
Don’t need to source it. I lived under the regime and still have many relatives there. I know exactly what I am saying by my own experience not by reading a journalist from the NYT. The drug business is very real and has deep roots in the military since the early 2000s so this is not new. Even the presidential plane has been used to transport drugs, that’s well documented. Chavez himself didn’t like it once his son got involved, but he died and Venezuela became the Wild West. There are two factions controlling the country, the ideological one and the “business” one. Both are involved in drug trafficking but the ideological branch supports Cuba and other communist regimes with free oil. Cuba hasn’t paid one dime for oil in more than 25 years. In fact many of the ships leaving Venezuela are bound to Cuba’s “customers” directly. The non ideological branch of the regime hates this “deal”, and many senior military are actually anti-Cuba, they have never been there, reason why the Cuban regime keeps Maduro in power. All of Maduro’s security ring is Cuban for that reason. The non ideological branch made a deal to stay out of oil in exchange for illegal mining. There’s a human and environmental catastrophe happening in the Amazonas state, with natives being displaced or killed and one of the most beautiful naturals reserves in the planet being destroyed. This is also well documented. Most of the gold is sold to Russia and Iran. There’s also some mining for uranium which Iran needs for their nuclear program. And that’s it, there’s really no other economy in the country. Don’t be naive believing Maduro is selling oil and keeping the country funded. As I said the economy is largely supported by “remesas” from the exodus and by the informal economy which is completely dollar based, no one takes local currency there.
by agentultra | 2025-12-18 15:26:01+00:00
There’s an anecdote from one of Djikstra’s essays that strikes at the heart of this phenomenon. I’ll paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact edw number off the top of my head.

A colleague was working on an important subsystem and would ask Djikstra for a review when he thought it was ready. Djikstra would have to stop what he was doing, analyze the code, and would find a grievous error or edge case. He would point it out to the colleague who would then get back to work. The colleague would submit his code for review again and this could carry on enough times that Djikstra got annoyed.

Djikstra proposed a solution. His colleague would have to submit with his code some form of proof or argument as to why it was correct and ready to merge. That way Djikstra could save time by only having to review the argument and not all of the code.

There’s a way of looking at LLM output as Djikstra’s colleague. It puts a lot of burden on the human using this tool to review all of the code. I like Doctorow’s mental model of a reverse centaur. The LLM cannot reason and so won’t provide you with a sound argument. It can probably tell you what it did and summarize the code changes it made… but it can’t decide to merge those changes. It needs a human, the bottom half of the centaur, to do the last bit of work here. Because that’s all we’re doing when we let these tools do most of the work for us: we’re here to take the blame.

And all it takes is an implementation of what we’re trying to build already, every open source library ever, all of SO, a GW of power from a methane power plant, an Olympic pool of water and all of your time reviewing the code it generates.

At the end of the day it’s on you to prove why your changes and contributions should be merged. That’s a lot of work! But there’s no shortcuts. Luckily you can reason while the LLMs struggle with that so use it while you can when choosing to use such tools.
by rdtsc | 2025-12-18 15:26:02+00:00
> They are scientists and conservators doing their best, working away in museum backrooms.

Yesterday’s kids are today’s scientists. You what the most popular archeological student prank is? - It’s for a team to bury a modern piece of pottery in another team’s site. So I am not at all surprised if they wanted to play a few practical jokes on the public’s ignorance.

Trolling here means that they followed the tradition of restoring the items - use just the materials they found on the statues. Well the materials found were the base layers - so that’s what you restore. You don’t go adding shading or fades or iridescent paint because it looks cute. They create art that looks like an 8 year old painted it, then laugh at the public “ooh-ing and ah-ing” over the “beautiful” restorations.
by nicole_express | 2025-12-18 15:26:20+00:00
The big problem I have with HTMX is the same one I have with React server components and similar concepts; I really like being able to just serve static files. Plus the clear separation of server and client really makes reasoning about a lot of different problem cases a lot easier, that's not something to dismiss lightly. (It's a bit of a 'ship your org chart' case, though)