MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ninadpathak | 2026-01-18 10:16:49+00:00
This is regulatory capture with a tech veneer. The "no house" framing is theater—Kalshi Trading exists exactly to be the house, market makers extract spreads, and the CFTC (1 commissioner, gutted staff) is unprepared to police this. The insider trading vulnerabilities are severe (Maduro trade, dated releases), and the platforms admit they don't care. Real talk: sophisticated traders with information asymmetry will extract wealth from retail traders at scale. The Sudeith profile glosses over the three class action suits alleging gambling addiction and the Reddit user who's now behind on bills. This is FanDuel but for geopolitics. The political betting implications are worth actual concern—when elections become $2B/week markets, misinfo becomes rationalized, and insiders have $500k incentive to influence outcomes. But hey, Trump Jr.'s on the board so this'll get zero regulatory scrutiny.
by elktown | 2026-01-18 10:16:59+00:00
> the field has become lucrative enough it has attracted people who are interested in the money and not the craft

Yup, exactly.

> I'd use unrealistic to describe Handmade, proud is also accurate and works too

In certain settings definitely. But even in those corporate settings where it's unrealistic I'd rather work with one than not. If not applied dogmatically, that corner of the corp has a good chance of being an oasis. But a fleeting one perhaps.
by AlanLan | 2026-01-18 10:17:04+00:00
The enduring relevance of Bruce Dawson’s analysis lies not just in the "1.3 quintillion" error bound, but in the fundamental tension between hardware-level heuristics and mathematical truth. Intel’s reliance on a 66-bit approximation of $\pi$ in the fsin instruction is a relic of an era that prioritized cycle-count over formal correctness—a compromise that is unacceptable in today's high-precision and latency-sensitive stacks.From the perspective of Modern C++, the real "killer feature" isn't just better syntax, but the ability to enforce Resource Sovereignty through consteval and compile-time evaluation. We no longer have to treat the FPU as a source of truth.By leveraging std::numbers for precise constants and moving transcendental reductions into the consteval domain, we can effectively bypass the flaky x87/AVX intrinsics altogether. During constant evaluation, the compiler (Clang/GCC) utilizes high-precision software-based math libraries (like MPFR) to fold these values into the binary. The resulting executable doesn't "calculate" the sine of a large constant at runtime; it simply loads a bit-perfect result.This is the essence of modern engineering discipline: transforming a runtime hardware risk into a compile-time invariant. If your "steady state" relies on legacy hardware instructions for period reduction, you aren't building a deterministic system; you're just gambling on Intel's error bounds.
by another_twist | 2026-01-18 10:17:12+00:00
If big companies could align themselves quickly they could copy your software since 10years ago. The issue is unwillingness. Why would Meta bother with copying a SaaS ? They are making money head over fist with their ads business. Keep in mind how much money big tech makes. Mark Zuckerberg personally is worth 100B dollars, most startups will be lucky to hit that number in their lifetime. Point is, its bot worth their time to pursue new ideas but rather buy out existing ones. Which is good news.
by olirex99 | 2026-01-18 10:17:34+00:00
Hello HN! This is my first open source project, Git Guide. It is a community-curated travel directory designed to replace SEO spam and fake reviews with a transparent commit history.

The project relies entirely on Markdown files and GitHub Actions—no database or servers. Users propose places via Issues, and once a voting threshold is met, a script automatically validates the location and commits it to the repository. This ensures total transparency without black-box algorithms.

I would love your feedback!
Show HN: Teamlibra/ry: a Zig framework for Cursor that makes prompting better
by keatonlivermore | 2026-01-18 10:17:46+00:00
We've been running Cursor Ultra ($200/month) in Auto Mode for extended sessions — sometimes 8+ hours of autonomous development. This repository is the result: 170k+ lines of Zig, a complete RISC-V64 operating system.

*The Cursor Ultra Experience:*

Auto Mode changes everything. Instead of prompting line-by-line, we describe high-level goals:
- "Fix all compilation errors in the JIT compiler"
- "Add TCP socket support with proper error handling"
- "Refactor this function to be under 64 lines"

The AI then works autonomously: reading files, understanding context, making coordinated changes across the codebase, writing tests, updating documentation. It's pair programming where your partner has read every file and never gets tired.

*What makes the code different:*

1. *AI-friendly style guide* – We created "Grain Style" specifically for AI-assisted development:
- 64-line function maximum (2^6)
- 128-character line maximum (2^7)
- No recursion
- 2+ assertions per function
- Explicit types (u32/u64 never usize)
- Every comment explains "why"

The AI follows these rules more consistently than humans would. 48 of 56 kernel files are fully compliant.

2. *Pure Zig* – No C dependencies except libc for host tools. Zig's comptime features let us do things that would require macros or code generation in C.

3. *JIT Compiler* – Working x86_64 JIT that translates RISC-V instructions to native code. Near-native speed on x86 hosts.

4. *249 Tests* – Essential for AI-written code. The AI writes the tests too.

*Technical highlights:*

- Kernel boots on QEMU RISC-V64 with virt machine
- 60+ syscalls (process, memory, IPC, network, audio, filesystem)
- TCP/UDP networking with socket abstraction
- Grainscript: a minimal scripting language with lexer, parser, interpreter
- Process scheduler with priority queues
- ELF loader supporting RISC-V64 binaries
- Framebuffer graphics with dirty region tracking

*The economics:*

$200/month for Cursor Ultra. This codebase would have taken a small team several months at $15-20k+ in developer costs. We built it in weeks.

The catch: you still need to know what you're building. AI amplifies capability, it doesn't replace vision.

*Roadmap to Alpha:*

Bottleneck: Basin kernel → Vantage VM → Framework x86_64. Target application: *first-responder dispatch software*.

Contributors needed for ARM aarch64 (Apple Silicon) — Zig → C → Swift macOS app. Also designing Aurora (open-source iOS Cursor alternative) with two inference backends:
- [Cursor CLI Ultra](https://cursor.com) ($200/month)
- [Cerebras WSE](https://cerebras.ai) — spatial RAM, single-threaded bounded compute, deterministic latency

*Current status:*

Kernel boots, REPL works, Grainscript executes.

Built with Zig 0.15.2. Follows [Grain Style](docs/grain_style.md). MIT/Apache-2.0/BSD-3-Clause licensed.
by thegrim000 | 2026-01-18 10:18:57+00:00
I mean, when you look through the site's article history and all you see is numerous negative doomer posts about every single business Musk is involved in: SpaceX, Grok, Tesla, Optimus, Musk himself, you name it, and not a single positive or even neutral post about anything, that's probably a sign that this author is not who you should be going to in order to receive objective, unbiased, rational discussion on the topic.
by frumplestlatz | 2026-01-18 10:18:57+00:00
> but for LLM's they can instantly compose the low level tools for their use case and learn to generalize

Hard disagree; this wastes enormous amounts of tokens, and massively pollutes the context window. In addition to being a waste of resources (compute, money, time), this also significantly decreases their output quality. Manually combining painfully rudimentary tools to achieve simple, obvious things -- over and over and over -- is *not* an effective use of a human mind or an expensive LLM.

Just like humans, LLMs benefit from automating the things they need to do repeatedly so that they can reserve their computational capacity for much more interesting problems.

I've written[1] custom MCP servers to provide narrowly focused API search and code indexing, build system wrappers that filter all spurious noise and present only the material warnings and errors, "edit file" hooks that speculatively trigger builds before the LLM even has to ask for it, and a litany of other similar tools.

Due to LLM's annoying tendency to fall back on inefficient shell scripting, I also had to write a full bash syntax parser and shell script rewriting ruleset engine to allow me to silently and trivially rewrite their shell invocations to more optimal forms that use the other tools I've written, so that they don't have to do expensive, wasteful things like pipe build output through `head`/`tail`/`grep`/etc, which results in them invariably missing important information, and either wandering off into the weeds, or -- if they notice -- consuming a huge number of turns (and time) re-running the commands to get what they need.

Instead, they call build systems directly with arbitrary options, | filters, etc, and magically the command gets rewritten to something that will produce the ideal output they actually need, without eating more context and unnecessary turns.

LLMs benefit from an IDE just like humans do -- even if an "IDE" for them looks very different. The difference is night and day. They produce vastly better code, faster.

[1] And by "I've written", I mean I had an LLM do it.
by Greed | 2026-01-18 10:19:00+00:00
I was part of a user study on Azure back when it first rolled out-- they were looking for seniors with an AWS background to participate in UX research, and I remember walking out of that study with imposter syndrome for the very first time. Spent 60 minutes totally unable to do the thing I wanted to do when I was introduced to Azure for the first time, and I remember thinking... am I a fraud?

No! Not this time, at least. In hindsight everything was named and organized terribly and it hasn't improved much since.
by Yokohiii | 2026-01-18 10:19:24+00:00
I assume you have absolutely no clue what it refers to.

Handmade Hero is a long running yt series by Casey Muratori. He builds a game engine from scratch, no cheats, no shortcuts, straight to the metal (from C-ish perspective). So you learn how to deal with computers to achieve things, fast and efficient, by understanding computers.

At some point Casey thought it was a failure and a waste of time. But to his surprise quite a fanbase evolved around it and it turned that it really helped people to go from zero to "hero". The handmade "movement" relates to this timeline and the aftermath of people thriving from it. My rough definition of "Handmade" dev mentality would be: Ignore the things that seem to make things "easy" (high level software) and learn the actual thing. So you learn what a framebuffer is instead of looking for a drawing api, applicable to different contexts.

That being said is that this foundation doesn't seem to be endorsed by Casey. Their mission goals seem quite shallow, if at all.
by userbinator | 2026-01-18 10:19:30+00:00
Second, they built a 5g mast put didn't put any equipment in it and left it 3 months. Several local threads on Facebook from the tweakers about how it was causing all sorts of completely unrelated problems from tinnitus to covid to mind control. Then someone burned it. There is still no equipment in the cabinet or mast today, nearly 4 years on. No one got 5g.

Reminds me of this infamous decade-old story:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161010203002/http://mybroadban...
by ninadpathak | 2026-01-18 10:19:46+00:00
The convergence story here is really Apple just slowly squishing everyone's design choices. You've got the most-used phone dictating what an emoji "should" look like, and everyone else either falls in line or gets ignored. Yeah, consistency is nice (I guess?) but we've basically let one company's design philosophy become the global standard for emotional expression. Pretty dystopian if you think about it. The real loss is all the cultural nuance getting smoothed away. A revolver doesn't mean the same thing across cultures, but Apple gets to decide that doesn't matter anymore. We're all just using their emoji vocabulary now. Freedom and all that.
by saxelsen | 2026-01-18 10:20:16+00:00
This hit close to home..!

I had a startup some years ago and took angel funding from family. When we were later running out of cash and had to raise professional money to stay alive, the pressure of the expectations I thought my family had because I was on the verge of losing their money caused me debilitating panic attacks.

I still feel the effects 6 years later, but have learned to cope whenever I feel the pressure begin to build. But man did it scar.

OP if there is any advice I can give, it's that you should have a chat with your investor friends about and make sure you feel like you can always walk away.
by littlestymaar | 2026-01-18 10:20:40+00:00
Yes, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

It's not supposed to be a learning source, it's not supposed to be an exhaustive reference on topics, it's not supposed to replace books and it has to be editorialized a lot to match the format.

It's by far the best encyclopedia ever created by mankind, on all metrics, but it's fundamentally an encyclopedia and nothing else.

And similarly about History and Geography YouTube, the problem isn't that they are regurgitated from Wikipedia, it's just YouTube is an entertainment platform.
by rednafi | 2026-01-18 10:20:47+00:00
Every abstraction simplifies a bunch of real-world phenomena. The real world is messy, our understanding keeps shifting, and we’re unreliable narrators in the sense that we’re often not even aware of the gaps in our own understanding, let alone good at expressing it.

No matter how much progress we make, as long as reasoning about complex systems is unavoidable, this doesn’t change. We don’t always know what we want, and we can’t always articulate it clearly.

So people building software end up dealing with two problems at once. One is grappling with the intrinsic, irreducible complexity of the system. The other is trying to read the minds of unreliable narrators, including leadership and themselves.

Tools help with the mechanical parts of the job, but they don’t remove the thinking and understanding bottleneck. And since the incentives of leadership, investors, and the people doing the actual work don’t line up, a tug-of-war is the most predictable outcome.
by acron0 | 2026-01-18 10:20:58+00:00
To put an economic spin on this (that no one asked for), this is also the capitalist nirvana. I don't have an immediate citation but from my experience software engineer salary is usually one of the biggest items on a P&L which prevents the capitalist approaching the singularity: limitless profit margin. Obviously this is unachievable but one of the major obstacles to this is in the process of being destablised and disrupted.
by ninadpathak | 2026-01-18 10:21:05+00:00
This is really well-written but honestly the whole thing screams "why didn't I just use an SDR and Python." Building 12 cascaded filters in discrete components to hit specific cutoff frequencies is... a lot. Like, I get the appeal. You learn filter design, impedance matching, all that. But then he's spending paragraphs tuning Q7's source resistor and measuring bias points with a multimeter to get half the supply voltage. A RTL-SDR dongle and scipy.signal would handle all that in like 50 lines of code and you could adjust everything in real-time without breaking out the soldering iron. I suspect part of the charm is the analog zen thing (which fair) but the practical argument for this approach in 2025 is pretty thin. The recording quality argument also doesn't hold since laptops now have decent audio ADCs. Good on him for the deep dive though, that level of circuit kung fu isn't common anymore.
Show HN: Grok Bikini – A personalized AI tool to "put on a bikini"
by thenextechtrade | 2026-01-18 10:21:36+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m the developer of Grok Bikini. This site is a small experiment I’ve been running lately.

While AI generation is everywhere, I’ve always been frustrated by how “plastic” most results look. To get that raw, photographic skin texture and natural lighting, I went with the Nano Banana model. The level of detail it produces is actually impressive. Moving forward, I’m experimenting with Grok Image to see if I can generate even more "spicy" photos.

What’s new: Custom Face Swap I just launched a "Custom Face Swap" feature. You can upload your own photo, and combined with my built-in "Spicy Mode" prompts, the AI will place you into some pretty intense artistic scenes.

Privacy: No storage, period. I know how sensitive face data is. I insist on in-memory processing. Everything is processed in RAM and destroyed the second the generation is done. I do not store any user photos.

Real talk (The "Struggling" part): Because my prompts are quite "hardcore," you might run into generation failures. Sometimes the safety filters are triggered because it’s "too spicy," or my server is simply struggling to keep up.

If it fails, I’m sorry—it’s not you, it’s my infrastructure. I’m currently "fighting for my life" to fix these bugs. If a generation doesn't go through, please just try another photo.

Internal tests have been pretty mind-blowing—honestly, a bit too hot at times . I’m open to any feedback, whether it’s praise or you just want to roast the site.

site: https://grokbikini.me/
by b65e8bee43c2ed0 | 2026-01-18 10:22:27+00:00
I have this [flagged] comment from 4 years ago, recounting my own perception of the events, and I stand by it

>pre-2018, he was a journalists' sweetheart. they were singing him praises and they didn't bring up attention to his misdeeds

>at some point around that time, he had pissed them off with the "who owns the media?" tweet, and they did a 180 degree turn. he didn't suddenly become eccentric then, his eccentricity started to get extensive negative attention. there's a plethora of media sweethearts who get away with far worse things without a peep from checkmarked firebrands

>in other words, you've changed your mind on cue, and you never had an independent opinion to begin with
by vidarh | 2026-01-18 10:22:32+00:00
Claude has outright told me "this is getting tedious" before proceeding to - directly against instructions - write a script to do the task instead of doing it "manually" (I'd told it not to because I needed more complex assessment than it could do with a script).

There are fairly straightforward fixes, such as either using subagents or script a loop and feed the model each item instead of a list of items, as prompt compliance tends to drop the more stuff is in the context, but, yes, they will "get bored" and look for shortcuts.

Another frequent one is deciding to sample instead of working through every item.
by ninadpathak | 2026-01-18 10:22:36+00:00
This conflates marketing narrative with technical achievement. Yes, 170k lines of Zig is impressive, but the "AI built this" angle glosses over what actually happened. Cursor wrote boilerplate and filled in scaffolding. Keaton still directed every decision, reviewed output, and handled the architecture. The repository shows 1,390 commits from one person using Cursor, not AI working autonomously. Also the tone gets weird mixing Castaneda warrior philosophy with permaculture housing proposals with technical specs. That's a red flag for me. The actual code might be solid but the narrative sells snake oil ("it would cost 20k in developer time" for a RISC-V kernel skeleton and test scaffolding is honest marketing, not what's claimed). Grain Style is a reasonable coding approach. The project's real value is showing what Cursor's extended context window enables, not AI agency.
by vkazanov | 2026-01-18 10:22:38+00:00
I wouldn't suggest going for a recent X1 as there are some driver issues on Linux.

My current one is a Thinkpad 14s AMD. As somebody who had most smaller Thinkpads and Dells in the last 15 years, this is my favourite machine so far: great battery, a decent GPU, still a Thinkpad, perfect Linux support.
by another_twist | 2026-01-18 10:23:41+00:00
Same here - did the grind for a few years then went straight to big tech. I got offers from the full set of FAANG. I still have a disdain for code monkey work as a job (I really think its practically unskilled labour). I had studied ML to a fairly high level, so landing gigs was easy. Not to mention the money is so much better.
by chungquantin | 2026-01-18 10:23:54+00:00
I’m working on Unibox (https://unibox.today) and I just opened up the public waitlist for the beta.

The core reason I built this is "search fatigue." I’d remember a conversation about a specific budget or a bug, but I couldn't remember if it happened in a Slack DM, a Telegram group, or an email thread. I’d spend 10 minutes jumping between apps just to find one sentence.

I wanted a way to treat all my communications as one searchable database.

You can join the waitlist here: https://unibox.today

Would love to hear your thoughts or any specific integrations that would make your life easier.
by elcapitan | 2026-01-18 10:25:01+00:00
I always had pretty simple fitness watches that just show and log pace and pulse, and that worked fine. Last year I got me a new one which is "smarter", with an app that makes predictions and asseses my fitness level, tracks "sleep quality" and stuff like that, and I came to the same conclusion, luckily without me injuring myself. I'll keep using it for just tracking, but as kind of personal trainer these things completely lack a big part of the feedback cycle about all your other body signals except heart rate, and therefore can send you down a negative, self destructive cycle of injuries.

With regard to the Marathon: Good luck, take it easy with the preparation. Don't let the pressure of investment into the Berlin Marathon (expensive registration fee etc) force you into feeling obliged to stick to plans. There are lots of other marathons and half marathons that are not as big and expensive as the Berlin Marathon, so if things go badly, just cancel it, recover, and pick another one.
by tetha | 2026-01-18 10:25:05+00:00
> The rules are interpretable as it being illegal to access data with a publically available password using this password, so we're going to apply them, despite it being patently absurd.

I very much agree. I do think that this kind of ethical hacking should have a legal framework around it, to protect both sides during such an access. But this should be more on the basis of responsibly minimizing access to protected data as well as minimizing foreseeable damage.

For example - running a select on a database may show you private and protected data, but if this is done to validate a problem, fine. Start digging for data on specific persons? Touch something called "Pump Controls"? This would however require technologically competent judges, and those are rare.

As I said, a frustrating topic and it will become very interesting if a hostile state starts pushing on this.
by KolmogorovComp | 2026-01-18 10:25:07+00:00
> No normal person is getting up at 05:30 to go to a flea market.

Of course there are, just go at that time and check. I know because I am one of them. 05:30 is not particularly early, and if you have a specific niche or quality standard and not just only a bystander, you know that is the only way.

I am also not sure why you believe this trend is new. The diamonds as far as I know have always been found very early.