MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by simonw | 2026-01-28 05:25:06+00:00
Except if you spend quality time with coding agents you realize that's not actually true.

They're equally useful for novel tasks because they don't work by copying large scale patterns from their training data - the recent models can break down virtually any programming task to a bunch of functions and components and cobble together working code.

If you can clearly define the task, they can work towards a solution with you.

The main benefit of concepts already in the training data is that it lets you slack off on clearly defining the task. At that point it's not the model "cheating", it's you.
by heresie-dabord | 2026-01-28 05:25:11+00:00
And I also hate to be that guy but pscal...

> someone should rewrite it in a decent language

was coded in BAGS (bash, awk, grep, sed) and Postscript circa 1987 [1], and it's still working almost 40 years later in 2026 !

Perhaps it was in fact coded decently. And licensed decently as well. ^_^

[1]

AUTHOR:
Patrick Wood
Copyright (C) 1987 by Pipeline Associates, Inc.
Permission is granted to modify and distribute this free of charge.
by mrtksn | 2026-01-28 05:26:12+00:00
Iranians are indeed incredibly brave, I have nothing but sympathy to the Iranians fighting the oppressive Islamic regime. Turks for example don’t have the guts to go against their oppressors, the most the Turks do is to wave their cell phone with the lights on rhythmically alongside with a song(which does nothing to stop the issue they are against).

That said, I find it very distrustful to smear people who were active in another cause for not being active on the Iranian cause(or demanding that Israel should be allowed to kill more people considering the low international reaction to the Iran killings - i’m still not sure what this person is advocating for alongside with some Israeli influencers).
by DonHopkins | 2026-01-28 05:27:00+00:00
Here's a whirlwind tour through all 117 skills, that shows how they fit together:

INDEX.md:
https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/skills/INDEX.m...

The purpose of this index markup file (besides explaining skills to humans) is to be an index of all the skills and how they work together, so the llm knows where to find what it needs and activate more detailed information. This file is like a really dense human readable catalog, to conserve tokens. There is another yaml index too, a bit fluffier, but it helps to have two forms, one structural, machine readable, and another narrative, human readable.

INDEX.yml:
https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/skills/INDEX.y...
by tarantino-sax | 2026-01-28 05:27:04+00:00
So. this code was most likely generated with AI trained on community decompilation efforts, possibly without their knowledge. I know that the community has not yet reverse engineered custom model skinning for the game, so it does not appear here because it wasn't in the training data. Why would somebody who has supposedly already implemented billboard object support, or as the code calls it "flipbook objects", couldn't just stick a similar animated billboard texture inside the ball? probably because they have no clue how the code actually works or is structured.

It's genuinely impressive that generative AI has advanced to the point where this was possible, but it also feels like this was built backwards, extremely niche mechanics in the game are rendered nearly perfectly, where the base elements of the game had this been built from the ground up are implented wrongly or completely absent.
by ggm | 2026-01-28 05:27:24+00:00
This is often discussed with "why can't we make Saturn V again" flavour. People dispute how much of the inputs are still available, other people decry even trying because some things (the F1) were essentially iterations in the field and may not have made it back into the tech drawings beyond "modify the bend radius until engine stops vibrating" annotations.

Around WW2 American aircraft which ditched in Soviet controlled territory were taken apart. There is a story in Richard Rhodes' books on the A bomb and H bomb that they re-created mistaken holes, welded repair plates into brand new aircraft in a chinese-copy mentality where they lacked time to make decisions what was needed and what was not. This allowed them to field long range bombers.

Some things only require physics to be proved. Soviet spying informed how to make Atom Bombs, even when all they had was measured constraints rather than drawings.

Again from Rhodes, they worked blind, the "proof" was when their science agreed with what they were told the Manhattan project had found. If they diverged and couldn't justify it, they had to re-do their working until they aligned.
by CSMastermind | 2026-01-28 05:28:38+00:00
Are you using Codex?

I'm not sure how big your repos are but I've been effective working with repos that have thousands of files and tens of thousands of lines of code.

If you're just prototyping it will hit wall when things get unwieldy but that's normally a sign that you need to refactor a bit.

Super strict compiler settings, static analysis, comprehensive tests, and documentation help a lot. As does basic technical design. After a big feature is shipped I do a refactor cycle with the LLM where we do a comprehensive code review and patch things up. This does require human oversight because the LLMs are still lacking judgement on what makes for good code design.

The places where I've seen them be useless is working across repositories or interfacing with things like infrastructure.

It's also very model-dependent. Opus is a good daily driver but Codex is much better are writing tests for some reason. I'll often also switch to it for hard problems that Claude can't solve. Gemini is nice for 'I need a prototype in the next 10 minutes', especially for making quick and dirty bespoke front-ends where you don't care about the design just the functionality.
by yes_man | 2026-01-28 05:29:11+00:00
I don’t want to discredit the authors but just want to offer couple of hypothetical points in these paranoid times.

From a marketing angle, for a startup whose product is an AI security tool, buying zero-days from black market and claiming the AI tool found them might be good ROI. After all this is making waves.

Or, could it be possible the training set contains zero-day vulnerabilities known to three-letter agencies and other threat actors but not to public?

These two are not mutually exclusive either. You could buy exploits and put them in the training set.

I would not be surprised if it is legit though.
by Quarrelsome | 2026-01-28 05:29:41+00:00
Consider the Lean Startup methodology. The darker patterns are where you break down the big picture rationale for the company. You extract metrics that contribute to the company's success (i.e. engagement) and you build a machine that rewards changes to the underlying system that improves those metrics.

If done successfully, you create an unwitting sociopathy, a process that demands the product be as addictive as possible and a culture that is in thrall to the machine that rewards its employees by increasing those metrics. You're no longer thinking about purpose or wondering about what you're doing to your users. You simply realise that if you send this notification at this time, with this colour button, in this place, with this tagline then the machine likes it. Multiple people might contribute a tiny piece of a horrifying and manipulative whole and never quite realise the true horror of the monster they've helped build.
by yojat661 | 2026-01-28 05:29:49+00:00
I don't know if it's fair to call him an ai addict or deduce that his ego is bruised. But I do wonder whether karpathy's agentic llm experiences are based on actual production code or pet projects. Based on a few videos I have seen of his, I am guessing it's the latter. Also, he is a research scientist (probably a great one), not a software developer. I agree with the op that karpathy should not be given much attention in this topic i.e llms for software development.
by eloisius | 2026-01-28 05:30:58+00:00
I’ve been thinking the same thing lately. It’s hard to tell if I’m just old and want everyone off my lawn, but I really feel like IT is a dead end lately. “Vintage” electronics are often nicer to use than modern equivalents. Like dials and buttons vs touch screens. Most of my electronics that have LCDs feel snappy and you sort of forget that you’re using them and just do what you were trying to do. I’m not necessarily a Luddite. I know tech _could_ be better theoretically but it’s distressing to know that it’s also not possible for things to be different for some other reasons. Economically, culturally? I don’t know.
by simonw | 2026-01-28 05:31:02+00:00
It remains an open challenge. I've seen three credible initial attempts so far, though none of them have got further than being able to render static HTML and CSS:

- https://github.com/hiwavebrowser/hiwave

- https://github.com/wilsonzlin/fastrender

- https://github.com/embedding-shapes/one-agent-one-browser

I've started tracking them on this tag on my blog: https://simonwillison.net/tags/browser-challenge/
by fendy3002 | 2026-01-28 05:32:23+00:00
the bigger caveat here is where some people can do "bad" things but the law doesn't apply to them. This breaks social contract and exposing law as a tool for the powerful to control the masses (this is still true, but by not doing it blatantly, the contract can still be somewhat upholded).

In an ideal world, when this happen, it should be anarchy until a new set of government, that uphold the law equal to everybody, is enacted. But we don't live in ideal world.
Ask HN: Do you verify AI-generated content before publishing?
by kumathpratik | 2026-01-28 05:33:20+00:00
I'm researching content repurposing tools and trying to understand a workflow gap:

When you use AI to turn podcasts/interviews/webinars into social posts, do you verify accuracy before publishing?

Context: Tools like Castmagic and Descript are 85-95% accurate. That 5-15% error rate means AI sometimes:
- Misquotes speakers
- Paraphrases in ways that change meaning
- Attributes quotes to wrong person (multi-speaker issue)

I've found two camps:

Camp A: "I carefully verify everything"
- Re-read transcripts or scrub audio
- Takes 20-30 minutes per post
- Zero tolerance for publishing errors

Camp B: "I trust AI and publish"
- "Good enough" for social media
- Errors are rare enough to accept
- Speed > perfection

My questions:
1. Which camp are you in?
2. If Camp A: what's your verification workflow?
3. Has anyone been burned by publishing inaccurate AI content?
4. Would "click any quote to hear exact audio timestamp" be valuable?

Building a tool that links every generated claim to source evidence. Trying to validate if this solves a real problem or if I'm overthinking content accuracy.

Appreciate any insights from the HN community.
by degamad | 2026-01-28 05:34:24+00:00
> Funny how these things when done by a human is a positive and when done by an LLM is a negative.

> Humans generate perfect code on the first pass every time and it's only LLMs that introduce bad implementations.

That's not what the "anti-llm experts" are saying at all. If you think of LLMs as "bad first draft" machines, then you'll likely be successful in finding ways to use LLMs.

But that's not what is being sold. Atman and Amodei are not selling "this tool will make bad implementations that you can improve on". They are selling "this tool will replace your IT department". Calling out that the tool isn't capable of doing that is not pretending that humans are perfect by comparison.
by dghlsakjg | 2026-01-28 05:34:41+00:00
This is a dilution not abandonment issue.

Courts will look at the level of systematic tolerance. If you have a history of vigorous enforcement, it will be harder to argue in the future that a borderline dilution should be allowed.

If you allow borderline dilution, the court is going to consider what you have let other people get away with in the past.

It’s a bit of a catch 22
by card_zero | 2026-01-28 05:34:55+00:00
That horror being..? I understand that this is a ruthless quest for engagement by any means, good or bad. For instance ...?

I don't mean to make you do all the work here: I can see a couple of pages from the introduction which mention "variability" and "investment":

> What distinguishes the Hook Model from a plain vanilla feedback loop is the Hook’s ability to create a craving. Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The unsurprising response of your fridge light turning on when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix—suppose a different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it—and voila, intrigue is created.

So that's "variability". I'm not hugely impressed. "Investment", meanwhile, is when you set preferences or connect to friends, so you feel like you lose out if you stop attending. I can see that these might be foolish ideas. But I can also see that foolish ideas are part of "engaging" with anything - some traditionally wholesome such as a piano, for instance. Imagine I'm a Victorian lady, and I've bought a piano and I invite my friends over for a regular evening of singing art songs, so that's "investment": also we buy new song sheets every time, so there's "variety". I'm totally hooked on this harmless positive thing, am I? Or do I in fact just like it and have free will?
by godelski | 2026-01-28 05:35:57+00:00
That's true for any system where you have contacts linked. Same thing happens when you have names and avatars.

If you don't want to link your contacts... don't link your contacts...

But this doesn't have the result that the GP claimed. The whole network doesn't unravel because in big groups like these one number doesn't have all the other contacts in their system.

For people that need it:

| Settings
|- Chat
| |- Share Contacts with iOS/Android <--- (Turn off)
|- Privacy
| |- Phone Number
| | |- Who Can See My Number
| | | |- Everybody
| | | |- Nobody <----
| | |- Who Can Find Me By Number
| | | |- Everybody
| | | |- Nobody <----
| |- App Security
| | |- Hide Screen in App Switcher <---- Turn on
| | |- Screen Lock <---- Turn on
| |- Advanced
| | |- Always Relay Calls <-----

If you are extra concerned, turn on disappearing messages. This is highly suggested for any group chats like the ones being discussed. You should also disable read receipts and typing indicators.

Some of these settings are already set btw
by adgnaf | 2026-01-28 05:37:10+00:00
Heterogeneous GPU infrastructures present a binary compatibility challenge: code compiled for one vendor's GPU will not run on another due to divergent instruction sets, execution models, and driver stacks . We propose hetGPU, a new system comprising a compiler, runtime, and abstraction layer that together enable a single GPU binary to execute on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Tenstorrent hardware. The hetGPU compiler emits an architecture-agnostic GPU intermediate representation (IR) and inserts metadata for managing execution state. The hetGPU runtime then dynamically translates this IR to the target GPU's native code and provides a uniform abstraction of threads, memory, and synchronization. Our design tackles key challenges: differing SIMT vs. MIMD execution (warps on NVIDIA/AMD vs. many-core RISC-V on Tenstorrent), varied instruction sets, scheduling and memory model discrepancies, and the need for state serialization for live migration. We detail the hetGPU architecture, including the IR transformation pipeline, a state capture/reload mechanism for live GPU migration, and an abstraction layer that bridges warp-centric and core-centric designs. Preliminary evaluation demonstrates that unmodified GPU binaries compiled with hetGPU can be migrated across disparate GPUs with minimal overhead, opening the door to vendor-agnostic GPU computing.
by Dlouie | 2026-01-28 05:37:29+00:00
IMO it’s a pretty verifiably correct and complex piece of software. There are all sorts of test suites but no greater one than comparing a page rendered to how it renders in chrome.

Also, and maybe more importantly, a browser is the kind of the perfect entry point for a lot of businesses.

If you’re for example hoping to build an agent that people rely on to manage their calendars, emails, book them vacations, etc.. a browser is probably the perfect form factor for that.

Or if you’re a AI lab and want to tap into training data behind logged in websites - a browser everyone uses is the ultimately what you need.

If you can build and maintain a browser from scratch with just agents then there’s no need to pay millions of dollars to hire away chromium engineers from Google.

The list goes on!
by fruitworks | 2026-01-28 05:37:55+00:00
How does your custom AI-built browser challenge the current browser triopoly?

The LLMs are trained on the code of existing browsers. This is essentially a massive process of turning code you don't understand into code you don't understand.

The code details are pretty much all of the details, other than the protocols and standards.

If you understood the codebase of existing browsers (or at least could be confident in making arbitrary changes to existing browsers, perhaps with AI assistance?) then the triopoly wouldn't be threatening because you could just patch out manifestv3 whenever you want.

There is also the problem of people not testing their websites to be compatible with your custom browser. But I would say this is a problem on the protocol level.
by runarberg | 2026-01-28 05:38:47+00:00
Supersonic jet engines, rockets to the moon, nuclear power plants, etc. etc. all have become more expensive. Superconductors were discovered in 1911, and we have been making them for as long as we have been making transistors in the 1950s, yet superconductors show no sign of becoming cheaper any time soon.

There have been plenty of technologies in history which do not in fact become cheaper. LLMs are very likely to become such, as I suspect their usefulness will be superseded by cheaper (much cheaper in fact) specialized models.
by hdjrudni | 2026-01-28 05:39:50+00:00
I work on the biggest codebase in the world. We have a fine-tuned model on our codebase. I've not been impressed with it. It does not produce better code than the non-tuned model.

Maybe there's certain problems that it excels at but probably 99% of what I throw it at can be gleaned from the context/nearby code anyway, like you said. Even if I'm using some in-house library (pretty much all of our code), the models are good enough to dig into that library and read the headers if they need to.

Maybe it can help with speed? If it needs to do less research before it can start coding.
by Quarrelsome | 2026-01-28 05:40:07+00:00
I worry that software and the industry is more resistent then we might imagine. Consider the insanity of Elon Musk's arbitrary cuts to twitter and the resilience of that platform in the years that followed.

It might simply be the case that buying more tokens and kicking the code enough times might give a "good enough" result for the industry to continue. I don't want to believe this but the discussion of how awful the openssl code base is seems to suggest that might be the case. You just need to automate the process of caution we have around it. We should all be hoping that Gastown fails but I feel like it might succeed.
by Brian_K_White | 2026-01-28 05:40:36+00:00
Neither of these are answers or explainations. So you said nothing, and then said nothing again.

I also "mean what I wrote". Man that was sure easy to say. It's almost like saying nothing at all. Which is anyone's righ to do, but it's not an argument, nor a definition of terms, nor communication at all. Well, it does communicate one thing.
by dgently7 | 2026-01-28 05:41:28+00:00
my personal distinction I use is about measurements. while you may model to a specific scale for use in 3d gfx (game by engine/animation/vfx) you cross over from "modeling" to "cad" as soon as you are creating geometry with specific real world measurements. (probably for manufacturing or engineering reasons bc thats when it matters most)

like I can model a table that is the right size and looks like it will not tip over for my game, but I am going to cad that table to run a stress sim and make the plans for building it for real.

though id still call the action of doing the building in the cad software "modeling"... so idk.. language is weird.

so software that lets you work accurately with measurements and real units == cad. (fusion360) software that just makes geometry == modeling. (blender)

but if you wanna go get real confused look at "plasticity" an app targeted at "modeling" but uses a cad engine and sells itself as "cad for artists" it has real scale
measurements and everything too.
by rewgs | 2026-01-28 05:41:29+00:00
I always try and keep in mind that we typically think of software as having three versions -- alpha, beta, and release -- but for it's considered even kind of "finished."

In my own work, this often looks like writing the quick and dirty version (alpha), then polishing it (beta), then rewrite it from scratch with all the knowledge you gained along the way.

The trick is to not get caught up on the beta. It's all too tempting to chase perfection too early.
by nextlevelwizard | 2026-01-28 05:42:17+00:00
Either you are MAGA or fed.

First was literally woman dropping her kid to school. ICE stopped her car, told her to both get out of the car and drive away. ICE pig deliberately stepped in front of her car, she turned the wheel away from all ICE pigs and started to move away and he shot her dead.

Second was ICE pigs pushing two women for at least 10 meters. They pushed these women until they hit a man who was literally just filming. He helped the women stay up. ICE pigs pepper sprayed all three and while he was on his knees with hand in the air, other supporting himself against the ground he was shot in the back of the head.

In both cases ICE created and escalated the situation against peaceful and completely innocent citizens. Neither situation was stressful nor an altercation and neither of these innocent people were impeding any investigation. And calling ICE agents actions “lawful” is laughable, let’s start from them illegally wearing masks, not wearing their badges which is also illegal, and not identifying themselves which surprise surprise is also against the law
by andai | 2026-01-28 05:43:57+00:00
What kinda phone do you have? I was nostalgic for getting an old nokia, but when I actually did, using it was surprisingly painful. I guess that's kind of the point?

I still need a proper mp3 player (been using an old android) and a camera though.

...and a Kindle, and a fax machine ;)

As a side note, the "old" style Nokias now seem to be running on some kind of emulation... The Nokia startup sound lagged and stuttered and made me die a little inside.
by throwup238 | 2026-01-28 05:44:11+00:00
> but without realizing that CAD is about constraints, parametrizing, and far more

Constraints and parametrizing are the trivial parts of CAD, something you can now implement in a weekend with Claude Code, the MINPACK/SolveSpace test suite, and OpenCascade as an oracle. The hard part is a geometric kernel that can express boundary representations for complex shapes (sketches, chamfers, fillets, etc) and boolean operations while somewhat handling the topographical naming problem without driving the user insane (which existing kernels are still all shit at).