MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pinkmuffinere | 2026-01-24 17:04:01+00:00
> [can’t] be reliably detected… only ~90% effective

I’m surprised to see these comments in conjunction, 90% is pretty good, and much higher than i expected. I wonder what’s the breakdown of false positives/false negatives

Edit: from the linked paper

> Of the 90 samples in which AI was used, it correctly identified 77 of
them as having >1% AI generated text, an 86% success rate. The fact that the tool is
more accurate in identifying human-generated text than AI-generated text is by design.
The company realized that users would be unwilling to use a tool that produced
significant numbers of false positives, so they “tuned” the tool to give human writers the
benefit of the doubt.

This all seems exceptionally reasonable. Of the samples with AI, they correctly identify 86%. Of the samples without AI, they correctly identify a higher proportion, because of the nature of their service. This implies that if they _wanted_ to make a more balanced AI detection tool, they could get that 86% somewhat higher.
by B1FIDO | 2026-01-24 17:04:49+00:00
Yes, my Gmail inbox is full of regular senders being flagged as "possibly unsafe" and I need to click a button "Looks Safe" to accept them. They are not being spamboxed, but they are definitely flagged. Even official communications from the USPS!

The reason given is that "Gmail hasn't scanned this message", so I suppose the scanners are unavailable/disabled for the time being.

They should also be tagged as "Important" but they are not. I believe this is a heuristic-based designation, and it has not been working too great lately. My most important mail is coming through as "unimportant".
by Tadpole9181 | 2026-01-24 17:05:01+00:00
Also, how can anyone claim to be intellectually curious and simultaneously ignore the rise of a violent, fascist government in the most powerful tech / geek culture country on the planet - as if those are unrelated.

Or how about the angle of business. Entrepreneurialism is a bit hard when your economy is run by a dementia patient who wildly swings unconstitutional trace measures, making your country an unstable mess that nobody wants to do business with.
by billy99k | 2026-01-24 17:05:19+00:00
"The lost productivity was a form of revenge, with slighted employees taking more paid sick time, arriving late, leaving early, and taking longer breaks."

Someone will feel slighted no matter how well you treat them. I blame all of the 'micro-aggression' nonsense we've seen in the last couple of years and subreddits like /r/antiwork. This sounds like just the kind of thing that's encouraged there.

"The study found that when managers at a national retail chain failed to deliver birthday greetings on time, it resulted in a 50% increase in absenteeism and a reduction of more than two working hours per month. "

Most people I know don't care about their birthday (or being recognized) to this extent. Years ago, I worked at a place that decided to celebrate everyone's birthday that week with a cake and a 10/15 minute meeting (usually multiple birthdays were celebrated at the same time). As the company grew, we were having these meetings 3-times per week.

My 6 year old would care if their birthday didn't get recognized and similarly pout all day and seek this type of 'revenge'.

I wouldn't want to work with anyone that did this.
by strange_quark | 2026-01-24 17:05:33+00:00
I think self driving cars is a good analog. We got lane centering and adaptive cruise control pretty much universally, and some systems are more advanced, but you cannot buy a fully autonomous car. Sure there’s Waymo and others pushing at the edge in very very limited contexts, but most people are still driving their own cars, just with some additional support. I suspect the same will be true for software engineering.
by mactavish88 | 2026-01-24 17:05:46+00:00
The exact same way you'd treat any other investment decision.

In the real world, if you've got $100k, you could choose to invest all of it into project A, or all into project B, or perhaps start both and kill whichever one isn't looking promising.

You'd need to weigh that against the potential returns you'd get from investing all or part of that money into equities, bonds, or just keeping it in cash.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-24 17:05:56+00:00
I've started disregarding any AI take that is all-or-nothing. These tools are useful for certain work once you've learned their limitations. Anyone making sweeping claims about vibecoding-style use being viable at scale or making claims that they're completely useless is just picking a side and running with it.

Different outlets tilt different directions. On HN and some other tech websites it's common to find declarations that LLMs are useless from people who tried the free models on ChatGPT (which isn't the coding model) and jumped to conclusions after the first few issues. On LinkedIn it's common to find influencers who used ChatGPT for a couple things at work and are ready to proclaim it's going to handle everything in the future (including writing the text of their LinkedIn post)

The most useful, accurate, and honest LLM information I've gathered comes from spaces where neither extreme prevails. You have to find people who have put in the time and are realistic about what can and cannot be accomplished. That's when you start learning the techniques for using these tools for maximum effect and where to apply them.
by 101008 | 2026-01-24 17:06:14+00:00
I tried a lot of these tools, including Turnitin, and I think they are all wrong. Not because they are a bad implementation, but just because the problem is naturally impossible in a lot of cases.

There are people whose style is closer to AI, that doesn't mean they used AI. And sometimes AI outputs text that look like a human would write.

There is also the mix: if I write two pages and I used two sentences by AI (because I was tired and I couldn't find the right sentence), I may be flagged for using AI. Even worse, if I ask AI for advice and then I rewrite it myself, what would be the output? I can make a reasoning that both (AI written and not AI written) would be wrong.
by fallinditch | 2026-01-24 17:06:19+00:00
Yes. I took over the project management of a job where the previous project manager had spent a year planning it out, but development had not yet started. The client was furious, understandably.

I abandoned the plans from the previous PM and discussed the job with the developer who ballpark estimated that the work would take 2 months. After a quick analysis I adjusted this to 14 weeks.

But the account manager thought this sounded too long and insisted that we plug everything in to a Gantt chart, define the shit out of everything, map the dependencies, etc, which showed that the development would only take 6 weeks.

The project ended up taking 14 weeks.
Show HN: PromptUI – AI kept giving me the same boring UI. So I fixed it
by exos-xyz | 2026-01-24 17:06:32+00:00
I run a UI design agency.

Last month I was building a client project in Cursor.
The output looked... fine.

Same rounded corners. Same blue buttons. Same "AI-coded" vibe.

Every project was starting to look identical.
The problem? AI has no design context. It defaults to the same generic patterns.

So I built PromptUI for myself.
Now before any client project, I:

Paste a URL that matches their brand vibe
Extract the full design system (colors, typography, spacing, components)

Feed it directly to Cursor or Claude Code

Result: Client-ready UI. First try.
No more "make it look more premium" back-and-forth.
$19 once. 20 exports. No subscription.

I use it daily. Maybe you will too.
by Expurple | 2026-01-24 17:07:11+00:00
Poor man's checked exceptions. That's important. From the `?` you always see which functions can fail and cause an early return. You can confidently refactor and use local reasoning based on the function signature. The compiler catches your mistakes when you call a fallible function from a supposedly infallible function, and so on. Unchecked exceptions don't give you any of that. Java's checked exceptions get close and you can use `throws Exception` very similarly to `anyhow::Result`. But Java doesn't allow you to be generic over checked exceptions (as discussed in the post). This is a big hurdle that makes Result superior.
by SV_BubbleTime | 2026-01-24 17:07:12+00:00
I consider vibe coding and LLM-assistance to be distinctively separate things.

I am vibe coding, if I needed x, I lay that out task with any degree of specificity, and ask for the whole result. Maybe it’s good, I gave the LLM a lot of rope to hang me.

I am using an LLM for assistance if I need something like this file renamed, and all its functions renamed to match, and all the project meta to change, and every comment that mentions the old name to be updated. There is an objectively correct result.

It’s a matter of scope.
by cess11 | 2026-01-24 17:07:25+00:00
I'm not sure what "exponential improvement" would mean in this context, but large models have been a massively hyped and invested thing for what, three-four years or so, right?

And what do they run on? Information. The production of which is throttled by the technology itself, in part because the salespeople claim it can (and should) "replace" workers and thinkers, in part because many people have really low standards for entertainment and accept so called slop instead of cheap tropes manually stitched together.

So it would seem unlikely that they'll get the required information fed into them that would be needed for them to outpace the public internet och and widely pirated books and so on.
by ozim | 2026-01-24 17:07:32+00:00
What was the thing you were estimating? R&D?

I think you were estimating time to build things that were out of R&D and you had specifications that were actual specifications you were building up to.

In SaaS my experience is: someone makes up an idea not having any clue how existing software is working or is laid out, has no specifications beside vague not organized bunch of sentences. Software development team basically starts R&D to find out specifications and what is possible - but is expected to deliver final product.
by kalleboo | 2026-01-24 17:07:35+00:00
Depends a lot on your house construction. I have a fancy Ubiquiti U7 Pro (on one floor, and a nanoHD on the other) but performance is crap all over my house because all the walls are reinforced concrete. In the hallway under the AP I get 1.6 Gbps on my phone but walk a few meters away into the living room and you're way under 200 Mbps because you passed 3 concrete walls.

Everyone comes home from a day out and you have several phones struggling to sync the 4K videos you shot meanwhile someone is streaming TV, open up my laptop to check the photos and now it wants to download updates...

I was able to option in Ethernet jacks where I lounge about in the living room, bedroom... - I have USB-C power bricks with built-in hubs so I stuck in cheap 2.5 GbE adapters there. Plug in to charge as normal and I automatically get 2 Gbps to the internet with no interference from anyone else, even works on iPhones with no setup.
by geaibleu | 2026-01-24 17:07:47+00:00
You aren't going to like answer but yes, there are firmware safety checks + CAN checksums. And driver facing camera tracking your attention so you aren't asleep behind the wheel. Something that your Tesla apparently failed to consider https://driving.ca/auto-news/crashes/sleeping-tesla-driver-r...

Your attitude reminds me of how Microsoft fans talked down Linux and GNU; blah blah open source can never be as good/secure/stable as our billion-dollar commercial product because money/certificate
by 1659447091 | 2026-01-24 17:08:24+00:00
The apple support link above has a table showing what apple has access to depending on if the user has Advanced Data Protection on or not.

The link you posted shows that the FBI got access to icloud and found screenshots saved there -- not the device; if the guy would have had ADP on all the FBI would get is mail, contacts, calendar data saved to icloud as Apple wouldn't have the key for the rest of it.
by xandrius | 2026-01-24 17:08:30+00:00
Here is my very simple view:

- exact reuse of a long-ish word sequence(s) without credits -> not cool.

- complete/partial reinterpretation of an already existing story in different words -> it's fine

- Traced/almost identical image/drawing/painting (with the intent to fool someone) -> not cool

- Visual imitation in style/content but different approach or usage -> it's fine

I think people are too attached by the novelty of something, sure if I write a bunch of words and you repeat them as yours, that's not cool. But if something I make inspires someone and they take it, reframe it, rephrase it or whatever, go ahead.

People adore Star Wars, which is an absolute one to one of a hero's journey, it still has value. Most modern fantasy are basically fanfics of Middle Earth, still good that they exist.

Imagine someone just spamming sequences of notes at random for their whole life, does it mean they own anything else made here afterwards +70/80/90... Years?
by nihonium | 2026-01-24 17:08:40+00:00
Thanks for sharing this, first time I've seen such device, I'd like to add other options that I experienced and would suggest;

- Open your telephone socket, if the actual cable has 5 pairs, it's probably a cat5e cable. It can do 1gbps with a RJ45 connection, just replace the plug and connect tou your device to check, yo ucan get a cheap ethernet cable tester too. If it has just 3 pairs, it can probably do 100mbs automatically with most ethernet capable devices.
- If you just need to connect 2 devices, you may probably just use existing cables to do it. More than 2 devices would not work.
- If it doesn't work, all those cables probably go to a box, find it and check if they are connected, if not yo ucan just crimp the ends together.

Other alternatives:
- As others mentioned, MoCA devices are also able to deliver 1gbps, and there is a higher chance that you may find them in most rooms, and they are almost always connected, so it shoudl be plug&play.
- Powerline adapters novadays not too bad as well. I was able to use them in a 30 eyar old home, 3 floors up to provide 500mbs.
by djoldman | 2026-01-24 17:08:49+00:00
> ... if asked

This is blurring of fact drives click bait.

The origin of this is a Forbes article[0] where the quote is: "Microsoft confirmed to Forbes that it does provide BitLocker recovery keys if it receives a valid legal order."

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/micro...
by dnautics | 2026-01-24 17:09:25+00:00
> "in isolation this code makes a lot of sense"..."what is this junk"

I mean I am left with two thoughts:

1. programming language skill issue. Some languages are simply much better at composition than others. I find that yes, this happens, but actually on the order of a day, and once the code is "good", it doesn't really change that much in the grand scheme of things?

2. Even for languages where composition is better, this is exactly what happens with human development too?
by techmetaphorist | 2026-01-24 17:09:58+00:00
From my attempts, still, it takes more time to fix the code than it would if writing it all by hand.
BUT!
It's getting better and I look at it as just the next abstraction layer we will get used to.
Think of it. Back in University I had to write code on PAPER. To think of memory allocation manually!
Then came out managed code..
Then huge SDKs..
Then smart IDEs with intellij/intellisense..

And some us even remember riding the CPU with mov rcx, 5.

We were just shifting our focus byte by byte from the nits and bolts towards the actual problem we are solving. In other words going less "hard"-ware, more and more "soft"-ware.

AI is just continuing this evolution, adding another abstraction layer in soft dev process.
by mystraline | 2026-01-24 17:09:58+00:00
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*ikF...

When nobody wants to work for you, that should be a strong indication that you are the problem.

And thinking that employees are "enacting vengence? in the form of vandalism from day 1."... You must be terrible indeed.
by B1FIDO | 2026-01-24 17:10:05+00:00
Step zero. Never disclose your email address to anyone.

This is very easy and straightforward. I operate 6 Gmail accounts, and three are "alts" where I've basically never given the address out to anyone at all, and they receive zero spam, zero UCE, zero marketing emails.

Of course, on my "main" I've disclosed the address to many entities and I use it for sign-in and shipping and many things. And yes, I do receive spam and scam emails there, but wcyd?
by wasabi991011 | 2026-01-24 17:10:30+00:00
Honestly reading that article made me more less worried about AI-detection. My main concern is false positives (incorrectly identifying a human-written text as AI-written), but it seems Turnitin got that close to 0.

Of course the sample size is fairly small, I would want a larger scale study to see if the false positive rate is actually 5%, or 1%, 0.1%, 0.000001%, etc.
by andsoitis | 2026-01-24 17:10:38+00:00
> It's sad to me that people are apparently so allergic to the term "theory" that we had to come up with this lesser version of it.

There's an argument to be made that it is useful to distinguish between mental models and theories.

If a theory is a structured, formal explanation of phenomena, grounded in evidence, logic, and often mathematics that is meant to be shared, tested, and and falsified, a mental model is more of an internal representation of how something works, often informal, simplified, personal, and built to help you reason, predict, and decide.

I find both tools useful, but different.
by zero-sharp | 2026-01-24 17:10:49+00:00
If I understand this correctly, it translates Rocq to C++? Took me several minutes to even understand what this is. Why is it called an extraction system? Who is this for?

I'm confused.

edit: I had to dig into the author's publication list:

https://joomy.korkutblech.com/papers/crane-rocqpl26.pdf

Testing remains a fundamental practice for building confidence in
software, but it can only establish correctness over a finite set of
inputs. It cannot rule out bugs across all possible executions. To
obtain stronger guarantees, we turn to formal verification, and in
particular to certified programming techniques that allow us to de-
velop programs alongside mathematical proofs of their correctness.
However, there is a significant gap between the languages used
to write certified programs and those relied upon in production
systems. Bridging this gap is crucial for bringing the benefits of
formal verification into real-world software systems.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-01-24 17:11:13+00:00
Bro the way you brush off the US military already moving into the 'murderous war crimes' phase and thinking there is an upper bounds of the direction already in motion.

Did you think you would ever so casually brush off the US Navy straight murdering people with 'sure, we're doing that but...'?

Edit: A large group of Federal agents just murdered a 50 something American on the street, on video.
by MetaWhirledPeas | 2026-01-24 17:11:33+00:00
There's a forced reframing going on of what it means to be an artist, and what it means to appreciate artistry. Over time we've developed the idea that art, once created, is not free for the observing; the artist has a right to compensation.

It's an understandable position for these reasons:

- We like art and we ant to show our support and appreciation for art

- The most straightforward way to show support and appreciation for art is to give the artist money

- Much of the art we appreciate was only possible due to the promise of monetary gain on the part of the artist

But there are some old, unavoidable questions:

- At what point does the pursuit of monetary gain begin to diminish one's own artistic expression?

- At what point does the pursuit of monetary gain begin to diminish other peoples' artistic expression?

As you point out, there is no art without appropriation and re-creation.

And now there are some new, unavoidable facts:

- Appropriation is becoming easier

- Attribution is therefore becoming more difficult

- Compensation is therefore becoming more difficult

- Rewinding the clock is impossible

The only way out of this would be for humanity to collectively take a puritanical stance on art, where any form of appropriation is demonized. I think this would make art suck.
by perihelions | 2026-01-24 17:11:39+00:00
Here's the source for that one (just in case anyone is living under a rock or something),

https://www.startribune.com/border-patrol-greg-bovino-smoke-... ("A federal agent sprays a man being pinned to the ground by other agents following the detention of at least two teenagers in south Minneapolis on Jan. 21. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)")
by pessimizer | 2026-01-24 17:11:40+00:00
> Try implementing something that is too hard for you.

This is almost the only thing I'm against when it comes to LLMs. You have no ability to figure out if it is right, and you will be overly impressed by garbage because you aren't qualified to judge. Has anybody come up with a pithy way to describe Dunning-Kruger for evaluating the output of LLMs, or are people too busy still denying that Dunning and Kruger noticed anything?

When it comes to implementing math, the main problem is that the tiniest difference can make the entire thing wrong, often to the degree of inverting it. I wouldn't be in any way comfortable in shipping something I didn't even understand. The LLM certainly didn't understand it; somebody should.
by eudamoniac | 2026-01-24 17:11:40+00:00
Well, I'd rather they just get pitted. If someone is at the point of fleeing from police in a high speed chase, I want them removed from society, because nobody well adjusted and beneficial does that. Whether that's by arrest or by accidental death, I really don't mind either way. The alternative also emboldens criminals to flee as a first resort and to plan around that possibility.

Fortunately in USA we have many state jurisdictions to choose from so we can each live under the sort of laws that suit us best!
by mjevans | 2026-01-24 17:11:55+00:00
While this is true, why even bother turning on encryption and making it harder on disk data recovery services in that case?

Inform, and Empower with real choices. Make it easy for end users to select an alternate key backup method. Some potential alternatives: Allow their bank to offer such a service. Allow friends and family to self host such a service. Etc.
by seeknotfind | 2026-01-24 17:12:01+00:00
Thanks, yeah, I did see some of the pure C++ types getting converted. Though it makes a lot of sense why you had to go with shared_ptr for generic inductive types.

Have you considered combinatorial testing? Test code generation for each sample program, for each set of mappings, and ensure they all have the same behavior. If you look at the relative size or performance, it could allow you to automatically discover this issue. Also, allocation counting.

Hey also sucks you are not in SF. I'm looking for people into formalization in the area, but I haven't found any yet