MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vidarh | 2026-01-24 23:43:19+00:00
> Have you actually tried to do this? i.e. not within a Claude Code chat instance but by one-shot prompting.

You ask if I've tried to do this, and then set constraints that are completely different to what I described.

I have done what I described. Several times for different projects. I have a setup like that running right now in a different window.

> It is hard to bootstrap because this isn't how Claude Code works.

It is how Claude Code works when you give it a number of sub-agents with rules for how to manage files that effectively works like task queues, or skills/mcp servers to interact with communications tools.

> it is not easy

It is not easy to do in a generic way that works without tweaks for every project and every user. It is reasonably easy to do for specific teams where you can adjust it to the desired workflows.
by Mountain_Skies | 2026-01-24 23:43:36+00:00
The United States has a labor pool of over 170 million people. If you can't find Amazon workers in a country of that size, it's due to one thing and one thing only: you're a bigot who hates Americans. We can dance around it and dress it up like we have for the past thirty years but it's time to call it for what it is: bigotry and hatred wearing a dress of openness. Just admit what you are instead of continuing this absurd dance that pretends 170 million people are all defective. Now mash that down vote button to feel good about your bigotry that you've written "VIRTUE" all over to hide the destructive force it truly is.
by xienze | 2026-01-24 23:46:06+00:00
Unions are only going to be effective in a domain where the job can’t be done just as well by someone on the other side of the planet. Think plumbers, electricians, etc. The fact that the work has to be done “here and now” is the leverage those workers have.

A software engineer’s union would just kick whatever offshoring is happening into overdrive.
by Tadpole9181 | 2026-01-24 23:46:11+00:00
Nazis. The federal government has become nothing more than actual, honest-to-God Nazis.

The other day, the official DHS presser had them prominently displaying a direct Nazi slogan: "One of ours, All of yours".

This, of course, referenced how that day one of their ICE agents murdered an innocent US citizen.
by antonvs | 2026-01-24 23:46:21+00:00
I'm not defending SBF, but I think you may not be completely taking into account how strong the pressures are on someone like that. I'm pretty sure he didn't set out to commit a multi-billion dollar fraud, he was sucked into it as a consequence of the expectations on him and so forth. My point here is just that this is a symptom of a societal problem, and SBF is just a well-positioned scapegoat.
by impute | 2026-01-24 23:47:33+00:00
The only reliable way to estimate is to find another relatively similar project and compare it to that. You can say stuff like this new project is roughly similar in scope to Project X but maybe it's about 20% more complicated due to more scope so it will probably take about 20% longer than what Project X took.

The key is to keep data on how long past projects actually took (which not a lot of organizations do). But once you have that real data, you can understand all the unknown unknowns that came up and assume that similar things will come up on the new project.
Ask CLI: A simple open-source tool to get help with commands from the terminal
by david-minaya | 2026-01-24 23:47:45+00:00
I want to share Ask CLI, a tool I developed to get help with commands and coding directly from the terminal. It is a simple app designed to do one thing well: provide instant command assistance. This isn't a complex coding agent like Claude Code; it is built specifically to get short, fast answers without context switching.

As a developer, I’ve always struggled to remember every command and its specific options. Whenever I need to use tools like Docker, Git, or psql, I find myself leaving the terminal to check documentation or scrolling through verbose --help text just to recall a specific flag. I usually know what I want to do, but I forget the exact syntax. I didn't want to waste time switching to Google or ChatGPT just to find a one-line command.

I developed Ask CLI to solve this. It has been a game-changer for my workflow. Now, when I forget a command, I simply ask my terminal. It gives me a fast, precise answer—exactly what I need—without breaking my flow.

It is incredibly easy to use: just select an AI model, set your API key, and start chatting naturally with your terminal.

Examples:

$ ask how to run a docker container with env variables

$ ask how to setup my local git account

You can also use the "what" and "how" aliases for a more natural feel:

$ what is chmod

$ how to print all the env variables

You can use Ask CLI with popular hosted models (Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT) or with local models and external providers that support OpenAI-compatible APIs (Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, etc.).

Ask CLI is free and open-source. Check it out here:

https://github.com/david-minaya/ask
by shepherdjerred | 2026-01-24 23:48:10+00:00
> "Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene," DHS said. "The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/border-patrol-involved-shooting-r...
by grumio | 2026-01-24 23:48:55+00:00
I'm taking a charitable interpretation of your take for sure. I do see the value of additional levers, but I don't think realistically it would be feasible to make such a court.

Counter-point: I don't think Chauvin would've been brought to justice if he were tried in some kind of cop-court.

I'm open minded though, I appreciate your perspective, gave me food for thought.
by thaynt | 2026-01-24 23:49:13+00:00
I think many people really like the gamification and complex role playing. That is how GitHub got popular, that is how Rube Goldberg agent/swarm/cult setups get popular.

It attracts the gamers and LARPers. Unfortunately, management is on their side until they find out after four years or so that it is all a scam.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-24 23:49:44+00:00
Because you often estimate something like three or four times as many tasks as actually get included in the sprint. You can't possibly know in advance which features will actually wind up in the sprint until you've considered all the possible candidates. You estimate, then the PM confers with stakeholders to prioritize what's actually most important and figure out the "puzzle" of which pieces add up to a coherent sprint, and then work starts.

To the developer, it seems like short-term sprint planning. But to the PM and stakeholders, it's very much medium-term planning because they're picking tasks for this sprint in light of what they also estimate the following couple sprints will look like (given current information, which is always going to change).

It's not as bad as it sounds, because when you're re-estimating something you already estimated in the past 2 planning pokers, it's usually pretty quick. You're just seeing if the previous estimate needs to be revised based on what the team has learned since. Most time is usually spent on newly proposed features, or features that have significantly changed or been split up.
by nakedgremlin | 2026-01-24 23:49:46+00:00
Yeah, my experience on testing GitLab CI/CD script logic is to use a sacrificial branch and grind through test commits until it works, then Squash commits when merging back into main branch.

It's so sad that we can't just run local validations on the CI/CD script through a local emulator. If they had a local emulator approach similar to what is provided by Firebase for their cloud products, that would be amazing.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-24 23:50:04+00:00
> Criticism is expected and encouraged, but if it is done so while ignoring the 3 primary goals of a business:

I didn’t mention criticism, though.

The abuse I was talking about was more like: “VP so-and-so mentioned this in a meeting so I need you to work nights and weekends until it’s done” for trivial features or bugs.

In one case we had a CEO who would do surprise visits to offices and demand an on-the-spot demo of what he thought the team should have been working on, often without prior communication that he wanted it to be our top priority. If you didn’t have something highly polished to demo or any bugs occurred during the impromptu demo, you could expect hours of verbal lashing and insults.

When he left, the top manager would run around trying to explain that it’s just part of the job operating at this pay grade.

I’m not talking about whiny or unproductive employees being pushed out. This is about managerial dysfunction being justified by high compensation. When people’s hands feel tied by any job change coming with a step down in compensation, a lot of toxicities can thrive. Not all highly paid companies are like this, but at big companies that pay well you can find pockets of managers who use the high pay as a weapon.
by SmellTheGlove | 2026-01-24 23:50:28+00:00
This was a helpful answer. It really is hard to make a choice if you've left the ecosystem for a while. My mac as well as windows+WSL have been good enough for a while, but this post got me curious. And mind you, I'm not completely out of touch with _linux_ - its running two servers in my basement. I've installed slackware from floppies and compiled gentoo. But it's never been the year of the linux desktop for me.

I ended up booting Mint with Cinnamon. I like it. It's pretty intuitive coming from macos/windows, and I'm in the terminal half the time anyway. Installing the nvidia driver was easy, then steam does a good job installing whatever compatibility layers it needs. I'll do CUDA next and try it for a month or so.
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-24 23:50:40+00:00
In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude. "US big tech is so entrenched we'll never get away". "European cloud will never be good enough". "There's nothing like Microsoft 365". At my work they don't even want to think about alternatives.

I think they hope that MAGA will just blow over somehow. I don't see that happening.
by BarryMilo | 2026-01-24 23:50:53+00:00
> Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that AI can eventually serve to level the playing field for everything. It outputs novels, paintings, screenplays - whatever you ask it for - of such high quality that they can't be discerned from the best human-created works.

This requires the machine to understand a whole bunch of things. You're talking about AGI, at that point there will be blood in the streets and screenplays will be the least of our problems.
by brainwad | 2026-01-24 23:51:56+00:00
When you buy services, is your bar good enough, or do you look for best value for money? And are those who try to optimise bigots merely for not buying from their local provider?

But anyway, the decrease in hiring in the US will be mostly driven by foreigners that will now not relocate to the US. Why hire someone on a H1-B at a cost of 100k when you can hire the same person in some other office and not pay that cost? It's a self-own by the US.
by zmmmmm | 2026-01-24 23:52:57+00:00
It's a bit like the argument with self driving cars though. They may be safer overall, but there's a big difference in how responsibility for errors is attributed. If a human is not a decision maker in the production of the code, where does responsibility for errors propagate to?

I feel like software engineers are taking a lot of license with the idea that if something bad happens, they will just be able to say "oh the AI did it" and no personal responsibility or liability will attribute. But if they personally looked at the code and their name is underneath it signing off the merge request acknowledging responsibility for it - we have a very different dynamic.

Just like artists have to re-conceptualise the value of what they do around the creative part of the process, software engineers have to rethink what their value proposition is. And I'm seeing a large part of it is, you are going to take responsibility for the AI output. It won't surprise me if after the first few disasters happen, we see liability legislation that mandates human responsibility for AI errors. At that point I feel many of the people all in on agent driven workflows that are explicitly designed to minimise human oversight are going to find themselves with a big problem.

My personal approach is I'm building up a tool set that maximises productivity while ensuring human oversight. Not just that it occurs and is easy to do, but that documentation of it is recorded (inherently, in git).

It will be interesting to see how this all evolves.
by majormajor | 2026-01-24 23:53:27+00:00
What does it mean to even say "having just one of them"? I think the false dichotomy just torpedoes the ability to predict the effect of new tools at all. There's already a world of difference between the janitor who couldn't learn how to read but does his best to show up and clean the place as well as he can every day and the middle manager engineer with population-median math or engineering abilities but a 12-hour-day work ethic that has let him climb the ladder a bit. And the effect of these AI tools we're considering here is going to be MUCH larger on one than the other - it's gonna be worse here for the smarter one, until the AI's are shoveling crap around with human-level dexterity. (Who knows, maybe that's next.)

Anyone you'd interact with in a job in a HN-adjacent field has already cleared several bars of "not actually that lazy in the big picture" to avoid flunking out of high school, college, or quitting their office job to bum around... and so at that point there's not that same black-and-white "it'll help you but hurt you" shortcut classification.

EDIT: here's a scenario where it'll be harder to be lazy as a software engineer already, not even in the "super AI" future: in the recent past, if you were quicker than your coworkers and lazy, you could fuck around for 3 hours than knock something out in 1 hour and look just as productive, or more, than many of your coworkers. If everyone knows - even your boss - that it actually should only take 45 minutes of prompting then reviewing code from the model, and can trivially check that in the background themselves if they get suspicious, then you might be in trouble.
by lxgr | 2026-01-24 23:53:39+00:00
I just don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation of a telecommunications tool, so yeah, I think it’s a fair change well within the norms and expectations of an instant messenger.

You should get to control how/ to whom your data is distributed, but also requiring these recipients to only use software and services of your choosing seems excessive. Platform lock-in at this point seems like the much greater harm.

I could see the case for a small indicator in the contact details that they’re using a third-party client, but anything more (green bubbles?) would be counterproductive.
by dekhn | 2026-01-24 23:53:43+00:00
OK, I'll do the work to follow up for you.

https://abc7ny.com/post/minneapolis-shooting-today-federal-a... attributes the quote to DHS

https://www.tpr.org/news/2026-01-24/man-shot-dead-by-federal... says it came from a DHS statement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/reported-shoo... -minneapolis-federal-agents-protesters/ is, I think, the article you say suggests O'Hara said this, but I believe it was originally incorrect and updated since then

https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2015202988923711951 is the tweet from the government using the direct wording

Also, to be obviously, the statement you attributed to O'Hara is inconsistent with what he would say given his role.

While I totally appreciate that you don't like people using emotional verbiage or making false conclusions biased by their own beliefs, the reality here is that basically no objective independent observer would say that the government's statements are true and accurate. And I also think that careful analysis of the videos by that same observer would conclude the agents made an egregious error in the heat of the moment. Constantly doubling down about how you're the rational one, when there is ample evidence otherwise simply weakens your own position and makes people less likely to bother reading what you have to say.
by ProllyInfamous | 2026-01-24 23:54:00+00:00
I have the physical book, translated by Gia-Fu Fend & Jane English.

Every night, I read one new passage — then every morning, I read that same passage again. Presuming you miss a few readings, you can then complete the entire Tao in less than three months (or: four times per year, cyclically).

This gives you time to digest each passage, be it in dreams or daytime.

>#23 — "he who does not trust enough will not be trusted"
by bdangubic | 2026-01-24 23:54:07+00:00
> I received a title bump without pay increase

I have been SWE for 30 years now and this is one of the most boggling things I’ve seen over the years. I hope my daughter never has to do the work I did in my career but if she actually has an office job I will tell her to quit immediately if this was offered to her (leave the job immediately without any notice, just pack up and go). This is not a promotion but an insult.
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-24 23:54:32+00:00
I think these narratives of yours are oversimplified or inaccurate, but ultimately it doesn't matter.

The important point is: Since US intervention is so bad, according to you, can you understand why I want to withdraw from NATO? Can we at least agree on that? Don't you want to save your continent from the evil US intervention such as all the billions we've sent as support to Ukraine?
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-24 23:54:42+00:00
Yep this. I think i've lost count of home many US and German companies keep moving their SW positions to my home country because US labor is too expensive and German unions to annoying for business. In a free market without trade and regulatory barriers, the best value/cost players win all.

Where I live now in Austria, there's some small union of IT workers, but it's toothless because they know their work can be offshored and have no leverage especially that the country is already not attractive to investors as-is due to high taxes and regulations. IT workers giving themselves stronger protections like, the rail workers do for example, would just mean most non critical IT work leaves the country ASAP.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-24 23:55:18+00:00
> I've never met someone for whom points didn't eventually turn into a measurement of time

The goal isn't to avoid time estimation completely, that would be crazy. People estimate how many points get delivered per sprint and sprints have fixed lengths of time. You can do the math, you're supposed to.

The point is that points avoid a false sense of precision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748310

The process is quite easy to implement. And it does wind up with extraordinary efficacy gains on a lot of teams, that's the whole reason why it's so popular. But you do have to actually learn about it. Here:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/estimatio...
by andsoitis | 2026-01-24 23:56:28+00:00
> According to Morningstar, of the thousands of actively managed U.S. large-cap blend stock funds, an embarrassingly small number of them (27%) outperformed the S&P 500 index in 2025.

It’s much much worse than that for actively managed funds. You can’t predict which fund will outperform an S&P 500 index fund for the coming year. And a fund that outperforms it in one year has zero reliability in outperforming it over 3, 5, or 10 years.

If you’re going to invest in equities, an index fund in something like the S&P 500 will always be superior.
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-24 23:57:36+00:00
OK so can we at least agree that the US needs to withdraw from NATO in order to focus on our own domestic issues, and so Russia will no longer interfere in our elections?

I need to worry about secret police in my state murdering randomly people. I have no time to think of Europe. Hence it is best to withdraw from NATO. Agreed?
by lzy | 2026-01-24 23:57:58+00:00
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by lateforwork | 2026-01-24 23:58:07+00:00
Even if MAGA goes away in 3 years when Trump (hopefully) goes away, the US will remain an oligarchy. Billionaire's interests comes before citizens' interests. This is because of a supreme court decision that allowed billionaires to buy elections. For this reason, even though I am American, I'd like to see European alternatives to US apps and services, because they are more likely to serve my interests.
by artyom | 2026-01-24 23:58:08+00:00
This is really easy to answer, with some perspective from the inside, but mostly from public information:

- Amazon has 3 main business lines ("orgs"): Ecommerce, AWS and devices.

- Ecommerce and AWS are (now) cash cows. Devices bleeds money. TV falls into the devices organization.

- Devices was a Bezos bet. Current Amazon couldn't care less honestly.

- The devices organization is (today, after layoffs and people leaving in droves) essentially full of incompetent people, where all the leftovers of the other two orgs end up.

- It's people that was hired to build structure with the sole purpose of some higher-up promotion. They never served any other purpose, neither they have any particularly sophisticated skill.

- That's the people that makes the TV app.
by WalterBright | 2026-01-24 23:59:04+00:00
I've been in the tech industry for 45 years. Layoffs happen regularly. Well, not regularly, what it is is a chaotic system. There will be good times and bad times. The best way to deal with it is to immediately save, at a minimum, 6 months of runway. Preferably a year.

When you're in between jobs, work on:

1. improving your job skills

2. network

3. build your resume by contributing to open source

4. start your own business
by Alasater | 2026-01-24 23:59:26+00:00
We actually didn't get to that part of the payload calibration campaign unfortunately, but all indications pointed towards getting geolocation between 5-10 meters on this first mission, driven primarily by star tracker quaternion error. Ephemeris and field angle map error was right in spec, so we were prepped to do an iterative line of sight pointing calibration but with the CMGs down, we didn't get to get there.

Future systems we've got a few updates though based on learnings, and we'll be shooting for closer to 3-5 meter geolocation error without ground control points (GCPs)
by krackers | 2026-01-24 23:59:29+00:00
I've heard some people say that "vibe coding" with chatbots is like slot machines, you just keep "propmting" until you hit the jackpot. And there was some earlier study that people _felt_ more productive even if they weren't (caveat that this was with older models), which aligns with the sort of time-dilation people feel when gambling.

I guess "agentic swarms" are the next evolution of the meta-game, the perfect nerd-sniping strategy. Now you can spend all your time minmaxing your team, balancing strengths/weaknesses by tweaking subagents, adding more verifiers and project managers. Maybe there's some psychological draw, that people can feel like gods and have a taste of the power execs feel, even though that power is ultimately a simulacra as well.