MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by charcircuit | 2026-01-11 11:33:43+00:00
Why do you think customization can only viably done via changing the code of the application itself.

I think there is room for closed source platforms that are built on top of using LLMs via some sort of API that it exposes. For example, iOS can be closed source and LLMs can develop apps for it to expand the capabilities of one's phone.

Allowing total customization by a business can allow them to mess up the app itself or make other mistakes. I don't think it's the best interface for allowing others to extend the app.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 11:34:54+00:00
Exactly. The AI is great at "write me a function that does X" or "convert this to async." It struggles with:
- Graph layout algorithms (crossing minimization, layer assignment)
- State machine interactions (how does undo interact with sync scroll when switching view modes?)
- Performance debugging (why is syntax highlighting slow on scroll?)

The domain knowledge still matters. AI just compresses the boilerplate time.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-11 11:34:55+00:00
> It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding.

Well, it's both, for different people, seemingly :)

I also like the understanding and solving something difficult, that rewards a really strong part of my brain. But I don't always like to spend 5 hours in doing so, especially when I'm doing that because of some other problem I want to solve. Then I just want it solved ideally.

But then other days I engage in problems that are hard because they are hard, and because I want to spend 5 hours thinking about, designing the perfect solution for it and so on.

Different moments call for different methods, and particularly people seem to widely favor different methods too, which makes sense.
by martin-t | 2026-01-11 11:35:40+00:00
If you want, I made a coherent argument about how the mechanics of LLMs mean both their training and inference is plagiarism and should be copyright infringement.[0] TL;DR it's about reproducing higher order patterns instead of word for word.

I haven't seen this argument made elsewhere, it would be interesting to get it into the courtrooms - I am told cases are being fought right now but I don't have the energy to follow them.

Plus as somebody else put it eloquently, it's labor theft - we, working programmers, exchanged out limited lifetime for money (already exploitative) in a world with certain rules. Now the rules changed, our past work has much more value, and we don't get compensated.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46187330
by dkdcio | 2026-01-11 11:35:56+00:00
you’re just repeating the straw man. if you can’t think critically and just regurgitate every dumb thing you hear idk what to tell you. nobody serious thinks a “singularity” is coming. there’s not even a proper definition of “AGI”

your argument amounts to “some people said stupid shit one time and I took it seriously”
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 11:36:14+00:00
Small correction: Ferrite uses egui (by Emil Ernerfeldt), not anything from Zed. Different ecosystem entirely.

- Zed uses their own gpui framework
- Ferrite uses egui — an immediate-mode GUI library

egui is great for rapid development but has limitations. The v0.3.0 custom editor widget is specifically because egui's built-in TextEdit blocks features like proper multi-cursor and code folding. We're not getting much "for free" there — the Mermaid renderer, syntax highlighting integration, and view synchronization are all custom.

That said, egui definitely accelerated the initial UI work. Credit where due!
by pwdisswordfishy | 2026-01-11 11:36:18+00:00
> I never understood why the more strict rules of XML for HTML never took off

Internet Explorer failing to support XHTML at all (which also forced everyone to serve XHTML with the HTML media type and avoid incompatible syntaxes like self-closing <script />), Firefox at first failing to support progressive rendering of XHTML, a dearth of tooling to emit well-formed XHTML (remember, those were the days of PHP emitting markup by string concatenation) and the resulting fear of pages entirely failing to render (the so-called Yellow Screen of Death), and a side helping of the WHATWG cartel^W organization declaring XHTML "obsolete". It probably didn't help that XHTML did not offer any new features over tag-soup HTML syntax.

I think most of those are actually no longer relevant, so I still kind of hope that XHTML could have a resurgence, and that the tag-soup syntax could be finally discarded. It's long overdue.
by CuriouslyC | 2026-01-11 11:37:01+00:00
If you make they will come has never been a valid strategy. And marketing is fucking miserable now because of the proliferation low quality software people are trying to turn into SaaS.

If you don't have a halo already, you need to be blessed or you're just going to suffer. Getting a good mention by someone like Theo or SimonW >> 1000 well written articles.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 11:37:15+00:00
This is a perfect use case! The v0.3.0 crate will have:
- parse() → AST
- layout() → positioned elements
- render_svg() → SVG string
- render_png() → via resvg (no browser needed)

CLI usage would be something like:

mermaid-rs diagram.mmd -o diagram.png> # or pipe from stdin> cat diagram.mmd | mermaid-rs --format svg > output.svg>

For your mark integration, you'd be able to call it as a subprocess or use it as a Rust library directly if you're building in Rust.

If you want to follow progress or have input on the API, feel free to open an issue on the repo!
by NitpickLawyer | 2026-01-11 11:37:18+00:00
You can run most open models (excluding kimi-k2) on hardware that costs anywhere from 45 - 85k (tbf, specced before the vram wars of late 2025 so +10k maybe?). 4-8 PRO6000s + all the other bits and pieces gives you a machine that you can host locally and run very capable models, at several quants (glm4.7, minimax2.1, devstral, dsv3, gpt-oss-120b, qwens, etc.), with enough speed and parallel sessions for a small team (of agents or humans).
by theturtletalks | 2026-01-11 11:37:18+00:00
LLMs are breaking open-source monetization.

Group 1 is untouched since they were writing code for the sake of writing and they have the reward of that altruism.

Group 2 are those that needed their projects to bring in some revenue so they can continue writing open-source.

Group 3 are companies that used open-source as a way to get market share from proprietary companies, using it more in a capitalistic way.

Overtime, I think groups 2 and 3 will leave open-source and group 1 will make up most of the open-source contributors. It is up to you to decide if projects like Redis would be built today with the monetary incentives gone.
by criddell | 2026-01-11 11:37:45+00:00
Same here. I’ve had limited success getting AIs to do very simple stuff. Every one I’ve tried invents APIs that don’t exist and eventually get stuck in a circle where it tells me to try A. When that doesn’t work, try B. No luck? Try C. Hmmm my apologies, try A. Lather, rinse, repeat.
by danielbln | 2026-01-11 11:37:56+00:00
There are too many people who see the absurd AI hype (especially absurd in terms of investment) and construct a counter-argument with it that AI is useless, overblown and just generally not good. And that's a fallacy. Two things can be true at the same time. Coding agents are a step change and immensely useful, and the valuations and breathless AGI evangelizing is a smoke screen and pure hype.

Don't let hype deter you to get your own hands dirty and try shit.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2026-01-11 11:37:59+00:00
I generally have a lot of respect for this guy. He’s an excellent coder, and really cares about his craft. I can relate to him (except he’s been more successful than me, which is fine -he deserves it).

Really, one of the first things he said, sums it up:

> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever.

I have been using it in a very similar manner to how he describes his workflow, and it’s already greatly improved my velocity and quality.

I also can relate to this comment:

> I feel great to be part of that, because I see this as a continuation of what I tried to do all my life: democratizing code, systems, knowledge.
by rastriga | 2026-01-11 11:38:08+00:00
You can change the system prompt claude code sends, which changes how the agent frames behavior, but claude still has internal and server side safety layers. So removing or rewriting the client system prompt won't allow to magically bypass those. I think of the client system prompt more as agent configuration than as the primary safety net — it shapes behavior, but it’s not the final authority. I’m covering this in Part 2 — breaking down what’s actually in the system prompt and how the client-side safety framing is constructed.
by matthewmacleod | 2026-01-11 11:38:10+00:00
Do you really struggle to understand the mindset?

Some people are happy to release code openly and have it used for anything, commercial or otherwise. Totally understandable and a valid choice to make.

Other people are happy to release code openly so long as people who incorporate it into their projects also release it in the same way. Again, totally understandable and valid.

None of this is hard to understand or confusing or even slightly weird.
by martin-t | 2026-01-11 11:38:27+00:00
I recall a basics of law class saying that in some countries (e.g. Czech Republic), open source contributors have the right to small compensation if their work is used to a large financial benefit.

At some point, I'll have to look it up because if that's right, the billionaires and wannabe-trillionaires owe me a shitton of money.
by jeffrallen | 2026-01-11 11:39:14+00:00
If the point of a home lab is to learn useful lessons where your customers don't pay for your stupidity (or more politely: your learning journey) then this guy's next employer is definitely getting their money's worth.

But that reminds me of something: I spend money on hobbies, but I spend the absolute minimum amount of money possible on home IT research and learning. Fuck that noise: if my employer wants a lab, they can damn well pay for one.
by artdigital | 2026-01-11 11:39:42+00:00
Yes that’s how I see it too. It’s a productivity multiplier, but depends on what you put in.

Sure Opus can work fully on its own by just telling it “add a button that does X”, but do that 20 times and the good turns into mush. Steer the model with detailed tech specs on the other hand, and the output becomes magical
by zahlman | 2026-01-11 11:39:44+00:00
> at least three quarters are boring boilerplate. And making that part interesting is one of the worst things you can do in software development! That path lies resume-driven development, architecture astronautics, abusing design patterns du jour, and other sins that will make code maintenance on that thing a nightmare!

You apparently see "making the boilerplate interesting" as doing a bunch of overengineering. Strange. To my mind, the overengineering is part of the boilerplate. "Making the boilerplate interesting" in my mind is not possible; but rather the goal is to fix the system such that it doesn't require boilerplate any more. (Sometimes that just means a different implementation language.)
by Solance | 2026-01-11 11:40:07+00:00
I am definitely planning to go cross platform in the future and integrate other music streaming services such as Apple Music, however, the APIs that these other services offer are nowhere near as good as what Spotify offers unfortunately. Also when I first began creating this app around 3 years ago, and just prior to launching the Spotify hate wasn't nearly what it is today. My plan is to keep releasing updates and features for now until I'm at a point where I'm happy to start integrating other streaming services. Would be interested to hear your perspective on this idea.
by Ekaros | 2026-01-11 11:40:52+00:00
Someone should really take AI to these task. Let the agents run wild. Let them astroturf every possible platform in existence. Especially like this one here HN. Insert marketing messages to every post and every thread.

There is not bad publicity. More you spam more you will be noticed. Human attention is limited. So grab as much as you can. And also this helps your product name to get into training data and thus later in LLM outputs.

Even more ideas. When you find an email address. Spam that too. Get your message out multiple times to each address.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-11 11:40:59+00:00
Yeah, but I guess wider. It's like the discussion would turn into "Don't use oil colors, then you don't get to do the fun process of mixing water and color together to get it just perfect" while maybe some artists don't think that's the fun process, and all the other categories, all mixed together, and everyone think their reason of doing it is the reason most people do it.
by loubbrad | 2026-01-11 11:41:14+00:00
> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer...

Reminds me of this excerpt from Richard Hamming's book:

> Finally, a more complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised—after more years than you are apt to believe during which most programmers continued their heroic absolute binary programming. At the time SAP first appeared I would guess about 1% of the older programmers were interested in it—using SAP was “sissy stuff”, and a real programmer would not stoop to wasting machine capacity to do the assembly. Yes! Programmers wanted no part of it, though when pressed they had to admit their old methods used more machine time in locating and fixing up errors than the SAP program ever used. One of the main complaints was when using a symbolic system you do not know where anything was in storage—though in the early days we supplied a mapping of symbolic to actual storage, and believe it or not they later lovingly pored over such sheets rather than realize they did not need to know that information if they stuck to operating within the system—no! When correcting errors they preferred to do it in absolute binary addresses.
by tsimionescu | 2026-01-11 11:42:00+00:00
This is exactly what I meant as irrelevant.

If I call `foo(std::move(my_unique_ptr))`, I know for sure, statically, that my_unique_ptr was moved from, as part of the function call process, and I can no longer access it. Whether `foo` chooses to further move from it is irrelevant.
by topocite | 2026-01-11 11:42:17+00:00
I have two laptops running linux. One is a MSI gaming laptop with RTX card that no one would recommend for linux.

I had to try about 10 distros before I settled on linux mint. Everything else had some problem but the driver manager on linux mint made setting up the RTX so flawless.

After 8 months of use, it is the best machine I have ever used. If I had just stuck with my old favorite KDE neon though I would have been posting on how not to get MSI if you want to use linux.
by martin-t | 2026-01-11 11:42:20+00:00
During the gold rush, the only people who made money were the ones selling the pickaxes. A"I" companies are ~selling~ renting the pickaxes of today.

(I didn't come up with this quote but I can't find the source now. If anything good comes out of LLMs, it's making me appreciate other people's more and trying to give credit where it's due.)
by svara | 2026-01-11 11:42:21+00:00
We've been hearing this a lot, but I don't really get it. A lot of code, most probably, isn't even close to being as challenging as a maths textbook.

It obviously depends a lot on what exactly you're building, but in many projects programming entails a lot of low intellectual effort, repetitive work.

It's the same things over and over with slight variations and little intellectual challenge once you've learnt the basic concepts.

Many projects do have a kernel of non-obvious innovation, some have a lot of it, and by all means, do think deeply about these parts. That's your job.

But if an LLM can do the clerical work for you? What's not to celebrate about that?

To make it concrete with an example: the other day I had Claude make a TUI for a data processing library I made. It's a bunch of rather tedious boilerplate.

I really have no intellectual interest in TUI coding and I would consider doing that myself a terrible use of my time considering all the other things I could be doing.

The alternative wasn't to have a much better TUI, but to not have any.
by falloutx | 2026-01-11 11:42:49+00:00
if you are very high up the chain like Linus, i think doing vibe coding gives you more feedback than any average dev. So they are having a positive feedback loop.

For most of us vibe coding gives 0 advantage. Our software will just sit there and get no views and producing it faster means nothing. In fact, it just scares us that some exec is gonna look at this and write us for low performance because they saw someone do the same thing we are doing in 2 days instead of 4.
by Fiveplus | 2026-01-11 11:44:58+00:00
Regarding mistake 1: return std::move(local_var), it is worth clarifying why this is technically a pessimization beyond just breaking NRVO. It comes down to the change in C++17 regarding prvalues.

> Pre-C++17, a prvalue was a temporary object.

> Post-C++17, a prvalue is an initializer. It has no identity and occupies no storage until it is materialized.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 11:45:02+00:00
You're right to push on this, let me be fully transparent.

100% of the code was generated by AI (Claude Opus 4.5(I am super impressed by the capabilities of Opus 4.5), via Cursor with MCP tools). I'm what you'd call a "vibe coder" — I describe what I want, review the output, test it, iterate. I haven't written Rust by hand for this project.

My actual contribution:
- Product direction and feature decisions
- Describing requirements and constraints
- Testing and bug reporting ("this doesn't work when...")
- Reviewing code for obvious issues
- Workflow orchestration (MCP tools, task management, context management)

What I'm learning:
- How to effectively direct AI for complex projects
- Rust patterns (by reading generated code)
- Software architecture (by seeing how AI structures things)
- What works and what doesn't in AI-assisted development

Why I'm doing this:
Honestly? To learn and experiment. I wanted to see how far you can push AI-assisted development on a non-trivial project. Ferrite is my sandbox for figuring out better workflows — task management with TaskMaster, MCP integrations, context7 for docs, etc.

Is this "real" software development?
I don't know. It's definitely a new paradigm. The code compiles, runs, and does useful things. Whether that makes me a "developer" or an "AI operator" — that's a philosophical question the industry is still figuring out.

The documentation and comments being AI-heavy was a fair tell. I probably should have been upfront about this from the start.
by pkorzeniewski | 2026-01-11 11:45:18+00:00
AI doesn't solve the main problems when it comes to building a successful product: what to build and how to find customers. In my opinion building the product is actually the easy part in most cases - there are already a ton of frameworks, libraries and services that vastly reduces time to implement what you need, AI just accelerates this, but if you don't have a proper bussiness idea you will just build another thing that nobody uses.
by ben_w | 2026-01-11 11:45:23+00:00
> Am I wrong to feel this?

There's no such thing as a wrong feeling.

And I say this as one of those with the view that AI training is "learning" rather than "stealing", or at least that this is the goal because AI is the dumbest, the most error prone, and also the most expensive way, to try to make a copy of something.

My fears about setting things loose for public consumption are more about how I will be judged for them than about being ripped off, which is kinda why that book I started writing a decade ago and have not meaningfully touched in the last 12 months is neither published properly nor sent to some online archive.

When it comes to licensing source code, I mostly choose MIT, because I don't care what anyone does with the code once it's out there.

But there's no such thing as a wrong feeling, anyone who dismisses your response is blinding themselves to a common human response that also led to various previous violent uprisings against the owners of expensive tools of automation that destroyed the careers of respectable workers.
I Build an Idea I Love. I Need You to Tear It Apart
by indigoeagle | 2026-01-11 11:45:35+00:00
Hi!

My name is Marta, and I’m working on a startup idea that I genuinely believe could become something big — and I want you to give me “harsh and frank” rather than “nice and polite” feedback.

I’d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to read this post and answer one honest question:

“Would you actually sign up for this?”

Not “sounds interesting,” not “nice idea,” but:

Would it solve a real pain for you?

Would it make your life feel a bit more fulfilled?

Would you try it at least once?

Thnx in advance.

Let’s go!

What is Kindred?

Kindred is a platform where you book meaningful 1-on-1 conversations with people who share your interests — directly in each other’s calendars, without chatting first or social pressure.

What will Kindred do differently than other typical social-networking apps?

On most apps, everything usually starts with:

“Hey ” → silence → awkward follow-ups → ghosting.

Not on mine. This is how it works:

1. You search by interests. You type what you’re curious about: Formula 1, French wines, horse racing, crypto, relocating abroad, career doubts, niche hobbies — anything

2. You see people who share those interests. You browse profiles of real people who are interested in the same topics

3. You choose the profile that resonates with you
You book time directly in their calendar. No need to write first. Every user in their personal calendar sets time slots when they’re available (e.g. Tuesday 8–9 pm, Wednesday 10–11 am)

4. Confirmation → calendar sync. The other person accepts or declines. Once confirmed, the meeting is automatically added to your Google Calendar

Key benefits

- No chatting before the first meeting (unless you want to).

- No emotional pressure to “write the perfect first message”/”break ice”

- No “hey, how are you?” marathon You don’t warm up for weeks — you just show up on a meeting and talk

- No pressure to continue forever. Kindred normalizes one-time or occasional conversations. You can talk about one topic with any person once and that’s perfectly okay. No guilt. No awkward fading out

Who it’s for?

- Busy people who value their time and do not want to spend thousand hours finding the perfect match for a talk

- Introverts who hate shallow talks and want intellectually intensive and meaningful

connections

- People with niche interests who can’t find “their people”

- Expats / relocators who want real connection, not surface-level socializing in their new bubble
Anyone who misses meaningful human conversation, but doesn’t want new obligations (friendship forever)

What Kindred is NOT

Not dating

Not networking with pitches

Not social media

Not “let’s be best friends forever”
by dkdcio | 2026-01-11 11:45:36+00:00
I started heavy usage in April 2025 (Codex CLI -> some Claude Code and trying other CLIs + a bit of Cursor -> Warp.dev -> Claude Code) and I’m still learning as well (and constantly trying to get more efficient)

I like to say it’s like learning a programming language. it takes time, but you start pattern matching and knowing what works. it took me multiple attempts and a good amount of time to learn Rust, learning effective use of these tools is similar

I’ve also learned a ton across domains I otherwise wouldn’t have touched