MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by troupo | 2026-01-12 17:39:56+00:00
> No, I don't.

Strange. For a simple "add two integers" you now have to do five different updates to specs to make it non-ambiguous, restarting the work from scratch (that is, starting a new context) every time.

What happens when your work isn't to add two integers? How many iterations of the spec you have to do before you arrive at an unambiguous one, and how big will it be?

> Once you figure out how to communicate,

LLMs don't communicate.

> Right, if that's what you meant, then yeah, of course they don't ignore the existing code, if there is a function that already does what it needs, it'll use that.

Of course it won't since LLMs don't learn. When you start a new context, the world doesn't exist. It literally has no idea what does and does not exist in your project.

It may search for some functionality given a spec/definition/question/brainstorming skill/thinking or planning mode. But it may just as likely not. Because there are no actual proper way for anyone to direct it, and the models don't have learning/object permanence.

> If the agent/LLM you use doesn't automatically does this, I suggest you try something better, like Codex or Claude Code.

The most infuriating thing about these conversations is that people hyping AI assume everyone else but them is stupid, or doing something incorrectly.

We are supposed to always believe people who say "LLMs just work", without any doubt, on faith alone.

However, people who do the exact same things, use the exact tools, and see all the problems for what they are? Well, they are stupid idiots with skill issues who don't know anything and probably use GPT 1.0 or something.

Neither Claude nor Codex are magic silver bullets. Claude will happily reinvent any and all functions it wants, and has been doing so since the very first day it was unleashed onto the world.

> But anyways, you don't really seem like you're looking for improving, but instead try to dismiss better techniques available

Yup. Just as I said previously.

There are some magical techniques, and if you don't use them, you're a stupid Luddite idiot.

Doesn't matter that the person talking about these magical techniques completely ignores and misses the whole point of the conversation and is fully prejudiced against you. The person who needs to improve for some vague condescending definition of improvement is you.
Ask HN: Is managing AI features fundamentally different from traditional coding?
by sshadmand | 2026-01-12 17:40:02+00:00
My team is working hard, but we're struggling to break work into measurable stories and tasks the way we used to. Now that we’re building AI-based processes and response systems, scoping feels fuzzier than traditional feature work.

I’ve seen this before with non-AI development. Usually it comes down to skill. People haven’t yet learned how to decompose a big problem into smaller, concrete steps. With some guidance, they improve. We go from two big "8s", and find out we can release a few 2s and 3s of value over time.

But with AI system development, I’m not sure if this is the same issue or if the nature of the work really is different. The engineers argue that it’s harder to "shrink" AI work into predictable, incremental pieces because outcomes are probabilistic, not deterministic. And that we can't just break them up since they rely on one another contextually.

So I’m curious:

- Are others experiencing this shift?

- Is this just a new version of the same problem-decomposition skill?

- Or, is building AI systems genuinely a different game we have to calibrate expectations around?

- And either way, how have you adapted your process to deal with these longer, less predictable, larger tickets?

Would love to hear what’s working for people.
by sublinear | 2026-01-12 17:40:16+00:00
Unless we're talking about some sketchy gig work nonsense, the "agency" is a consultancy like any other. They are a legitimate employer with benefits, w2, etc. It's not like they're pimps or something!

Those devs aren't code monkeys and they get paid the same as anyone else working in this industry. In fact, I think a lot of the more ADHD type people on here would strongly prefer working on a new project every 6 months without needing to find a new employer every time. The contracts between the consultancy and client usually also include longer term support than the limited time the original dev spent on it.
by uyzstvqs | 2026-01-12 17:40:21+00:00
Nudity, including artistic nudity, is in itself the complete opposite of pornography. One is human nature, with art depicting its beauty and purity, while the latter is about the gratification of lust.

As a Christian, pornography is clearly sinful and harmful. But if you wish to use your free will to partake in it, then you do you. Non-consensual pornography (which is what this is about) causes harm to another person, which is why it cannot be tolerated.

This should be obvious IMO.
by reify | 2026-01-12 17:40:49+00:00
I was 70 years old this week.

ketogenic diet for the last 20 years. before it became fashionable.

I have had very low cholesterol for 20 years, even though 70% of my calories are quality fats.

never been an ounce overweight. constant 83Kg forever

ketogenic diets are now prescribed as a no drug cure for Diabetes with very good research into Epilepsy.

As well as the ketogenic diet, I have chosen all my life never eat any food that is squirted out of a machine (breakfast cereals etc). this includes all take away foods like macdonalds, pizza's, and bleached chicken companies. THIS FOOD IS NOT DESIGNED FOR HUMANS.

I am a martial artist, aikido brown belt and shotokan orange belt.

power walk 6 miles, three time a week, rain or shine.

For mental well being, I cook organic food and bake sourdough breads for my local mental health charity and local church. This is for those less fortunate that need support.

I never ever take any drugs that are prescribed by a doctor. I learned over 20 years as a psychotherapist that most GP's here in the UK, do not know all there is about the drugs they prescribe. Their prescribing decison are made from the sales brochures they receive and from pressure salesmen promoting the drugs from big pharma.

The only medical people I trust are those that really matter. In particualar those who work in surgical practice. Surgeons in all fields are amazing. Now those people are the real life savers and know their stuff.

Ive not watched the TV for 25 years, which in turn makes me autonomous, individual and self regulated. Unaffected by the manipulative brain washing propaganda of mass media companies.

Being a linux (arch BTW) user also has its mental health benefits. less stress being the main one, and no poxy anti-virus or three days updates.

I realised early on in my life that by giving more than you receive is the key to our own mental well being.

For instance, I realised during my psychotherapy training that the people who needed psychotherapy the most, were the people who could not afford it. So I worked pro bono for 10 years as a volunteer psychotherapist and gave my time for free.
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-12 17:41:06+00:00
Everyone is missing the point, including Karpathy which is the most surprising because he is supposed to be one of the smart ones.

The focus shouldn't be on which sensor to use. If you are going to use humans as examples, just take the time to think how a human drives. We can drive with one eye. We can drive with a screen instead of a windshield. We can drive with a wiremesh representation of the world. We also use audio signals quite a bit when when driving as well.

The way to build a self driving suite is start with the software that builds your representation of the world first. Then any sensor you add in is a fairly trivial problem of sensor fusion + Kalman filtering. That way, as certain tech gets cheaper or better or more expensive and worse, you can just easily swap in what you need to achieve x degree of accuracy.
by klaff | 2026-01-12 17:41:09+00:00
I'm kinda shocked that there's no discussion of sinc interpolation and adapting it's theoretical need for infinite signals to some finite kernel length.

For a sampled signal, if you know the sampling satisfied Nyquist (i.e., there was no frequency content above fs/2) then the original signal can be reproduced exactly at any point in time using sinc interpolation. Unfortunately that theoretically requires an infinite length sample, but the kernel can be bounded based on accuracy requirements or other limiting factors (such as the noise which was mentioned). Other interpolation techniques should be viewed as approximations to sinc.

Sinc interpolation is available on most oscilloscopes and is useful when the sample rate is sufficient but not greatly higher than the signal of interest.
by kotaKat | 2026-01-12 17:41:20+00:00
I appreciate that TTC goes the extra mile with the continually updated global rankings spreadsheet[1]. It’s a lot easier to poke back at the recommendations from TTC than it is from PF. It’s also another clever source of revenue to keep the channel running cleanly.

[1] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1152216140/torque-test-channel-...
by throwaway920102 | 2026-01-12 17:41:22+00:00
I hate Trump but Treasury control over central banks and interest rates is not a particularly revolutionary thing. Independent central bank is a relatively new invention and a non-independently controlled central reserve bank did not always lead to immediate implosion in all cases. The concept of independent central bank only became popularized in the 1920s. The world existed before that.

The dire thing here is that Trump himself is a maniac, so him taking control is very scary, but a non-independent central bank itself is not as big a calamity as 1000 other problems we're facing in society.

History:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank_independence

You can find many criticisms of the job performance of many of the past chairs of the US fed, the Fed is not infallible. The current Everything Bubble / Too Big to Fail situation we are in is largely of their creation.
by neutronicus | 2026-01-12 17:41:52+00:00
This is true - we've taken advantage of it somewhat (my wife ripped Harry Potter this way, and we recorded ourselves narrating some favorites).

Mainly (shamefully) "Simply remove the DRM" is doing some work in your sentence. We just, uh, haven't gotten together the executive function to figure out how to do it with the Libby app on the iPhone. As a Hacker News poster I want to be the type of person who figures this out. But, I have not.
by benoau | 2026-01-12 17:42:07+00:00
> So because Apple chose not to spend money to develop it's own AI, it must be punished for then choosing to use another companies model? And the reason that this is an issue is because both companies are large?

No they were already being sued for antitrust violations, it just mirrors what they are accused of doing to exploit their platform.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...
by adrian_b | 2026-01-12 17:42:15+00:00
22050 Hz is an ideal unreachable limit, like the speed of light for velocities.

You cannot make filters that would stop everything above 22050 Hz and pass everything below. You can barely make very expensive analog filters that pass everything below 20 kHz while stopping everything above 22 kHz.

Many early CD recordings used cheaper filters with a pass-band smaller than 20 kHz.

For 48 kHz it is much easier to make filters that pass 20 kHz and whose output falls gradually until 24 kHz, but it is still not easy.

Modern audio equipment circumvents this problem by sampling at much higher frequencies, e.g. at least 96 kHz or 192 kHz, which allows much cheaper analog filters that pass 20 kHz but which do not attenuate well enough the higher frequencies, then using digital filters to remove everything above 20 kHz that has passed through the analog filters, and then downsampling to 48 kHz.

The original CD sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz was very tight, despite the high cost of the required filters, because at that time, making 16-bit ADCs and DACs for a higher sampling frequency was even more difficult and expensive. Today, making a 24-bit ADC sampling at 192 kHz is much simpler and cheaper than making an audio anti-aliasing filter for 44.1 kHz.
by happymellon | 2026-01-12 17:42:25+00:00
You refer to CCTV for state mass surveillance, and link to Wikipedia pages but it doesn't appear that you even read them.

> The vast majority of CCTV cameras are not operated by government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011 Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK.

The NYPD alone had 18k back in 2018.

https://securitytoday.com/articles/2018/10/29/new-surveillan...

That doesn't make the UK appear to be monitored heavier than other locations when a single city in the US approaches half their total number of cameras.
by plorg | 2026-01-12 17:44:04+00:00
I can't say I like the 604 from looking at it, but that's a pretty surface level judgment and I'd have to use it to really compare. For my purposes a rechargeable mouse that lasts more than a day is fine because I'm using this at work and I just plug it in when I leave. Having a replaceable rechargeable battery also means if it starts running out of juice before one day I can just pop in a new battery and it'll be good for a couple more years.
by malfist | 2026-01-12 17:44:18+00:00
> the average American eats 400-700 excess daily calories

This can't possibly be true. A caloric surplus of 500cal/day adds a pound of weight per week. That'd mean in a decade of life the _average_ American would add an additional 260 pounds. In 4 decades Americans would add half a ton to their waistline, on average.

That'd mean at then end of their life the average American would die weighing over 2 tons
by lxgr | 2026-01-12 17:44:30+00:00
That would still only require a couple dozens or few hundreds of satellites. For example, Iridium has 60-70, and Globalstar has less than 50 or so.

The actual reason for these new megaconstellations having so many is spatial frequency reuse through directional transmission/reception beams: More satellites means less users competing for each satellite's spectrum-limited bandwidth.
by ashwindharne | 2026-01-12 17:44:44+00:00
I'm building something similar, but as an Excel add-in instead of a standalone product.

In real use-cases, it seems that by far the hardest part is figuring out the right representation for a spreadsheet workbook and the right primitives for the agent to be able to navigate it adeptly and cost-effectively; structure is incredibly variable and the data just compresses rather poorly (values, formulas, formatting, charts, pivots, etc.).

Great stuff though, think we'll see a lot of movement in the space in the coming years!
by Arathorn | 2026-01-12 17:44:48+00:00
Synapse has improved; Dendrite has stagnated due to lack of funding; meanwhile there are also rust-native homeservers like Conduit which are beta but smaller footprint. The plan on the Element side is to keep optimising Synapse - the main win to be had is https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pKtLl4vCV3-8xz8crvxW...
by abetusk | 2026-01-12 17:44:59+00:00
This is a very confusingly worded.

I think what they mean is that the data and code itself is libre/free/open [0] [1] but the API access is essentially rate limited for non-paying customers?

[0] https://open-meteo.com/en/licence (CC-BY)

[1] https://github.com/open-meteo/open-meteo/blob/main/LICENSE (AGPL)
by natch | 2026-01-12 17:45:00+00:00
They transitioned from “nobody can read your data, not even Apple” to “Apple cannot read your data.” Think about what that change means. And even that is not always true.

They also were deceptive about iCloud encryption where they claimed that nobody but you can read your iCloud data. But then it came out after all their fanfare that if you do iCloud backups Apple CAN read your data. But they aren’t in a hurry to retract the lie they promoted.

Also if someone in another country messages you, if that country’s laws require that Apple provide the name, email, phone number, and content of the local users, guess what. Since they messaged you, now not only their name and information, but also your name and private information and message content is shared with that country’s government as well. By Apple. Do they tell you? No. Even if your own country respects privacy. Does Apple have a help article explaining this? No.
by the_af | 2026-01-12 17:45:02+00:00
> To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring.

Your definition of boring is different than min. I find the reality of what evidence points at to be awe-inducing!

I watch Cosmos (original or 2.0) and I get goosebumps.

There's no need to make shit up, the universe is wondrous.
by observationist | 2026-01-12 17:45:35+00:00
If you're taking something from 44.1 to 48, only 91.875% of the data is real, so 8.125% of the resulting upsampled data is invented. Some of it will correlate with the original, real sound. If you use upsampling functions tuned to features of the audio - style, whether it's music, voice, bird recordings, NYC traffic, known auditorium, etc, you can probably bring the accuracy up by several percent. If the original data already has the optimizations, it'll be closer to 92%.

If it's really good AI upsampling, you might get qualitatively "better" sounding audio than the original but still technically deviates from the original baseline by ~8%. Conversely, there'll be technically "correct" upsampling results with higher overall alignment with the original that can sound awful.
There's still a lot to audio processing that's more art than science.
by epistasis | 2026-01-12 17:45:40+00:00
I'd like to see the source of your cost numbers, I've never seen a $/MW from the Navy's subs' and carriers' reactors that was defensible, even Construction Physics didn't want to come up with a $/MW number in their discussion [0]

But remember that with the Seawolf classes the cost was astronomically higher than in the Virginia submarine; high costs are very possible without the NRC and are frequent, and an excellent counterexample to show the underlying fallacy behind the "NRC must be reason costs are high" argument. And remember that the Navy can use highly-enriched fuel that we don't allow in civilian reactors, and that the military nuclear labor force usually gets the best and the brightest and that the civilian nuclear work force gets the leftovers.

The NRC could be the source of high cost, but if so there should be two clear pieces of evidence to show that: 1) clear examples of the NRC doing something to drive up costs, and 2) some example of what to do instead of the NRC, or differences with other regulatory schemes that we could adopt instead. In particular, I never hear the corrective action that people want to the NRC. Having the Navy license civilian power reactors does not seem feasible. The closest we got to suggested regulatory reform culminated with Vogtle and Summer's failure: combined licensing. The biggest benefit of the industry's request merely gave the builders enough rope to hang themselves with bad design and their own delays.

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...
by alex1138 | 2026-01-12 17:45:45+00:00
This is wildly unrelated and I apologize but it reminds me of Apollo 13 vs From The Earth To The Moon (which Tom Hanks directed so one suspects he had more creative freedom)

FTETTM has artistic license. There's no record of Collins (Apollo 11) saying "If you had any balls, you'd say 'oh my god! what is that thing?', scream and cut your mic" but it's very in line with his general character, you can imagine it happening

Apollo 13 put in a bogus argument with Swigert after the oxygen tank exploded

I will never not despise "artistic license" which is just simply wrong
by brendoelfrendo | 2026-01-12 17:46:01+00:00
I can't find a style guide for the Irish Times, but the Independent's style guide seems to agree with you: capitalize when used as part of the name of a bill or act, and use lowercase thereafter [0]. Perhaps because they are using Bill in the headline as a shorthand for the full-name of the bill (probably for space reasons), they saw fit to capitalize it? Regardless, this is one of those cases where it's not really a grammatical choice but one of style/convention.

[0] https://www.independent.ie/editorial/pdfs/stylebook23.pdf
by KronisLV | 2026-01-12 17:46:50+00:00
> It's only been in recent years that people have come to believe that Google/Microsoft/Apple should be the final authorities on which executables are safe to run.

I mean, the OS package repositories at least have some vetting and processes behind them, as opposed to a random website found online - so there's surely middle ground there!

You don't need to give everything up to a few big corpos to have at least a bit of a sense of security - I personally trust the Debian maintainers quite a bit due to their track record, short of bad actors infiltrating the community or accounts getting compromised.
by akiselev | 2026-01-12 17:47:14+00:00
I've been working on this exact same thing with both Solidworks and Altium! There has definitely been a step change in Opus 4.5; I first had it first reverse engineer the Altium file format using a Ghidra MCP and was impressed and how well it worked with decompiled Delphi. Gemini 3 Pro/Flash also make a huge difference with data extraction from PDFs like foot prints or mechanical drawings so we're close to closing the whole loop on several different fields, not just with software engineering.

For the most part they still suck at anything resembling real spatial reasoning but they're capable of doing incredibly monotonous things that most people wouldn't put themselves through like meticulously labeling every pin or putting strict design rule checks on each net or setting up DSN files for autorouter. It even makes the hard routing quite easy because it can set up the DRC using the Saturn calculator so I don't have to deal with that.

If you give them a natural language interface [1] (a CLI in a claude skill, thats it) that you can translate to concrete actions, coordinates, etc. it shines. Opus can prioritize nets for manual vs autorouting, place the major components using language like "middle of board" which I then use another LLM to translate to concrete steps, and just in general do a lot of the annoying things I used to have to do. You can even combine the visual understanding of Gemini with the actions generated by Opus to take it a step further, by having the latter generate instructions and the former generates JSON DSL to that gets executed.

I'm really curious what the defensibility of all these businesses is going to be going forward. I have no plans on entering that business but my limit at this point is I'm not willing to pay more than $200/mo for several Max plans to have dozens of agents running all the time. When it only takes an hour to create a harness that allows Claude to go hog wild with desktop apps there is a LOT of unexplored space but just about anyone who can torrent Solidworks or Altium can figure it out. On the other hand, if it's just a bunch of people bootstrapping, they won't have the same pressure to grow.

Good luck!

[1] Stuff like "place U1 to the left of U4, 50mm away" and the CLI translates that to structured data with absolute coordinates on the PCB. Having the LLM spit out natural language and then using another LLM with structured outputs to translate that to a JSON DSL works very well, including when you need Opus to do stuff like click on screen.