MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by DaedalusII | 2026-02-06 14:53:30+00:00
wall street analysts are starting to realise that software companies shouldnt trade on a P/E of 300.

DocuSign is currently valued at 30 times its annual earnings. Adobe is currently 16. Amazon is 28 -- has been as high as 50 recently. NVDA is 44.

Investors are basically starting to realise that enterprise are not going to subscribe to software like DocuSign for 50 years. They'll probably just move to odoo or zohosign or something and save a lot of money. So its probably a better bet to put that capital into something like Nvidia or Tesla or whatever. it also looks like the US Fed isn't going to cut rates, so capital is getting more expensive.

Of course, if you are a CEO its great to blame all this on AI and then tell your investors you are increasing AI in your business (see: salesforce whose stock price is down 42% in a year and is now trading at 25x earnings)
by fragmede | 2026-02-06 14:53:48+00:00
In the comparison to compilers, it relevant to point out that work began on them in the 1950's. That they're basically solid by the time most people here used them, should be looked at with that time frame in mind. ChatGPT came out in 2022, 3-4 years ago. Compilers have had around three quarters of a century years to get where they are today. I'll probably be dead in seventy years, nevermind have any idea what AI (or society) is going to look like then!

But for reference, we don't (usually) care which register three compiler uses for which variable, we just care that it works, with no bugs. If the non-dertetminism of LLMs mean the variable is called file, filename, or fileName, file_name, and breaking with convention, why do we care? At the level Claude let's us work with code now, it's immaterial.

Compilation isn't stable. If you clear caches and recompile, you don't get a bit-for-bit exact copy, especially on today's multi-core processors, without doing extra work to get there.
by tgsovlerkhgsel | 2026-02-06 14:54:04+00:00
Excluding severe vulnerabilities like ones that completely pwn your machine just by connecting it to an untrusted network is not legitimate for any reasonable bug bounty program.

Of course, a company can do it (they just did!), but it shows that they don't care about security at all.

Especially if the answer is "sorry this is out of scope" rather than "while this is out of scope for our bug bounty so we can't pay you, this looks serious and we'll make sure to get a patch out ASAP".
by PaulHoule | 2026-02-06 14:54:13+00:00
I'd agree that ads can be useful for some things. However many major online platforms are flooded with scams to the extent that ads for anything that aren't obvious scams are suspect.

Also there is the converse proposition that: "all clicks are click fraud", that is, many web sites try to trick you into clicking on ads by making pop-ups that are hard to close, by making the layout shift so you click on an ad when you were trying to click a link, etc.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2026-02-06 14:54:41+00:00
> You can see this just by going around the country. Scandinavia has much higher social trust than Italy. The upper midwest, where Scandinavian immigration dominated, has higher social trust than NJ/NY, which saw mass immigration from southern Italy.

OK, that's interesting, I'll have to look into that book.

However, what's going on in this chart?

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-trsic/tru...

I can see that (as you said) the Nordic countries have much more trust than Italy, and Italy, Spain and France are similar (along with a similar language and large inter-mixtures over time).

However, look at Ireland vs the UK. Basically the same genetics, an extremely similar culture (particularly given the amount of cross migration back and forth), and yet very divergent amounts of social trust (I'm sceptical of the metric here, would like to see it very density as I suspect that drives a bunch of the results).

> Think about your own life. How important is food to your family and friends as a way of social bonding? Do you think you’d be able to change that easily?

In terms of my parents/culture, not at all. It was much, much, much more about drinking alcohol rather than food. And yet, while that part is still there, there's far more emphasis on food as a socialisation tool in my generation.

Some of that is because of drink-driving laws being enforced, but some of it is definitely a cultural change which would seem to argue against your suggestion of long-term impacts due to culture.

> The cultural differences between companies in a country are superficial compared to the cultural differences between countries.

Again, I'm not convinced this is true. Like, if a company in Ireland has majority European employees but American leadership, what culture will it have?

> You can see this just by going around the country

I think that the particular outcomes of one country, predominantly founded by Europeans, tells us very little about how culture works.
by hnthrowaway0315 | 2026-02-06 14:54:57+00:00
> you lay out a huge specification that would fully work through all of the complexity in advance, then build it.

I have tried this a couple of time even for small projects ( a few sprints ), and they never worked out. I'd argue it never works out if you are doing non-system programming projects, and only has a theoretical non-zero possibility to work out for system programming projects, and perhaps a 5-10% to work out for very critical and no patch possible projects (like moon landing).

Because requirements always change. Humans always change. That's it. No need to elaborate.
Show HN: Beam – Terminal Organizer for macOS
by faalbane | 2026-02-06 14:55:21+00:00
https://getbeam.dev

I built Beam because I kept losing track of terminal sessions across different projects. The core idea: group terminals into "subwindows" (like virtual desktops), with tabs and split panes in each. Save layouts and restore them instantly.

Features:
- Subwindows to organize by project/context
- Tabs and split panes within each
- Save/restore layouts (switch project contexts in one click)
- Quick switcher (⌘P) to jump to any terminal
- Undo close for accidentally killed tabs
- Full terminal emulator (SwiftTerm) – works with tmux, vim, ssh, etc.

Built with Swift + SwiftUI. $29 one-time, with a free tier to try it.

I'm a solo dev and YC alum (https://www.ycombinator.com/verify/xgj2zdtraywxgmxs). Would love feedback – what's missing? What would make this useful for your workflow?
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2026-02-06 14:55:29+00:00
> I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel

Did this come down to making Clang 100% gcc compatible (extensions, UDB, bugs and all), or were there any issues that might be considered as specific to the linux kernel?

Did you end up building a gcc compatability test suite as a part of this? Did the gcc project themselves have a regression/test suite that you were able to use as a starting point?
by StackBuilders | 2026-02-06 14:55:34+00:00
In our latest blog, we dive into the era of Agentic AI, which promises to move project management beyond simple augmentation and into true autonomous, goal-driven decision-support. Following this exploration of advanced capabilities like autonomous risk mitigation and digital twin project simulation, we will discuss the PM’s New Skillset required for this evolving landscape and lay out Good Practices for Standardizing AI Integration. Lastly, we provide a Practical Toolkit of standardized prompt examples for consistent adoption.
by WillAdams | 2026-02-06 14:55:38+00:00
What is the new way in which manuals should be written?

I've been trying via Literate Programming:

http://literateprogramming.com/

and applying the concepts of:

https://diataxis.fr/

(originally developed at: https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/) which divides documentation along two axes:

- Action (Practical) vs. Cognition (Theoretical)

- Acquisition (Studying) vs. Application (Working)

resulting in a matrix of four things

- Tutorials

- How-to Guides

- Explanation (of the code)

- Reference (of the code)

which seems to be working well for my current project: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/gcodepre...
by lo_zamoyski | 2026-02-06 14:55:40+00:00
You should calm down and knock off the puerile snark.

I see I have to spell things out for you. It is of no relevance whether Antifa is a formalized organization with formal membership. That's why it's called an ANALOGY. You seem to have confused analogy with univocity...which is precisely what analogy is not. The essential point, which you seem to have missed by a mile, is that labels are irrelevant. That "Antifa" comes from "anti-fascist" tells me very little, if anything, about what the movement is actually, empirically about: what its principles actually are, what political ends it seeks to achieve, what means it uses to achieve them, and so on. The fact that the movement is informal actually makes the actions more relevant in characterizing and judging the movement, regardless of the label it uses.

In summary: the name given to a thing tells me nothing certain about the thing, and I would think this would be obvious to anyone.
by d_runs_far | 2026-02-06 14:56:07+00:00
Although it has been a couple decades since I've worked on construction sites, the underlying factor is that of the culture - this was northern Alberta - you had to be 'tough' and that meant eating steak, drinking hard and ignoring basic safety protocols like dust protection masks, eye guards, etc.

I was in my early 20's and worked with guys only a few years older than me that were already bordering on obese. The physical nature was typically repetitive and while sometimes requiring raw strength, had very little cardio/endurance aspects.

Of course there were exceptions, like the wiry 'old guy' who could take two bundles of shingles up a ladder over his shoulder and slam three beers for lunch.

They were being paid crazy amounts (for their age and the rest of their peers) and it was spent on rye and weed.
by amadeuspagel | 2026-02-06 14:56:41+00:00
Salesforces market cap today is 180,35B. That, not the change, is the market's judgement of how valuable salesforce is, despite any risk from AI. If salesforce stock drops with a new AI model that doesn't mean that investors think salesforce is worthless. It means a slight risk to their business is getting priced in.
by wackget | 2026-02-06 14:56:54+00:00
It's way more complex than "no self control". Social media is addictive by design and is peddled at such scale that it is literally impossible to ignore. It's also backed by billions upon billions of dollars.

Pitting the average person up against that, then blaming them for having "no self control" once they inevitably get sucked in is not a remotely fair conclusion.
by metalman | 2026-02-06 14:56:55+00:00
Unless there was clear unequivical instruction from air traffic controll to stop and turn there..."cleared for takeoff"
"comence takeoff run at your discretion", etc, then it's a Pilot....former pilot error.
In any case it took at least three people getting it all wrong before someone hit the brakes, recordings are going to be classic, "not like this" education material.
by bilbo0s | 2026-02-06 14:57:05+00:00
>if I approve a bad release that leads to an egregious failure, for me it's a prison sentence and unlimited fines

Again, I'm in 510k land. The same applies to myself.

But the fact remains that no one stops either of us from writing software in the future in some other domain.

They very much do stop PE's from designing buildings in the future in any other domain.
by andsoitis | 2026-02-06 14:57:38+00:00
Don't let a troll upset you :-)

> Where's the outrage and declarations of freedom of religion from Douthat, Yglesias, Weiss and Fox News?

In practice, if he were to penalize individual religions or churches, I'm pretty sure he will run into revolt, so I wouldn't worry about it. Similar to all the awful ICE stuff etc., the American public pushes back and the administration adjusts and recalibrates.
by zozbot234 | 2026-02-06 14:58:12+00:00
> Note: I believe this would be the case even if the money was literally burnt/disappeated rather than being given to the government

No need to literally burn the money, either: just use the entirety of that increased tax revenue on paying down the national debt, and lower the debt ceiling by the exact same amount so it can't go back up. This is an even better deal if you think "interest rates are too high, the Fed should cut a lot more". It all fits. And we managed this throughout the 1990s.
by _rwo | 2026-02-06 14:58:26+00:00
The only way this title could be any better is this: Github Actions is slowly KILLING engineering teams /s

Said that - every CI sucks one way or another, Github actions is just good enough to fire up a simple job/automation which seems to be majority of use cases anyway?

I think fully production CI pipelines will always be complicated in one way or another (proper catching alone is a challenge on it's own); I really need to check out woodpeckerci (drone ci fork) tho as I had good memories about droneci, but possibly it because I was younger back then xd
by afavour | 2026-02-06 14:58:33+00:00
In fairness Apple did come up with a custom JSON format for articles:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applenewsformat

The problem is that people don't use it. I imagine it's a chicken/egg thing, the audience on News isn't big so it isn't worth the publishers time catering to an entirely new format, the News experience is crappy so the audience doesn't grow.

They could have insisted that everyone use their format but I suspect publishers would just refuse.
by adolph | 2026-02-06 14:58:42+00:00
>> power attracts the corrupt
> hence why limited terms are a prerequisite for functioning democracies.

The practical effect of limited terms is a set of hapless electeds who depend on the kindness of lobbyists or other stakeholders to perform core duties, such as write effective legislation. In terms of the Gervais Principle [0], the sociopaths move from elected to lobby (which is a natural career progression already) and emplace more of the clueless as elected officials.

But if you want to take Vienna, take Vienna! Embrace limited power

Limited government power is often rightfully challenged as being unbalanced to the tremendous power of non-government entities such as corporations. However, this claim elides that the power and charter of any particular entity is downstream of what is granted and enabled by government functions. Less government power makes for less powerful corporations.

However, once everything is cut down a few notches, will the remaining power still attract the "corrupt?" Yes, power, status and other social markers will still exist and act like a bug lamp for sociopaths. But on the plus side they won't be as able, as you say, "to do that much damage."

0. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
by jcynix | 2026-02-06 14:59:05+00:00
Here's a reading and listening tip for handling social media addiction:

Frank Possemato: How to Live an Analog Life in a Digital World: A Workbook for Living Soulfully in an Age of Overload

How to live an analog life in a digital world | Frank Possemato | TEDxBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEMffdUgWCk

He does not say stop everything, but instead offers realistic tips to reduce one's dependency, e.g. he suggests to take breakes and training to stay offline for certain intervals (e.g. half an hour, or an hour)
by jjk166 | 2026-02-06 14:59:12+00:00
No one is saying flying is cheaper than driving full stop. The claim from the beginning was flying is cheaper than driving beyond a certain distance. The point of comparison is what it costs an individual to move from point A to point B. The fact that planes have significantly more occupants is an important part of the comparison. Likewise bus travel is cheaper than either flying or driving.

> Folks don't fly 600+ mi because it's cheaper (the fuel isn't cheaper until about 1600 mi)

There are costs besides fuel. Tolls, wear and tear on the vehicle, food and lodging expenses from the longer duration trip, etc. A 1000 mile drive will cost roughly double a 1000 mile plane ticket.

> The assumption that folks are alone in a car is only true only for short trips

Citation needed
by shukruth | 2026-02-06 14:59:40+00:00
Location: Boston,MA

Remote: I prefer onsite in USA Willing to relocate: Happily

Technologies: Javascript/Typescript, Python, Tailwind CSS, Node.js, Express, MySQL,MongoDB,Postgres, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes.

Resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RG-3pTV6Cto0nX60oivYFm9U7gA...

Github: https://github.com/shukruth21

Email: jagadeesha.s@northeastern.edu

Hello, I am Shukruth. I am fullstack software engineer with high interest in backend and distributed systems development. Also learning about AI curiously and building ambitious stuff. I am looking for Internship/Co-op . I can work for 4-8 months flexibly from this summer .
by shipman05 | 2026-02-06 14:59:42+00:00
I worked construction during the summers in college. There's quite a bit of sedentary work on a job site. In my experience, the guys who worked on their feet and did hours of physical labor were in pretty good shape. They burned a lot of calories and consumed a lot of calories: fast food, sweet tea, gatorade, beer at night. The more senior folks often ran heavy equipment like track hoes and bulldozers. Those guys were seated all day long, but their eating and drinking habits didn't change. Every one of the machine operators I worked with was overweight and had various health problems. Heavy smoking and drinking surely didn't help.
by crazygringo | 2026-02-06 14:59:55+00:00
> Why would a less legitimate company not pay more money to give you a worse deal with better margins?

Because what matters is the total spend per resulting purchase, not total spend per impression.

Because spam ad companies have a very tiny conversion rate, they can only pay a very small amount per impression before it becomes unprofitable.

Legitimate companies aren't usually trying to completely trick their customers. They are selling an actual decent or good quality product.
by 76SlashDolphin | 2026-02-06 15:00:10+00:00
Not only that but it's also quite difficult to find a laptop with an ANSI keyboard in an ISO country. My choices are basically an overpriced new Macbook (MacOS is the main con here), an overpriced new Thinkpad (brand new ones are horrible value since it tanks just a year after purchase), a Clevo (much worse build quality and questionable Linux support), or a Framework (worse build quality and mediocre battery life). As much as I hate MacOS, my M1 Macbook is still better at just being a light machine I can take anywhere and be working with immediately, while still lasting over an entire workday regardless of what I do. I really wish that Lenovo would fix their X9 Gen1 Linux support as those laptops are basically what I'd run if I could have proper support.
by polyglotfacto | 2026-02-06 15:00:10+00:00
So I do think one can get value from coding agents, but that value is out of proportion compared to the investments made buy the AI labs, so now they're pushing this kind of stuff which I find to be a borderline scam.

Let me explain why:

> the resulting compiled output is over 60kb, far exceeding the 32k code limit enforced by Linux

Seems like a failure to me.

> I tried (hard!) to fix several of the above limitations but wasn’t fully successful. New features and bugfixes frequently broke existing functionality.

This has code smell written all over it.

Conclusion: this cost 20k to build, not taking into account the money spent on training the model. How much would you pay for this software? Zero.

The reality is that LLM are up there with SQL and ROR in terms of changing how people write software and interact with data. That's a big deal, but not enough to support trillion dollar valuations.

So you get things like this project, which are really just about driving a certain narrative.

> We are still early

Hodl
by dangus | 2026-02-06 15:00:10+00:00
> You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade. None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It is really sad.

News+ is the only one of these that has poor quality.

Apple Music is extremely good, and pays artists better than many other platforms like Spotify. Unlike Spotify it isn’t enshittifying the product with video and podcast distractions. Plus, there’s a classical music focused version that’s entirely separate.

Fitness+ is a premier product in the space. Have you tried it?

Arcade probably does need to have more games added and more attention paid to it, but it’s basically the only place to get mobile games that aren’t stuffed full of gambling mechanics and advertisements. Where can you get that from the Play Store?

Apple TV+ is literally the new HBO. They produce some of the most critically acclaimed shows on the planet. The software is actually good, which is only really true for TV+ and Netflix. The production values, bitrate, and technology integration is second to none. MLS coverage by Apple is also top tier, again, with other sports networks regularly mediocre broadcast quality.
by caminante | 2026-02-06 15:00:13+00:00
The one that got me was the RETIREMENT wealth advisor who advised people to plow into MicroStrategy.[0]

> That said, as a Wealth Advisor, I do NOT recommend clients investing in the stock if they are not willing to do the requisite 100+ hours of studying Bitcoin before yet another 100+ hours studying MicroStrategy.

Ouch!

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/1qx2qs2/photos_ta...
by mbreese | 2026-02-06 15:00:23+00:00
I agree that “customer” is a better term. I’m not sure I agree with the rest of the rationale.

In my mind, “user” stated to take over when we started having web based services that were used by people, but they were the ones paying. For example, Google and Facebook. Both got paid through ads, so they advertisers were the customers. The “users” were just the eyeballs the advertisers wanted to reach. So, you had to make your service compelling enough for someone to use for long enough that they’d see enough ads to make it profitable to provide the service.

It’s more akin to talking about “viewers” or “viewership” when talking about more traditional media.

For Apple, they are generally looking to get paid by the ultimate consumer of the product. So to them, we are the customers.
by pfisherman | 2026-02-06 15:00:29+00:00
Oh boy, are you going to be in for a rude awakening. Might I ask what is your exposure? Because this does not line up with what I am witnessing day to day at all.

This type of commentary reminds me of the people during the dot com boom who were adamant that e-commerce was all film flam and would never take off.

Consider that it is possible that both (1) we are in an investment bubble and (2) we are underestimating the long term impact of LLMs and perhaps mispredicting where they will land.
by Supermancho | 2026-02-06 15:01:02+00:00
> The real question is: where do we draw the line between protecting people from manipulative design and respecting their ability to make their own choices?

Spoiler: There is no line. Societies (or more accurately, communities) attempt to self-regulate behaviors that have perceived net-negative effects. These perceptions change over time. There is no optimal set of standards. Historically, this has no consideration for intelligence or biology or even practical reality (in regards to religious practices).
by skydhash | 2026-02-06 15:01:07+00:00
> The same kind of checks that we use for people are needed for them

Those checks works for people because humans and most living beings respond well to rewards/punishment mechanisms. It’s the whole basis of society.

> not the same kind of checks we use for software.

We do have systems that are non deterministic (computer vision, various forecasting models…). We judge those by their accuracy and the likely of having false positive or false negatives (when it’s a classifier). Why not use those metrics?