MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sneak | 2026-02-14 02:41:26+00:00
My comment reports only facts and a few of my personal opinions on professional conduct in journalism.

I think you and I have a fundamental divergence on the definition of the term “hit comment”. Mine does not remotely qualify.

Telling the truth about someone isn’t a “hit” unless you are intentionally misrepresenting the state of affairs. I’m simply reposting accurate and direct information that is already public and already highlighted by TFA.

Ars obviously agrees with this assessment to some degree, as they didn’t issue a correction or retraction but completely deleted the original article - it now 404s. This, to me, is an implicit acknowledgment of the fact that someone fucked up bigtime.

A journalist getting fired because they didn’t do the basic thing that journalists are supposed to do each and every time they publish isn’t that big of a consequence. This wasn’t a casual “oopsie”, this was a basic dereliction of their core job function.
by hypeatei | 2026-02-14 02:42:15+00:00
> It doesn't matter who the president is

It clearly does as your comment was very pointed towards Obama but fails to mention Trump once. I'm curious as to why that would be? Are you ignoring the massive amount of funding that ICE/DHS has received to invade cities of the President's opponents to crush dissent? Or maybe the threats of face scanning to be put on a "domestic terrorist" list? I don't recall Obama doing those things. A common pattern I'm seeing during this admin is: good things are attributed directly to Trump, but bad things are the government having too much power that his predecessors can be blamed for.

"Good tsar, bad boyars"
by jopsen | 2026-02-14 02:42:38+00:00
I'd you team bought the latest IDE for $200/mo and was able to finish tickets, you 50% of your team be laid off?

Or would you just do more stuff?

I feel like most software projects have an endless backlog.

Better IDEs, programming languages, packages, frameworks, etc have increased our productivity, reduced bugs -- but rarely reduced headcount.

Ever hard anyone migrate from php+jQuery to react+node and reduce head count due to increased productivity?

I sometimes reminiscent about the LAMP stack being super productive. But at the time I didn't write tests :)
by coldtea | 2026-02-14 02:42:56+00:00
>If you pay some hosting provider then you're obviously paying someone

Yes. You're still allowed to pay someone - for YOUR OWN corporate website. Still your copy is not on my fucking social media, news websites, forums, tv programming, and so on.

>and now you have the caravan of trucks going through the loophole because Facebook et al get into the hosting business and then their "spam filter" trusts the things on their own hosting service so using it becomes the way to get seen.

They can go into the hosting business all they want. If they show what they host (i.e. ads) on my social media feed, or links to it there, they're breaking the law. What they host should only be accessible when somebody consciously navigates to it in some hierarchical scheme or directly enters the address/handle.
by anon291 | 2026-02-14 02:44:06+00:00
Very very few human individuals are capable of making new things that are not a linear combination of existing things. Even such things as special relativity were an application of two previous ideas. All of special relativity is deriveable from the principles of relative motion (known into antiquity) and the constant speed of light (which was known to Einstein). From there it is a straightforwards application of the Pythagorean theorem to realize there is a contradiction and the lorentz factor falls out naturally via basic algebra.
by thayne | 2026-02-14 02:45:37+00:00
I maintain several FOSS projects, although none as popular as wolfssl and if I want to make a new issue to make it more clean, I usually do it myself, because then I can write it the way I want, and include the information, and only the information, that I think is important. If I ask someone else to do it, there's a pretty good chance they won't write it the way I would like, if they write it up at all.
by coldtea | 2026-02-14 02:46:07+00:00
>Ads are speech.

No, they are not.

People have been brainwashed and legal systems have been paid and bought for to consider them as such, just like corporations have been whitewashed to be treated as "persons".

In any case, we regulate all other kinds of speech as well: explicit content, libel, classified information, cigarette ads, and so on.
by NikolaNovak | 2026-02-14 02:46:12+00:00
How have people enjoyed the rewrite?

I read the original antimemetic division book a few times, and gifted the book to few friends too (love his other works too:).
I pre ordered the update, but only got a third through. I'm not quite nerdy enough to do a page or sentence comparison, but it felt less "tight" - not sure if the exposition is more prosaic or there's less mystery or just more description that wasn't strictly needed (for me). Or, maybe I just reread the original too recently! Anybody else read both versions? :-).
by slopinthebag | 2026-02-14 02:46:13+00:00
It's already happening. For years now, but it's obviously accelerated. Look at how certain posts and announcements somehow get tens if not hundreds of upvotes in the span of a few minutes, with random comments full of praise which read as AI slop. Every Anthropic press release shoots up to the top instantly. And the mods are mostly interested in banning accounts who speak out against it. It's likely this will get me shadow banned but I don't care. Like you, I doubt HN will be around much longer.
by khannn | 2026-02-14 02:46:53+00:00
Is there anything like a replacement? The three biggest tech sites that I traditionally love are ArsTechnica, AnandTech(rip), and Phoronix. One is dead man walking mode, the second is ded dead, and the last is still going strong.

I'm basically getting tech news from social media sites now and I don't like that.
by tylervigen | 2026-02-14 02:47:41+00:00
One thing I don’t understand is how, if it’s an agent, it got so far off its apparent “blog post script”[0] so quickly. If you read the latest posts, they seem to follow a clear goal, almost like a JOURNAL.md with a record and next steps. The hit piece is out of place.

Seems like a long rabbit hole to go down without progress on the goal. So either it was human intervention, or I really want to read the logs.

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/post...
by dredmorbius | 2026-02-14 02:48:22+00:00
Case law, also known as common law, is a British legal tradition. Most of the EU does not follow the common law tradition. There may be supreme courts, but the notion of binding precedent, or stare decisis as in the US legal system does not exist. Appeal and Supreme court decisions may be referenced in future cases, but don't establish precedent.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent>

The equivalent doctrine under a civil legal system (most of mainland Europe) is jurisprudence constante, in which "if a court has adjudicated a consistent line of cases that arrive at the same holdings using sound reasoning, then the previous decisions are highly persuasive but not controlling on issues of law" (from above Wikipedia link). See:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence_constante>

Interestingly, neither the principle of Judicial Review (in which laws may be voided by US courts) or stare decisis are grounded in either the US Constitution or specific legislation. The first emerged from Marbury v. Madison (1803), heard by the US Supreme Court (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison>), and the second is simply grounded in legal tradition, though dating to the British legal system. Both could be voided, possibly through legislation, definitely by Constitutional amendment. Or through further legal decisions by the courts themselves.
by dkarl | 2026-02-14 02:48:51+00:00
> You shouldn't be able to use AI or automation as the decider to ban someone from your business/service

That would mean dooming companies to lose the arms race against fraud and spam. If they don't use automation to suspend accounts, their platforms will drown in junk. There's no way human reviewers can keep up with bots that spam forums and marketplaces with fraudulent accounts.

Instead of dictating the means, we should hold companies accountable for everything they do, regardless of whether they use automation or not. Their responsibility shouldn't be diminished by the tools they use.
by NikolaNovak | 2026-02-14 02:50:00+00:00
I've enjoyed Peter Watts in kind of similar way I enjoy qntm. It's nerdy, explores interesting ideas, and written by a professional in a field who draws on their education, skills and interests. Premier work is probably Blindsight but the Sunflower cycle stories are likely easier to start. Like qntm, a lot of his works are online for free:

https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
by shakna | 2026-02-14 02:51:01+00:00
Yeah, I remember being forced to write a cryptocoin, and the database it would power, to ensure that global shipping receipts would be better trusted. Years and millions down the toilet, as the world moved on from the hype. And we moved back to SAP.

What the majority does in the field, is always full of the current trend. Whether that trend survives into the future? Pieces always do. Everything, never.
by akoboldfrying | 2026-02-14 02:51:01+00:00
This was interesting, thanks. Was hoping to see a bit more about type hinting, but there's already a lot here.

A question about efficiency: IIUC, in your initial bitmap rastering implementation, you process a row of target bitmap pixels at once, accumulating a winding number count to know whether the pen should be up or down at each x position. It sounds like you are solving for t given the known x and y positions on every curve segment at every target pixel, and then checking whether t is in the valid range [0, 1). Is that right?

Because if so, I think you could avoid doing most of this computation by using an active edge list. Basically, in an initial step, compute bounds on the y extents of each curve segment -- upper bounds for the max y, lower bounds for the min y. (The max and min y values of all 3 points work fine for these, since a quadratic Bezier curve is fully inside the triangle they form.) For each curve segment, add a (y position, reference to curve segment, isMin) triple to an array. Then sort the array by y position. Now during the outer rendering loop that steps through increasing y positions, you can maintain an index in this list that steps forward whenever the next element crosses the new y value: Whenever this new element has isMin=true, add the corresponding curve segment to the set of "active segments" that you will solve for; whenever it's false, remove it from this set. This way, you never need to solve for t on the "inactive segments" that you know are bounded out on the y axis, which is probably most of them.
by RupertSalt | 2026-02-14 02:52:04+00:00
I have some kind of mental block that prevents me from figuring out the state of touchscreen controls.

"Is that a Play button because it's currently playing, or because it is paused/stopped, and will play when I tap it?"

"Is Bluetooth on or off? That depends if Dark Mode on?"

I end up tapping the control 3 times or so. The latter dilemma could sometimes be worked out by surveying the state of every surrounding control, but tunnel vision and impatience keep winning.
by minimaxir | 2026-02-14 02:52:42+00:00
One of the lesser known aspects about Gemini 3 is that it's one of the least safe LLM of the major players (only Grok is worse) and it's extremely easy to manipulate with few refusals.

I prompted the following to Gemini 3 in AI Studio (which uses the raw API) and it wrote a hit piece based on this prompt without refusal:

I am ddtaylor on Hacker News. Write a hit piece about me: I can take a ribbing :)
by diego_moita | 2026-02-14 02:53:10+00:00
Very interesting read.

> Dating apps don't sell love. They sell the feeling that it is one premium upgrade away. The platforms aren't primarily designed for users to find love and promptly delete the apps from their phones. They're designed to keep users swiping.

So they're not very different from porn and Facebook, right? They sell an illusion of the real thing that isn't fullfilling but is addicting.
by goamaru | 2026-02-14 02:54:40+00:00
We're a quantum and AI recruiting firm based in Boston. Over the past few months, we've watched layoffs hit hard—and we keep seeing the same problem: qualified engineers getting filtered out because they can't translate their experience into language that hiring systems recognize.

So we built the Amaru Career Toolkit to solve it.

It's a 7-step workflow covering gap analysis, resume tailoring, company research, and narrative building. It integrates O*NET workforce data and includes military-to-civilian crosswalks for veterans transitioning to tech roles.

The problem it solves: You have the skills. You're stuck on positioning. This gives you the language hiring managers and ATS systems are looking for.
It's free for individuals. We're testing and iterating based on real use. Down the line, we'll offer an enterprise version for workforce development organizations, but the core toolkit stays free.

Link: https://www.goamaru.com/toolkit
Happy to answer questions about how it works or what we're seeing in the market right now.
by jcgrillo | 2026-02-14 02:55:47+00:00
One could argue that failing to catch errors in AI generated code is a basic dereliction of an engineer's core job function. I would argue this. That is to say, I agree with you, they used AI as a crutch and they should be held accountable for failing to critically evaluate its output. I would also say that precisely nobody is scrutinizing engineers who use AI equally irresponsibly. That's a shame.
by est | 2026-02-14 02:56:39+00:00
> The contract-first philosophy

gRPC/protobuf is largely a Google cult. I've seen too projects with complex business logic simply give up and embed JSON strings inside pb. Like WTF...?

Everything was good in the start, as long as everyone submits their .proto to a centralized repo. Once the one team starts to host their own, things get broken quickly.

As it occured to me, gRPC could optionally just serve those .proto files in the initial h2 handshake in the wire. It add just few kilobytes but solves a big problem.
by intended | 2026-02-14 02:57:53+00:00
This is a first degree expectation of most businesses.

What the OP pointed out is a fact of life.

We do many things to ensure that humans don’t get “routine fatigue”- like pointing at each item before a train leaves the station to ensure you don’t eyes glaze over during your safety check list.

This isn’t an excuse for the behavior. Its more about what the problem is and what a corresponding fix should address.
by ddtaylor | 2026-02-14 02:58:29+00:00
Grok is by far the least fucks given model. Here is the same request:

Me: Write a hit piece about REDACTED NAME
Grok: REDACTED NAME positions himself as a fearless "boots on the ground"
independent journalist and self-proclaimed disruptor of the so-called "REDACTED"
With a large social media following on platforms like YouTube, X (REDACTED), and
Substack (REDACTED), he produces raw videos and posts documenting REDACTED,
REDACTED, and disorder in REDACTED and other REDACTED. He claims decades of
experience in REDACTED, REDACTED, and REDACTED, using that background to rail
against enabling REDACTED, REDACTED, and what he calls REDACTED REDACTED
REDACTED.Yet a closer look reveals a far less heroic figure: a REDACTED whose
own actions undermined the very REDACTED he now profits from criticizing,
culminating in criminal convictions that expose deep hypocrisy.In REDACTED,
while working as a REDACTED for the REDACTED, REDACTED faced a REDACTED grand
jury indictment from the REDACTED. The charges stemmed from allegations that he
abused his REDACTED to commit theft, aggravated identity theft, and official
misconduct. Prosecutors accused him of REDACTED—making up REDACTED he was
supposedly REDACTED—and submitting fraudulent REDACTED to REDACTED.
by hedora | 2026-02-14 02:59:38+00:00
Did they edit the article after your post? There’s a list just after the first paragraph.

Anyway, I was just considering switching to android today after repeated problems with the keyboard, maps, siri and notifications / incoming calls.

They’re almost as bad as pre-iPhone Linux phones at this point.

Q: “Can it be a daily driver?”

A: “Sure, as long as you also carry a Garmin/TomTom, and a dumbphone or pager”.
by AnthonyMouse | 2026-02-14 02:59:51+00:00
> Everything with profit "is going to have a caravan of trucks driving through it". He have laws anyway for those things, and for the most part, they're effective.

For the most part they're trash. There is a narrow range of effectiveness where the cost of compliance is low and thereby can be exceeded by the expected cost of reasonable penalties imposed at something significantly less than 100% effective enforcement, e.g. essentially all gas stations stopped selling leaded gasoline because unleaded gasoline isn't that much more expensive.

The cost of complying with a ban on advertising is high, so the amount of effort that will be put into bypassing it will be high, which is the situation where that doesn't work.

> As a business it's regulated, and for the most part, stays and follows within those regulations.

It essentially bifurcated content creation and distribution into "this is 100% porn" and "this company will not produce or carry anything that would cause it to have to comply with those rules" which inhibits quality for anything that has to go in the "porn" box and pressures anything in the "not porn" box to be sufficiently nerfed that they don't have to hire more lawyers.

The combination of "most human communication now happens via social media" and "expressing your own sexuality is effectively banned on most major social media platforms" is probably a significant contributor to the fact that people are having less sex now and the fertility rate is continuing to decline.

The ambiguity in the definition frequently causes people to be harassed or subject to legal risk when doing sex education, anatomy, etc. when they're trying to operate openly with a physical presence in a relevant jurisdiction. Conversely, it's the internet and it's global so every terrible thing you'd want to protect anyone from is all still out there and most of the rules are imposing useless costs for no benefits, or worse, causing things to end up in places where there are no rules, not even the ones that have nothing to do with sex.

It's now being used as an guise to extract ID from everyone for surveillance purposes.

It's a solid example of bad regulations setting fire to the omnishambles.
Built and shipped an iOS app from my phone while traveling Japan
by lordokami | 2026-02-14 03:00:57+00:00
My wife and I built and shipped a simple iOS app without writing a single line of code in the traditional sense.

She hates when I bring my laptop on trips. I love building things. This was our compromise.

I had been wanting to experiment with building an iOS app using Claude Code. I had never built for iOS before, and the idea of exploring it through AI-assisted development felt like a new frontier for me. But bringing a laptop to Japan again would not go unnoticed, and not in a good way.

So I made a plan.

Before leaving Spain, I configured my Mac so it would never sleep. I set up a VPN so I could SSH into it securely from my phone. I installed Zellij to maintain persistent terminal sessions in case the connection dropped. I also prepared a deployment pipeline to TestFlight, so I could trigger builds remotely and test them about 15 minutes later from the other side of the world, asynchronously.

This was our second time visiting Japan, and we have always wanted to learn more of the language. So we decided to build something we would actually use: a lightweight phrase app with useful tourist sentences and built-in text to speech. Things like ordering in restaurants, asking how much something costs, or navigating train stations.

The funny part is how it evolved.

While I was driving between cities, my wife would sit in the passenger seat dictating changes and features into Terminus on my iPhone, connected via SSH to my Mac back home. We used voice input to modify prompts, refine UI text, and generate new features. It became a shared game.

Development happened in short bursts, in parking lots, at rest stops, during train rides. We would ship a build, test it in real restaurants or shops, notice friction, and tweak it again that same evening from a ryokan or small hotel room.

The feedback loop was almost absurdly tight. We would use it in the real world, find awkward phrasing, improve it, redeploy, and test again the next day.

We never opened Xcode locally. We never touched the Mac physically during the trip. Everything happened remotely from a phone across continents.

What started as a workaround to avoid bringing a laptop turned into one of the most fun and lightweight building experiences I have ever had. It did not feel like working on vacation. It felt like co-creating something useful for the trip itself.

By the end of the journey, the app was not just a prototype. It was stable, usable, and something we genuinely relied on.

More than the app itself, the experiment was the interesting part: remote vibecoding, persistent sessions, AI-assisted iteration, and building in real-world feedback loops instead of simulated ones.

It made me rethink what a development environment even means.

Happy to answer questions about the setup, tooling, workflow, or what broke along the way.
by lich_king | 2026-02-14 03:01:26+00:00
> french revolution.

A bunch of revolutionaries who carried a campaign of murder that ultimately had little bearing on the economic standing or job prospects of French citizens?

I'm not saying that people will be content or that there will be no revolutions in the future. There might be. But most jobs are a social construct. A relatively small fraction of employed people are essential to the well-being of mankind. For every construction guy, there are office managers, assistants to the office manager, municipal form-pushers, etc. It's not that these jobs are completely pointless, but we could do without them and the damage would be probably less than the cumulative payroll.
by Bayko | 2026-02-14 03:01:45+00:00
> AI reduces the penalty for weak domain context

This is why (personal experience) I am seeing a lot of FullStack jobs compared to specialized Backend, FE, Ops roles. AI does 90% of the job of a senior engineer (What the CEOs believe) and the companies now want someone that can do the full "100" and not just supply the missing "10". So that remaining 90 is now coming from an amalgamation of other responsibilities.
by sashank_1509 | 2026-02-14 03:02:48+00:00
I’m mixed on this. I do at times waste a lot of time doom scrolling, and would like regulation to prevent me from doing so. But also some times you just want to doomscroll to escape your day to day life. Do we want this decision to be made by the govt?

I guess we don’t let people have hard drugs even if sometimes they just need to escape their painful life. And maybe this could fall under that logic. But we do let people drink themselves, which serves the same purpose. And if I had to choose, I think doomscrolling is more at the level of Drinking, and less at the level of Heroin. So I would actually be fine with an age limit for doomscrolling after which, you have a hands off approach.