MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by shevy-java | 2026-02-09 09:53:13+00:00
I am currently not really working on anything major, due to time constraints.

However had, on my semi-immediate todo list in the future are:

- improvements to the scripts I use to compile software from source; I want to be able to build a complete LFS/BLFS without any interaction (I know there is AFLS but I don't like the format or restrictions; I literally want to be able to do everything here via actionable scripts at every moment in time, including using git sources rather than old releases)

- continue on the unified widgets project (e. g. use oldschool GUIs but also for the web "GUIs"). Describe once, run anywhere, in any programming language. This is obviously way too much for a single person, so I mostly want to get the foundation right, prototype primarily in ruby, then add python and java to it. The "end format" should be for normal people, e. g. they should be able to describe everything in one format, and then have that be the basis for every GUI.

- continue working with regard to bioinformatics, also with a focus on normal people (non-tech savvy people). Most bioinformatics software was written by math-heavy tech-centric people, which makes sense. It's not trivial to work with that (we have AI to work around this to some extent, but I feel that many people who use AI don't understand the underlying components; I kind of want something like a Linux from Scratch for all bioinformatics-centric software. Like not just use it but full and useful explanations that are not too technical, but also not too overly long.)

Hopefully gem.coop becomes a viable alternative to rubygems.org - I hate the corporate identity rubygems.org adopted (and you can see the fall-out in other areas, e. g. Heroku dying right now, which kind of means ruby will die too, if all use cases are eroded despite the pro-corporate focus RubyCentral embraced). Unfortunately things seem to become worse in general - I was hoping LadyBird would be a real competitor. The moment you make any statement that they perceive as "criticism" is the moment their code of conduct kicks in and locks you out. And that's not even after a first release; imagine how they will operate once people come in with complaints about LadyBird having problems.

The world wide web used to be a LOT more open in the past.
by sensecall | 2026-02-09 09:53:47+00:00
A tiny web app for busy weeknight cooking.

You tap in what ingredients you’ve got, add a time limit + a couple of preferences, and it gives you 3 genuinely doable dinner ideas with step-by-step recipes (no “manage your pantry”, no endless scrolling).

https://spud.recipes

It’s early, but people seem to like the “use up what you’ve got” angle. Feedback very welcome.
Show HN: Fifu – Ultra-Fast Terminal YouTube Downloader
by dawitworku | 2026-02-09 09:53:51+00:00
I built *Fifu (Fetch It For Us)*, a cross-platform *TUI* for downloading YouTube channels and playlists with zero friction.

It’s built with *Textual* + *yt-dlp*, supports *async downloads*, *subtitles*, *audio extraction*, and has *keyboard-first navigation*. Perfect for power users who want to download entire channels or playlists quickly.

*Features:*

* Multi-threaded downloads (3 at a time)
* Search channels by popularity
* Playlist & section downloads
* Favorites & download history
* Auto subtitles & audio extraction

*Quick Start:*

```bash
npx fifu-tui
# or via pipx
pipx install git+https://github.com/Dawaman43/fifu.git
```

*More info & docs:* [https://fifu-docs.vercel.app/](https://fifu-docs.vercel.app/)

Made with by me, *Dawaman43*
by nineteen999 | 2026-02-09 09:54:25+00:00
I mean - who would honestly expect an LLM to be able to compete with a compiler with 40 years of development behind it? Even more if you count the collective man years expended in that time. The Claude agents took two weeks to produce a substandard compiler, under the fairly tight direction of a human who understood the problem space.

At the same time - you could direct Claude to review the register spilling code and the linker code of both LLVM/gcc for potential improvements to CCC and you will see improvements. You can ask it not to copy GPL code verbatim but to paraphrase and tell it it can rip code from LLVM as long as the licenses are preserved. It will do it.

You might only see marginal improvements without spending another $100K on API calls. This is about one of the hardest projects you could ask it to bite off and chew on. And would you trust the compiler output yet over GCC or LLVM?

Of course not.

But I wager, that if you _started_ with the LLVM/gcc codebases and asked it to look for improvements - it might be surprising to see what it finds.

Both sides have good arguments. But this could be a totally different ball game in 2, 5 and 10 years. I do feel like those who are most terrified by it are those whose identity is very much tied to being a programmer, and seeing the potential for their role to be replaced and I can understand that.

Me personally - I'm relieved I finally have someone else to blame and shout at rather than myself for the bugs in the software I produce. I'm relieved that I can focus now on the more creative direction and design of my personal projects (and even some work projects on the non-critical paths) and not get bogged down in my own perfectionism with respect to every little component until reaching exhaustion and giving up.

And I'm fascinated by the creativity of some of the projects I see that are taking the same mindset and approach.

I was depressed by it at first. But as I've experimented more and more, I've come to enjoy seeing things that I couldn't ever have achieved even with 100 man years of my own come to fruition.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-02-09 09:54:45+00:00
I've downloaded and installed too many packages where the developers didn't bother with this, but I uncritically went to Mac's security settings to let it do its thing anyway.

I don't know if developer utilities can be distributed through the app store, but they should be so that Apple can review them properly. Criticisms aside, the iOS App Store and the iOS security model has been the best thing for software security (especially for lay-people), ever.
by pseudohadamard | 2026-02-09 09:54:46+00:00
The author knew there was a problem, knew where the problem was, and knew what the problem was, but even with that and an extensive perusal of the standard he still only thinks he knows what part of the standard was violated, presumably because nothing else fit ("didn't explicitly say anything about invalid _Bool values. After some more searching, I believe I've found my answer"). There's no way anyone without omniscience could have predicted this obscure issue being present somewhere in Doom's 60,000 lines of code.
by mjaniczek | 2026-02-09 09:56:05+00:00
The choice to use Count was made before I joined the company; IIRC they migrated to it from Tableau.

We wanted to migrate (to Streamlit, back then) to have the SQL not live locked in a tool, but inside our git repository; to be able to run tests on the logic etc. But the spaghetti mess was felt too, even if it wasn't the main reason to switch.

(But then, 1) some team changes happened that pushed us towards Metabase, and 2) we found that Streamlit managed by Snowflake is quite costly, compute-time wise. (The compute server that starts when you open a Streamlit report, stays live for tens of minutes, which was unexpected to us.)

----

Export to DBT sounds great. Count has "export to SQL" which walks the graph of the cell dependencies and collects them into a CTE. I can imagine there being a way to export into a ZIP of SQL+YML files, with one SQL file per cell.
by rolfus | 2026-02-09 09:56:09+00:00
I used to play GTA on my 133 mhz Pentium, running windows 95. I distinctly remember the game running smooth and at a reasonably high resolution! My memory must have betrayed me because playing this now is hard to stomach. I just can't get over the jaggy motion of the hardlocked framerate (especially while driving at high speeds).
by fragmede | 2026-02-09 09:56:10+00:00
The framing is key here. Is three years a long time? Both answers are right. Just getting a business off the ground is an achievement in the first place. Lasting three years? These days, I have clothes that don't even last that long. And then three years isn't very long at all. Bridges last decades. Countries are counted by centuries. Humanity is a millennia old. If AI can make me a company that's solvent for three years? Well, you decide.
by codebolt | 2026-02-09 09:56:12+00:00
That's why I'm very careful about how the context is constructed. I make sure all the relevant files are loaded with the prompt, including the project file so it can see the directory structure. Also keep a brief summary of the app functionality and architecture in the AGENTS.md file. For larger tasks, always request a plan and look through it before asking it to start writing code.
by sammuttaja | 2026-02-09 09:56:59+00:00
Location: Turku, Finland

Remote: yes, but willing to work at onsite if needed
Willing to relocate: currently no, but willing to relocate inside Finland

Technologies: c#/.Net, c++, Unity game engine, Docker, Azure, SQL (MySQL, SQLite)

Résumé/CV: https://sammuttaja.autiosaari.net/cv.pdf

Portfolio: https://sammuttaja.autiosaari.net

Email: See portfolio or cv

Backend and game developer for 5-7 years, mostly doing Unity projects, backend code in using aspnetcore and php, Xamarin/maui mobile project and one phaser game project for Finnish Parliament
by fauigerzigerk | 2026-02-09 09:57:37+00:00
I think we are going to have to find out what maintainance even looks like when LLMs are involved. "Maintainable" might no longer mean quite the same thing as it used to.

But it's not going to be as easy as "just regenerate everything". There are dependencies external to a particular codebase such as long lived data and external APIs.

I also suspect that the stability of the codebase will still matter, maybe even more so than before. But the way in which we define maintainability will certainly change.
by ileonichwiesz | 2026-02-09 09:57:44+00:00
> How well do LLMs handle handwriting recognition?

Pretty well for neat modern handwriting, but much worse for cursive or messier writing. They also really struggle if the text is at an angle. I have some recent experience with a project where we tried to use LLMs to digitise handwritten specimen labels from the 19th and early 20th century, and the success rate was far too low to proceed with that approach.

Hallucination was also a common problem, with the output often replaced by a similar (but more common) name or word.

I’d assume you could improve the results by using a model trained specifically on handwriting data sets, grounding the model, or using existing purpose-built OCR tools - but frankly that’s above my pay grade.
by shirian | 2026-02-09 09:57:50+00:00
Interesting to see the genesis story for mutmut. It has come a long way since its inception: https://pypi.org/project/mutmut/

Mutation testing is a new concept for me, and even though one has to manage the performance aspects of it, it seems like a good idea to at least apply to selected functions in one's codebase, in order to find bugs.
by barrell | 2026-02-09 09:58:53+00:00
Thanks for the kind words! The promised walk through will maybe come hopefully this weekend, give or take a few days.

Can I ask if the new page explained it better? The “demo/how it works” section is still missing the graphics, which I think is pretty critical. But I’m hoping the new page is a bit improvement!

One of the pieces of feedback I get most often from users is “oh this is actually really simple”. But explaining it simply has always eluded me
by TheDong | 2026-02-09 09:59:20+00:00
I dunno, I'm pretty happy with my thinkpad. Even if I could run Linux flawless on a macbook (which you can't unfortunately) I'd still take the thinkpad hardware over a macbook.

A macbook air is 1.25kg, and my thinkpad is 910g, and I can really feel that difference. The thinkpad keyboard also feels ever so slightly better too... and Linux working well is worth more than pretty much anything else.
by noduerme | 2026-02-09 10:01:23+00:00
Super dumb question but if you have one railway line on the left splitting into two on the right: if you extended the clothoids of the two back to the left past the junction, would their wave patterns intersect each other again? What happens if you take the further left intersection and then split to the right from there along bezier curves to two points matching the x- of the original intersection and an arbitrary y- ? Purely spitballing but is there a way you could use the previous two points where the ripples crossed before the point of the junction, and interpolate from there?
by PranayKumarJain | 2026-02-09 10:01:47+00:00
Yeah, if you’re comfortable wiring it together yourself, you can get ~80% of the way there with “LLM + SSH + a chat bridge”. The delta (when it’s working) is mostly plumbing + ergonomics: a long-running daemon with a consistent tool registry, background jobs/schedules, a file-based memory convention, and a bunch of integrations that are already packaged and share the same auth/permission model.

The other non-obvious bit is operational discipline: rate limits, auditability, and being able to run it in a constrained environment (VM/container, minimal mounts, separate accounts) so a prompt-injection doesn’t turn into “oops it had my whole laptop”. A DIY script can be safer too, but most people don’t end up doing the guardrails.

That said, I agree the core idea isn’t magical—packaging is the product here, and it’s still early/buggy enough that DIY often wins if you’re already set up.
by Dathuil | 2026-02-09 10:02:27+00:00
I've been on and off attempting to reverse engineer old Sierra games in Godot.
I've brought in AI to build tooling to speed up asset extraction from the old game files which has been a huge help. I just got building placement working last night which was a huge win.

This is part of a small hobby where I try to recreate aspects of old games myself to see how I would implement them. I eventually hope to have the skills to create the kind of game I miss playing when I was a kid 30 years ago.
by RupertSalt | 2026-02-09 10:03:17+00:00
My introduction to RCS was indeed spurred by a command typo!

I was learning Pascal on AT&T 3B2 systems. They were running SVR3. Perfectly normal clustered systems with nifty things like RFS. We were all logged in via dumb terminals, and the machines were sequestered on another floor. I had pictured them as big, really big. But 3B2s were not.

Anyway, our first lessons were how to use the Bourne shell and how to use "vi" to edit our source code.

I had learned to type 4 years previously, so I was already fast and fearsomely accurate. But I still made mistakes.

So one day I typed "ci filename.p" and then I had an hour's worth of sheer horror!

"ci" had not spawned the visual editor as I had hoped, but it did something inexplicable to that file! It had renamed it to "filename.p,v" and had put a bunch of garbage into it!

I can't remember how much "RCS garbage" was inserted, or how much cleanup I needed to do. For some reason, our TA/lab assistants were not available for me to ask! I was in a cold sweat, because all my hard classwork had been utterly mangled by this unfeeling machine, and I didn't know how to effectively undo it.

Eventually I learned about the RCS system, and what those curious "$...$" symbols meant, and I think I worked out a way to "undo" it (which I think consisted of merely "co" to checkout the file again.)

But it was a rude awakening to the fact that simple command-line typos could have some very unintended consequences!
by latexr | 2026-02-09 10:04:36+00:00
> There's 0 actual instances (and I've been looking) where verbatim code has been spat out.

That’s not true. I’ve seen it happen and even remember reports where it was obvious it happened (and trivial to verify) because the LLM even reproduced the comments with source information.

Either way, plagiarism doesn’t require one to copy 100% verbatim (otherwise every plagiarist would easily be off the hook). It still counts as plagiarism if you move a space or rename a variable.

https://xcancel.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554

https://xcancel.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309

> We need to do better.

I agree. We have to start by not dismissing valid criticisms by appealing to irrelevant technicalities which don’t excuse anything.
by account42 | 2026-02-09 10:04:51+00:00
This post is surprisingly shallow considering the author. I don't think it should be surprising to anyone even remotely familiar with low level programming that function calls have an overhead but inlining doesn't always always end up making things faster.

Inlining is also not a binary yes or no question. E.g. modern compilers can create clones of functions with constants propagated into some of the arguments, which gives some of the benefits of inlining. They are also free to change the calling convention (or make one up on the spot) for internal functions instead of inlining - something I'd like to see compilers explore further.
by boltzmann-brain | 2026-02-09 10:05:21+00:00
> The "money goes to the repo part" is the problem here, as it incentivizes maintainers to refuse legitimate pull requests.

That's not true. The issue is that the system the comment you're replying to described is escrow. Escrow degenerates in the way that you describe. I explain it a bit more in this comment elsewhere on this post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46943416

A straight up non-refundable participation payment does not have this issue, and creates a different set of incentives and a different economy, while there also exist escape hatches for free-of-charge contributions.

> The real problem here is the amount of work necessary to make this viable.

Not necessarily. This article mentions Tezos, which is capable of doing such things on-chain already:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46938811

> all the annoying KYC/AML that a normie has to get through to use it.

There are always escape hatches. If your code is so great that people will want to pull it, then you don't pay to push. If it's not really that great, then what are we talking about? Maybe it disincentivizes mid code being pushed. So be it.

You can make friends, you can make a name for yourself, you can make a fork that's very successful and upstream will want to pull it in, you can exert social pressure / marketing to get your code merged in. Lots of options that do not involve KYC/AML.

For everyone else, I'd say KYC/AML are a good idea because of the increasing amount of supply chain exploits being pushed out into repos. If pushing by randos is gated by KYC/AML, then there's at least some method of chasing the perps down and taking them to justice.

That's a win-win-win-win situation. Less mid code, less exploits, earnings for maintainers, AI slop blocked. Absolutely amazing.
by pjc50 | 2026-02-09 10:05:36+00:00
Yes? I'm not sure what the point is of re-litigating this now. The more recent conflict with Venezuela was even more explicitly oil focused.

Similarly, Iran is a traditional enemy of the US for decades, and a murderous regime that kills their own citizens in the streets; but when the US-Iran war is over, the US oil industry will be in control of the Iranian oil reserves.
Show HN: Algorithmically Finding the Longest Line of Sight on Earth
by tombh | 2026-02-09 10:05:55+00:00
We're Tom and Ryan and we teamed up to build an algorithm with Rust and SIMD to exhaustively search for the longest line of sight on the planet. We can confirm that a previously speculated view between Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan and the Hindu Kush in China is indeed the longest, at 530km.

We go into all the details at https://alltheviews.world

And there's an interactive map with over 1 billion longest lines, covering the whole world at https://map.alltheviews.world Just click on any point and it'll load its longest line of sight.

Some of you may remember Tom's post[1] from a few months ago about how to efficiently pack visibility tiles for computing the entire planet. Well now it's done. The compute run itself took 100s of AMD Turin cores, 100s of GBs of RAM, a few TBs of disk and 2 days of constant runtime on multiple machines.

If you are interested in the technical details, Ryan and I have written extensively about the algorithm and pipeline that got us here:

* Tom's blog post: https://tombh.co.uk/longest-line-of-sight

* Ryan's technical breakdown: https://ryan.berge.rs/posts/total-viewshed-algorithm

This was a labor of love and we hope it inspires you both technically and naturally, to get you out seeing some of these vast views for yourselves!

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45485227
by lofaszvanitt | 2026-02-09 10:06:52+00:00
Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind.
---
Lately it's more like swallowing big swathes of BS. Software and engineering are two very far away disciplines. This has nothing to do with engineering. You have to use cumbersome, non-human-centric things just to get a job interview. They don't look at you as a programmer. They look at you as an X or Y framework expert. So, you are not an engineer at all. You are more and more becoming a trained monkey who has to appease the feebleminded and work with mind-bogglingly idiotic and overcomplicated things.
by jarofgreen | 2026-02-09 10:07:54+00:00
Hey, sorry it was hacked.

You mention rsync which can be fine. But there are tons of other solutions, many that will have snapshot features. I use borg backup, for instance. https://www.borgbackup.org/

Also, look into scriping your server setup with tools like Ansible or PyInfra. There is always the risk that bad things happen to servers, and when you want a new server it's great to be able to spin things up in a matter of minutes. Tools like these are profesional best practices these days.

In fact, if you have a scripted server setup and a server that doesn't collect data itself you may not even need backups. What is there to backup? Just spin up a new server with your scripts and carry on.
by esskay | 2026-02-09 10:08:55+00:00
GTAII was really weird for me, it ran at 0.5x speed. Later realised it wasn't any sort of GPU limitation but was due to some quirk with how it was tied to CPU. I had an off-brand CPU (a Transmeta if I recall) running on an old Mc Donalds workstation ripped out of an old office when they upgraded. It 'ran' just very, very weirdly. It wasn't until I saw a friend playing it on their computer that I realised that it wasn't in fact supposed to work like that!
by raxxorraxor | 2026-02-09 10:09:46+00:00
I cannot recommend Gitea enough. It is easy to install, can be very well integrated into the usual corporate Microsoft networks (ldap/adfs) and has very simple workers, which just reliably execute the actions defined in the .gitea folder of your repository. Installing workers is an extra step, but you don't really need a PhD to get it running.

You can build a very efficient and reliable CI pipeline this way and you are not dependent on third parties at all. The interface is mostly 1:1 Github. Just the bullshit is ripped out.
by kace91 | 2026-02-09 10:10:05+00:00
Your elevator should not have automatic doors, doors are restrictive. They stop you from quickly jumping out of the elevator if you decide that you actually want to stay at the first floor.

Sure, we’ve seen some pretty gnarly accidents, and there is no reasonable situation where risking death is a sane choice.

But ask yourself: is it the elevator's job to prevent an accident? If you think so, I suggest you never leave your home again, as safety is your own concern.

Like and subscribe for other posts like “knife handles? What an idiot” and “never wear a helmet you coward”.