MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vidarh | 2026-02-24 11:00:23+00:00
Changing the style is easy: Just feed it a writing sample, and tell it to review its own writing against the style of the writing sample.

That won't entirely weed out these tropes, but it will massively change the style.

Then add a few specific rules and make it review its writing, instead of expecting it to get it right while writing.

To weed out the tropes is largely a question of enforcing good writing through rules.

A whole lot of the tropes are present because a lot of people write that way. It may have been amplified by RLHF etc., but in that case it's been amplified because people have judged those responses to be better - after all that is what RLHF is.
by friendzis | 2026-02-24 11:00:41+00:00
> Detecting whom exactly the next victim is going to be isn't really going to change anything as far as researching a treatment or cure goes.

Your reasoning relies heavily on this statement, which is only true if occurrence is entirely random, which is in most cases not true. A condition can easily mask the cause of the condition and then you have a confounder(-s) that you have no way of controlling. If you can build multiple strata with high risk ratios, you can find baseline similarities and differences in those groups. Early detection is highly important in knowing these confounders in the first place and then controlling for; and as GP mentions allows for more targeted research in treatment. Without this we could easily spend all the research effort on the effect (symptom) of a condition without even approaching treatment of the cause, i.e. prevention.

A very similar thing has happened with the infamous atherosclerotic plaques. AFAIK (correct me if you are aware of any evidence) there is currently no mechanistic model of how these atherosclerotic plaques form. Yet we spend so much effort in lowering the symptomatic side of increased cholesterol/LDL (which has well-known positives) even if there are known metabolic pathways for LDL increase, based entirely on correlational studies, when LDL is not even close to being the best predictor of cardiovascular conditions. LDL just happens to be easy to measure in a blood test and easy to control with oral medication.
Show HN: Agent workspace switcher for Git worktrees
by prbdias | 2026-02-24 11:01:24+00:00
Hey HN, I've been exploring ways to make my engineering teams more productive in multi-agent AI coding workflows. The most popular development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) leverage git worktrees to enable multiple agents to work in parallel, guaranteeing each runs in a semi-isolated workspace. The workflow is powerful, but switching between worktrees to test what each agent built is painful: take down the stack for agent X, cd to the right worktree, re-source .env files, bring up the stack for agent Y, run migrations, seed the database, start build tools... every single time.

>
forest solves this with a single command. It's a portable Bash script (~1200 lines, no dependencies beyond git/docker/jq) that bridges git worktrees, Docker Compose, and host services:
>
- forest list -- shows all worktrees with branch context, dirty file counts, and issue numbers parsed from branch names
- forest boot 2 -- spins up the full dev stack (Docker + host services like Vite) for worktree #2
- forest switch 3 -- tears down the current stack and boots another in seconds
- forest status -- shows exactly what's running and where
>
It also has a configurable hook system (pre, pre-services, post) so you can automate all the ceremony around booting an environment. Running migrations, seeding or resetting databases, installing dependencies, setting up k8s clusters, health checks, whatever your project needs. It auto-sources .env files, redirects host service logs to .forest/logs/, and remembers branch names even when worktrees end up in detached HEAD state (common during agent rebases).
>
Config is a single JSON block that lives alongside your editor config (auto-detects from .cursor/worktrees.json, .claude/settings.json, or .forest/config.json), and forest init walks through setup interactively.
>
Pure Bash 3.2+ (works on macOS out of the box), MIT licensed, installs with:
>
>
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prbdias/forest-cli/main/in... | bash>
>
Would love feedback from anyone doing multi-worktree development, with or without AI agents.
by hsuduebc2 | 2026-02-24 11:01:25+00:00
It's ridiculously toxic. If you do not wish to participate in any form of internet cultural wars or politics it is virtually not possible there. For me the feed is mainl ridiculosuly stupid russian propaganda or politicians tilting each other. The "Do not recommend" button does nothing.

The problem is that he doesn't care about the money, so he can fuel his rage bait machine as long as he wants which would be normally not possible.
Ask HN: Missing page from Practical Computing magazine (1980)
by sim04ful | 2026-02-24 11:01:32+00:00
Perusing out of pure curiosity the May 1980 edition Practical Computing. I came upon a rather intriguing short story "And there was light" by a certain John Abbatt, which I was happily absorbed in until, without warning, pages 73 and 74 were nowhere to be found.

I understand that finding an excerpt nearly half a century old, from a little-known magazine and a little-known author, is bound to be challenging.
by animal531 | 2026-02-24 11:02:15+00:00
Here's an easy to understand example. I've been playing EvE Online and it has an API with which you can query the game to find information on its items and market (as well as several other unrelated things).

It seems like a prime example for which to use AI to quickly generate the code. You create the base project and give it the data structures and calls, and it quickly spits out a solution. Everything is great so far.

Then you want to implement some market trading, so you need to calculate opportunities from the market orders vs their buy/sell prices vs unit price vs orders per day etc. You add that to the AI spec and it easily creates a working solution for you. Unfortunately once you run it it takes about 24 hours to update, making it near worthless.

The code it created was very cheap, but also extremely problematic. It made no consideration for future usage, so everything from the data layer to the frontend has issues that you're going to be fighting against. Sure, you can refine the prompts to tell it to start modifying code, but soon you're going to be sitting with more dead code than actual useful lines, and it will trip up along the way with so many more issues that you will have to fix.

In the end it turns out that that code wasn't cheap at all and you needed to spend just as much time as you would have with "expensive code". Even worse, the end product is nearly still just as terrible as the starting product, so none of that investment gave any appreciable results.
by throwworhtthrow | 2026-02-24 11:02:20+00:00
Besides the telltale "it's not x, it's y" used repeatedly in their comment history, I also struggle to imagine what would motivate a human to type such blandly agreeable jargon-filled pablum. I'd certainly prefer not read it, even if it didn't spill out of an LLM.

Thanks for making a stink about it.

(edit: I now see you used the p-word to describe it too, and normally I'd edit my post to use a different synonym, but "pablum" really is the perfect description. I also assume you already reported this account to hn@ so I won't bug the mods a second time.)
by remenoscodes | 2026-02-24 11:02:31+00:00
I built git-native-issue (https://github.com/remenoscodes/git-native-issue), a distributed issue tracker that stores issues as Git commits under refs/issues/.

In April 2007, during a flame war about the Linux 2.6.21 release, Linus wrote:

"There must be some better form of bug tracking than bugzilla. Some really distributed way of letting people work together, without having to congregate on some central web-site kind of thing. A 'git for bugs', where you can track bugs locally and without a web interface."

Source: https://lore.kernel.org/all/alpine.LFD.0.98.0704290848360.99...

19 years later, nobody shipped this. 10+ tools tried (Bugs Everywhere, ticgit, git-bug, git-dit, git-appraise, git-issue). All failed for similar reasons — mostly file-based storage that breaks on merge, and no format spec for ecosystem adoption.

The core insight: issues are append-only event logs, and Git is a distributed append-only database. So I mapped issue tracking directly to Git primitives:

- Commits = issue events (creation, comments, state changes)
- Refs = issue identity (refs/issues/<uuid>)
- Trailers = structured metadata (same format as Signed-off-by)
- Merge commits = conflict resolution
- Fetch/push = sync

Usage:

$ git issue create "Fix login crash" -l bug -p high
$ git issue ls -f full
$ git issue show a7f3b2c
$ git issue sync github:owner/repo

The architecture follows Git's own philosophy: the core only knows commits, refs, and trailers. Platform bridges (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea/Forgejo) are separate scripts that translate between APIs and git primitives. New platform = new bridge, core doesn't change.

The real deliverable is ISSUE-FORMAT.md — a standalone spec that any tool can implement. If this project dies tomorrow, the spec survives. That's the key difference from prior art: none of them produced a standalone format specification.

282 tests across 22 suites. POSIX shell, zero dependencies beyond Git for the core. Platform bridges need jq + their respective CLIs (gh, glab, or curl for Gitea/Forgejo).

Honest limitations: shell is slow with large repos (10k+ issues work but not fast). A C rewrite is on the roadmap, inspired by the path git-subtree took into contrib/.

Feedback I'm looking for: Is the format spec (ISSUE-FORMAT.md) clear and implementable? What edge cases did I miss? Would you actually use this?

Install:

brew install remenoscodes/git-native-issue/git-native-issue
# or
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/remenoscodes/git-native-issue/main/install.sh | sh
by noduerme | 2026-02-24 11:02:40+00:00
I'd like to point out that this article seems to focus on minutiae like how much energy a human brain takes to solve a problem, when the obvious question is: Which is more worthwhile to us as a species - even assuming the same inputs and energy and planetary damage? Spending that energy on fostering humans who can solve problems? Or on machines which render humans superfluous?
by dahauns | 2026-02-24 11:02:44+00:00
Apologies that I'm latching onto your post for visibility, but for the sake of discussion - the European Identity Digital Wallet project specification and standardisation process is in the open and lives on github (yeah, the irony isn't lost on me :) ):

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet

https://eudi.dev/latest/

Everything's very much WIP, but it aims to provide a detailed Archictecture and Reference Framework/Technical Specifications and a reference implementation as a guideline for national implementations:

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-wallet-re...

https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-stand...

You'll find several (still evolving) Technical Specifications regarding ZKPs (including a discussion area) in the latter.
by simonw | 2026-02-24 11:03:23+00:00
If you follow the link to the tweet but don't have an account there you'll miss a joke, because Twitter doesn't show threaded replies to logged out users. The xcancel link shows it. Here's the two tweet sequence:

> AI-generated replies really are the scourge of Twitter these days. Anyone know if it's from packaged solutions being sold as a product or if it's people mainly rolling their own custom reply-bots

> ... and I just found out the category name for this is "reply guy" tools which is so on the nose it hurts

(You can confirm this by Google searching "reply guy service".)
by matwood | 2026-02-24 11:04:18+00:00
I was wondering about this. Maybe we were not really meant to spend so much time communicating through screens. And if all we do is communicate through screens, does it even matter if it’s AI, a dog, or a person? I know people will jump in and say yes it matters, but if I was never going to meet the person on the other side of a comment it’s hard to get worked up about it.
by abc123abc123 | 2026-02-24 11:04:36+00:00
I love AI-generated replies. I use it on all cold mailers who try to sell me shit. I just tell the AI to give me a one a4 response, and to gently string them along with vague interest, but not committing to anything.

The more determined salesmen last for 3-4 emails, but most drop off after 2 or so.
by elric | 2026-02-24 11:05:32+00:00
I feel like you're glossing over a lot of uncomfortable but important implementation details here. None of this works without effectively banning personal computing and tying the whole system to secure attestation (which in practice means non-jailbroken apple & android devices). No thanks.

Can we go back to defaulting to parenting instead of nanny-states? Maybe make "age sensitive" websites include this fact into a header (or whatever) so that parents can decide who in their household can access which content. Instead of having some overreaching corpo-government implementing draconian "verification" systems.

If I want to live under the thumb of a strongly verified "benevolent" dictatorship, I'll move to China. No need to create a second China at home.
by Garlef | 2026-02-24 11:05:47+00:00
I what the article proposes is the wrong direction:

Instead of every single person to maintain an offering a vertical slice through the whole stack, we should make it easier to publish content in the first place.

The real issue that this pushes the burden of maintenance and infrastructure on the individual; But this should be a shared responsibility.

Instead we need:

- A federated content/file system
- An open standard for viewer/app definitions (hosted on this system)
Show HN: Pointwise – Self-hosted Lidar annotation for AV teams
by sohailsaifi | 2026-02-24 11:06:00+00:00
Built this because annotation teams working on serious AV/robotics
datasets often can't send data to a third-party cloud, and existing
self-hosted options have no real multi-user workflow.

Runs on Docker + PostgreSQL. WebGL renderer handles 1M+ points at
60fps in the browser. Full annotator/reviewer/admin roles with a
review pipeline, issue tracking, and audit trails. Supports local
filesystem or S3-compatible storage.

Happy to answer questions about the rendering approach or the
multi-user architecture.
by Hywan | 2026-02-24 11:06:03+00:00
In this article, I illustrate how Data-oriented Design helped to remove annoying memory pressure and lock contention in multiple sorters used in the Matrix Rust SDK. It has improved the execution by 98.7% (53ms to 676µs) and the throughput by 7718.5% (from 18K elem/s to 1.4M elem/s)! I will talk about how the different memories work, how we want to make the CPU caches happy, and how we can workaround locks when they are a performance bottleneck.
by roysting | 2026-02-24 11:06:15+00:00
You are only touching on a far bigger and deeper issue around this seemingly “simple prompt”. There is an inherent malicious nature also baked into this prompt that is both telling and very human; a spiteful nature, which usually says more about the humans than anything else.

Your perspective on the meta-question about why such a question would need to be asked in the first place is just the first layer, and most people seem to not even get to that point.

PS: I for one would just like to quickly note for posterity that I do not participate in or am supportive of malicious deception, manipulation, and abuse of AI.
by zozbot234 | 2026-02-24 11:06:45+00:00
Computer algebra of the Mathematica/Maple variety is not formally rigorous: it will get things wrong due to conflating function domains, choices of branch cuts for 'multi-valued functions' and other assumptions that are required for correct results but not exposed or verified. The work of providing "strong and fast algorithms" that are comprehensively described ought to be done as part of building proof systems for the underlying mathematics that will ensure correctness.
by mpnex | 2026-02-24 11:06:50+00:00
It's illegal to pass a school bus when the lights are on / stop arm is extended. That's why they have the stop-sign on the driver's side of the bus.

The article forgot to mention that but the assumption is that (a) a reasonable driver would know that and (b) their audience probably remembered that happening, since it was only a few months ago IIRC.
by KronisLV | 2026-02-24 11:07:07+00:00
> The question has been making the rounds online as a simple logic test, the kind any human gets instantly, but most AI models don't.

...

> They ran the exact same question with the same forced choice between "drive" and "walk," no additional context, past 10,000 real people through their human feedback platform.

> 71.5% said drive.

Well that's a bit embarrassing.

That implies that some models are just better than humans.

I don't think the technology needs to live up to some expectation of perfection, just beat out the human average to have benefit (often, sadly, not to workers themselves).
by pjmlp | 2026-02-24 11:07:18+00:00
That is why platforms like Common Language Runtime exist, not only COM.

CLR was going to be the COM Runtime+, and idea was reborn again as Windows team with their anti-.NET bias decided to redo Longhorn in C++, with WinRT.

"Turning to the past to power Windows’ future: An in-depth look at WinRT"

https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...

It is also how Android IPC and Apple's XPC kind of get into the picture.

The elephant in the room is that FOSS OSes hardly embrace such solutions.
by elric | 2026-02-24 11:08:16+00:00
When Trump came into power a second time, and the ICE-nazification became apparent, I reached out to my government and asked them what they were doing to make it harder for "Trumpism" to happen here. No reply. Just crickets.

Hoovering up less data would be a really fucking good start. There's something about babies and bathwater, but by god this has proven to be very dangerous bathwater time and time again.
by rerdavies | 2026-02-24 11:08:24+00:00
An interesting parallel to that is the "What's the next number in this sequence?" sort of questions.

If four numbers are provided, one can calculate the coefficients of a a quartic polynomial, for x values of 0, 1, 2 and 3, and then solve for x=4. Which does indeed provide a defensible "next number". And by similar reasoning, there are an infinite number of answers to this question.

Even worse. You could in fact provide any number as an answer, because there is always a quintic polynomial that fits the four initial numbers AND your arbitrary fifth number.

So these questions are actually not about what the next number is, but trying to imagine what the person who set the question thought was a "cool" answer, for some curious definition of "cool", for some person who isn't smart enough to realize that the premise on which the question is based is flawed.
by KvanteKat | 2026-02-24 11:08:46+00:00
Given that you're citing Wikipedia on this, the issue of detecting and fighting auto-generated slop in articles is actually quite fascinating.

There was a really interesting talk given by Mathias Shindler (long time editor of German Wikipedia) at the 39C3 conference about this topic a few months back that is worth a watch for anyone interested in the issue: https://youtu.be/fKU0V9hQMnY
by fnky | 2026-02-24 11:08:55+00:00
This is the crux of every decentralized system. If there's no one there to host the data and make it available, you have to start somewhere.

The point of ATproto is that it gives you the option to move to your own, or someone elses. Bluesky is just a use-case which happens to provide a good enough platform that people don't need to host it. That's typically not the concern of most people anyway.
by fragmede | 2026-02-24 11:09:20+00:00
Thanks for reading! They are arbitrary, but they're just as arbitrary as SAE's levels, it's just that I'm not a standards body or anything. I am more interested in the underlying technology than the politics of it all because that's what's more interesting to me. Maybe if I update to call them milestones or some other analogy rather than levels I can get it to stick.
by simianwords | 2026-02-24 11:09:21+00:00
you have just linked the fact that they have code executions but not proved that it is needed for strawberry problem.

there are multiple ways to disprove this

1. GPT o1 was released and it never supported the tools and it easily solved the strawberry problem - it was named strawberry internally

2. you can run GPT 5.2-thinking in the API right now and deny access to any tools, it will still work

3. you can run deepseek locally without tools and run it, it will still work

Overall this idea that LLM's cant reason and need tools to do that is misleading and false and easily disproven.
by vaylian | 2026-02-24 11:09:57+00:00
First let me clearly state that I appreciate the amount of thought you guys are putting into creating better systems that have high privacy guarantees. I concede to you, that in some situations, your system leads to better privacy.

But I don't look at this on a purely technological level. These identity-based systems are instruments of control. Right now everything is still in flux with how these tools will be used and how accessible they are to the general population and the many minorities therein. I simply don't trust our politicians to do the right thing short-term and long-term. The establishment of the GDPR has been a major victory for better privacy legislation and now the Commission wants to hollow it out. The Commission also wants chat control to increase the amount of mass surveillance in Europe.

There is a potential future, where we all win. But I am highly skeptical, that in the current political climate, we will end up there.
by graphcolorer | 2026-02-24 11:10:04+00:00
I like this part very much:

More than three years after this episode took place, Terence, still a little boy,
happily played hide and seek with his two younger brothers when the Tao
family visited the Clements household. He is a happy, well-mannered lad who
obviously loves and respects his parents and his two brothers. He gets on well
with others, too. Mr John Fidge, his Year 11 Mathematics teacher at Blackwood
High School for the first two terms of 1983, told me that after he had been
attending the Year 11 Mathematics classes for about a fortnight he was accepted
as just another member of the class. He is always willing to volunteer answers
to questions asked by his teachers and was regarded as a friendly, humble, but
very bright boy by his classmates.
by ooloncoloophid | 2026-02-24 11:10:37+00:00
His book 'On Liberty' is the subject of a recent In Our Time episode (BBC Radio Four series on the history of ideas) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pqnc]. They discuss his childhood and his (apparently very warm) relationship with his father. (Sidenote: first proper In Our Time episode with the new host; he seems fine, but I miss Melvyn Bragg.)