MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by anonymous908213 | 2026-02-16 20:15:41+00:00
> on attacks against journalism and free speech.

"Free speech" is some kind of terminal brain worm that begs itself to be invoked to browbeat most anybody into submission, I suppose. Now we're apparently extending "free speech" to mean "the government must publish sensitive private information about every citizen in an easily-scraped manner". Well, I don't buy your cheap rhetorical trick. I support freedom of speech in exactly the scope it was originally intended, that is, the freedom to express ideas without facing government censorship or retaliation. Trying to associate your completely unrelated argument with something that everybody is expected to agree with by default is weak.

Nor is it "an attack on journalism". If a real journalist still exists in the current year, they can do investigative work to obtain information that is relevant to the public's interests and then publish it freely. Nobody is stopping them.

> LOCK DOWN ALL INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINALS

Notably, people who aren't criminals may find themselves in court to determine whether or not they aren't. Unfortunately, people like yourself and the entirety of the broadcast and print media then go on to presume every person who goes to court are criminals and do everything in their power to ruin their lives. Far from just "some musician", most people who are arrested on serious charges get a black mark on their record that effectively destroys their careers and denies them the ability to rent property outside of a ghetto, as employers and landlords discriminate against them baselessly even after they are acquitted of all charges against them.
by jrflowers | 2026-02-16 20:15:41+00:00
> It's more like being hooked on a slot machine which pays out 95% of the time because you know how to trick it.

“It’s not like a slot machine, it’s like… a slot machine… that I feel good using”

That aside if a slot machine is doing your job correctly 95% of the time it seems like either you aren’t noticing when it’s doing your job poorly or you’ve shifted the way that you work to only allow yourself to do work that the slot machine is good at.
by MattRos | 2026-02-16 20:15:44+00:00
I’m Matt, and I run a small MSP in Colorado.

I built Irondiff because I was tired of staring at notepad sessions at 2 AM trying to spot a single line of configuration drift that took down a client site. While diff is great for code, it’s a pain for scrolling through massive Cisco IOS or Juniper config dumps, especially for our Tier 1 techs who aren't CLI wizards.

Irondiff is a visual tool to solve that specific headache.

What it does: It takes two config files (yesterday vs today), normalizes them, and highlights exactly what changed. It supports the weird syntax nuances of Cisco, Juniper, pfSense, Fortinet, etc.

Why I turned it into a SaaS:
I originally scripted this for internal use, but we realized we needed better visibility across our team. I added an API and webhooks so we could pipe alerts directly into Slack and Microsoft Teams whenever a config changed. Now, if an engineer makes a change, the whole team sees the diff in chat instantly.

Pricing:
There is a free tier for basic diffs.
The paid plans ($49/mo and $190/mo) are for the API access, team notifications, and longer history retention. I’m bootstrapping this, so the pricing is designed to sustain the infrastructure without VC money.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the diff visualization or any edge cases with specific hardware vendors we might have missed.

Thanks!
by dirasieb | 2026-02-16 20:15:47+00:00
it's hilarious that "people" downvote comments pointing out the logical conclusion of the policies they defend

wouldn't making it illegal to discriminate based on criminal records prevent an elementary school of refusing to employ a candidate that is "fit for the job" (graduated from a good university, has years of experience in the field, etc) who just happens to have a child rape conviction on the basis that he has a child rape conviction? doesn't 1 + 1 equal 2?
by NickC25 | 2026-02-16 20:15:52+00:00
I doubt that. Stockfish 11 years ago as you claim (which around then was rated approximately 2800), maybe. Stockfish today? Stockfish on Lichess is 3000 and that's not even running at full capacity. A fully supported Stockfish running on top hardware is currently 3650ish. It can avoid known draw lines and stalemate lines, and could absolutely crush the likes of Magnus.

You would lose every time, not even close.
Show HN: Business Lead Finder – Scrape Google Maps and Yelp for Leads
by harborbuilds | 2026-02-16 20:15:58+00:00
I built a tool that extracts structured business data from Google Maps and Yelp. You give it a query (e.g., "coffee shops in Brooklyn") and it returns name, address, phone, website, rating, and review count as JSON or CSV.

It runs as an Apify Actor, so no infrastructure to manage.

Technical details:
- Built with Python + Playwright for rendering JS-heavy pages
- Handles Google Maps' infinite scroll and dynamic loading
- Deduplicates across Google Maps and Yelp results
- Outputs structured JSON with consistent schema

Why I built it: Existing lead databases (ZoomInfo, Apollo) start at $100+/month and are overkill for small teams that need a few hundred local leads. I wanted something with no subscription and a simple input/output model.

Limitations I'm upfront about:
- Data is only as current as Google/Yelp listings
- Very broad searches can be slow
- Phone numbers aren't always available

Feedback welcome.
Show HN: I built a multi-agent Think Tank that calls out my bad decisions
by atulya_techtea | 2026-02-16 20:16:04+00:00
I built this multi-agent system to solve a problem I know a lot of you have:
too much data, not enough insight.

I have notes, habit trackers, market intel — but was still stuck in planning mode.
So I built "The Think Tank": three agents (Saul, Mike, Gus) analyze different domains,
and one synthesis layer (The Cook) delivers ONE actionable move.

The twist? The Cook's job is to find contradictions. Like: "You say you want AI/ML
career transition but your logs show 90% business dev, 10% technical study."

It hurts. It works.

Open source, Breaking Bad themed, and genuinely useful. Check it out.
by orksliver | 2026-02-16 20:16:07+00:00
Petri nets were invented in 1962. They predate Unix, the internet, and object-oriented programming. For most of their history, they lived in academic papers — a formalism known to theorists but invisible to working programmers.

This book argues they deserve wider use. Not because they're elegant (they are) but because they solve practical problems. A Petri net is a state machine that handles concurrency. It's a workflow engine with formal guarantees. It's a simulation model that converts to differential equations. It's a specification that can be verified, compiled to code, and proven in zero knowledge.
by dvrp | 2026-02-16 20:16:07+00:00
We also are working on crowdsourcing methods, but it's hard because almost everyone involved in the development of this project is a volunteer that either works for a company already or is a startup founder (me)... so is very tricky to find time.

Also, feel free to check Jwiki (FKA Jikipedia) at https://jmail.world/wiki
by giancarlostoro | 2026-02-16 20:16:32+00:00
> One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment.

You got a source for that? Because the only communication I've seen from Discord implies no data is sent when these scans take place, its supposed to all take place locally FIRST is my understanding. The only exception is if the local scan goofs in some way.

https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...

> Key privacy protections of Discord’s age-assurance approach include:

> On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device.

> Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly— in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.

> Straightforward age assurance: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group.

> Private status: A user’s age group status cannot be seen by other users.
by jaggederest | 2026-02-16 20:16:34+00:00
The least helpful possible framing for this, I think. Refusing to answer altogether has all of the risks of giving too high/low a salary, and none of the benefits of actual negotiation.

If you're in a position where you can not answer, you're in a position there's no reason not to give them your desired salary up front and let them tell you why they can't do it. Pick a high number of course!

If you're in a position where you can't afford not to answer, you should pick a reasonable number, and take whatever they give you, because you completely lack agency. This is the case where you might screw yourself out of money, but if you need the job that badly, do you really care?

A better way to frame this, and this is always what I do if I have the agency to not answer, is to give them the number I'd like or remain mum, but either way when they make the final offer just ask them a simple question: "Is there any way you can come up a little bit from that?". If they say no, you decide based on that first number. But they'll almost always say yes, and you'll get a small effortless raise.

I've done this about 10 times across my career and about 70-80% of the time I've gotten a bump in the 5-10% range. Which means that, collectively, about 30-40% of my current salary level is a result of that one question, applied consistently over time.

You won't get a raise outside the salary band, but you might move from the median for that band up a notch or two within it, and that absolutely matters in the long run.
by Calavar | 2026-02-16 20:16:38+00:00
The analogy can hold even if it's not intentionally designed that way.

I think gatcha games are a better analogy than gambling. There are some objective markers of progress, but maintaining forward velocity is a never ending battle. Because as you progress further (higher level in a gatcha game vs. larger and more complex code base in agentic coding), it takes more effort to maintain that same velocity. There is skill involved, but there is also a significant stochastic component, and once you've maxxed out on the skill portion, the only way left to keep the forward velocity going is to brute force the stochastic component with a pay-to-play strategy.

This is also compounded by a FOMO social pressure to spend, spend, spend now lest you risk dropping your velocity and falling behind your peers.
by ssl-3 | 2026-02-16 20:16:43+00:00
It was ridiculously reliable. The telephone, as it was, Just Worked. The importance of this reliability was very ingrained in how they did things. (Which makes sense: When you've got many tens of millions of customer circuits to maintain, and the switching gear to cross-connect them, you need that stuff to work. The manpower required to maintain an unreliable system of that scale would be astronomically expensive.)

The one time in my life when the home phone didn't work in our house, I decided to wander out back to have a look. I saw a cable just dangling there in the alley that I visually traced back to the house.

I called the phone company from our other line (we had one for the modem) and reported this combination of no dialtone, and a down line. A truck appeared in less than 10 minutes. A short time after that, they knocked on the front door to say it was fixed, and speculated that maybe it'd been clipped by a truck or something.

If the old AT&T had purchased GitHub instead of Microsoft, it would be stodgy, featureless, grey, robustly-reliable, and delivered into homes and businesses over a dedicated copper circuit at profound monthly expense.
Show HN: SafeClaw – Sleep-by-default AI assistant with runtime tool permissions
by rawaldelhi | 2026-02-16 20:16:48+00:00
I studied OpenClaw and built a more secure alternative. Key differences:

- Dormant by default (only wakes on /wake command from owner)
- All tools disabled by default (you /enable on demand)
- Dangerous actions require /confirm before executing
- Single-owner auth (strangers silently dropped, zero info leak)
- Full audit log of every action

Built as a working TypeScript prototype with Telegram integration. Next step: connect real AI agent (Claude/GPT) and add WhatsApp support.

Curious what HN thinks about this security model for AI assistants.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-02-16 20:16:50+00:00
Same... I remember when Super Castlevania IV came out on the SNES our jaw dropped when we saw that the whole level began to rotate. We were already coding back then but probably not old enough to be professional game developers (although some started really young).

Mind-blowing effect (for 1991) begins at 2min 12s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQvTCzjyWtY
by CGMthrowaway | 2026-02-16 20:16:53+00:00
> The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction.

Intermittent variable rewards, whether produced by design or merely as a byproduct, will induce compulsive behavior, no matter the optimization target. This applies to Claude
by palata | 2026-02-16 20:17:04+00:00
> Im neurodivergent as hell

Well that may explain it, then, thanks for letting me know.

I realise that my question was not super clear because... well I didn't really know what to ask :-). I was just trying to engage in a human interaction. Say I am at a party with friends and strangers, and when I get introduced to a stranger, they say "I am a professional reverse engineer". Because I find that interesting, I will start asking questions. And I may well start trying to explain what I find interesting, giving the expert an angle to start talking about it.

Of course I could just go home and read about reverse engineering. But at that moment, in that party, I want to enjoy a discussion about it with a human being. Part of the experience is that I get to hear what some other human thinks about it.

I am not there for a formal course, I am there to listen to what a human being has to say about it. And obviously an LLM cannot do that job :-).
by mirashii | 2026-02-16 20:17:37+00:00
There's two paths for verification, and the discussion on them is muddying things. There's k-id, which is the local-only age verification, and then there's a secondary process for places where k-id is indeterminate or their system flags you as possibly still being underage, and requires ID verification.

Previously, they handled this escalation path via Zendesk, which was breached revealing all of the messages with IDs.

Now, they're trying out Persona for this path.
by ebiester | 2026-02-16 20:17:44+00:00
Consider - why did Discord or Slack win over IRC?

It turns out it's very slow to evolve a protocol. How long did it take for IRCv3 to handle channels having persistent history? How about channel takeovers via network splits? We knew these were problems in the 20th century but it took a very long time to fix.

Oh, and the chathistory Extension is still a draft! So is channel-rename! And account-registration?

And why is it still so painful to use Mastodon?

That's but one of many examples. Consider how the consolidation of HTML and HTTP clients was the only way that we ended up with any innovation in those services. People have to keep up with Chrome who just does their own thing.

I want to want a decentralized world governed by protocols, but good software that iterates quickly remains the exception rather than the rule.
by mzajc | 2026-02-16 20:18:12+00:00
I should've been clearer - by Google-approved, I meant that your device has to pass Google's remote attestation scheme. From https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295...:

> I’m seeing this error message: "Your device does not meet our security requirements".

> /../ If the operating system is an Android variant (also called a 'custom ROM'), such as LineageOS or Pixel Experience, then the wero app can’t be installed for security reasons.
by joezydeco | 2026-02-16 20:18:16+00:00
In either case, it never amounts to more than a $10K swing in comp. Same for vacation time.

Yes, it's a polite way to brush off the question. But the end result is the same. A job offer way lower than what you're making, and now they have $20K in a bucket to go a little higher when you try to negotiate.
by Joel_Mckay | 2026-02-16 20:18:32+00:00
>Not sure what 4-year cycle you're talking about.

I observe many groups solving platform design issues also eventually move on to other projects or careers. The dozens of documented fools-errands from Academic literature and Commercial sectors are eventually lost again each time. There are various institutional structural reasons this occurs, but the outcome is usually the same.

One must accept many problems are not purely technical in nature, and unfortunately complex Mechatronics often tend to exhibit sustainability problems.

>I'm not sure how you ended up here.

Don't worry about it... =3
by ModernMech | 2026-02-16 20:18:32+00:00
For me I would ask it to do a simple thing and it would give me the tutorial code you could find anywhere on the Internet. Then you ask it to modify it in a way that you can't find in any example online, it will tell you it's fixed everything, but actually nothing has changed at all or it's completely broken.

I think if someone's goal was just the tutorial code, it would have been very impressive to them the AI can summon it.
by mooreds | 2026-02-16 20:18:37+00:00
> Either way, there's no reason to name numbers until AFTER the company makes an offer with included compensation package details.

I agree that a candidate shouldn't name numbers until after an offer.

But I think the company should give a range as early as possible. This is because of point #2 above. As an engineering manager I've had at least one heartbreaking experience where we took a candidate through the hiring cycle and then found out we and they were way out of line re: comp. Hiring sucks enough without that curveball.

That's why, for all the warts, I'm a fan of salary disclosure laws (like those in Colorado, USA). Yes, it's hard to have an accurate range, because jobs and skills are squishy. Yes, candidates anchor towards the top. Yes, it's weird for a buyer of a thing (labor) to state a price.

But companies have more power in the hiring process (there are, after all, many employees working for a company, but usually only one company an employee works for). Companies, or the hiring managers, also have a budget.

If you are a hiring manager, I'd encourage you to have your salary range shared with candidates as early as possible in the process.
by skmurphy | 2026-02-16 20:18:46+00:00
Looks like they may be cancelling half of F-35 order in favor of Swedish Gripen

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/02/16/once_un...

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/john-ivison-sources-ottawa-conside...
"The most likely scenario seems to be that Canada will buy around 40 F-35s and complement them with up to 80 Saab Gripens, which would be made in Quebec."

Gripens are less capable but half the price of F-35, allowing Canada to trade 40 F-35's on order for 80 Gripens to be built in Canada.
by thattechiedude | 2026-02-16 20:18:50+00:00
Thanks for checking it out! You're right — the docs need updating, we're fixing that now. The actual API responses are the source of truth (which it looks like you figured out). Really cool that you built the Python SDK — mind if we link to it from our developer docs as a community SDK? Happy to bump you to Developer tier if you want to keep building.Hit me up: projects@stacklinestudio.com
by lich_king | 2026-02-16 20:18:58+00:00
I like the weird arms race here: phone manufacturers develop more and more computational photography techniques to convert the output from potato sensors and optics into what looks like a professional photo... and phone-based photographers put more and more effort into undoing a lot of that work to avoid the look they used to covet. Back in my day, that first baby photo would be widely considered the best.

I would think there's a point where, if you want this level of creative control and image quality, you go back to a mirrorless camera, which now costs less than iPhone Pro. But I guess the convenience is hard to beat?
by biophysboy | 2026-02-16 20:19:00+00:00
This matches my experience using LLMs for science. Out of curiosity, I downloaded a randomized study and the CONSORT checklist, and asked Claude code to do a review using the checklist.

I was really impressed with how it parsed the structured checklist. I was not at all impressed by how it digested the paper. Lots of disguised errors.
by zokier | 2026-02-16 20:19:09+00:00
I think this press release adds much needed context: https://epicompany.eu/media-insights/bancomat-bizum-epi-sibs...

Especially these parts:

> The cooperation builds on the success of existing solutions, connecting them via a central hub to create a truly pan-European experience for cross-border payments.

> European consumers will continue using their current preferred solution, now with broader European reach

> The cooperation is based on a central interoperability hub, operated by a future central entity jointly established by the partners.

So it is unlikely that Wero will be the single solution for entire Europe. Instead it is one of many solutions that hopefully will interoperate in the future. But we are still in the MoU phase only, so lets see what happens...
by topocite | 2026-02-16 20:19:20+00:00
I just totally disagree.

I love art, I even love AI art and would probably be considered an art snob in general.

Midjourney often has the same problem with drawing lines. There is something just aesthetically wrong with the lines.

I don't care how an image is made. I only care about the output and these drawings are shit to me.

People of course have different taste in art as they do in food and all manner of subjective experiences. I would have to question how much art someone has really consumed to call this "profound". Of course you might really like it but to call this profound is absurd.
by aqeisi | 2026-02-16 20:19:25+00:00
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If you’re new I strongly recommend giving at least the free challenges a shot.