MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sarchertech | 2026-02-22 23:30:26+00:00
It’s definitely true that LLMs require tests, but tests aren’t an antidote to what I’m taking about because LLMs are also good at writing plausible looking tests that are actually terrible.

They’re also very bad at understanding what edge cases are useful to test and what edge cases can be ignored.

I had a situation just the other day where the LLM produced tests for scores of edge cases, but a managed to leave out a specific sequence that caused a very difficult to diagnose bug. I’m assuming because it decided that sequence wasn’t possible.

But it did include dozens of redundant cases that no sane human ever would have.
by Stephen304 | 2026-02-22 23:30:29+00:00
Hmm funny to see Hetzner mentioned - I tried to rent a dedicated server from them and placed the order and gave payment details, about 6 hours later I got an email that they have decided to deactivate my account and cancel all products and orders because of "some concerns". Email support can't give me any reason because the info was anonymized and couldn't give me any information on how to avoid having my account randomly deleted besides don't break tos.
by gwbrooks | 2026-02-22 23:31:22+00:00
Lived in California for 30 years -- it's an amazing place. But it's hubris to assume your definition of quality of life is objective or universal.

California has seen negative net domestic migration for over 20 years. So multiple things can be true:

* It's a desirable place to live and work, for some.
* For others, the net quality of life is higher elsewhere.

Triumphalism ("They know they could never make it here...") isn't a good look whether you live in Silicon Valley or Dallas.
by dataflow | 2026-02-22 23:31:56+00:00
I'm not saying you're wrong (or right), but that you're simply jumping to a much more complicated explanation than what I'm seeing. My point was much more straightforward than that.

All I'm saying is: you addressed (b), but what about (a)?

That is, if you believe this comparison is merited, then surely Iranians would at least be making it themselves reasonably frequently? Now I don't know I'm living in a bubble, or if I'm just not keeping up with the news (I know for a fact there is a lot of news I'm missing, so I wouldn't put this past me by any means), but I simply don't see Iranians themselves going, e.g., "Why was there so much worldwide support for Palestinians but not for us?!"... is this something you do see?

If so, I'd love to hear more about it (links or even anecdotes would be great)... but if not, I'm suggesting that maybe the comparison just isn't apt, is all.
by ajross | 2026-02-22 23:31:59+00:00
> what the mathematically average chronically online person knows and thinks about a topic

Yes you do, often. Understanding ideas and consensus is part of understanding "topics". To choose a Godwinized existence proof: an LLM that didn't understand public opinion in, say, 1920's Germany is one that can't answer the question of how the war started.

You're making two mistakes here: one is that you're assuming that "facts" exist as a separate idea from "discourse". And the second is that you appear to think LLMs merely "average" the stuff they read instead of absorbing controversies and discourse on their own terms. The first I can't really help you with, but the second you can disabuse yourself of on your own just by pulling up a GPT chat and talking to it.
by jkhdigital | 2026-02-22 23:32:43+00:00
It definitely wasn’t a waste of time! I passed JLPT N1 back in 2014 after ~6 years of mostly Anki-based studying. Did Heisig’s RtK first and then mostly played old Japanese console games that I was familiar with. Never opened a JLPT study guide and passed the test on my first attempt.

Could I speak Japanese at that point? No not really… I even had a Japanese spouse! But we spoke mostly English at home. I could read quite well, but conversation was very challenging.

Then we moved to Japan. Despite not having a job that requires me to speak Japanese, I got enough live exposure just from chatting with people at the gym or in social activities that now, a few years later, I’ve backfilled all that conversational fluency that was missing. No special extra effort required, just living in an environment where I used the language reasonably often.

Anyways, the point is that all the time spent in Anki laid a rock-solid foundation that merely needed activation in the right environment for active fluency to emerge. Of course I no longer do my daily flashcard drills (and I’ve forgotten how to write quite a few kanji as a result) but the work paid off.
by verdverm | 2026-02-22 23:33:30+00:00
Not that I have heard or seen. Many use the .gitignore for this.

What do you see it being used for? They are generally pretty good if you just put the focus/ignore in the AGENTS.md, though forcing is also valid and why I started building a custom coding agent (copilot did not force agents.md files in, let the llm decide, dumb imo)
by gck1 | 2026-02-22 23:33:38+00:00
Very similar to what I'm doing, but I take a more unsupervised approach, then introduce as much determinism as possible in the right layers, while cutting out as much magic as possible.

One thing these sort of loops gloss over though, is that _plans change_ during implementation and I've never seen anyone talking about how they address this.

With pre-generated detailed implementation plan for an entire feature or a subsystem, the model will try to stick to the plan when reality has changed during implementation. So I would advice against a detailed plan. Plan and tasks within it are only valid for a single task for a feature. When codebase, i.e. reality changes - plan has to be regenerated.

The only thing that is immutable and untouchable during implementation is a high level spec.md file that lists goals and non-goals. I spend 1-2 hours specing a subsystem together in an interactive session with Opus, have it write a spec.md file, then a simple ralph loop. So it ends up:

1. Spec.md - interactive, extremely human-in-the-loop, high level objectives with acceptance criteria

Loop starts:
2. Plan - opus is instructed to read all specs using subagent to get general understanding. Then read the spec that we're currently working on. It will also read codebase to see what's the current state, what are the last changes in git, and what does log.md for the spec contain. Then it has to read the previous plan.md file and REWRITE it entirely, putting the most important next task at the top. It will have to log what it has done in specname_log.md (just a few lines max, no more)

3. Build: this is basically instructed to pick the most important thing from the plan and build it. All tests, lints etc must succeed before it can commit. It also logs to specname_log.md

This can loop for as long as both plan/builder iterations don't say that there's nothing to be done. And when that happens (usually after hours or days), reviewer agent steps in to do a more thorough review that everything listed in spec is done.

I also maintain a directives.md file in spec dir. I always review the TUI every 30 minutes or so to check if its getting stuck somewhere or taking path I don't like. I then put a single line in directives.md: "- X is the wrong approach and must be dropped"

All agents in their prompt have a line that says: "read directives.md - it contains human overrides that must be followed and they override everything".

This works extremely well. But the biggest downside is that you'll hit weekly Max 20x limits in 3 days.

I also advice ignoring any tooling that hides these things from you. All of this is a 300 line bash script and a few template prompt.md files that I built in a few minutes with opus, based on what I observed were the pain points. You need to be able to tweak your system in a few minutes down to the minute details. Using things like GSD, gastown, spec-kit, openclaw, etc locks you into the paradigms of people who also, don't know what we're all doing and what approach will win. In a few years, it's possible something will emerge that we all universally adopt, but right now, nobody has an idea what works.
by chrisweekly | 2026-02-22 23:33:48+00:00
Interesting. Spotify works almost perfectly for my discovery needs. I just pick a track I know that fits my mood, then use the (3-dot menu) "Go to Radio" option, which leads to a playlist that usually includes tracks and/or artists new to me. It's been a reliable discovery mechanism for me for many years. Also, there's a new feature I first saw within the last week, a "non-personalized" option that increases the "new to me" ratio.
by ajross | 2026-02-22 23:33:50+00:00
You're the second responder here that appears to think LLMs are "averaging" machines and that they need to be "protected" from wrong info. That's exactly the opposite of the way they work. You feed them the garbage precisely so they can explain to you why it's garbage. Otherwise we'd have just fed them wikipedia and stopped, but clearly that doesn't work as well.
by sendkamal | 2026-02-22 23:34:03+00:00
Hi HN,

I built WARN Firehose because I was frustrated trying to track layoff data across the US. The WARN Act requires companies with 100+ employees to file public notices 60 days before mass layoffs — but the data is scattered across 50 state websites with different formats, broken links, and no API.

WARN Firehose scrapes every state workforce agency daily and normalizes the data into a single database going back to 1988. It now has 131,000+ notices covering 14 million workers.

*What you can do:*

- Browse interactive charts and data tables (no account needed): https://warnfirehose.com/data
- Drill into any state, city, company, or industry: https://warnfirehose.com/data/layoffs
- Query the REST API (free tier: 100 calls/day): https://warnfirehose.com/docs
- Export in CSV, JSON, NDJSON, Parquet, or JSON-LD
- Set up webhooks for real-time alerts on new filings

*Who uses this:*

- Journalists breaking layoff stories before press releases
- Quant funds using WARN filings as an alternative data signal (filings happen ~60 days before layoffs)
- Recruiters sourcing from displaced talent pools
- Researchers studying labor market dynamics
- Workforce development boards doing rapid response planning

*Tech stack:* Python/FastAPI, SQLite, scrapers for all 50 states, static HTML generation for SEO pages, Claude Haiku for AI analysis, deployed on EC2.

Free tier is genuinely useful (100 API calls/day, dashboard access, charts). Paid plans start at $19/mo for full historical data and bulk exports.

Would love feedback on the API design, data quality, or anything else. Happy to answer questions.
by throwaway2037 | 2026-02-22 23:34:34+00:00
I think you could write a counterpoint article that takes the opposing view: Jevon's paradox. If we can create WhateverClaws with a billion token window, it will "feel" like something that approaches a mid-level computer programmer. Personally, I think this outcome is more likely than the "T2 Judgement Day" view from this blog post.
by jimmydddd | 2026-02-22 23:35:47+00:00
I think folks are mis-interpreting the story. To me it sounds like AWS was doing everything fine (and OP agrees), but he wanted to re-negotiate the $1500/month fee because of his under usage (maybe a cheaper tier?), so he sent an email. They didn't respond, so he stopped paying to get their attention and entice them to respond. But, intead of responding, they just terminated his account.
by fallinditch | 2026-02-22 23:37:00+00:00
Using AI to process meeting transcripts opens up some useful scenarios such as knowledge capture - tacit, detailed instructional, planning and work break down, etc.

Creating documentation in this way encourages meeting discipline, speaking clearly for the AI, use of 'verbal bookmarks', detailed and robust prompting habits.

Sure, as author points out: be careful, but on the whole I reckon that this sort of use for AI in organizations is currently one of the most effective uses of this technology.
by nicbou | 2026-02-22 23:38:27+00:00
I always saw it as being multiple subtasks deep into a problem, or opening too many parentheses. Yak shaving does not imply that you're wasting time, only that the task involves solving problems that feel remote to your initial objective.

For example, I want to use ES6 modules on my website, then esbuild to compile them. However masonry.js breaks it, and instead of fixing it, I decided to get rid of it, but that breaks the layout of the /guides page, and while I'm there I might as well reorganise the list of guides.

So now I'm on week 2 of the switch to ES6, but I ended up redesigning a page, writing a bunch of tests, fixing unrelated UI bugs, making a few UX fixes, making changes to the static site generator, etc etc.

I get to do that because I'm self-employed and thinking long-term, but if I was at $PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER doing sprints, my boss would be wondering why I spent an entire sprint on this simple task.
by stego-tech | 2026-02-22 23:38:40+00:00
Which is a fair and nuanced argument! It is also not the same as, "but historical data shows X," which is regurgitated so often without any context as to be appallingly ignorant.

We gotta take these bad actors at their word that they're creating AI meant to (eventually) wholesale replace human labor, and act accordingly. That doesn't mean burning down data centers or trying to shove AI back into Pandora's Box, so much as it means not letting them dictate societal trends or reforms necessary to ensure stability and survival through such an incredibly disruptive transformation, provided they're right.

Arguing against proactive reform with regards to AI is the same sort of ignorance I've heard about climate change for my entire life, and folks shouldn't stand for it. We have infinitely more to lose by doing nothing with a "wait and see" approach than if we proactively legislate around its definitive harms.
by SirensOfTitan | 2026-02-22 23:38:58+00:00
I mean like: being alive isn't leverage, but controlling the economic output that has made elites rich is.

Mass economic displacement often doesn't produce solidarity, it produces fragmentation, scapegoating, and strongmen. People won't agree on why things are bad.

And the state is way more sophisticated than during the labor movements of the last century or two. If it is aligned with the elites and the masses have no leverage, it has numerous tools for massive surveillance, police and military control, and propaganda that will only get more effective through AI. They might not even need the extreme levers, mass confusion alone might be enough.

There's that old joke:
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.

"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
by verdverm | 2026-02-22 23:39:18+00:00
There are a lot of versions of this already, the main blocker is people not wanting to learn a bespoke DSL.

The second problem is the escape latch story, how do people customize beyond the functions when they inevitably reach that point. If you haven't hit this, you haven't built complex enough applications yet with your framework.

The elephant in the room is, why this instead of Ai? (I personally have an answer to this question, in the scope of my take on the framework described in your post)
by largbae | 2026-02-22 23:40:09+00:00
I still think Jevons Paradox has a role to play here. It was not obvious at all during the industrial revolution that the middle class would end up processing information, and to the displaced middle class, their prospects must have felt exactly like the article and your statement here.

If we accept that information processing and process automation are about to become ludicrously cheap compared to now, what previously-impossible projects become feasible-but-hard now?

Security oversight and trust management for AI services seems like a good stepping stone. Air traffic control innovations that enable a flying vehicle per person? Dynamic MMORPGs where great storytellers can build and manage whole worlds for adventurers to explore? Organic food production so well managed that it becomes accessible to normal folks? Perhaps our ability to consume resources before robots will flip everything around and mining basic resources will become the valuable human labor.

Even without new categories, there are plenty of service professions where a human touch will be valued over anything that any machine can provide. These might be unlikely to pay doctor-level pay (except perhaps... doctors).
by burnt-resistor | 2026-02-22 23:41:19+00:00
> No amount of salary would have made me able to afford housing near work

Everyone who sells themselves short also sells everyone else short too by comparable TC.

I was hired IC5 $280k TC at Meta in 2020 with the help of a salary negotiator/coach and had an EDTX IP lawyer do due-diligence and walkthrough with me the hiring document terms. That would just barely qualify me for 50% D/I for the house I grew up in. It'd take a minimum of $470k to afford the house my grandparents bought in 1968 for $30k. And, unlike my parents and grandparents who pulled up the ladder behind them, I wouldn't get CA Prop. 13 like they did. But what's crazy is I could instead live in a car or on a boat for about 6-8 years and then buy an SV house with liquidated proceeds of investments outright.

> I cared much more that my employer fire the incompetent

This is magical thinking and not your problem. I don't understand why you think you're not worth being paid a livable salary.

As an alternative, move somewhere cheaper rather than futility compete with a surplus of rich people and NIMBYs whom prevent development.
by gopher_space | 2026-02-22 23:42:04+00:00
The people laughing at Gandhi were laughing at the hopelessness of his struggle, not the idiocy of his actions. A clown at the circus, made up to go on stage, doesn't need "First they laugh at you" rattling around in his brain.

Now that I think about it, that's kind of the basic idea behind Joaquin Phoenix' take on the Joker.
by gmurphy | 2026-02-22 23:42:25+00:00
We did a lot of experimentation with keyboards in Android - finding better ways to type and click is pure HCI dream work

The key challenge is:

- At first, people don't care about speed - they just want to type well and accurately - for most people, that means standardised layout across all their devices, and they won't consider phones that push them into other models.

- Only after they've mastered that standard layout do they start to care about speed, but by then they've gotten good enough at the basic system that swapping to anything else is too much of a regression

So I really do love the existence of third party keyboards that cater to the set of people that are willing to deal with that setback
by alexjplant | 2026-02-22 23:42:28+00:00
The long pause after "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." as the disk image downloaded aroused a dormant feeling of dread in me as I panicked and wondered why Windows wasn't loading... back in the day it meant getting yelled at for "breaking" the computer and tasked with spending the day reinstalling Windows and everybody's programs.

Nostalgia tends to make things seem better than they were. Moments like this remind me how much tech has improved over the years.
by throwaway2037 | 2026-02-22 23:42:47+00:00
> People do this constantly, some to a comical degree, going so far as to make two loops on their shopping trip to return groceries they found cheaper at the next store.

To go less far, it is pretty common for normies to have at least two supermarkets in their shopping list: one with lower prices and one with higher prices, but fancier goods.
by krapp | 2026-02-22 23:43:07+00:00
>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.

I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.
by tgbugs | 2026-02-22 23:43:12+00:00
This is incorrect. You can write a parser for org. See for example https://github.com/tgbugs/laundry. Work toward standardization has been stalled because I (among others) have not had time to circle back to work on it. In part this is because the lack of a standard has not blocked most use cases since emacs is open source and can run almost anywhere.
by cyberrock | 2026-02-22 23:43:21+00:00
To me it always feels like music classification and recommendation efforts, open source and commercial, are too focused on music distributed in albums and singles. In the long history of human music, albums have only been a fleeting moment, an App Store of music if you will. This would never recommend me concert performances (even those on YouTube), covers on YouTube, DJ sets on SoundCloud, or game soundtrack without an official release. Listenbrainz is the closest I've found because it just has Title and Artist, but even that can be fuzzy for covers and live performances. Maybe no one other than Google can build this right now.
by anonzzzies | 2026-02-22 23:43:27+00:00
Not sure if making a company a ton of money has anything to do with obliging anything. Many companies I ship money to (this post for AWS for instance) won't do anything for you at all, except, hopefully mostly, provide the service you paid for. If the credit card company (or it's AI) has any reason to not help you, they won't, guaranteed.
by ggm | 2026-02-22 23:43:57+00:00
When this settles down, I look forward to all of jail/iojail, Sylve, Bastille, Bhyve documenting this in a mutually consistent manner. As it stands, I have managed to completely knot my brain over the abstractions, what is happening. It's me, not the systems, but I think there is a little bit of "meh, I understand it, so it must be obvious to anyone smart" going on, and alas, I am not smart, and I get confused easily.

I'm in bastille atm, but have been in all of them and TrueNAS core. and libvirt over on the other unix.
by tehjoker | 2026-02-22 23:44:49+00:00
If this scenario comes to pass, then the class war in labor markets will have been won by capital. That would spell the end of the promise of non-violent resistance. What other leverage would ordinary people have if their labor is worthless?

Blue collar work is somewhat insulated so long as humans are cheaper and less fickle than robots.

We have seen in Gaza and to native americans what capital/power does to populations deemed surplus. It's not pretty. of course, that kind of violence happens once their land is desired, before that they are simply repressed.

I think if the superintelligence hypothesis really does happen, we will need to have a rapid accommodation for the bulk of the population or things will get quite out of control.
by kaliszad | 2026-02-22 23:45:05+00:00
Consult a passionate dental hygienist or get a second opinion from a different dentist. Either you are doing yourself no favors by biting to push over the top and should probably get some kind of a retainer like boxers have to prevent overloading your teeth.

Or you are one of many people that have been told how great their teeth are yet which have periodontitis/ gum inlfamation. (Source: My wife is an established dental hygienist keeping up with the newest approaches, going to advanced courses, visiting conferences.) If your gums are redish instead of light pink that's a good indication. If you are bleeding on regular use of interdental brushes/ flossing that's another hint something might be off.