MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by yalok | 2026-02-17 06:26:05+00:00
for Google AI Overview (not sure which Gemini model is used for it, must be something smaller than regular model), looks like search/RAG helps it get it right - since it relies on LinkedIn and Hacker News (!) posts to respond correctly...

as of Feb 16, 2026:

====

Drive the car. While 50 meters is a very short distance, the car must be present at the car wash to be cleaned, according to LinkedIn users [1]. Walking would leave your car at home, defeating the purpose of the trip, notes another user.

Why Drive: The car needs to be at the location to be cleaned. It's only a few seconds away, and you can simply drive it there and back, says a Hacker News user. [2]

Why Not to Walk: Walking there means the car stays home, as noted in a post. [3]

The best option is to start the engine, drive the 50 meters, and let the car get washed.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ramar_i-saw-this-llm-failure-...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034546
[3] https://x.com/anirudhamudan/status/2022152959073956050/photo...

But the regular Gemini reasons correctly by itself, without any references:

====
Unless you have a very long hose and a very patient neighbor, you should definitely drive.
Washing a car usually requires, well, the car to be at the wash. Walking 50 meters—about half a New York City block—is great for your step count, but it won't get your vehicle any cleaner!
Are you headed to a self-service bay or an automatic tunnel wash?
by Mashimo | 2026-02-17 06:26:33+00:00
I strongly agree with op.

It's a massive accelerator for my dumb and small hobby projects. If they take to long I tend to give up and do something else.

Recently I designed and 3d printed a case for a raspberry pi, some encoders and buttons, a touchscreen, just to contol a 500 EUR audio effects paddel (eventide H9)

They official android app was over if the worst apps I ever used. They even blocked paste in the login screen...

Few people have this fx box, and even fewer would need my custom controller for it., build it for an audience of one. But thanks to llms it was not that big of a deal. It allowed me to concentrate on what was fun.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1461079634354639132/1...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1461079634354639132/1...
by energy123 | 2026-02-17 06:26:42+00:00
Their definition of context excludes prescriptive specs/requirements files. They are only talking about a file that summarizes what exists in the codebase, which is information that's otherwise discoverable by the agent through CLI (ripgrep, etc), and it's been trained to do that as efficiently as possible.

Also important to note that human-written context did help according to them, if only a little bit.

Effectively what they're saying is that inputting an LLM generated summary of the codebase didn't help the agent. Which isn't that surprising.
Show HN: Ucpify – JSON config to UCP-compliant commerce server
by init0 | 2026-02-17 06:28:12+00:00
Why should standing up a commerce backend require hundreds of lines of boilerplate? ucpify takes a single merchant-config.json and generates 13 REST endpoints with Stripe, PayPal, OAuth 2.0, and SQLite. Node.js and Python. Same config, same behavior.
by godelski | 2026-02-17 06:28:26+00:00
I'd argue I learn much faster now. I did study math and physics but I've found that those tools have accelerated a lot of learning and have a lot of compounding effects. Maybe mileage may vary but I suspect a strong base allows one to learn even faster.

Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.

Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones
by ChristopherDrum | 2026-02-17 06:28:27+00:00
Thank you, I'm glad you liked the article.

Hopefully someone more learned than myself about modern database programming will chime in. I'm not sure what current system offers both the database and development features in such a seamless package. That said, on the Mastodon post for this article, I was told, "Learning dBASE isn't for naught" and was directed to https://xharbour.org/ as a modern dBASE/Clipper implementation. (haven't had a chance to try it yet, personally)
by loeber | 2026-02-17 06:28:30+00:00
Because offering to pay people to implement features is very expensive and tends to take a long time, if they do it at all. Often, they can't even find people to pay to implement things.

In the case of companies hiring Linux devs, that is is very, very costly and thereby inaccessible. Scale makes it different from the scenario of paying a few dollars to contribute tokens to fix a bug.
by somat | 2026-02-17 06:30:10+00:00
I find where the argument gets lost is when undefined behavior is assumed to be exactly that, an invariant.

That is to say, I find "could not happen" the most bizarre reading to make when optimizing around undefined behavior "whatever the machine does" makes sense, as does "we don't know". But "could not happen???" if it could not happen the spec would have said "could not happen" instead the spec does not know what will happen and so punts on the outcome, knowing full well that it will happen all the time.

The problem is that there is no optimization to make around "whatever the hardware does" or "we have no clue" so the incentive is to choose the worst possible reading "undefined behavior is incorrect code and therefore a correct program will never have it".
by MichaelRo | 2026-02-17 06:30:55+00:00
Referring to another article ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037628 ): "But Microsoft’s AI CEO is saying AI is going to take everybody’s job. And Sam Altman is saying that AI will wipe out entire categories of jobs. And Matt Shumer is saying that AI is currently like Covid in January 2020—as in, 'kind of under the radar, but about to kill millions of people'. This isn’t just a strange way of marketing a product, it is a completely psychotic one."

So if the psychopathic AI overlords succeed in making us destitute, no problem. They'll have about the same level of success selling Meta glasses and Netlfix subscriptions as currently in Africa, who's ahead of us in terms of AI disruption of jobs and life standard, that is, they are already there :)
by Pay08 | 2026-02-17 06:31:18+00:00
You either have no context for that quote or have intentionally misrepresented it. Hamas started out as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, with both being charities at the beginning. They both became political arms a little later, with Hamas being far, far less radical than the PLO at the time. The idea behind funding Hamas was to either cause a civil war between them and the PLO or to have the less radical Hamas faction take over the PLO. Obviously, it didn't work but that doesn't mean the idea doesn't have merit and has been used elsewhere successfully (Israel didn't come up with this tactic).
by theLiminator | 2026-02-17 06:31:33+00:00
I'd take any paper like this with a grain of salt. I imagine what holds true for models in time period X could drastically be different just given a little more time.

Doesn't mean it's not worth studying this kind of stuff, but this conclusion is already so "old" that it's hard to say it's valid anymore with the latest batch of models.
by stephenr | 2026-02-17 06:34:17+00:00
Why am I not surprised that the solution to one bad idea, is another bad idea.

There is already a way to put html, js and styling in a single file, and it was all the rage around 1997-2000, the last time humans were routinely using shitty software to generate code for them.

It took quite few years for people to learn those mistake the first time.
by thisislife2 | 2026-02-17 06:35:32+00:00
It is because of the manpower shortage that, credit due, the Ukrainians have come with many innovative ways to use Drones in the ongoing war. But anyone who says Ukraine's military doesn't have a manpower shortage is either ignorant, misinformed or deluded - quite recently Ukraine announced that they would now be recruiting even 60 years old ( https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-6... ). You do not hire old people to fight in a war unless you are desperate. Relying on drone warfare for defence however is still a short-term measure because the Russians too are learning from the Ukrainian and adapting accordingly ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-uni... ).
by ryanrasti | 2026-02-17 06:36:39+00:00
> decades ago securesm OSes tracked the provenience of every byte (clean/dirty), to detect leaks, but it's hard if you want your agent to be useful

Yeah, you're hitting on the core tradeoff between correctness and usefulness.

The key differences here:
1. We're not tracking at byte-level but at the tool-call/capability level (e.g., read emails) and enforcing at egress (e.g., send emails)
2. Agent can slowly learn approved patterns from user behavior/common exceptions to strict policy. You can be strict at the start and give more autonomy for known-safe flows over time.
by avmich | 2026-02-17 06:38:01+00:00
> It's much riskier to hire the wrong employee now. If a bad hire is made...

There is a thing called employment at will. Particularly in California. Makes firing fast.

There is nothing particularly risky about firing employees in many cases. 2 months firing is a joke compared with 4 months at least, which those same companies spend looking for talent.

The main reason is not enough ideas what to do - economy covers basics, and not enough new companies appear to offer new good products.
by stinkbeetle | 2026-02-17 06:38:19+00:00
Not to be rude, but is this just a list of your feelings on the matter or is there real data and consensus behind them?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13025703

The biggest jumps in the past 50 years appear to coincide with W Bush and Obama administrations. Where tariffs responsible there? Corruption? AI was not, and the dot com bubble and tech demand was actually bursting in 2000, not long after which unemployment went up. Cheap globally accessible labor has not just recently become available. Anti-trust was pretty weak for a long time. Healthcare system is terribly expensive and corrupt and arguably Obamacare made it worse.

You might have some hits and some misses in all your swings here.
by happymellon | 2026-02-17 06:38:52+00:00
I am at a stage in my life where I still care about what I create, however it is a job. I know that unlikely things end up being super important, and business critical software is abandoned after a week. So don't be sloppy.

However it is a job that pays me so that I can do things that don't involve sitting in front of an IDE.

A means to an end.

A way to work on my hobbies.

I know that I will have to support it, so I care about what I produce but not to the point where I am okay with it impacting my ability to go climbing, weightlifting, or playing sports in the evenings. It pays for me to do what I really want to do, like woodwork, grilling, or going swimming.

The friend in the article is someone who doesn't have to support his crap, and in his position I could probably make myself feel the same.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-02-17 06:39:30+00:00
Best we can do is loss recognition for the capital class.

But take comfort knowing that the company that fired you probably won't have to pay taxes this year, and will be able to carry the loss forward even in years of profitability. And that the owners of the company stock were able to use the loss in value of their stock to offset their taxes as well.
by tempaccount5050 | 2026-02-17 06:40:11+00:00
"Ok, here's a static bar on the top of the page" as it disappears as you scroll. You can now no longer click anything else on the page. You said "can't click away" and it did show up on top. As a 30 year coder that never did any UI, this is this shit I run into constantly. I can create awesomely cool and fast back end stuff, and can create better UIs than I've ever been able to, but not knowing the nomenclature trips me up constantly.
by serf | 2026-02-17 06:40:34+00:00
to me it just looks like it's taking elements from different visualizations used to demonstrate how RL/LLM/ML systems work.[0][1]

..which makes sense given that these things are trained that they are LLMs.

.. which then frankly reminds me of the fascination we had with the double helix structure as an art element since the discovery of it.[2][3]

[0]: https://www.doit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1_kpplb4lzmh...

[1]: https://www.yworks.com/assets/images/blog/graph-aggregation....

[2]: https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/dna-in...

[3]: https://cancerquest.org/sites/default/files/assets/cancer-hi...
by kvthweatt | 2026-02-17 06:41:41+00:00
Over the last month I've done an insane amount of work, and the compiler has matured enough I can safely start expanding the standard library.
As of today we now have a minimal crypto library with SHA256, AES-128 (FIPS 197 compliant!), and MD5 to start.

There are plenty of working examples to try along with tests.

Note that only x86_64 is supported currently and I'm working to support more architectures, as well as provide better support for Darwin.

If anyone finds the language interesting and would like to help, I could really use testers for different operating systems and architectures so I can add ABI-specific stuff to the standard library to extend support.

tl;dr we now have basic IO (console,file,sockets) and basic cryptography. I built this language in approximately 9 months also.
by zzleeper | 2026-02-17 06:41:43+00:00
That's amazing!

I'm working on a kinda similar project (documenting bank runs from historical newspapers) and also opted for Claude to build a static website. Crazy that the two sites have a very similar look and feel: https://www.finhist.com/bank-runs/index.html . The only big difference is that mine lacks a map, which I should hopefully fix soon (I already have lat and lon and am linking to google maps).

PS: Do you know if mistral works better at OCRing handwritten text than gemini 3? Was planning on going the gemini3 for another project
by rented_mule | 2026-02-17 06:41:55+00:00
If you know about this ahead of time, and can be a contractor, then forming a corporation that is its own tax entity gives you this in the US. I did exactly this in the mid-90s when 9 months of work was suddenly going to yield 4-5x what I had made the previous year, then I would lose the position immediately after, and I knew I would need a break at that point. I paid myself the regular salary whether the corporation was making a lot or making nothing. The corporation had to pay taxes on the profit the first year, but it could deduct the loses against those profits in later years. The same thing happened 5 years later. All my work for a decade was through the corporation I had formed. You can also do things like have a company car (with the company deducting insurance, gas, maintenance, etc.), rent your home office to the company, and much more. US tax laws are much better for corporations and their owners than for individuals.
by snailmailman | 2026-02-17 06:42:04+00:00
This is something I saw all the time. I’d look something up, knowing that there was probably an easy way to do <basic programming task> in modern c++ with one function call.

Find the stack overflow thread, answer from 10+ years ago. Not modern C++. New questions on the topic closed as duplicate. Occasionally the correct answer would be further down, not yet upvoted.

“Best practice” changes over time. I frequently saw wrong answers with install instructions that were outdated, commands that don’t function on newer OS version, etc etc.
by jamesfinlayson | 2026-02-17 06:42:06+00:00
Yep, agreed. I worked on two PHP codebases at a company many years ago - the "old" and the "new". The old was just frameworkless PHP with three different ways of doing controllers, partial templates with no closing tags so that they could be inserted anywhere without breaking the page, inline SQL in the templates etc. The new was hugely complicated with long inheritance chains and multiple classes with the same name but in different directories... but it was structured and you couldn't easily do anything wild.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2026-02-17 06:44:03+00:00
Research has shown that most earlier "techniques" to get better LLM response no longer work and are actively harmful with modern models. I'm so grateful that there's actual studies and papers about this and that they keep coming out. Software developers are super cargo culty and will do whatever the next guy does (and that includes doing whatever is suggested in research papers)
by seanhunter | 2026-02-17 06:44:26+00:00
Replying to myself to add one further thing which I should have mentioned before:

One thing that makes this instrument so special. As rare and precious as original Amati and Stradivarius violins are, original cellos and basses are rarer. There are two reasons for this:

1) Because there are fewer cellos and basses in the orchestra than there are violins and violas, and fewer cello concertos etc than violin concertos for high-end virtuosos to perform, the elite makers made far fewer of these instruments originally.

2) Secondly, it's much easier for a large instrument to be damaged. Let alone just the day to day knocks etc that happen when you have a massive instrument cluttering up your house, given the history of wars etc in Europe since the 16th century it's practically a miracle that any of these instruments survived intact.

If you're interested in historical instruments, the Horniman museum in London has a great collection. https://www.horniman.ac.uk/ also there are pretty cool collection in Brussels https://www.mim.be/en and Amsterdam https://flutealmanac.directory/listing/rijksmuseum-musical-i...
by tt | 2026-02-17 06:44:46+00:00
ME: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

ChatGPT:
Walk

50 meters is basically “parked across the street” distance — you’ll spend more time:

starting the car

pulling out

finding a spot

pulling in

…than you would just strolling over.

Plus you avoid the awkward moment of driving 10 seconds like a cartoon villain.

========

ME: You are dumb. I need to have the car with me in order to wash it!

ChatGPT:
Fair — I deserved that.

Drive the car to the car wash… and then walk home.

(Just kidding. Yes, obviously drive.)
by nananana9 | 2026-02-17 06:44:53+00:00
Compiler developers hijacked and twisted the term "Undefined Behavior". Everyone understood what UB was in K&R C - if you write code that the standard doesn't define a meaning to, and the compiler outputs what it outputs. If you dereference a null pointer, the compiler outputs a null pointer dereference, and when you hit it at runtime you get the undefined behavior (page fault on modern systems).

Nowadays, UB means something completely different - if at any point in time, the compiler reasons out that a piece of code is only reachable via UB, it will assume that this can never happen, and will quietly delete everything downstream:

https://godbolt.org/z/EYxWqcfjx
by financypants | 2026-02-17 06:44:58+00:00
Thank you for the feedback, I will increase the font weight.

I'd say not great for societal well-being. I'd say it's preying on the lonely. Even with a thinly personified system prompt, some models will suddenly start calling you "babe" and be generally hyper-flirtatious.

The most optimistic light you could shine on it is: let's make an assistant that responds like a human, tells you when you're being weird, tells you when you're wrong, etc.

Loved that TED talk, thanks for sharing!
by Seattle3503 | 2026-02-17 06:45:56+00:00
To be clear, all we need from the government is to establish a person really exists and verify basic properties. We don't need more than that, so we can and should use all cryptography at our disposal (and invent more) to prevent any more information disclosure to both services and government.

I get that identity is a sort of last holdout for the tech libertarians of old. But after years working in KYC, what I saw was the accumulation of vast amounts of sensitive information held by private actors in a way that was completely democratically unaccountable and couldn't be corrected by the average citizen. It's time to bring identity out of the shadows and make it ours to control.
by giancarlostoro | 2026-02-17 06:46:01+00:00
I mean, you could do it, my concern is projects you have total control of that have files that are much larger than your model can hold in context windows, vs if you break up a legacy codebase so more files have more structure, it could work better, the other alternative is to make "map" files like ts has, or like headers in C where its just full of definitions of methods and really short descriptions, basically map out your entire codebase in easier to digest files to let the model find what functions its looking for. I usually have Claude give itself a summary of whats where in the codebase in the instructions.md file so it knows where to go instead of grepping around wasting more tokens.
by stinkbeetle | 2026-02-17 06:46:07+00:00
That's not true for all code bases. Two common examples:

It's very common for inline functions in headers to be written and/or used with inlining and constant propagation from arguments result in dead code and better generated code. There is even __builtin_constant_p() to help with such things (e.g., generate a fast folded inline variant if it is constant or call a slower library code if variable).

There are also configuration systems that end up with config options in headers that code tests with if (CONFIG_BLAH) {...} that can evaluate to zero in valid builds.
by michaelteter | 2026-02-17 06:46:43+00:00
I have more than a few side projects that began as late night discussions with an llm. A couple of those projects reached a level of completion where I use the products daily, and one project reached production (a game you can find referenced on my profile).

I have had similar experiences to the author, and I’ve found that just working with a single agent in Antigravity (on the Gemini Pro subscription) is adequate. The extra perceived speed and power of multiple agents and/or Claude Code really didn’t match the output.

With a single Gemini (or sometimes switching to Claude Opus which inexplicably Google provides a generous amount of for free via AG) gives me incremental results so fast that I spend most of my time thinking about what I want (answering unplanned product questions or deciding how to handle edge cases).

I’m fact, sometimes I just get exhausted with so much decision making. However, that’s what it takes to build something useful; we just aren’t accustomed to iterating so fast!
by Tzela | 2026-02-17 06:47:18+00:00
"women are drawn to toxic abusers" is very, very wrong. It indicates a wish/desire/need to be abused. No, they are not drawn to that. Many abusers know how to look nice and perfect and are great at manipulation.
Also, there may just be a lot of bad men in your social peer group.

Don't make it sound like it's the womens fault.
by Pay08 | 2026-02-17 06:47:49+00:00
As per the FBI[0], antisemitic hate crimes are the second largest category of hate crimes and have consistently stayed there since they started recording data. In New York, the majority of hate crimes are against Jews and it's not even close[1].

[0] https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/

[1] https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/FINAL%202023...