MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cstrahan | 2026-02-05 19:26:38+00:00
> Any self respecting engineer should recognize that these tools and models only serve to lower the value of your labor.

Depends on what the aim of your labor is. Is it typing on a keyboard, memorizing (or looking up) whether that function was verb_noun() or noun_verb(), etc? Then, yeah, these tools will lower your value. If your aim is to get things done, and generate value, then no, I don't think these tools will lower your value.

This isn't all that different from CNC machining. A CNC machinist can generate a whole lot more value than someone manually jogging X/Y/Z axes on an old manual mill. If you absolutely love spinning handwheels, then it sucks to be you. CNC definitely didn't lower the value of my brother's labor -- there's no way he'd be able to manually machine enough of his product (https://www.trtvault.com/) to support himself and his family.

> Using these things will fry your brain's ability to think through hard solutions.

CNC hasn't made machinists forget about basic principles, like when to use conventional vs climb milling, speeds and feeds, or whatever. Same thing with AI. Same thing with induction cooktops. Same thing with any tool. Lazy, incompetent people will do lazy, incompetent things with whatever they are given. Yes, an idiot with a power tool is dangerous, as that tool magnifies and accelerates the messes they were already destined to make. But that doesn't make power tools intrinsically bad.

> Do you want your competency to be correlated 1:1 to the quality and quantity of tokens you can afford (or be loaned!!)?

We are already dependent on electricity. If the power goes out, we work around that as best as we can. If you can't run your power tool, but you absolutely need to make progress on whatever it is you're working on, then you pick up a hand tool. If you're using AI and it stops working for whatever reason, you simply continue without it.

I really dislike this anti-AI rhetoric. Not because I want to advocate for AI, but because it distracts from the real issue: if your work is crap, that's on you. Blaming a category of tool as inherently bad (with guaranteed bad results) suggests that there are tools that are inherently good (with guaranteed good results). No. That's absolutely incorrect. It is people who fall on the spectrum of mediocrity-to-greatness, and the tools merely help or hinder them. If someone uses AI and generates a bunch of slop, the focus should be on that person's ineptitude and/or poor judgement.

We'd all be a lot better off if we held each other to higher standards, rather than complaining about tools as a way to signal superiority.
by isoprophlex | 2026-02-05 19:26:39+00:00
There seems to be a lot of convergent evolution happening in the space. Days before the gas town hype hit, I made a (less baroque, less manic) "agent team" setup: a shell script to kick off a ralph wiggum loop, and CLAUDE-MESSAGE-BUS.md for inter-ralph communication (Thread safety was hacked into this with a .claude.lock file).

The main claude instance is instructed to launch as many ralph loops as it wants, in screen sessions. It is told to sleep for a certain amount of time to periodically keep track of their progress.

It worked reasonably well, but I don't prefer this way of working... yet. Right now I can't write spec (or meta-spec) files quick enough to saturate the agent loops, and I can't QA their output well enough... mostly a me thing, i guess?
by tgtweak | 2026-02-05 19:27:09+00:00
It's not a static number as it's also based on ambient air temperature in the form of dew point - 45% RH at low temps can be far more dangerous than 65% RH at warm ambient.

Likewise the impact on server longevity is not a finite boundary but rather "exposure over time" gradient that, if exceeding the "low risk" boundary (>-12'C/10'f dew point or >15'C/59'f dry bulb temp) results in lower MTBF than design. This is defined (and server equipment manufacturers conform and build to) ASHRAE TC 9.9. This mean - if you're running your servers above high risk curve for humidity and temperature, you're shortening the life considerably compared to low risk curve.

Generally, 15% RH is considered suboptimal and can be dangerous near freezing temperatures - in San Diego in January there were several 90%+RH scenarios that would have been dangerous for servers even when mixed down with warm exhaust air - furthermore, the outdoor air at 76'f during that period means you have limited capacity to mix in warm exhaust air (which btw came from that same 99%RH input air) without getting into higher-than-ideal intake temps.

Any dew points above 62.5'f are considered high risk for servers - as are any intake temps exceeding 32'C/90'f. You want to be on the midpoint between those and 16'C/65'f temps & -12'C/10'f dew point to have no impact on server longevity or MTBF rates.

As a recent example:

KCASANDI6112 - January 2, 2026

High Low Average

Temperature 73.4 °F 59.9 °F 63.5 °F

Dew Point 68.0 °F 60.0 °F 62.6 °F

Humidity 99 % 81 % 96 %

Precipitation 0.12 in -- --

Lastly, air contaminants - in the form of dust (that can be filtered out) and chemicals (which can't without extensive scrubbing) are probably the most detrimental to server equipment if not properly managed, and require very intentional and frequent filter changes (typically high MERV pleated filters changed on a time or pressure drop signal) to prevent server degradation and equipment risks.

The last consideration is fire suppression - permitted datacenters usually require compliance with separate fire code, such that direct outdoor air exchange without active shutdown and dry suppression is not permitted - this is to prevent a scenario where your equipment catches on fire and a constant supply of fresh oxygen-rich outdoor air turns that into an inferno. Smoke detection systems don't operate well with outdoor-mixed air or any level of airborn particulates.

So - for those reasons - among a few others - open air datacenters are not recommended unless you're doing them at google or meta scale, and in those scenarios you typically have much more extensive systems and purpose-designed hardware in order to operate for the design life of the equipment without issues.
by hyperfield | 2026-02-05 19:27:15+00:00
[1.6.0] - 2026-02-04

- Added document content analysis (text LLM) with rename-only/document-only options and optional creation-date suffixes for categories. Supported document formats include PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, ODS, and ODP (plus common text formats).

- Local 3B model download now defaults to Q4 for better GPU compatibility. The legacy Local 3B Q8 is still selectable when an existing download is found.

- Improved the LLM selection dialog latency.

- Added custom API endpoints to the Select LLM dialog. Custom endpoints accept base URLs or full /chat/completions endpoints, with optional API keys for local servers.

- LLM-derived categorizations and rename suggestions are now saved as you go, so progress isn't lost if the app closes unexpectedly.

- Image analysis now falls back (with a user prompt) to CPU if the GPU has insufficient available memory.

- Review dialog now lets you select highlighted rows and bulk edit their categories.

- Review dialog is now scrollable on smaller screens so action buttons stay visible.

- Improved subcategory consistency by merging labels that only differ by generic suffixes (e.g., “files”).

- Added a system compatibility check (benchmarking) to determine the most suitable LLM for your system.

- Added Korean as an interface language.

- macOS builds now include variant `make` targets for Apple Silicon (M1 / M2-M3) and Intel outputs, plus improved arch-aware llama.cpp builds.

- UI, stability, persistence, and usability improvements.
by probably_wrong | 2026-02-05 19:27:59+00:00
> This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.

The issue I take with statements like that is that they are saying one thing while doing the opposite. This document [1], for instance, shows that YouTube knew as early as April 2025 that infinite feeds of short form content can "displace valuable activities like time with friends or sleep", but that hasn't stopped them from aggressively pushing YouTube shorts everywhere.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that there are two factions, one worried about the effects of YouTube in teens and a second one worried about growth at all costs. And I don't think the first one is winning.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.40...
by NitpickLawyer | 2026-02-05 19:28:13+00:00
This is a much more reasonable take than the cursor-browser thing. A few things that make it pretty impressive:

> This was a clean-room implementation (Claude did not have internet access at any point during its development); it depends only on the Rust standard library. The 100,000-line compiler can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. It can also compile QEMU, FFmpeg, SQlite, postgres, redis

> I started by drafting what I wanted: a from-scratch optimizing compiler with no dependencies, GCC-compatible, able to compile the Linux kernel, and designed to support multiple backends. While I specified some aspects of the design (e.g., that it should have an SSA IR to enable multiple optimization passes) I did not go into any detail on how to do so.

> Previous Opus 4 models were barely capable of producing a functional compiler. Opus 4.5 was the first to cross a threshold that allowed it to produce a functional compiler which could pass large test suites, but it was still incapable of compiling any real large projects.

And the very open points about limitations (and hacks, as cc loves hacks):

> It lacks the 16-bit x86 compiler that is necessary to boot [...] Opus was unable to implement a 16-bit x86 code generator needed to boot into 16-bit real mode. While the compiler can output correct 16-bit x86 via the 66/67 opcode prefixes, the resulting compiled output is over 60kb, far exceeding the 32k code limit enforced by Linux. Instead, Claude simply cheats here and calls out to GCC for this phase

> It does not have its own assembler and linker;

> Even with all optimizations enabled, it outputs less efficient code than GCC with all optimizations disabled.

Ending with a very down to earth take:

> The resulting compiler has nearly reached the limits of Opus’s abilities. I tried (hard!) to fix several of the above limitations but wasn’t fully successful. New features and bugfixes frequently broke existing functionality.

All in all, I'd say it's a cool little experiment, impressive even with the limitations, and a good test-case as the author says "The resulting compiler has nearly reached the limits of Opus’s abilities". Yeah, that's fair, but still highly imrpessive IMO.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-02-05 19:28:15+00:00
I remember the term "clown computing" to describe "cloud computing" from IRC earlier than 2016

I use a localhost TLS forward proxy for all TCP and HTTP over the LAN

There is no access to remote DNS, only local DNS. I use stored DNS data periodically gathered in bulk from various sources. As such, HTTP and other traffic over TCP that use hostnames cannot reach hosts on the internet unless I allow it in local DNS or the proxy config

For me, "WebPKI" has proven useful for blocking attempts to phone home. Attempts to phone home that try to use TLS will fail

I also like adding CSP response header that effectively blocks certain Javascript

It sounds like the blog author gave the NAS direct access to the internet

Every user is different, not everyone has the same preferences
by Ethee | 2026-02-05 19:28:18+00:00
I've been using Gas Town a decent bit since it was released. I'd agree with you that it's design is sub-optimal, but I believe that's more due to the way the actual agents/harnesses have been designed as opposed to optimal software design. The problem you often run into is that agents will sometimes hang thinking they need human input for a problem they are on, or they think they're at a natural stopping point. If you're trying to do fully orchestrated agentic coding where you don't look at the code at all (putting aside whether that's good or not for a second) then this is sub-optimal behavior, and so these extra roles have been designed to 'keep the machine going' as it were.

Often times if I'm only working on a single project or focus, then I'm not using most of those roles at all and it's as you describe, one agent divvying out tasks to other agents and compiling reports about them. But due to the fact that my velocity with this type of coding is now based on how fast I can tell that agent what I want, I'm often working on 3 or 4 projects simultaneously, and Gas Town provides the perfect orchestration framework for doing this.
by m4r1k | 2026-02-05 19:28:30+00:00
While the analysis is definitely intresting, OP misses completely the point. And worst, this work becomes a joke. OP is not losing $780 because OP, thanks to Anthropic, is making far more money than without it. This does not wanna say that Claude should have current level of uptime, on the countrary, they should improve it but the point OP makes is plain wrong.
by sanderjd | 2026-02-05 19:28:58+00:00
I kind of thought the "15 years" was just one of those things where people kind of forget what year it is. Wow, 2010 was already over 15 years ago?? That kind of mistake. I think this person was thinking pre-2005. I graduated college just after that, and that's when all this cloud and managed services stuff was just starting to explode. I think it's true that before that, pretty much everyone was maintaining actual servers somewhere. (For instance, I helped out with the physical servers for our CS lab some when I was in college. Most of what we hosted on those would be easier to do on the cloud now, but that wasn't a thing then.)
by romes | 2026-02-05 19:29:25+00:00
I've put weeks of effort on the post and months on the project. I think it's worthy of being in HN and the votes so far seem to imply the same. I have been improving the title and posting at the time period HN allows. It's not a repost in the sense that it hasn't gained any attention. It just hasn't reached a critical enough mass. What does it mean to you? If you think the post is just not high quality perhaps you can comment on that, rather than the number of times it has been posted.
by kjellsbells | 2026-02-05 19:29:30+00:00
I didn't have defending Word on my todo list today,... but Word would totally be the wrong tool for this,so it isnt fair to compare.

The tragedy is that serious large document authoring systems died with the invention of hypertext and the CDROM. Instead of an elegant set of FrameMaker or Interleaf documents for print you got a cdrom with a private site. And then once the web took off, just a site. Something got lost in that transition beyond the pallet of manuals showing up on your loading dock when you bought a system.

Sadly because Word won, technical authors still try to produce some content with it, but (not their fault) it's a horrible broken experience for both writer and reader. One example is the 3GPP specs that define how the mobile phone network works. Giant 200 page Word docs that take minutes to open and paginate.
by wat10000 | 2026-02-05 19:29:59+00:00
Right. My point is that you only run it once, so there's only that one chance for a compromise. If you got lucky and talked to the right server and it gave you a good script, which is overwhelmingly probable most of the time, you're in the clear. That doesn't mean it's wise, but the danger is limited. Whereas with these agents, every piece of data they're exposed to is potentially interpreted as instructions.
by socalgal2 | 2026-02-05 19:30:05+00:00
I disagree. I use all of those because they let me get work done faster. I've shipped Electron apps to clients that are effectively just a wrapper around a command line app because (1) I knew the client would much prefer a GUI over a command line (2) I was on Mac and they were on Windows and I knew I could more trivially get a cross platform app (3) I could make the app look good more trivially with HTML/CSS than I could with native (4) Iteration time is instant (change something /refresh). The clients don't care. Interpreted languages are fine.
by zephen | 2026-02-05 19:30:24+00:00
Exactly. If their metric implies that 1 of the top 10 prodigy chess players became 1 of the top 10 adult chess players, and that holds down the line, then a prodigy has a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a top player, but a muggle has a 1 in 889 million chance.

To be a top child player, you need talent, recognition of that talent, and investment of time and energy.

So, who's to say that the time and involvement didn't make them better as adults than they would have been?

ISTM that if you groom 10 children and even one of them outperforms a billion other potential players, you've done well, even if they had some latent talent to start with.

They claim to "prove" that catering to young talent is counterproductive, but this certainly doesn't prove it.

And part of their "proof" is that generalist sportsmen in youth do better as adults than specialist sportsmen in youth. This is beyond stupid -- to be a generalist youth sportsman typically means that the parents have invested significantly more time, energy, and money, and it's pretty obvious that effort in related fields usually pays off well, and most sports don't run all year, and it's useful in physical endeavors to make your body move in different ways.

It is trivially accurate for them to mention that the possibility of burnout is a real thing, but it is also risible to discount the positive benefits of sustained attention and effort.
by LogicFailsMe | 2026-02-05 19:30:39+00:00
Or you own a later model car with blind spot detection, automatic Lane keeping, self parking and a bunch of other AI/ML safety features that invisibly lower the cognitive load of driving.

The real bubble is the United States as the global luddite with nukes. The rest of the world is continuing apace on every front while we desperately try to return to the previous century.
by NitpickLawyer | 2026-02-05 19:30:48+00:00
It's a bit disappointing that people are still re-hashing the same "it's in the training data" old thing from 3 years ago. It's not like any LLM could 1for1 regurgitate millions of LoC from any training set... This is not how it works.

A pertinent quote from the article (which is a really nice read, I'd recommend reading it fully at least once):

> Previous Opus 4 models were barely capable of producing a functional compiler. Opus 4.5 was the first to cross a threshold that allowed it to produce a functional compiler which could pass large test suites, but it was still incapable of compiling any real large projects. My goal with Opus 4.6 was to again test the limits.
by cfmcdonald | 2026-02-05 19:31:00+00:00
I think it's instructive to compare the U.S. and Soviet stances in Europe after WW2. To maintain a military presence in Eastern Europe, the Soviets had to rely on repression, coercion, and occupation. This was expensive and fragile and eventually fell apart. The U.S. was openly welcomed into Germany and other countries in Western Europe. This was the value of "soft power."
by Corence | 2026-02-05 19:31:24+00:00
It is a fair question. I'd expect the numbers are all real. Competitors are going to rerun the benchmark with these models to see how the model is responding and succeeding on the tasks and use that information to figure out how to improve their own models. If the benchmark numbers aren't real their competitors will call out that it's not reproducible.

However it's possible that consumers without a sufficiently tiered plan aren't getting optimal performance, or that the benchmark is overfit and the results won't generalize well to the real tasks you're trying to do.
by AlexandrB | 2026-02-05 19:31:34+00:00
> every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it

You're out of touch. The modern approach is to give people a service just barely good enough so they don't leave outright and keep them coming back with fomo, clickbait, and pandering to their worldview. I doubt user satisfaction is even a column in a table at social media companies.

Most services I use are worse than they were 10 years ago but make far more money.

Edit:

> They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror!

By the way, the customers here are not the users, they're the advertisers. The users are largely disposable eyeball inventory.
by btown | 2026-02-05 19:31:46+00:00
> This was a clean-room implementation (Claude did not have internet access at any point during its development); it depends only on the Rust standard library. The 100,000-line compiler can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. It can also compile QEMU, FFmpeg, SQlite, postgres, redis, and has a 99% pass rate on most compiler test suites including the GCC torture test suite. It also passes the developer's ultimate litmus test: it can compile and run Doom.

This is incredible!

But it also speaks to the limitations of these systems: while these agentic systems can do amazing things when automatically-evaluable, robust test suites exist... you hit diminishing returns when you, as a human orchestrator of agentic systems, are making business decisions as fast as the AI can bring them to your attention. And that assumes the AI isn't just making business assumptions with the same lack of context, compounded with motivation to seem self-reliant, that a non-goal-aligned human contractor would have.
by sjsjsbsh | 2026-02-05 19:32:56+00:00
> I can already feel the contracts coming to fix LLM slop like this when any company who takes this seriously needs it maintained and cannot

Honest question, do you think it’d be easier to fix or rewrite from scratch? With domains I’m intimately familiar with, I’ve come very close to simply throwing the LLM code out after using it to establish some key test cases.
by AnthonyMouse | 2026-02-05 19:33:14+00:00
The general problem is that nobody actually needs cigarettes but communication is fundamental to the human experience. How do you even propose to define "social media" in a way that can distinguish between it and any other public forum for discussion?

The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement.

That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2026-02-05 19:33:51+00:00
Not really. My only released music is a single album at https://pauldavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-generati... which was made almost entirely with VCV Rack (Ardour was used for some pretty minimal editing). I've also used it for a short podcast series ("Audio Developer Chats") that is currently offline. I do try to talk to musicians and engineers almost every single day about what they're doing, however.