MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by srcreigh | 2026-02-16 04:29:31+00:00
What more do you want than what's covered in the post?

To me, this post is proof zig doesn't need "proper support". You can already have extremely ergonomic error payloads with existing language features.

Earlier version of this post had some language feature ideas, but then I realized Zig already had all the capabilities, so I just removed that section.

For example, I used to think it'd be nice for functions to be a namespace, so I didn't have `myFunc` and `MyFuncDiagnostics`. But then I realized that the Diagnostics type doesn't need its own name; you can just put the type in the function signature, and use a function like `diagnostics.OfFunction(fn)` to extract the type from the function definition, so you can just write this:

var diag: diagnostics.OfFunction(myFunc) = .{};
const res = myFunc(foo, bar, &diag) catch |err| ...;

As another example, I used to write out the `error{OutOfMemory, ...}` type explicitly in addition to the tagged union payload, but then realized you can generate an error set from the union tags at comptime.

Do you want automatic inference of the error payload type? So zig creates a special tagged union error payloads type for you automatically? It seems complicated and maybe not a good idea. Do you really want your function to return an invisible 20 elements union on error? Do you want to call a someone else's function which returns an invisible 20 elements union on error? You know, maybe it's not a good idea.
by crazygringo | 2026-02-16 04:30:06+00:00
I don't think I have a particularly distinctive voice. But I once asked a question at a Q&A with a famous actor, the whole event went up on YouTube, but only the stage was on-camera, not the people in the Q&A line. Three years later, a friend of mine messages me "WAS THAT YOU asking a question about x to actor y at event z?" She'd randomly come across it on YouTube. Yup, it was. Blew me away.
by kdheiwns | 2026-02-16 04:30:22+00:00
People will say something needs to be done about waste and microplastics then complain when actual action is taken.

One of the largest contributors to microplastics in our world is clothing. If companies need to start taking responsibility and reducing their supply, that's good for everyone. If companies feel pressured by regulations because they can no longer produce endless shit and artificially inflate prices by destroying half the shit they produce, then I'm in favor of it. I'd even be in favor of governments shutting down corporations that massively overproduce. It's the 21st century and these companies measure every single little aspect of their business. If they need to trash a bunch of their clothes, it's because they're being actively wasteful. Cost reduction is one of the most fundamental aspects of capitalism, and if companies aren't even concerned about that aspect, then they deserve to be crushed.
by _carbyau_ | 2026-02-16 04:30:35+00:00
I think we are largely in agreeance here.

It was the thing about "nuances" that bugged me mostly. The nuances determine whether the benefits outweigh the cost.

Appropriately managed isolated systems are fine. Dystopian nightmare is not.

.. and the apathy might doom us all. Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.
by jhatemyjob | 2026-02-16 04:30:37+00:00
I agree they're right to be scared. The culture has regressed. When I was a teenager / in my early 20s I didn't really believe that was possible, and I thought the older folks were just bitter. But now that I'm older and have a firmer grasp of history (both from what I've read, and my own lived experience) it is so obviously the case that the cracks in this decadent society continue to grow bigger over time. Sadly younger generations will repeat the same error I did and waste their precious time taking poorly calculated risks, trusting the wrong people, and suffering the very real, sometimes permanent, consequences. It's a positive feedback loop that only gets more ruthless as the decades pass. Don't stick your neck out, it's not worth it, freedom of speech isn't real. The silver lining is, freedom of thought is real. There are ways to bend your speech to avoid persecution, and reach the people you want to reach. It's a skill that takes time to master. Some people have mastered it. They have been mentioned by name elsewhere in this thread.
by carshodev | 2026-02-16 04:30:48+00:00
But most apps are documents, they are built to render data and text fields in a nice way for the consumer to use.

You most certainly shouldn't be building graphs with table elements but JS has canvas and svg which make vectors pretty efficient to render.

The document model provides good accessibility and the ability for things like SEO and GEO to exist.

If you are making a racing simulator, then using HTML in no way makes sense, but for the apps that most of us use documents make sense.

It would be nice if browsers implemented a new interpreted statically typed language with direct canvas/viewport rendering that was more efficient than javascript, but chrome would need to adopt it, then developers would need to actually build things with it. It seems like it would currently have to come from within the chrome team directly and they are the only ones that can control something like this.
by rdfc-xn-uuid | 2026-02-16 04:30:56+00:00
> There is a reason why if you aren't in a Tier 1 tech hub like SV, NYC, Beijing, Hangzhou, TLV, Bangalore, and Hyderabad you are increasingly out of the loop for a number of changes that are happening within the industry.

I am in one of these tech hubs (Bangalore) and I have never seen any such practitioner pervasively using these "AI executive assistants". People use chatgpt and sometimes the AI extensions like copilot. Do I need to be in HSR layout to see these "number of changes"?
by nilslindemann | 2026-02-16 04:31:22+00:00
Just because you can not do it it does not mean that others can not do it. If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against (edit: strongest!) Stockfish (which, admittedly is not the full throttle Stockfish) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. Such is a claim which only inexperienced chess beginners and Stockfish fanboys make. Stronger players know that Stockfish is relatively better, and by a far margin, but – obviously – does not win all the time due to the huge drawing range in chess. Admittedly, winning a game gets more and more difficult with every year. And, to make you happy, I have never beaten Lc0.
by saagarjha | 2026-02-16 04:31:58+00:00
FWIW my take on this is that it’s a bug that wouldn’t have even been considered back when dyld2 was being used because the necessary infrastructure to even make these kinds of guarantees were not present. With dyld3/4 it has become load bearing since it has extra privileges under newer security models which consider non-dyld code to be less special.
by dnautics | 2026-02-16 04:33:01+00:00
Zig has error unions on return types which are basically a special cased (rust enum aka sum type) of the return type with a special cased (c enum aka enumerated type), and stacktraces are only available in certain build modes.

A "diagnostics" pattern has emerged in the community to optionally request extra information about a failure. You can pass a pointer to the diagnostic (it can be on the stack) and get the extra info back. It's just a more explicit version of what would otherwise happen in a language with error payloads.
by hadlock | 2026-02-16 04:34:17+00:00
Sure. I am (literally) currently feeding a newborn, my house is a diaster zone, and it's raining. DHL just changed my delivery date from today, to the 19th so maybe it will arrive today, maybe it won't. I haven't slept more than 4 hours in 3 days so getting an answer via voice memo seems pretty nice right now.
by richardw | 2026-02-16 04:34:30+00:00
Got a friend who is in the high frequency trading industry and uses both Java and C#. I asked about GC. Turns out you just write code that doesn’t need to GC. Object pools, off-heap memory etc.

It won’t do the absolute fastest tasks in the stack quite as well but supposedly the coding speed and memory management benefits are more important, and there’s no GC so it’s reliable.
by NarratorTD | 2026-02-16 04:34:36+00:00
Fair point on the skimming. I definitely let the scenic route take over in this one; Ironically, getting lost in the weeds is how I found the voice!

I love the idea of using it for structure only. My fear was that if AI touches the structure, it inevitably sanitizes the voice too. But there's probably context I can provide to avoid that.
by carshodev | 2026-02-16 04:34:54+00:00
Yeah this article is only about React. But it makes sense that someone would think this way because many dev's think JS web apps==react only.

The problem is react is "good enough" for most cases and the performance degradations happen slow enough that the devs/project leads don't see it until it's too late and they are already overly invested in there project and switching would be too compliated/costly for them.

Svelte/kit and properly optimized packages solve almost all of the "problems" this article tries to bring up.
by ggm | 2026-02-16 04:34:57+00:00
I think like most people in power, he works to satisfy a domestic agenda. If he can use this to leverage a lower pump price, he wins. If he can gain traction with the oil companies in dispute over stranded assets and losses in Venezuela, he wins. It has nothing to do with anyone else, any global need, or intent.

That he can now choke oil entry to Cuba is only an added extra, Rubio in partiular will love that. It's causing extreme economic distress there.

There is no neutral arbiter, no single viewpoint declaring good or bad in these things. States act as they need to the situation they find themselves in. If it sounds amoral it is: there is no dimension of need for this to be decided on morals or even economics. It just advantages the administration right now, here, at this time, and tomorrow it may not but tomorrow is another day.
by october8140 | 2026-02-16 04:36:30+00:00
> In computer science, the ELIZA effect is a tendency to project human traits — such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy — onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface. ELIZA was a symbolic AI chatbot developed in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum that imitated a psychotherapist. Many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite its basic text-processing approach and the explanations of its limitations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect
by rep_lodsb | 2026-02-16 04:39:39+00:00
Yes, the 80287 and 387 used some I/O port addresses reserved by Intel to transfer the opcode, and a "DMA controller" like interface on the main processor for reading/writing operands, using the COREQ/COACK pins.

Instead of simply reading the first word of a memory operand and otherwise ignoring ESC opcodes, the CPU had to be aware of several different groups of FPU opcodes to set up the transfer, with a special register inside its BIU to hold the direction (read or write), address, and segment limit for the operand.

It didn't do all protection checks "up front", since that would have required even more microcode, and also they likely wanted to keep the interface flexible enough to support new instructions. At that time I think Intel also had planned other types of coprocessor for things like cryptography or business data processing, those would have used the same interface but with completely different operand lengths.

So the CPU had to check the current address against the segment limit in the background whenever the coprocessor requested to transfer the next word. This is why there was a separate exception for "coprocessor segment overrun". Then of course the 486 integrated the FPU and made it all obsolete again.
Show HN: Jsiphon – Streaming JSON parser with delta tracking and ambiguity trees
by sugeul | 2026-02-16 04:40:41+00:00
Hi HN, I built Jsiphon to solve a common frustration with LLM streaming: you ask for structured JSON output, but can't use any of it until the entire stream finishes.

If you've used JSON mode (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), you've hit this — you want {"answer": "...", "sources": [...]}, but JSON.parse() fails on every incomplete chunk.

LLM responses are inherently append-only (tokens arrive left to right, never go back), so Jsiphon leans into that with three ideas:

1) Append-only parsing — Feed in {"msg": "Hel and get {msg: "Hel"} immediately. Values are only extended, never removed or mutated.

2) Delta tracking — Each snapshot contains only what's new. For a chat bubble, just append delta.content to the DOM — when the LLM produces next chunk "lo, World!", we immediately get {msg: "lo, World!"}. No need to repeat partial JSON parsing or full tree rerendering.

3) Ambiguity tree — A tree that mirrors the shape of your data and tracks which subtrees are finalized at every depth. For example, if you're streaming {"header": {"title": "...", "date": "..."}, "body": "..."}, you can check isAmbiguous(ambiguous.header.title) to use the title the moment it's done, even while header.date and body are still streaming. This isn't a flat "is the whole thing done?" flag — it's per-node stability tracking that propagates up, so isAmbiguous(ambiguous.header) turns false only when all of header's children are finalized.

Existing partial JSON parsers like partial-json and gjp-4-gpt do a great job at the core parsing problem — turning broken JSON into usable objects. Jsiphon builds on that foundation and takes it one step further: instead of just parsing, it gives you a streaming data pipeline where append-only snapshots, per-field deltas, and multi-depth ambiguity tracking all come out of a single async iteration. If you've been using partial-json and wished you knew which fields were done vs still streaming without polling the whole object, that's exactly the gap this fills.

Zero dependencies, never throws on invalid input, handles junk text before/after the JSON root (which LLMs sometimes produce).

GitHub: https://github.com/webtoon-today/jsiphon
npm install jsiphon

Would love feedback on the API design — especially the ambiguity tree.
Tracking per-node stability across arbitrary nesting depth was the trickiest part. Curious if anyone sees a cleaner approach.

Disclosure: I'm a native Korean speaker. I used Claude to help structure and translate this post into English. The ideas and code are mine.
by somenameforme | 2026-02-16 04:41:26+00:00
I assume you mean that beautiful tactical shot Lazavik found? In general these sort of games are the opposite of convincing. The reason is that we're all human and make tactical mistakes now and again, even more so in very rapid time controls. What generally defines players overall edge though is the ability to grind small edges, rather than stumble into knock-out blows.

For instance this is why Carlsen was so crushed by his loss to Niemann in 2022 (that led to the cheating claim controversy). Niemann actively avoided a draw and then systematically outplayed Magnus in a very difficult R+N v R+B ending. This is also why players like Erdogmus seem to have so much potential. It's not the tactics - which is basically a prerequisite to high level play, but his ability to just systematically grind down extremely strong players like MVL.
by YaraDori | 2026-02-16 04:42:58+00:00
One thing I've been building is a workflow-to-skill converter. The idea is you record your screen doing a task once, and AI extracts the full agent skill from it — step-by-step instructions, decision logic, error handling, the works.

It's called SkillForge (https://skillforge.expert). The insight was that most teams waste weeks writing agent instructions by hand, when a 2-minute screen recording captures all the implicit knowledge.

Still early but the results have been surprisingly good. The AI picks up on branching logic and edge cases that people usually forget to document.

Curious if anyone else has tried similar approaches to generating skills from demonstrations rather than writing them from scratch?
by alexandriaeden | 2026-02-16 04:43:37+00:00
Been using Opus 4.6 daily for the past week or so building an MCP server. The agentic task sustain is real — it holds context across much longer multi-step implementations than 4.5 did. The adaptive thinking is a genuine quality-of-life improvement for mixed workloads where some calls need deep reasoning and others are straightforward. One trade-off I've noticed: it can overthink simple tasks at the default high effort setting. Dialing effort to medium for routine work and keeping high for complex problems has been the right pattern for me.
Show HN: Untranslated Einstein paper available in English for the first time
by ajw287 | 2026-02-16 04:44:25+00:00
As far as I can tell, this paper (in which Einstein solves a decades old question about Crookes Radiometers) has never been available in English! Einstein’s work became public domain on 1st January 2026, which meant that I could finally release this translation that I did during my PhD in 2019!

I have a blog post that gives a little more context: https://adaptive-machine-patterns.com/blog.html#einstein [alt. link: http://archive.today/381Pl] I am new to blogging, so advice welcome.

The preprint is hosted at CULA repository (many thanks) https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/398349 and it has a DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.127224
by CuriouslyC | 2026-02-16 04:45:49+00:00
I don't think those are examples of unique intelligence except perhaps in a chauvinistic, anthropomorphic sense. We only know that we can't get other animals to display patterns we associate with intelligence in humans, however truthfully that's just as likely to be that our measures of intelligence don't map cleanly onto cognitive/perceptual representations innate to other animals. As we look for new ways to challenge animals that respect their innate differences, we're finding "simple" organisms like ants and spiders are surprisingly capable.

For a clear analogy, consider how tokenization causes LLMs to behave stupidly in certain cases, even though they're very capable in others.
by intrasight | 2026-02-16 04:46:38+00:00
I think both

Analogous to discussion 3 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46994869#46995258

We're fast approaching 1 trillion Arm CPUs manufactured - because it was a good design for a good price.

No doubt unprecedented for something so complex to be produced in such volume. I predict that nothing else will ever achieve such scale.
by alexandriaeden | 2026-02-16 04:47:16+00:00
This is exactly the right instinct. When you own the agent harness, you decide what's visible. I've been building my own tooling on top of Playwright for similar reasons — the feedback loop between 'what did the agent just do' and 'should I let it continue' is the core UX of any agent, not a detail to be abstracted away. Hiding it breaks the only trust mechanism the user has.
by digiown | 2026-02-16 04:47:30+00:00
I think banning facebook/instagram/etc is one of the special cases where it makes more sense to be enforced by the site, because people use these out of mainly peer pressure and network effect. If a majority is kept off, the rest have little use for it regardless of their personal wishes. Heck, I'd reckon most kids don't actually want to use them all that much. Regardless of technical details, giving parents this control will also cause a lot of resentment if most parents don't go along.

As opposed to censoring internet content in general, which does not work because there will always be sites not under your jurisdiction and things like VPNs. I don't support any such censorship measures as a result.
by SanjayMehta | 2026-02-16 04:49:18+00:00
He has expressed worry over the BRIC rumoured currency threatening even more tariffs for countries not using the dollar.

Also, regional geopolitics aside, the oil companies are still mad about Iran's oil. The Israelis have been talking up a nuclear threat for decades, hasn't happened yet.

It's always about oil. I have no sympathy for the Iranian regime, but if I was part of that gang, I would be frantically building nukes.

Oil and no nukes is a bad combination.
by crazygringo | 2026-02-16 04:49:36+00:00
> the biggest problem is that the DOM was built for documents, not apps

I don't see the difference. They're both text and graphics laid out in a variable-sized nested containers.

And apps today make use all the same fancy stuff documents do. Fonts, vector icons, graphics, rounded corners, multilingual text including RTL, drop shadows, layers, transparency, and so forth.

Maybe you think they shouldn't. But they do. Of all the problems with apps in web pages, the DOM feels like the least of it.
by atulyaaj | 2026-02-16 04:49:44+00:00
Hi HN! I built Tabric, a Chrome extension to save and restore browser tab sessions with notes.

What it does?

1. Save all tabs in the current window as a named session (with notes)

2. Quick Save (one click)

3. Restore sessions anytime

4. Search by name/notes + bulk delete

5. Export/Import sessions (JSON backup)

6. Light/Dark/Auto themes

Privacy: Everything stays on your device. Only feedback you submit is emailed to me.

I’d love feedback on the UX and what features would make this more useful for your workflow.
by crisiscore_sys | 2026-02-16 04:50:20+00:00
I built this because I ran into a problem that felt bigger than software.

After a spinal injury, a lot of my life collapsed at once — work, stability, routine, and eventually housing.
During that time, I was also trying to document chronic pain in a way doctors and insurers would actually take seriously.

Every pain-tracking app I tried had the same assumptions:

your data belongs in the cloud

you’ll always have connectivity

you’re calm enough to navigate complex UI

privacy is a policy, not an architecture

None of that matched real life in unstable conditions.

So I started building a different model:
a privacy-first, offline-capable Progressive Web App designed around trauma, instability, and limited energy — not ideal environments.

Key constraints I treated as non-negotiable:

Zero cloud storage — data stays on the device unless the user exports it

Client-side AES-GCM encryption for all persisted records

100% offline clinical assessment capability

No accounts, analytics, or tracking

Open-source code for inspection, not trust-me privacy claims

The goal wasn’t a wellness app.
It was something closer to a local documentation tool that survives when infrastructure doesn’t.

I wrote a full technical whitepaper covering:

threat model and adversarial assumptions

local-first encrypted data flow

offline service-worker guarantees

clinical boundary disclaimers (not a medical device)

honest limits of zero-cloud design

That’s here:

https://www.paintracker.ca/whitepaper

The live app and source are small and early, but functional.
Right now I’m mainly interested in technical and ethical scrutiny, especially from people who think:

zero-cloud health software is necessary

or completely unrealistic

Both perspectives are useful.

If nothing else, I wanted to test a simple question:

Can clinically useful health software exist without extracting user data or depending on constant connectivity?

I’m still figuring out the answer.

Feedback welcome.
by materielle | 2026-02-16 04:51:18+00:00
I really think corporations are overplaying their hand if they think they can transform society once again in the next 10 years.

Rapid de industrialization followed by the internet and social media almost broke our society.

Also, I don’t think people necessarily realize how close we were to the cliff in 2007.

I think another transformation now would rip society apart rather than take us to the great beyond.