MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2026-02-17 03:55:57+00:00
There have been both. Here is a famous example from around 1977 I believe that was broadcast on the BBC (I knew of this example but this is the first time I actually found a recording of the broadcast): https://www.baroquemusic.org/violincomparison.html . The violinist playing is Manoug Parikian, who presumably knew which instrument was which, and neither Isaac Stern nor Pinchas Zukerman (both world class soloists) nor Charles Beare (a famous luthier described as "the most esteemed authenticator in the world" by the NYTimes) could identify which violin was which.
by zahlman | 2026-02-17 03:56:02+00:00
> But that's a reason you should expect it to stop working soon

I agree. (And it seems like it already stopped working, if I understood others here correctly.)

But again if I understood others here correctly, an academic paper like this would necessarily be studying models that are well behind the leading edge at time of publication. My argument is that the study authors shouldn't be faulted for investigating something that currently seems unlikely to work, because at the time of investigation it would have seemed much more likely to work.
by kristopolous | 2026-02-17 03:56:23+00:00
I've never heard of sonarqube ... this looks very enterprisey ... isn't this just prompt engineering over the source with a harness? Why am I clicking through all this signup flow?

I'd buy the put this in your ".git/hooks" workflow ... but I don't know what's going on with this thing.

The strongest opensource contributors tend to be kinda weird - like they don't have a google account and use some kind of libre phone os that you've never heard of.
by jimt1234 | 2026-02-17 03:56:30+00:00
I can't understand how anyone can do such a job for any length of time. I worked at a PC repair shop back in the 90s, fixed some dude's PC, and I saw a bunch of CSAM stuff (a lot, like thousands of pics, all children). I reported it to the local cops, then the FBI got involved, and that's the last I heard of it. My point is that the memory of those pics haunt me to this day. And I only saw a handful of pics, over, maybe, a period of about 2 minutes. To do that all day, everyday - how could one not become an alcoholic?
by Avicebron | 2026-02-17 03:57:27+00:00
It's weird I was having a conversation with a contractor the other day, and he mentioned how in 1970, contractors earned ~9k/year and a truck cost ~2k. He was making the comparison about how he made 50K this year and the truck he financed was also around 50K..

I don't think it's a coincidence a lot of problems are happening at the same time in the US.
by lstodd | 2026-02-17 03:59:05+00:00
You mean 1991 Elite Plus? The whole series has been reverse-engineered to death and back. Maybe you mean some other game?

Anyway, for those old titles I don't think not having source is that much of a problem. I participated in two reimplementations of 1994 XCOM : UFO2000 and OpenXcom, helped the 1oom project (first Master of Orion) and I don't think having original source would have helped much.
by balls187 | 2026-02-17 03:59:06+00:00
Interesting.

I think it's because AI Models have learned that we prefer answers that are confident sounding, and not to pester us with questions before giving us an answer.

That is, follow my prompt, and don't bother me about it.

Because if I am coming to an AI Agent to do something, it's because I'd rather be doing something else.
by cher-nov | 2026-02-17 03:59:13+00:00
https://github.com/kendallb/scitech-mgl/issues/2#issuecommen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SciTech_SNAP#SciTech_SNAP_Grap...

Also includes code of side projects like SciTech GLDirect and SciTech WinDirect, the latter of which was used by Quake (1996) in its initial Windows port (WinQuake.exe).
by majormajor | 2026-02-17 04:00:25+00:00
Time for the other American political party to pick up the "nah it's just negative media, people still have money and food" drum!

Sure, many people (in an absolute-number sense) are in no immediate risk of crisis. But many are.

Economic policy for 40+ years has been shifting both income and wealth largely to the already-haves with massive knock-on effects on the general affordability and comfort for everybody else. The flow of money into small sets of assets and investments distorts the "inflation" measurements and we find ways to ignore it.

People were talking about it long before Covid, but the Covid bullwhip and the complete lack of foresight or management[0] of the situation pushed it into a new, noticably-worse-normal overnight. While before we were just boiling the frog and blaming avocado toast for millenials not buying houses or having kids yet.

But you can't have a viable consumer economy when everyone with power is squeezing the consumer tighter and tighter. We've been papering over this problem by making stuff free-with-ads but eventually there won't be enough buying power left in a large enough non-broke cohort to keep the system working for anybody.

[0] "you think maybe people will want more of the stuff they bought before, and less Pelotons, in a two years?? No way! Buy Zoom stock!"
by elzbardico | 2026-02-17 04:00:27+00:00
I am pretty sure we are running towards a big 1929 style system correction. I may be wrong, but that people doesn't even try to contemplate this possibility seems bonkers too me. And in that case, those 401k are not going to be worth much, viz. the price of butter, and neither you can count on rental properties as a income source when everywhere became Flint, OH.
by unodonut | 2026-02-17 04:01:04+00:00
Update, with Apple's 'Passwords' app, it appears all someone needs to do to get access to every single stored password, is grab your iPhone while it's unlocked, or sneak it from you while sleeping and use face id to unlock it.

Or, they could shoulder surf to get a 6 digit pin to unlock the phone, then steal it, then they're in.

Seems way less secure than 'Correct Horse Battery Staple'.
by foxglacier | 2026-02-17 04:01:28+00:00
Yep. He's just repeating the same popular opinions you hear every day, and with just as much lack of reasoning and evidence to support them as every other AI doomer. He even has the same standard opinion of cryptocurrency that goes along with it. I suppose this sort of post acts as a summary of popular opinion but not as a source of useful ideas about the topic itself.
by retatop | 2026-02-17 04:01:29+00:00
I do a lot of soldering at my day job to bodge boards, tune networks, etc. I burn myself on the time because when I'm working through the microscope I seemingly forget I have hands or lose track of them and bump the iron into them when pulling it away from the work. Not sure why, but it's really easy for me to get into this mode where the view through the scope is the only thing in the world
by eqvinox | 2026-02-17 04:01:42+00:00
> Security comes before a lot of things but not before accidental breakage.

It didn't really sound accidental, though the bugzilla report sounds like they underestimated the impact. But I'm quite sure they were aware this would break at least some old software, it's not like it's hard to understand what exactly is happening here. Old software (or rather, builds) used executable stacks by default, and some edge cases used them for some time after that. I'll say they probably should've done a warning period.

> If you say "our compat guarantees are so strong you shouldn't keep track of versions at all",

What I said was you should never pin a glibc version, not to not keep track of versions at all :). I will admit this is hazy if you build binaries to distribute; in that case you probably want to intentionally use an old glibc. But that's not exactly a "pin", that's a "what's the oldest you want to support". The software being built basically makes no difference; glibc will do what it does, the only limit will be placed by features added in newer glibc versions. The binaries produced from that, running on a new system with any newer glibc, have AFAIK last broken during that S390 incident I linked. (e.g. you wouldn't have gotten executables requiring executable stacks out of a normal GNU tool chain for quite some time by now. It's still possible to intentionally mangle your code and build options to get that result, but you need to either be trying, or do relatively cursed things [like Mono probably some binary loading shenanigans]).

Either way — never pin glibc. And if your cmake or whatever complains about a glibc version conflict, remove the pins and use the newest version involved.

(And about the execstack thing — I'm happy to hear your complaints if and only if you show up with an actual report of breakage that you encountered. No 3rd party phoning. Because what's at question in this case is the actual impact size, which to me seems quite limited.)
Show HN: Swapface – Real-time, hyperrealistic AI face swap for Windows and Mac
by hanruezz | 2026-02-17 04:01:45+00:00
Swapface is a lightweight, real-time AI face swap tool that works for live streams, videos, and images.

Key Features:

Real-time Streaming: Create face-swapped live streams instantly.

High Quality: One-click HD image and video/GIF face swapping.

Privacy-focused: Processing is done locally (requires Windows or Mac Apple Silicon).

Free to use: Currently available for free download.

It's designed to be the easiest-to-use faceswap tool globally, supporting high-end hardware like NVIDIA 50-series GPUs for optimal performance.
by somenameforme | 2026-02-17 04:02:32+00:00
So the elites were flying in on the Lolita Express to an island filled with underage sex workers, to a venue with luridity abounds, hosted by a convicted pedophile, to discuss philanthropy?

Or might it be that the entire political class is filled with moral and ethical degenerates, to nobody's surprise. And so consequently you are effectively having suspects investigate themselves only to conclude 'nah, nobody did anything wrong except the dead guy, but he's dead so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ '

Even that report notes at least 4 or 5 victims stated they were abused by other men and women besides Epstein. So it's gone from #MeToo to #Only4or5. Funny how the narrative shifts when the political class is involved.
by samrus | 2026-02-17 04:02:48+00:00
> What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible!

That is a generous interpretation. Mighr be correct. But they dont make as much money if you quickly get the right answer. They make more money if you spend as many tokens as possible being on that "maybe next time" hook.

Im not saying theyre actually optimizng for that. But charlie munger said "show me the incentives, and ill show you the outcome"
Show HN: Mind Spectrum – Data-driven SEO and digital marketing for SMEs
by hanruezz | 2026-02-17 04:03:16+00:00
Mind Spectrum is a technology-focused agency specializing in increasing online exposure and leads through ethical "white hat" SEO and integrated digital strategies.

What we offer:

Advanced SEO: Tailored techniques to keep up with evolving search algorithms.

Global Reach: Operations based in Florida with a dedicated unit in India for 24/7 global support.

Client-Centric: Focusing on measurable client satisfaction and ROI for small and medium-sized enterprises.

We help businesses create both online and offline "buzz" to reach their target audience effectively.
by zephen | 2026-02-17 04:03:33+00:00
> You'd be surprised. People discern things of value from a one-time viewing of another person constantly.

True. I overstated my case a bit. Of course, no matter what they are wearing, it is something that exists in their wardrobe, but that may or may not matter.

> studies show the gaydar exists

This, I know from experience. I had a gay roommate once, and he taught he how to spot them, way back when they were still trying to be a bit unobvious. But, even though gay people usually dress better and in certain ways, that's not the usual tell. It's really not about the clothes.

> doesn't have to be accurate all the time to exist and be usable

This is paradigmatic "system 1" thinking. We all use it, but sometimes the failures are catastrophic.
by cryptonector | 2026-02-17 04:03:36+00:00
Oh no! It's pouring PRs!

Come on. Maintainers can:

- insist on disclosure of LLM origin
- review what they want, when they can
- reject what they can't review
- use LLMs (yes, I know) to triage PRs
and pick which ones need the most
human attention and which ones can be
ignored/rejected or reviewed mainly
by LLMs

There are a lot of options.

And it's not just open source. Guess what's happening in the land of proprietary software? YUP!! The same exact thing. We're all becoming review-bound in our work. I want to get to huge MR XYZ but I've to review several other people's much larger MRs -- now what?

Well, we need to develop a methodology for working with LLMs. "Every change must be reviewed by a human" is not enough. I've seen incidents caused by ostensibly-reviewed but not actually understood code, so we must instead go with "every change must be understood by humans", and this can sometimes involve a plain review (when the reviewer is a SME and also an expert in the affected codebase(s), and it can involve code inspection (much more tedious and exacting). But also it might involve posting transcripts of LLM conversations for developing and, separately, reviewing the changes, with SMEs maybe doing lighter reviews when feasible, because we're going to have to scale our review time. We might need to develop a much more detailed methodology, including writing and reviewing initial prompts, `CLAUDE.md` files, etc. so as to make it more likely that the LLM will write good code and more likely that LLM reviews will be sensible and catch the sorts of mistakes we expect humans to catch.
by alephnerd | 2026-02-17 04:03:50+00:00
Not really. Different demographics and different subeconomies are feeling better or worse than others. CPI is also calculated at a subnational level as well.

Insurance, Rent, Food, and other fundamentals are all differently priced in different regions and subregions of the US.

Edit: cannot reply

> The racial diversion ...

This comment was not about race - both Oregon and West Virgina are majority white, but have entirely different demographics (urban heavy Oregon with the population centered around Portland versus rural primary WV with microagglomerations on the border of DMV and Huntington-Ashland).

And more critically, the fact that you assumed it as such betrays a lot about you.
by maltalex | 2026-02-17 04:03:59+00:00
It's not just open source though. Many high quality sources of information are being (over-)exploited and hurt in the process. StackOverflow is effectively dead [0], the internet archive is being shunned by publishers [1], scientific journals are bombarded by fake papers [2] (and anecdotally, low-effort LLM-driven reviews), projects like OpenStreetMap incur significant costs due to scraping [3], and many more.

We went from data mining to data fracking.

[0]: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-...

[1]: https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news-publishers-limit-inte...

[2]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/wiley_journals_ai/

[3]: https://www.heise.de/en/news/OpenStreetMap-is-concerned-thou...
by SyneRyder | 2026-02-17 04:04:53+00:00
No, but I index parts of the web that are important to myself, sites I frequently reference. (I have all of Simon Willison's site indexed, for example.) It turns out that a simple SQLite database is a lot more capable and faster than I thought. I index from my laptop, using another tool I built with Claude. I don't crawl or spider, I focus on indexing from sitemap.xml files and RSS feeds. I have about 1.5 Million pages in my local index, and I get search results in 40ms - 70ms, thereabouts.

For every search that doesn't find results - and of course that's still the majority - it falls back to a meta-search combining results from Brave, Mojeek & Marginalia. The core of that metasearch is what Claude 3.5v2 generated for me in a one-shot back in Dec 2024. Kagi is just a metasearch with a very small local index as well, and my main purpose in building this was replacing Kagi for my needs.

The last 10% of my queries were widget queries like currency conversion, distance & temperature conversion etc that I was using for about 10% of my search queries.
by prakashdep | 2026-02-17 04:05:19+00:00
HN values things you can build with and ship. The negative sentiment isn't really about the underlying tech, it's about the ratio of speculation to actual utility.

Most crypto conversations still center around price, tokens, and "number go up." That doesn't land with a crowd that cares about solving real problems with software.

The tech underneath is interesting, though. ZKPs for privacy, programmable settlement, onchain identity. But those conversations get drowned out by the noise of yet another token launch or influencer pump.

The sentiment would shift if more projects shipped useful products first and tokenized later (or never). The crypto projects HN does respect (Signal adding MobileCoin, the ZKP work Google is doing) lead with the problem they solve, not the financial instrument they created.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2026-02-17 04:05:43+00:00
Don't get hung up on "14 years old". It's a classic journalist trop designed to get you to read their paper without putting too much weight on the actual content which is a paper thin, pun intended, PR fluff thing for The Society for Science. The prize is not even linked to the origami but on-site team challenges in a final event.

The origami is Miura-ori fold by the way and they are already used in plenty of fields. Fairly interesting stuff from the 60s. Would have made for a great article.

The kids tested some paper configurations and specific fold patterns. Really impressive stuff considering it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace. Neat science fair project, awful headline.
by atomicnumber3 | 2026-02-17 04:08:29+00:00
Did you actually fix the issue, or did you fix the issue and introduce new bugs?

The problem is the asymmetry of effort. You verified you fixed your issue. The maintainers verified literally everything else (or are the ones taking the hit if they're just LGTMing it).

Sorry, I am sure your specific change was just fine. But I'm speaking generally.

How many times have I at work looked at a PR and thought "this is such a bad way to fix this I could not have come up with such a comically bad way if I tried." And naturally couldn't say this to my fine coworker whose zeal exceeded his programming skills (partly because someone else had already approved the PR after "reviewing" it...). No, I had to simply fast-follow with my own PR, which had a squashed revert of his change, with the correct fix, so that it didn't introduce race conditions into parallel test runs.

And the submitter of course has no ability to gauge whether their PR is the obvious trivial solution, or comically incorrect. Therein lies the problem.
by BobbyTables2 | 2026-02-17 04:08:30+00:00
The discrete and “xor” parts of your comment made me think of this:

https://wolframphysics.org/

(Though I realize likely many have various objections)

I still struggle a bit with General Relativity. Understand everything is moving at a constant speed through spacetime (speed of light in a vacuum) with just the direction slightly shifting from “only along time” to the spatial dimensions.

I find it both elegant but also viscerally disturbing. Connecting time and spatial movement makes the universe seem artificial. Know it comes out from Maxwells’ equation… but it feels “wrong”.

Seems all human physical snd chemical activity is just preoccupied with transferring momentum from objects with slightly different angles of motion.
by bigiain | 2026-02-17 04:08:42+00:00
I've been following Daniel from the Curl project who's speaking out widely about slop coded PRs and vulnerability reports. It doesn't sound like they have ever had any problem keeping up with human generated PRs. It's the mountain of AI generated crap that's now sitting on top of all the good (or even bad by worth mentoring) human submissions.

At work we are not publishing any code or part of the OSS community (except as grateful users of other's projects), but even we get clearly AI enabled emails - just this week my boss has forwarded me two that were pretty much "Him do you have a bug bounty program? We have found a vulnerability in (website or app obliquely connected to us)." One of them was a static site hosted on S3!

There's always been bullshitters looking to fraudulently invoice your for unsolicited "security analysis". But the bar for generating bullshit that looks plausible enough to have to have someone spend at least a few minutes to work out if it's "real" or not has become extremely low, and the velocity with which the bullshit can be generated then have the victim's name and contact details added and vibe spammed to hundreds or thousands of people has become near unstoppable. It's like SEO spammers from 5 or 10 years back but superpowered with OpenAI/Anthropic/whoever's cocaine.
by foxglacier | 2026-02-17 04:09:07+00:00
> they appropriated ideas and concepts, without giving due credit to their originators so there is a deeper ethical component

No there isn't. We're all free to copy each other's ideas and concepts and not give any credit to their "originators" who aren't usually even the first people to think of them but just the previous person in the chain of copying ideas. That's how progress happens. No we should not inhibit our use of knowledge because every idea "belongs" to somebody.

I'm not talking about copyright here, which is different and doesn't usually protect ideas and concepts anyway, at least none that are useful.
by allthetime | 2026-02-17 04:09:18+00:00
I can't help but feel that far too many intelligent people, including many here, are wasting too much of their precious time, skill, potential, etc. on questions like this. Remember a few years ago when we just used to make useful software? Now we are consumed with discussions about the AI flavour of the week and trying really hard to prove the usefulness of things that we will soon forget when the next shiny one comes.

Web3 and JavaScript frameworks never had the nerd-sniping power of the AI ecosystem. I'm not denying the usefulness and potential of the space, and the achievements of its current champions, but the degree with which it has consumed discussion and productivity in the tech space is worrying.

This article would be wildly interesting with the opposite headline, but instead it simply states what many of us would assume based on experience.
by randycupertino | 2026-02-17 04:09:24+00:00
I saw a thing in Wall Street Journal today about how millennials are "splurging on rotisserie chicken."

> “Gen Zers and millennials are swimming in student debt and may never own homes, but they’re splurging on gut-healthy juices and rotisserie chickens.”

https://offthefrontpage.com/the-wall-street-journal-gets-com...
by Arifcodes | 2026-02-17 04:09:26+00:00
The distinction matters: skills that encode your team's domain-specific conventions are useful. Skills the model generates from scratch based on a vague prompt are not.

I've been building AI agent systems for clients and the pattern that works is iterative: the agent tries something, you steer it, then you capture what worked as a reusable skill. Not "generate skills before solving" but "distill lessons after solving." The paper tests the former, which nobody experienced actually does.

The real value of skills is reducing token burn on repeat tasks. Once you've figured out the right approach, you encode it so next time the model doesn't have to re-derive everything from first principles. It's memoization for reasoning.