MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tomashubelbauer | 2026-02-17 08:14:30+00:00
Just this morning I have run across an even narrower case of how AGENTS.md (in this case with GPT-5.3 Codex) can be completely ignored even if filled with explicit instructions.

I have a line there that says Codex should never use Node APIs where Bun APIs exist for the same thing. Routinely, Claude Code and now Codex would ignore this.

I just replaced that rule with a TypeScript-compiler-powered AST based deterministic rule. Now the agent can attempt to commit code with banned Node API usage and the pre-commit script will fail, so it is forced to get it right.

I've found myself migrating more and more of my AGENTS.md instructions to compiler-based checks like these - where possible. I feel as though this shouldn't be needed if the models were good, but it seems to be and I guess the deterministic nature of these checks is better than relying on the LLM's questionable respect of the rules.
by hbarka | 2026-02-17 08:14:56+00:00
This is a very trivial treatment of Deming and I’m surprised how it makes its way to the top of HN.
The arc from Walter Shewhart to W.E. Deming is a bedrock foundation in an Industrial Engineering curriculum. These men paved the manufacturing process quality principles of modern industrialization. Drucker was about management science, truly an apples to oranges comparison.
by echelon | 2026-02-17 08:17:14+00:00
You need to try it before you knock it.

I was a doubter. This will literally work 100x faster than you. It can one-shot 1kLOC across dozens of files in mere minutes and understand the context.

You'll need to pay back a lot of those performance gains in reviewing the code, but the overall delta is a 2x speedup at minimum. I'd say it's closer to 4x. You can get a week's worth of work done in a day.

A human context switches too much and cannot physically keep up with these models. We're at the chess take off moment. We're still good at reviewing and steering.
by arjunbajaj | 2026-02-17 08:17:28+00:00
This resonates with me a lot, and well-timed too!

I've always been unhappy with the way tasking/todo app (don't) work for me. I just started building a TUI in Zig (with the help of Codex) to manage my daily tasks. And since I'm building it just for me, the scope is mine to determine too.
by nine_k | 2026-02-17 08:18:05+00:00
Yes, the diagram just shows the ASCII table for the old teletype 6-bit code (and 5-bit code before), with the two most significant bits spread over 4 columns to show the extension that happened while going 5→6→7 bits. It makes obvious what was very simple bit operations on very limited hardware 70–100 years ago.

(I assume everybody knows that on mechanical typewriters and teletypes the "shift" key physically shifted the caret position upwards, so that a different glyph would be printed when hit by a typebar.)
by wongarsu | 2026-02-17 08:18:38+00:00
The way neurons and synapses work you spend a lot of energy keeping them ready to fire. How often they actually fire is a smaller cost compared to maintaining them in ready state.

We end up using 100W (2000kcal/day) for the whole body, or about 20W for the nervous system alone (though a nervous system alone wouldn't be able to survive). That's comparable to what a modern laptop uses. Sure, that laptop can't run a large LLM at any reasonable speed, but it can do basic math far better than my brain. By a comically large margin. Just a consequence of the very different architectures chosen
by krisoft | 2026-02-17 08:18:46+00:00
I mean, there is no official database of “boyfriends”. Even after you identified the girl, and found the mom, how would you figure out if she has a boyfriend, and if so who?

Remember that if you tip them of in any way the abuser might go escape and hide with the girl or even worse decide to get rid of the witness by murdering the girl. So you can’t just do the easy thing and ask the mom nicely.
by atraac | 2026-02-17 08:20:36+00:00
> With design just being more sensitive and more overlooked area

My take is that design stopped being for the user. It's a rat race on who will make it look the most fancy or closest to whatever new trend AirBnB starts as quickly as possible. More animations, more colors, darker, lighter, let's make this transparent. Noone really thinks about UX anymore, it's all just portfolio-driven-design.
by zephen | 2026-02-17 08:20:41+00:00
Not everybody has full control over their environment.

The -Werror flag is not even religiously used for building, e.g. the linux kernel, and -Wextra can introduce a lot of extraneous garbage.

This will often make it easier (though still difficult) to winnow the program down to a smaller example, as that person did, rather than to enable everything and spend weeks debugging stuff that isn't the actual problem.
by deaux | 2026-02-17 08:21:44+00:00
I read the study. I think it does the opposite of what the authors suggest - it's actually vouching for good AGENTS.md files.

> Surprisingly, we observe that developer-provided files only
marginally improve performance compared to omitting
them entirely (an increase of 4% on average), while LLM-
generated context files have a small negative effect on agent
performance (a decrease of 3% on average).

This "surprisingly", and the framing seems misplaced.

For the developer-made ones: 4% improvement is massive! 4% improvement from a simple markdown file means it's a must-have.

> while LLM-
generated context files have a small negative effect on agent
performance (a decrease of 3% on average)

This should really be "while the prompts used to generate AGENTS files in our dataset..". It's a proxy for prompts, who knows if the ones generated through a better prompt show improvement.

The biggest usecase for AGENTS.md files is domain knowledge that the model is not aware of and cannot instantly infer from the project. That is gained slowly over time from seeing the agents struggle due to this deficiency. Exactly the kind of thing very common in closed-source, yet incredibly rare in public Github projects that have an AGENTS.md file - the huge majority of which are recent small vibecoded projects centered around LLMs. If 4% gains are seen on the latter kind of project, which will have a very mixed quality of AGENTS files in the first place, then for bigger projects with high-quality .md's they're invaluable when working with agents.
by traes | 2026-02-17 08:22:01+00:00
> Also his current rating is higher than either Karpov’s or Kasparov’s were when they first won the title. His rating when he first won was about the same as Fischer’s when Fischer first won.

This doesn't really mean anything. Rating is a purely relative system, as in the other thing that matters when performing Elo calculations is the difference in Elo between the two players. The absolute value of an Elo rating carries no real meaning and drifts over time based on the volume, skill level, and initial rating of lower level players. Since these change frequently, it's pretty much useless to compare ratings separated in time by more than a decade or so, maybe less. 50+ years is certainly far too long.
by rafaelmn | 2026-02-17 08:23:47+00:00
> Any answer other than "that was the most likely next token given the context" is untrue.

"Because the matrix math resulted in the set of tokens that produced the output". "Because the machine code driving the hosting devices produced the output you saw". "Because the combination of silicon traces and charges on the chips at that exact moment resulted in the output". "Because my neurons fired in a particular order/combination".

I don't see how your statement is any more useful. If an LLM has access to reasoning traces it can realistically waddle down the CoT and figure out where it took a wrong turn.

Just like a human does with memories in context - does't mean that's the full story - your decision making is very subconscious and nonverbal - you might not be aware of it, but any reasoning you give to explain why you did something is bound to be an incomplete story, created by your brain to explain what happened based on what it knows - but there's hidden state it doesn't have access to. And yet we ask that question constantly.
Show HN: Speed Reader – Chrome extension for RSVP speed reading
by GlebShalimov | 2026-02-17 08:24:29+00:00
I built a Chrome extension for speed reading using RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation).

One day I came across research on RSVP — a technology that allows you to read 2-3x faster without losing comprehension. That's how Speed Reader was born — a free Chrome extension that lets you read faster right in your browser.

The main feature is automatic article parsing. Open any page, click one button, and the extension extracts the text, removing ads and clutter. It also highlights the ORP (Optimal Recognition Point) — the natural focus point in each word.

Free, no ads, no data collection. Feedback welcome!
by nick486 | 2026-02-17 08:24:41+00:00
I think it sort of depends on how you look at it. If 800 is an hour of running - that's probably "a lot" for quite a few people. But 800 is also just a sandwich. Which isn't all that much.

So if you view this from a time use perspective, just skipping that sandwich is way better than running for an hour. And many people can't spare an hour a day just to make up for a sandwich. Hence - "not a lot" - Its too expensive time-wise for the caloric balance effect it provides. Just skip the sandwich instead.
by whatever1 | 2026-02-17 08:24:43+00:00
Fundamentally stock markets won the world of business, so everything has a horizon of a financial quarter.

Hence, every action of a company needs to be measured against the upcoming quarterly results.

OKRs et al are great at that.

Who cares about quality/sustainabily. We just want the stock go wheeeeee and get our bonuses.
by vintermann | 2026-02-17 08:24:48+00:00
I never said he's really smart. I think he's a garden variety - well, I'd say psychopath, but maybe that's not the whole of it or even the central bit. I think he's one of the quite common people whose first and basically only need, is to always be in control of the situation, including knowing where he has other people. He's willing to lie about what he believes to get that control. He might say something off-the-wall (like bringing up the antichrist) because seeing how you respond to it is more valuable to him than appearing consistent or not-crazy. He probably thinks he can work with it however you respond.

People like this don't hold many sincere beliefs, they spend their time thinking about what they should present to you, not what they should actually believe.
by mamonster | 2026-02-17 08:25:42+00:00
>Oil rent came from outside the system; foreigners paid for a tradable asset, and the money circulated through the economy with real multiplier effects. Military rent is internal redistribution towards assets designed for destruction. The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy.

Once Russian drone industry enters the export market they will blow out almost every competitor in any market not named Europe and US.

Russia now can export drones (Geran lineup) that can reliably overwhelm any current anti-air network + can offer expertise in constructing local production (Elabuga-like) + can offer drone pilot training and drone-aware tactics.

The only other country with this expertise is Ukraine (except for setting up production, they have too much cottage industry stuff going on) but outside of Europe/US most countries (especially African ones) will go with Russia as a supplier.
by treetalker | 2026-02-17 08:26:31+00:00
Use of threats of physical and property harm to obtain something against the will of the victim is typically referred to as extortion. Blackmail typically refers to threats of exposing damaging information.

> If you don't do X for me, I will harm you physically. There are plenty of X's that will not be illegal, but harmful to reputation.

You're describing extortion. Blackmail is typically the use of harmful information to get something one wants against the other's will. Regarding the thing being obtained being harmful to the victim's reputation, it sounds like you have it a bit backwards.

Moreover, blackmail statutes often specifically cover situations in which the person being blackmailed actually did commit the crime, the threatened disclosure/allegation of which is being used to obtain something against their will. Hence, blackmail is certainly not limited to innocent victims but instead includes blameworthy ones.
by citizenpaul | 2026-02-17 08:26:50+00:00
>The age of actually finishing side projects is here

This is a really good summary of how I've experienced AI put into words. I'm not really sure how this can be monetized though.

I'm not going to burn $200-1k per day on agents to do some side projects that have been on the back burner. The only reason I'm doing it now is the heavily subsidized or free available models all over the place.
by fifticon | 2026-02-17 08:28:28+00:00
Usually, I can easily tell bad AI slop, because it is just that - sloppy - the bullet points, the 'delving' and all that.
But how can you tell this article was also AI-tainted?
On a second skim, I can sort of sense some of it - the bulletpoint-enthusiasm, the idiosyncratic segues (?) that link sections/paragraphs of the text.
But it didn't trigger for me immediately, or cause me concern..?

I'm worrying that soon, I will have to hunt for non-AI essays by them just being worse written/more 'crude' and not as eloquently written as an AI would do :-/
Basically, seeking out "authentic human slop".
by traes | 2026-02-17 08:29:00+00:00
This is an incredibly ironic comment. "Freestyle" chess was an attempt to do exactly this with Magnus's support, and it failed to secure funding after its initial run. This event is them running back to FIDE in shambles to salvage their tour. Kasparov attempted something similar in the 90s, making his own world championship title, and similarly failed horribly.

The stability of a 100+ year old international organization that's led by serious politicians with connections in every major country is hard to contend with. FIDE's current president was Russia's Deputy Prime Minister for 6 years.
by imiric | 2026-02-17 08:29:04+00:00
True, this has been a problem for decades, but this new technology makes the work required to spread disinformation and steer online conversations much more accessible, with far greater reach and impact. It's no longer necessary to run human troll farms, when anyone can deploy thousands of bots cheaper and faster. We haven't even begun to address the original problem, and we've now made it much worse. It's bewildering that very few people are taking this seriously.
by hnbad | 2026-02-17 08:29:13+00:00
LLMs are basically improv theater. If the agent starts out with a wildly wrong assumption it will try to stick to it and adapt it rather than starting over. It can only do "yes and", never "actually nevermind, let me try something else".

I once had an agent come up with what seemed like a pointlessly convoluted solution as it tried to fit its initial approach (likely sourced from framework documentation overemphasizing the importance of doing it "the <framework> way" when possible) to a problem for which it to me didn't really seem like a good fit. It kept reassuring me that this was the way to go and my concerns were invalid.

When I described the solution and the original problem to another agent running the same model, it would instantly dismiss it and point out the same concerns I had raised - and it would insist on those being deal breakers the same way the other agent had dimissed them as invalid.

In the past I've often found LLMs to be extremely opinionated while also flipping their positions on a dime once met with any doubt or resistance. It feels like I'm now seeing the opposite: the LLM just running with whatever it picked up first from the initial prompt and then being extremely stubborn and insisting on rationalizing its choice no matter how much time it wastes trying to make it work. It's sometimes better to start a conversation over than to try and steer it in the right direction at that point.
by vonunov | 2026-02-17 08:29:26+00:00
Interesting, thanks. Notwithstanding all I've said, I've also struggled with a nebulous sense that there's something to handwriting, possibly bordering on "sacred", to be a bit dramatic about it. This has resulted in phases of annoying obsession with handwriting where all its technical/practical shortcomings are overwhelmed by this unknown property for a time.

The sub-process thing sounds vaguely plausible, but at the same time, I'm under the impression that I'm already constantly evaluating whether what I'm writing makes sense, its implications and assumptions, etc. At least I feel that I'm attentive to the impression of it not making sense, though I also try not to confuse the feeling that something makes sense with the fact of it being so.

Anyway, what I'm going for here is, did you consciously apply any technique or process to evaluating this or do you come by this insight naturally?
by silisili | 2026-02-17 08:30:54+00:00
The answer isn't one a lot of people are willing to talk about, but personally, I don't care.

The problem isn't "businesses", it's other Indians. They take entire tech orgs over, then only hire each other. They make up bizarre reasons why US workers won't fit while spamming H1B applications.

Before you grab your pitchforks, or try to dox me for racism one, please understand it's not all Indian people, obviously. There are so many in the US, and the majority are good people. But there's an extremely clear pattern that's emerged that you'd have to be blind not to see.
Show HN: CoThou v0.2 – Autonomous Superagent
by MartyD | 2026-02-17 08:31:07+00:00
In the future I envision, everyone has their own personal superagent that works on their behalf.

From ordering groceries to managing calendars, meetings, and notes, scheduling life events, starting a business, researching markets, building websites or full apps, and even reaching out to customers, handling revenue, accounting, and taxes.

A truly autonomous personal assistant for life, work, and everything in between.

This is what CoThou is built for.

Give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

Still buggy and slow but improving on a daily basis.
by zem | 2026-02-17 08:31:37+00:00
that is not what makes a julius though. there are lots of good, competent workers who don't really give a damn about the job, and are just in it for the money, but they know their stuff and are genuinely working and delivering value for the money they are given while they are on the clock. what a julius dials up to eleven is the oft-heard dictum "fake it till you make it", only they are so good at faking it that it becomes their entire thing, not just a way to stay under the radar while they learn the job.
by andai | 2026-02-17 08:32:08+00:00
Remarkable. What does vulnerability mean in this context?

Edit: They asked people how many times they had been victimized, which they defined as "worse than bullying".

> Twelve video clips of unsuspecting targets walking from Wheeler et al.
(2009) were used in the present study. The targets were undergraduate stu-
dents, of whom 8 were women and 4 were men. As described in Wheeler
et al., targets were unknowingly videotaped from behind as they walked
from room A to B, to capture natural gaits. The targets indicated whether
they had ever been victimized and how many times they had been victim-
ized in the past (after the age of 18). The wording of the question was very
broad, given the numerous types of victimization that can occur, and the
effects of any victimization are relative. If participants asked for clarifica-
tion, they were asked to think of victimization as being equal to or greater
than bullying. Each target’s gait was coded by two independent judges
according to the Grayson and Stein’s criteria (1981). As discussed in the
original Wheeler et al. study, interjudge reliabilities were high for all gait
characteristics (kappa = .77 to 1.00). Essential to the idea that body lan-
guage cues indicate vulnerability, targets coded as displaying vulnerable
body language in the Wheeler et al. were more likely to have self-identified
as a victim, rho (11) = .68, p < .05.

---

Edit 2: The study references a very similar study from 32 years earlier.

> The original 1981 study by Grayson and Stein was incredibly simple. It involved setting up a video camera on a street in New York City, filming people (60 persons) as they walked by (between 10:00 AM and 12:00 pm over a three day period), and then showing the footage to convicted offenders (12 of them), whose crimes involved violence, and asking them to select those individuals who they would target/victimize (on a scale from 1 to 10), in order to discover if there were any identifiable non-verbal cues that were commonly picked up on/identified.

https://www.bostonkravmaga.com/blog/criminology/that-grayson...

So the 1st study focused purely on target selection and gait analysis, while the 2nd one interviewed the potential targets to see how that lined up with their actual history of being abused.

Now the billion dollar question of correlation vs causation: seems to go both ways, as usual. Neurodivergent people walk differently (and have differences in motor areas of the brain), but also trauma changes your posture and movement...
by hnbad | 2026-02-17 08:32:45+00:00
I recall that early LLMs had the problem of not understanding the word "not", which became especially evident and problematic when tasked with summarizing text because the summary would then sometimes directly contradict the original text.

It seems that that problem hasn't really been "fixed", it's just been paved over. But I guess that's the ugly truth most people tend to forget/deny about LLMs: you can't "fix" them because there's not a line of code you can point to that causes a "bug", you can only retrain them and hope the problem goes away. In LLMs, every bug is a "heisenbug" (or should that be "murphybug", as in Murphy's Law?).
by anal_reactor | 2026-02-17 08:33:12+00:00
That's a simplified example I used to explain the point. Of course you rarely have people whose job is nothing but hiring, but often you have people whose all responsibilities revolve around inefficient processes, and making these processes efficient threatens their jobs.

TurboTax is a great example of this - the entire purpose of their existence is to make sure that filling taxes is as complicated as possible so that people keep using their services. In other countries simpler and cheaper tax systems are used, but if such a system was adopted in the US, the entire business model of TurboTax would immediately collapse, so they will fight tooth and nail against any improvement.