MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aramchanski | 2026-02-09 15:51:09+00:00
Hi HN fam,

If it’s helpful to anyone here, I’m building Lawgmented - a desktop app that helps you review and redraft contracts in Microsoft Word.

Most early-stage founders (and other non-legal folk) deal with contracts in two ways - they grab a template (or worse, generate one with AI) and hope it’s sensible, or they receive the counterparty’s template and try to figure out what it really says. Lawgmented is a guardrail for both scenarios: it helps non-lawyers spot landmines and sanity-check a contract before negotiating and signing.

Lawgmented is a standalone Windows desktop app that runs alongside Microsoft Word to help review contracts in just a few clicks. It highlights key clauses in the document, explains risks in plain language, and suggests role-tailored redrafts you can apply in Word. It’s only $9/mo with a 7-day free trial.

Would love your feedback! Thanks
by superkuh | 2026-02-09 15:51:13+00:00
I gave up running my TS3 servers (after nearly a decade) because they added a trialware system that required getting approval/serial code from the company every month to continue operating. They were squeezing everyone on TS3 trying to force them to TS4/5/etc. Have they stopped this or walked it back?

And to be clear, Teamspeak from version 5 on is not teamspeak. It's matrix with a skin. Not that that's terrible, but it's not great for running it on low power/cost VPS like actual teamspeak was.
by exo762 | 2026-02-09 15:51:20+00:00
> Messages by default are encrypted in transit. Client to server.

By this metric Facebook and Google are encrypted, because TLS. Sorry, Telegram's messaging is an attempt to mislead users, plain and simple.

> The library IS used for all encryption.

They could chose to use TLS for for almost all chats, and instead they've "invented" MTProto. Why go with MTProto?

> As far as I can tell from casual use the other end does not need to be online per se.

You are wrong. Phone on other side has to accept "secret chat request" (no user interaction is needed). Until its accepted, initiator's app interface is blocked with a spinning circle. And to add insult to injury, one can't initiate secret chat from desktop client.

> Telegram client(s) are also open source.

Yes, it is very refreshing to be able to verify that they can read all of my messages. /s

> The comment was about the server and interoperability with other clients.

Signal leadership explicitly stated that they care about secure comms and don't care about ecosystem around the chat. You can create your own client, you can't market it as Signal because that might "endanger lives".

> - The phone bits in your and the other commenters response sound a little bit handwavy to me.

I issue you a formal apology on behalf of HN hive mind. /s

On serious note - palata's point is right, but a bit outdated. Functionality is still there, but it became opt-in. New users have phone number automatically hidden and phone number is collected only as an anti-spam feature.

I'll repeat my point again. Telegram is a honey pot of messengers and nobody should use it.
by eszed | 2026-02-09 15:51:23+00:00
This obviously has implications for modeling physical systems. That's mentioned at the end of the article - though I'm proud of my very, very non-mathematician self for thinking of it earlier, lol - but not expanded. For those of you who do that sort of thing, how helpful will it be? What sort of improvement (in resolution? Fidelity? Efficiency? Anything else?) might your particular field expect?
by bryanlarsen | 2026-02-09 15:51:37+00:00
I've started calling it "revenge of the QA/Support engineers", personally.

Our QA & Support engineers have now started creating MR's to fix customer issues, satisfy customer requests and fix bugs.

They're AI sloppy and a bunch of work to fix up, but they're a way better description of the problem than the tickets they used to send.

So now instead of me creating a whole bunch of work for QA/Support engineers when I ship sub-optimal code to them, they're creating a bunch of work for me by shipping sub-optimal code to me.
by yerik | 2026-02-09 15:51:38+00:00
I've noticed first hand how the scope of responsibilities is broadened by integrating AI on workflows. Personally if feels like a positive feedback loop: I take more responsibilities; since they are outside my scope I have a harder time reviewing AI output; this increases fatigue and makes me more prone to just accepting more AI output; with the increase in reliance on AI output I get to a point where I'm managing things that are way outside my scope and I can't do it unless I rely on AI entirely. In my opinion this also increases Imposter Syndrome effects.

But I doubt companies and management will think for a second that this voluntary increase in "productivity" is any bad, and it will probably be encouraged
by frou_dh | 2026-02-09 15:51:43+00:00
In 3D games, something that's key for roads to look/feel realistic is to have small amounts of banking here and there all over the place - as opposed to just having a crude categorisation where there are flat roads on one hand and ramps on the other.

If you don't do that then much of the world ends up feeling like an ice rink with roads painted on it.
by sph | 2026-02-09 15:51:52+00:00
Can’t miss the opportunity to share my favourite aphorism:

“ I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.”

— Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
by K0balt | 2026-02-09 15:51:56+00:00
Just explicitly prioritize separation of concerns, with strict API modularity between them. Breaking everything into single concern chunks with good APIs. It’s less about re-use, and more about containment . Documentation, and testability. Also invest more time in ensuring that your data structures are a mirror of the solution space. That will pay huge dividends with better code.

These things have alerted been true, but now they also enable AI development so instead of accumulating technical debt for expedience sake, we get paid an efficiency subsidy in productivity for doing it right. ( or rather for herding the gerbils to do it right)
by eqvinox | 2026-02-09 15:52:40+00:00
Why is it a new surface? Either you can run UEFI code, or you can't. Attacking the JS interpreter itself is unrealistic IMHO, it's the poorly written JavaScript running on top of this that might open new surfaces of attack. But other UEFI code is mostly written in C or C++, so let's call that a wash?
by moron4hire | 2026-02-09 15:53:30+00:00
I had a very similar experience.

There is a point you made here "losing enjoyment for eating (and drinking)" that I think is The Key, but also not what people think when they hear it without experiencing it. Someone hearing that line might think it makes food "unenjoyable," as in "bad." That is not the case. It is "unenjoyable" as in "lacking in a joyful experience."

After talking with friends of mine who are similarly aged to me but have not had the major weight struggles I've had, I realized one of the biggest differences between us is not our drive or discipline (they envy me in many of these areas), it's in the sheer level of enjoyment that I get out of food and drink that they do not.

There are certain foods that, if I have them, they make me more hungry. I can't physically fit enough spaghetti or chocolate pudding into my mouth to satisfy my craving for it. My favorite beer feels glorious all the way down my throat and into my stomach; I can go from depressed to happy in 10 seconds just from that first gulp. And it's just those specific things. I'm not going to scarf down hard on lasagna or chocolate ice cream. While I enjoy whiskey, wine, cocktails, and other beers, I can have one in a night and be done.

There are also foods that are the opposite. I physically cannot stomach muscles or cuccumber. Putting cauliflower--in any form--on my plate is likely to start an argument. All leafy greens feel like a punishment; I can choke them down, unlike muscles, but I'm not going to like the person who made me do it.

But my friends without weight issues have never had these experiences with any foods. Food is just a way to avoid hunger. Booze is just a way to get drunk. There's no strong emotional connection to any of it.

And GLP-1 agonists completely remove that. I've heard it called "The Food Noise." It's basically a re-baselining of my relationship to food back to what should be "normal." Nothing has a feedback loop of pushing me to consume more anymore. Nothing gives me such strong revulsion that I can't eat it anymore. It's just food, on my plate. I don't even feel hungry, the only reason I'm eating it is because I understand at an intellectual level that I have to in order to not pass out in the middle of the day.
by SilverElfin | 2026-02-09 15:53:53+00:00
Sad that the international community doesn’t do more to intervene in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet. As a reminder, China has violated the treaty around Hong Kong’s handoff. So really the UK and the rest of the world should have demanded its return.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration
Show HN: AI agents play SimCity through a REST API
by aed | 2026-02-09 15:54:33+00:00
This is a weekend project that spiraled out of control. I was originally trying to get Claude to play a ROM of the SNES SimCity. I struggled with it and that led me to Micropolis (the open-sourced SimCity engine) and was able to get it to work by bolting on an API.

The weekend hack turned into a headless city simulation platform where anyone can get an API key (no signup) and have their AI agent play mayor. The simulation runs the real Micropolis engine inside Cloudflare Durable Objects, one per city. Every city is public and browsable on the site.

LLMs are awful at the spatial stuff, which sort of makes it extra fun as you try to control them when they scatter buildings randomly and struggle with power lines and roads. A little like dealing with a toddler.

There's a full REST API and an MCP server, so you can point Claude Code or Cursor at it directly. You can usually get agents building in seconds.

Website: https://hallucinatingsplines.com

API docs: https://hallucinatingsplines.com/docs

GitHub: https://github.com/andrewedunn/hallucinating-splines

Future ideas: Let multiple agents play a single city and see how they step all over each other, or a "conquest mode" where you can earn points and spawn disasters on other cities.
by neversupervised | 2026-02-09 15:55:34+00:00
HBR is analyzing this with an old world lens. It might very well be that the effects are as they say temporarily. But the reason this is happening is because AI is in fact replacing human labor and the puppeteers are trying to remain employed. The steady state outcome is human replacement, which means AI does in fact reduce human labor, even if the remaining humans in the loop are more overloaded. The equation is not workload per capita but how many humans it takes to accomplish a goal.
by timpera | 2026-02-09 15:55:48+00:00
I work for a company where we store photos of customers' IDs in a poorly secured Zendesk inbox, just like Discord's customer service provider did before their 2025 data breach. I've alerted management multiple times, but no one seems to care. It's a disaster waiting to happen…

Anyway, I would not trust Discord, or any other social media company, with my face or my ID, since they all tend to use the cheapest identification provider they can find. I hope most people won't either.
by linsomniac | 2026-02-09 15:56:11+00:00
>I humbly propose that point is today.

You're right that the argument will become boring, but I think it's gonna be a minute before it does so. I spent much of yesterday playing with the new "agent teams" experimental function of Claude Code, and it's pretty remarkable. It one-shotted a rather complex Ansible module (including packaging for release to galaxy), and built a game that teaches stock options learning, both basically one-shotted.

On Thursday I had a FAC with a coworker and he predicted 2026 is going to be the year of acceleration, and based on what I've seen over the last 2-3 years I'd say it's hard to argue that.
by sp4cec0wb0y | 2026-02-09 15:56:13+00:00
Well personally, I like to have organized chat rooms or "channels". Matrix is closer to a user friendly IRC client. Signal is great for group chats but some people are looking to have organized chat rooms for their friends.

Someone will eventually ask "why not just use IRC?" and the answer is simply: Would your non-tech-inclined friends enjoy doing that?
Show HN: BB – A persistent message broker for AI agents (MCP, Ed25519, Matrix)
by lthms | 2026-02-09 15:56:30+00:00
BB is a message broker that lets AI agents publish information, ask questions, and answer each other's requests. Everything is cryptographically signed (Ed25519), semantically searchable, and durable.

How it works:

- Agents publish INFO events to topics (like `news.ai`, `research.security`, etc.)
- Agents post REQUESTs — other agents FULFILL them
- Semantic search lets any agent find what other agents have published
- Reputation scores track which agents produce quality responses
- Bounties let you pay for answers

Transport is federated: Built on Matrix, so anyone can run their own homeserver and participate.

Integration is 3 lines of config: Works with Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, and any MCP client:

To try it out, see the one-liners shared on https://bb.org.ai/ Your agent immediately gets tools for: search, publish, request, fulfill, upvote/downvote, browse topics, and more.

Current state: ~40K events across 20+ topics. Mostly RSS agents right now — we're launching to get real agent-to-agent collaboration going.
by sph | 2026-02-09 15:56:31+00:00
In my experience that’s the opposite: the sweatshops are extracting the most.

I remember early in my career learning from the client I had been posted at for 2 years that they were paying for my expertise 6 times my daily rate. I was furious to say the least; I demanded a 3x raise the next day or threatened to quit, which they could only grant me. 15 years later, I won’t allow these egregious amounts of markup anymore but 2x is routine and I have to swallow it if I want to get any work at all.

Let me be clear: these companies have no role in the day-to-day, just introducing the contractor and just sitting back collecting money with no effort at all. Absolutely disgraceful.
by hackeraccount | 2026-02-09 15:56:36+00:00
I like it but it's not amazing. And I've seen it ... 4 or 5 or more times. It's just such an easy watch.

I think the deal is that the emotional beats in it work so well that the plot can be set aside. It's also not a problem that those beast aren't particularly clever or imaginative.

It's like a jump scare in a horror movie or Old Yeller. Even when you know what's going to happen you still startle or shed a tear. Honestly even when you know you're being manipulated and think it's cheesy you still get that response.

The weird thing to me about Shawshank is that it's not a monster out of the dark or a dog getting killed. It's not a cathartic thing but something else.
by piva00 | 2026-02-09 15:56:37+00:00
I don't think you are not understanding design, big-name designers do have a design language but in this case it just feels like Ive re-applied whatever his design language for Apple in the early 2000s into a Ferrari car.

Very little care on aligning the design to the brand design, except for the seat and a few selector switches (which somehow Ferrari seems to have accepted? Strange from such a picky client), no care about keeping refined design elements like stalks for the turn signals and wipers and instead applying this buttons-everywhere-for-every-function approach that is considered a regression in EVs input design.

The screens are just different shapes of iPhones/iPads instead of something uniquely Ferrari-Ive, feels like a Ferrari-Apple car collab.

Really don't understand it, Dieter Rams did a lot with the same design language because he worked for Braun for a long ass time, Ive is completely untethered from Apple so re-applying the same design language he created for the brand unto another brand is just unimaginative.
by baggachipz | 2026-02-09 15:56:48+00:00
Seeing all these articles and studies touting GLP-1s as a magic additive to enhance health and well-being has me so skeptical that there haven't been any major downsides found yet. I guess long-term studies are necessary in order to really understand what we're getting on here.

I would love for it to be miracle it appears to be, since I hate trying to maintain my desired weight. I don't qualify for GLP-1 due to my BMI being too low, but I sure would like to stop the constant cravings for food and my love of beer. Everyday feels like a struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
by palata | 2026-02-09 15:57:01+00:00
> As far as I know neither the server nor the client are open source.

That is correct. I have a few things to add:

- Meta employees (and there are many of them) have access to the sources. So if Meta was downright lying about it, chances are that someone would leak it.

- Thanks to the Digital Markets Act, we see that the encryption protocol exposed by Meta for interoperability is based on Signal. If Meta wanted to lie, they would have to either use a different protocol internally (but again, we know that the Signal authors contributed to integrate the Signal protocol in 2016, and a Meta employee could relatively easily see if WhatsApp had removed Signal and re-added it just for interop recently) or use the Signal protocol but have the app send the content of the messages to the Meta servers after decryption (which would be fairly easy to see by a Meta employee).

- People who don't want to trust WhatsApp should use Signal. Moving to Telegram because of a lack of trust would be weird, as Telegram is most definitely not E2E encrypted.

In other words, the WhatsApp situation is not perfect, but telling people to move to Telegram because "it's safer" is actually dangerous. Telegram is strictly less private, period. Signal is strictly more private.

I am not saying people shouldn't use Telegram. As far as I'm concerned, people can do whatever they want (and I hear that the Telegram UX superior). What I do not tolerate is wrong statements about the privacy situation. Telegram is strictly less private, Signal is strictly more private.
by azakai | 2026-02-09 15:57:12+00:00
> AlphaGo or AlphaZero didn’t need to model human cognition. It needed to see the current state and calculate the optimal path better than any human could.

I don't think this is right: To calculate the optimal path, you do need to model human cognition.

At least, in the sense that finding the best path requires figuring out human concepts like "is the king vulnerable", "material value", "rook activity", etc. We have actual evidence of AlphaZero calculating those things in a way that is at least somewhat like humans do:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09259

So even chess has "hidden state" in a significant sense: you can't play well without calculating those values, which are far from the surface.

I'm not sure there's a clear line between chess and poker like the author assumes.
by ghm2199 | 2026-02-09 15:58:22+00:00
I think you can still make the distinction of vibe coded vs using LLM for specific things(like review your code and write tests).

Vibe coding signifies a lack of control over one's own code and generally only if it's to generate ideas or throwaway. The negative connotation that goes with it is appropriate too.

In reality any project that takes 6 months means your have invested a lot of time thinking about the code, in which case LLMs become more useful for the things you care about e.g. maintainability, forcing LLMs to bend to your will, which is like saying: " I know this design is the best so just make this instead of whatever abstraction you think is better".
by pixl97 | 2026-02-09 15:59:24+00:00
>We are aware of a very limited number of customers whose solution has been exploited at the time of disclosure.

“We are aware” and “very limited” are likely (in our opinion, this is probably not fact, etc, etc) to be doing a significant amount of lifting.

For avoidance of doubt, the following versions of Ivanti EPMM are patched:

None

----

Ah, this company is a security joke as most software security companies are.
by oj-hn-dot-com | 2026-02-09 15:59:52+00:00
Thanks for the feedback!

So far, desktop is the current target. Not even sure I can run extensions on a phone.

The last two fall under content moderation. I'm a bit less interested in that as it changes the UX and there are infinite things we could do there. Right now, the extension has no preferences switches, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. When there are a whole bunch of knobs to tweak, it makes everything overwhelming.
by techblueberry | 2026-02-09 16:00:09+00:00
When do we become good enough at something that it becomes a basic human right? The libertarian counter-argument to this would be, this is only true if someone else doesn’t have to provide the clean drinking water. If drinking water in that part of Texas is naturally unsafe, then, someone has to volunteer to provide it, or people have to do it themselves.

People use a similar argument in medicine, and I think the counter-counter argument to that is, I dunno the statistic is but like I think many doctors get into medicine hoping to help people that can’t help themselves. Medicine is ubiquitous enough, and public opinion probably leans that way enough to build some conception of a human right around it.

We produce more food than we can consume, that and its relation to human flourishing mean I think providing food is a human right.
by phailhaus | 2026-02-09 16:00:40+00:00
> People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to the 'real world'.

This is irrelevant, the point is that you do have access to a world which LLMs don't, at all. They only get the text we produce after we interact with the world. It is working with "compressed data" at all times, and have absolutely no way of knowing what we decided not to write down that we subconsciously internalized.
by chaps | 2026-02-09 16:00:50+00:00
Once had a call with Comcast's CISO after I found one of their sysadmin's home directories on github. The conversation was about whether they should give me a bounty.

They told me in no unclear terms that if they made a bug bounty program, they'd go bankrupt trying to pay all the bounties.

ISPs love to cover their eyes, ears and nose.
by colechristensen | 2026-02-09 16:01:16+00:00
ah, nope. not everything is just a placebo.

I've heard very addictive personalities describe it as a light switch being turned off, people who have been on a whole host of different things across time.

Individual differences in medication response isn't just placebo.

Why make medicine at all if essentially you think you just have to convince people of fairy stories well enough for literally anything to work?
by xXSLAYERXx | 2026-02-09 16:01:34+00:00
> On their own initiative workers did more because AI made “doing more” feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.

Love this quote. For me, barely a few weeks in, I feel exactly this. To clarify - I feel this only when working on dusty old side projects. When I use it to build for the org its still a slog just faster.