MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by keiferski | 2026-02-24 17:29:44+00:00
I spent a couple months last year writing an essay about consciousness for the Berggruen essay contest. Ultimately they ended up picking a guy that already wrote books about the topic, alas…

Anyway, I plan on posting it online somewhere eventually, but HN seems like a good place to throw the introduction out there.

The basic argument I have is that consciousness is a red herring, a concept that was relevant historically but is increasingly routed around by cybernetic systems that aren’t interested in interior states.

Here’s the intro. If you find this interesting, please let me know!

MacGuffin. Whodunit. Smoking gun. Fall guy. The detective fiction genre is an underappreciated source of terminology for unsolved problems, useful not only for criminal mysteries, but also for unanswered questions in philosophy and science. One such term is the red herring: an apparently useful thing, that upon further inspection, is actually a distraction from solving the main mystery at hand.

The concept of consciousness may be such a red herring. It has occupied the minds of
philosophers for centuries and increasingly frames debates around AI, animal rights, and
medical ethics, among other issues. And yet, even as consciousness is rhetorically dominant, in practice it is increasingly ignored and routed around in real-world situations. When rights are bestowed and resources allocated, the mechanism by which these are done is increasingly uninterested in interior consciousness.

This is not because the problem of consciousness has been solved, or because a revolutionary new theory has novel insights. Rather, it is the natural consequence of cybernetic systems concerned only with output, not internal states or abstract ideals.

What is needed, then, is a genealogy of the concept of consciousness, in the manner of Nietzsche, Foucault, or Charles Taylor. Not a new theory of consciousness, but a story of how the concept developed and came to underlie significant legal, moral, and philosophical systems, and how that foundation is rapidly fading away.

What this genealogy reveals is not merely the history of a single concept or the changing of societal systems, but a deeper human shift: the erosion of interiority itself and the triumph of the external. In simpler terms: a new, largely exterior idea of the self is forming, while at the same time, it is becoming more difficult to conceive of an interior-focused one.

This essay will trace the history of the concept of consciousness, show how it is being routed around by output-focused systems, then ask what effect this has on human life, and how to address it.
by WA | 2026-02-24 17:30:46+00:00
I once mailed the maker of a little German indie game called Clonk about wanting to learn programming. It was my favorite game for a while. Never heard back from him, which I found disappointing.

Now, I answer every single email my app customers are sending me and have been doing this for close to 20 years and I get a lot of positive reviews for the great customer support.
by jarito | 2026-02-24 17:31:04+00:00
I built something like this a long time ago. I actually used a FUSE filesystem to present a file interface to the calling application, then a policy engine to determine who could access the file and what the contents were. The FUSE driver could also make callouts to third party APIs (my example was the OpenStack key manager - barbican), but could just as easily be 1Password or something similar.
by cloverich | 2026-02-24 17:31:06+00:00
Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2].

[1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...

[2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20
by engineer_22 | 2026-02-24 17:31:33+00:00
My final year of college I lived 2 miles off campus and would daily bicycle to school. In previous years I would commute via car as I lived too far to make the trip conveniently. I perceived greater emotional well-being during the 1 year period of moderate daily exercise. My grades also improved dramatically and I was more resilient during periods of sleep deprivation or intense study. As an adult with a family it has been more difficult to establish a pattern of daily physical activity. Going to the gym is very boring for me.
by someone7x | 2026-02-24 17:31:36+00:00
> If cobalt never existed in DRC, what exactly would they be doing for work and subsistence? Is this horribly unsafe and in-humane form of work a step up from whatever alternatives they have, or perhaps from nothing at all.
Again I am not condoning it, I am just wondering

Is just wondering the new just asking questions?

Clearly they would be doing something else, perhaps what they did before the mine opened.

I feel by framing it as either a step up from nothing at all or from something lesser, you've already condoned it.
by salleisha | 2026-02-24 17:31:40+00:00
If you’re a founder, your time is worth at least $500/hr. Probably more.

So why are you spending three hours on a Sunday afternoon categorizing $12 receipts? It’s the classic founder trap: doing $20/hr admin work because you’re "already in the spreadsheet anyway."

But it’s not just the hours. It’s the mental tax. It’s the nagging feeling that you’re going to get audited in three years because you clicked the wrong dropdown menu in a frantic rush to meet a deadline.

We built TaxHero AI to kill that anxiety.

We don't do "disruptive AI bookkeeping." We just make sure your taxes are done, and you never have to think about the IRS while you’re trying to build a company.

Back to work.

taxhero.vc

Free personalized tax calendar for startups: taxhero.vc/checkin

#startups #startuptaxes #ccorp #Delaware #taxes
by Lightstate | 2026-02-24 17:31:51+00:00
Ah yes, I did similar, I pitched a game idea I had called "shadowstorm", drew out a sketch of the protagonist and sent it to Sony PlayStation address.

They sent me a letter thanking me and said that they don't develop games in a nice way.

I immediately filed that letter with the orange Sony letterhead and still have it til this day.

Good times.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-02-24 17:31:58+00:00
I just started the process of migrating to them yesterday. They are still very affordable. But a bit less. I'm estimating that our quite lean GCP setup cost is going to be cut to about 20-25% when I'm done. So, it doesn't affect my decision to go with them literally yesterday morning.

It's all a bit barebones and primitive but I don't mind. I spent yesterday tweaking some ansible scripts with codex to setup stuff like bastion hosts and nat networking. I expect I have most of the rest ready in a few days.

The benefits of having an uncomplicated docker compose and boring tech stack. No microservices. Just a monolith.

One issue that I don't have a solution for yet is disk encryption and encrypted bucket content. Probably solvable but not natively supported. Might trigger compliance issues with some of our customers.
by slopinthebag | 2026-02-24 17:32:08+00:00
I agree mostly with your metaphor, I think perhaps I disagree slightly on how it's applied. You don't need to create your own tools to create art, but I don't necessarily map the "tools" to code. The act of programming is mapping information to hardware, the value is in the information, and using LLM's to bypass the phase where you obtain, synthesise, and extend that information is the part where you lose the benefits of iteration. If you're just using the LLM as a mechanical tool to output code, it's mostly not different from, say, using speech-to-text to output code. When you start hearing things like "I don't care about the quality of the code, just it's outputs" that starts sounding like someone isn't iterating on the information which is the crucial bit.
by ABCLAW | 2026-02-24 17:32:15+00:00
>Refusing to improve early, probabilistic diagnosis because today’s treatments are modest confuses sequence with outcome.

While you're right from the perspective of humanity taking the steps of gathering data then tackling the disease, most developed countries have single payer healthcare systems that require some level of cost-benefit analysis to approve covering new diagnostic systems.

Alzheimer's disease progression doesn't seem to have any notable preventative indications other than 'eat well, exercise and stay mentally active', all of which are standard recommendations.

Recall that this isn't an issue deciding between funding and non-funding. It's an issue deciding between funding Alzheimer's diagnostics, new GMP agonists, new screening options for highly preventable cancers, etc. Building out a dataset is nice but unless that's surplus money redirected from other programs it's going to come at a real flesh and blood cost.
by dyingkneepad | 2026-02-24 17:32:18+00:00
I also learned Prolog in the university.

In the Classsic AI course we had to implement gaming AI algorithms (A*, alpha-beta pruning, etc) and in Prolog for one specific assignment. After trying for a while, I got frustrated and asked the teacher if I could do it in Ruby instead. He agreed: he was the kind of person who just couldn't say no, he was too nice for his own good. I still feel bad about it.

Rest In Peace, Alexandre.
by 99954bb63ccc | 2026-02-24 17:32:34+00:00
> So a truly great engineer also needs to be arrogant/assertive/loud as that is the only way to fight other arrogant people. The "quiet confident" engineers opinion will be overruled by loud incomptent engineers.

What is the underlying cause here? Or is this just a product of group psychology...(?) I feel like it's typically weak and/or incompetent management but hesitating to jump right to that because it's largely out of most people's control beyond a job change.
by sigmar | 2026-02-24 17:32:34+00:00
https://archive.is/plU2X

>A similar signal has been picked up by a traditional European forecast model, which is generally considered the best of its kind. But as of Tuesday morning, a powerful new European AI model sees a lower threat.

this article is frustratingly short on specifics and doesn't even name models. which ai models? ecmwf's aifs model?
by helterskelter | 2026-02-24 17:32:42+00:00
Oftentimes the records aren't in the hands of either party and need to be subpoenaed. When you get them, they can open up entirely new lines of inquiry. Opposition will fight this tooth and nail so that the evidence can't be included, or they'll go on a fishing expedition under the guise of having all the facts on the table, and the court might just allow them. This process can take a very long time, and from what I've seen, the higher the stakes, the more the court will be willing to allow it to happen, so nobody can cry to the appeals court that something important was left out. Judges don't like their rulings overturned.
by encom | 2026-02-24 17:32:48+00:00
I can't really think of a tech company that does not hate its users. Yes of course there's Framework, but I mean large tech companies. It's all glued shut, proprietary, planned obsolescence, AI slop-ified, privacy invasive and over priced. Feel free to add to the list.

Related anecdote: My old washing machine is about to die, and I was discussing this with a co-worker the other day. He told me, with much excitement, about his new washing machine with AI, and a smartphone app where he can program his own washing cycles. I... just don't feel like I belong on the same planet as this person. It's the polar opposite of what I want.
by stale2002 | 2026-02-24 17:33:26+00:00
Question 1: If a human modifies with themselves with enough sci-fi tier technology are they still "Human"? (And therefore if humans "ascend" past their biology, humanity technically wouldn't survive)

Question 2: If a person cannot conceive that the 1st question is an interesting question, with multiple nuances, are they basically an idiot?
1Password pricing increasing 20% in March
by otterley | 2026-02-24 17:33:37+00:00
Just got an email from 1Password:

Since 2005, 1Password has been on a mission to make security simple, reliable, and accessible for everyone. As the way people work and live online has evolved, so has 1Password.

More recently, we’ve invested significantly in new features that make 1Password even more powerful and effortless to use, helping protect what matters most to you, including:

* Automatic saving of logins and payment details

* Enhanced Watchtower alerts

* Faster, more secure device setup

* AI-powered item naming

* Expanded recovery options

* Proactive phishing prevention

While 1Password has grown substantially in value and capability, our pricing has remained largely unchanged for many years. To continue investing in innovation and the world-class security you expect, we’re updating pricing for Family plans, starting March 27, 2026.

Current vs New Pricing:

* Current price: $59.88 USD / year

* New price: $71.88 USD / year

The new price will take effect at your next renewal, provided it’s on or after March 27, 2026. Those occurring prior to March 27, 2026, will continue at the current pricing until your next renewal.
by lysace | 2026-02-24 17:35:31+00:00
I once flew with ANA to Tokyo/Haneda in First with a rewards-paid ticket for crazy cheap. When I got there and picked up my luggage there was a tag on it, asking me to go to some specific desk. I did. The luggage was a bit janky, but that happens.

They very seriously apologized for breaking my bag. They asked me how much it had cost. I said "around $40, it was just something cheap". A minute later I was sort of ceremoniously handed an envelope with japanese yen notes worth that much.
by npodbielski | 2026-02-24 17:35:53+00:00
At some point OnePlus announced that they will stop sharing firmware blobs. Lineage os team announced that they will be dropping the support. Then after another few years they were back. I remember because I bought 3 and I was planning to stay with that brand because of easy unlock (via ADB), decent price and good Lineage support. Probably OnePlus reconsidered this at some point. Right now fairly new ones have support. Maybe OP was unlucky and bought one of those models from this period of time.
I built a governance layer for multi-agent AI coding – lessons after 6 months
by vincentvandeth | 2026-02-24 17:35:57+00:00
Six months ago I started coordinating multiple AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI) across parallel terminals for a production project. The agents were productive, but I had no idea what they were actually deciding or why.

The problem wasn't capability — it was accountability. An agent would make a choice buried in a 50-file commit, and I'd only find out weeks later when something broke. No trace of which agent did what, when, or based on what context.

So I built a governance layer on top. The core idea: every agent decision gets recorded in an append-only receipt ledger (NDJSON). Each receipt links a specific agent action to a git commit, a dispatch ID, and a quality verdict. The orchestrator (T0) reviews receipts and decides what happens next — approve, hold, or redispatch.

Some things I learned:
1. Sub-agents are a black box. I never use them. When a bug surfaces, you can't trace which agent's context was polluted. Instead, I run independent agents in separate terminals with their own context windows, reporting back to T0.
2. Quality gates need to be deterministic, not LLM-based. An automated advisory checks every completion against pre-registered rules (file size limits, test coverage, open blockers). The LLM proposes, the gate validates. No vibes.
3. Context rotation is unsolved by the ecosystem. When an agent fills its context window mid-task, most workflows just fail. I built an automated rotation pipeline using Claude Code hooks — detects context usage, writes a structured handover, clears the window, and resumes. Zero human intervention.
4. The receipt ledger is the most valuable artifact. After 1100+ entries, patterns emerge: which types of tasks fail, which agents struggle with what, where context pollution happens. That data feeds back into dispatch planning.
5. Terminal locking prevents chaos. Each terminal can only work on one dispatch at a time. Sounds obvious, but without it you get overlapping work, merge conflicts, and agents overwriting each other's changes.

The system runs across 4 tmux panes (T0 orchestrator + 3 worker tracks), supports multiple AI providers, and everything is filesystem-based — no database, no cloud dependency. Open-sourced it recently.

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or specific failure modes.
by fernandopj | 2026-02-24 17:36:25+00:00
That is also why I think it "won" over Slack. Discord solved audio comms for gamers, period. It got so good, that SMB and startups started to migrate for stuff like easy pair-programming, open meetings etc.

Discord IMO won because of a killer trio: 1) good comms 2) full history 3) faster UI over bloated Slack.
by mtw14 | 2026-02-24 17:36:48+00:00
I'm wondering if the post-condition checks change the perspective on this at all, because yes the code is nondeterministic and may execute differently each time. That is the problem this is trying to solve. You define these validation rules and they are deterministic post-condition checks that retry until the validation passes (up to a max retry number). So even if the model changes, and the behavior of that model changes, the post-condition checks should theoretically catch that drift and correct the behavior until it fits the required output.
by aibuildersdig | 2026-02-24 17:36:54+00:00
I noticed most \"prompt guides\" out there are meant for marketing copy or writing emails, which isn't very helpful for us actually building AI infrastructure. \n\nOver the last year of building, I compiled a list of 50 specific prompts designed for:\n- Code architecture and system design\n- SQL/Database generation and indexing\n- Code refactoring using specific design patterns\n- Generating high-quality few-shot datasets for fine-tuning\n- Hallucination checking for RAG pipelines\n\nHere are a couple examples from the list:\n*The Codebase Indexer*: \"Analyze the following project structure and summarize the core business logic, identifying any potential bottlenecks in the data flow between [Service A] and [Service B].\"\n\n*The Hallucination Checker*: \"Compare the following model output against the provided source documentation. Identify any factual inconsistencies or made-up details.\"\n\nIf you want the full list of 50, I send it out to anyone who joins my weekly technical newsletter. We also cover deep dives on the shift to SLMs and building reliable agentic workflows.\n\nYou can grab it here: https://project-1960fbd1.doanything.app\n\n(Hope this helps some of you building this weekend!)
by jakub_g | 2026-02-24 17:37:17+00:00
> In early December, a 35-year-old passenger from Tanzania was impressed to see that all the handles of the suitcases on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area were facing the passengers.

> After the luggage is unloaded and collected in the cargo handling area upon arrival at the airport, ground support personnel manually align the handles of the bags and place them on the conveyor belt.

That's a level of attention to detail that we should be striving for in everything we build.
by Tharre | 2026-02-24 17:37:52+00:00
It's a question of what tradeoffs you're willing to make. If you're making a professional product then sure, but I've checked the chips you suggested and the cheapest one available on JLCPCB seems to be the LPC1820FB at $6.5. If you fuck up a revision or two at 5 pieces each that gets expensive rather quickly for a hobby project.

It's a shame really that ULPI is such a complicated interface, at least compared to RMII or SDIO, otherwise you could just buy a high speed USB ULPI phy and use it with the RP2350 via PIO. Eben even mentioned at some point someone working on a PIO ULPI implementation, but I'm assuming that went nowhere because they couldn't make it work reliably.

An alternative approach I've been considering is using a ch32v305 as a "smart" USB-HS bridge, and connecting the RP2350 via SDIO to it. The problem with that of course is you have to implement most of the USB stack on the ch32v305, and the documentation on those chips isn't great to put it mildly.
by Krishnaa_ | 2026-02-24 17:39:09+00:00
What does the average YC company actually look like? I scraped 793 startups and 1,625 founder bios from the last 5 batches to find out. 27 interactive charts covering: which industries are surging, which are dying, what founders have in common, how partners pick companies, hidden themes in descriptions, and the exact statistical profile of a "default" YC startup. Some surprises: YC funds direct competitors in the same batch. And every partner has a type. Free. No login
by levkk | 2026-02-24 17:39:22+00:00
> Are there some specific standard Postgres test suites you run PgDog through to ensure it's compliant with Postgres standards?

That's right. We have many levels of testing: unit, integration, and acceptance, where we run the same query against an unsharded Postgres database and PgDog, and compare the result.

> what sort of techniques do shard-able NoSQL database employ which makes sharding inherently easier?

They remove features. For example, most of them don't support joins, so each table can be stored anywhere in the cluster with no data locality restrictions. There are no foreign key constraints either, or even transaction support. The list goes on. Ultimately, NoSQL databases are just K/V stores, with a fancy API. Scaling K/V is a solved problem.

> one table in shard 1 has a foreign key to a record in shard 2 how do you prevent Postgres from rejecting that

We don't, at least not yet. We can and will build a more sophisticated query engine that will validate constraints, but it may not always be completely atomic or performant. Cross-shard queries are expensive, because of the laws of physics. For example, if a query is executed outside of a transaction, validating the constraint could introduce a race condition, while in non-sharded Postgres, all queries run inside implicit transactions.
by mystraline | 2026-02-24 17:39:54+00:00
Becoming a billionaire is never done through your hard work.

It is only by exploiting the surplus of large amounts of workers at scale that permits being a billionaire. It is their hard work, not the billionaires.

Now, how much surplus the workers get is primarily the discussion between capitalism, socialism, and communism.

Naturally, capitalists are disinclined in giving ANY of the surplus, and keeping it all for themselves. But when every capitalist does that, thats how we end up with 7 year depression/boom cycles, when the whole economy treats workers poorly.
by amiga386 | 2026-02-24 17:40:02+00:00
It sets a verified lower bound on baggage loss. An achieveable ideal that other airports should aspire to.

Lots of orgs claim to aspire to 5 nines of uptime but can barely manage 2 nines. Kansai airport with an average of about 17 million pax/yr [0] hasn't lost any luggage. Losing one item out of, say, 10 million items a year, would be 7 nines.

[0] https://www.kansai-airports.co.jp/en/business/in-figures/
by vitlyoshin | 2026-02-24 17:40:14+00:00
Many security incidents don’t start with sophisticated exploits; they start with a phone call.
In a recent podcast conversation, we discussed why voice AI is uniquely difficult compared to text-based systems. Speech contains emotional shifts, urgency, cultural nuance, and deviation over time. Modeling that in real time enables detection of social engineering and synthetic voice attacks, but it also introduces ethical trade-offs.
The interesting technical angle is the need for contextual modeling and low-latency inference at scale, especially when most calls are benign and only a tiny fraction are malicious.
Curious how others here think about real-time voice analysis: where does the security benefit outweigh the privacy cost?