MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by IshKebab | 2026-02-18 16:36:06+00:00
It seems weird to require an entirely new programming language for this tbh. They make the claim that it is special because it's not Turing-complete, but that's nonsense. Turing completeness is almost never a property that is important. I think in this case they're equating Turing incompleteness with "doesn't take a long time to execute" but that isn't really the case at all.

The property you really want is "can be cancelled after a certain amount of compute time - ideally a deterministic amount", and you can obviously do that with Turing complete languages.
by lawouach | 2026-02-18 16:36:10+00:00
I spent the last few months analyzing marathon coding sessions (300 to 1,200 turns) with agents like Claude Code and OpenCode.

I wanted to solve a simple performance problem: replaying these sessions for memory indexing was too slow and expensive because I extracted information using LLM on each turn.

I ran into two learnings:

1. You can’t just skip "noise" turns for search. Raw text embeddings crushed "smart" LLM-extracted summaries (88.5% vs 73.9% recall). The signal is distributed across every turn.

2. Frustration is a lagging indicator. Failure wouldn't happen at turn 699; it would start at turn 400 (on one of my dataset). Basically, by the time you snap, the agent has been drifting for hundreds of turns. Makes sense I suppose, you're happy until you're not.

I ended up building a "trajectory regulator" that measures structural instability (logic churn, symbol repetition) in real-time to intervene before the "death spiral" kicks in. Essentially, I wanted to reduce the number of times I'd grow frustrated against the agent.

I wrote up the data and the mental model I used to build the controller. Curious if others have measured similar patterns in long-running agent sessions.
by Daishiman | 2026-02-18 16:36:17+00:00
> I've watched teams go from deploying weekly to deploying 5x/day after adopting AI coding tools. Their velocity metrics looked incredible. Their incident rate also tripled. Not because the code was worse per se, but because they were changing more things faster than their observability and testing could keep up with.

But this an improvement! The features/incident rate improves as you have more incidents but fewer in relation to the increased velocity. This may or may not be a valid tradeoff depending on the impact of incidents.

At least in my org we have an understanding that the product side will have to change drastically to accommodate the different rates of code development.
by boringops-dan | 2026-02-18 16:36:41+00:00
I'd love to know if the people responsible for 'Responsible Gaming' actually think it has an impact or if they're just enjoying the stable income and performative nature of the job.

In Ontario, we have Jon Hamm next to sports cars and supermodels telling us about betting limits. Everyone in the 'regulation chain' makes money on the back of the people who actually need the help. It's awful.
by userulluipeste | 2026-02-18 16:37:02+00:00
The only reason for a source code to be is for humans to read it, bun when the source code gets churned (by AI agents) in too large of a quantity for any human to realistically read and analyze, then what's the point of having a source code in the first place? Generating binary directly simply makes sense. Working with binary does, even when a human is involved, as long as there's an AI helper as well. The human simply can ask the AI assistant to explain whatever logical aspects behind the binary code and instruct the AI agent to modify the binary code directly, if necessary. That may be scary and not easy to accept. Going further with this idea, even the written text may become "too costly to work with" when there will be an AI agent to verbally or graphically serve the human with whatever informational aspect of a given text that could be of interest in a given situation.
by tzlatanov | 2026-02-18 16:37:05+00:00
Hey HN! I built allsee because I wanted a file & web search tool that works the same way on Windows, macOS, and Linux — and doesn't send anything off your machine and it's fully customizable.

A few things I'm happy with under the hood:

- Search doesn't scan the full index on every keystroke. It uses a trigram index to narrow candidates, then FST sets (via the `fst` crate) for prefix and fuzzy search, and RoaringBitmap indexes for extension/type filters. Filtering by `ext:rs` is a single bitwise AND.
- The index snapshots to disk via memory-mapped I/O so cold startup loads in under a second. A write-ahead log handles crash recovery.
- Filesystem changes (create, rename, delete) are picked up in real-time via the `notify` crate — no manual rescans needed.

The search syntax supports substring, prefix (`mod*`), fuzzy (`confg~`), regex (`/main\d+/`), and filters (`ext:rs,toml`, `type:dir`, `-ext:log`).

It has a template system, where you can get creative and customize it any way you want, it doesn't enforce anything on the user.

It's built with Rust + Tauri v2 + Svelte 5. MIT licensed.
by crimsoneer | 2026-02-18 16:37:45+00:00
But this one isn't a trick question either right... it's just basic maths, and a quirk of how our brain works that means plenty of people don't engage the part of their brain that goes "I should stop and think this through", and just rush to the first number that pops into their head. But that number is wrong, and is a result of our own weird "training" (in that we all have a bunch of mental shortcuts we use for maths, and sometimes they lead us astray).

"A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"

And yet 50% of MIT students fall for this sort of thing[1]. They're not unintelligent, it's just a specific problem can make your brain fail in weird specific ways. Intelligence isn't just a scale from 0-100, or some binary yes or no question, it's a bunch of different things. LLMs probably are less intelligent on a bunch of scales, but this one specific example doesn't tell you much that they have weird quirks just like we do.

[1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/08953300577519673...
by insin | 2026-02-18 16:37:48+00:00
Any plans to create a combined server + web app template using @hono/vite-dev-server for local development, with both sides of auth preconfigured, with the server serving up the built web app in production?

I've used this setup for my last few projects and it's so painless, and with recent versions of Node.js which can strip TypeScript types I don't even need a build step for the server code.

Edit: oops, I didn't see nkzw-tech/fate-template, which has something like this, but running client and server separately instead
by aetherson | 2026-02-18 16:38:44+00:00
Nonsense. There are lots of things that you need more than three strikes for, especially on a platform that you expect to use for decades.

I'm not here to say that Facebook's enforcement behavior is optimal, and I don't know that a "17 strike policy" is a full description of their enforcement behavior. But there are plenty of behaviors that you want to discourage but not go nuclear about.
by pjc50 | 2026-02-18 16:38:46+00:00
I was going to see if I could quote some job postings from my employer to compare this, and then discovered that even the intranet jobs board does not have salary ranges posted. Sigh. Going to have to feed that back to someone.

> Software engineers make great digital logic verification engineers. They can also gradually be trained to do design too. There are significant and valuable skill and knowledge crossovers.

> Software engineers lack the knowledge to learn analogue design / verification, and there’s little to no knowledge-crossover.

Yes. These are much more specific skills than HN expects, you need an EE degree or equivalent to do analogue IC design while you do not to do software.

However I think the very specific-ness is a problem. If you train yourself in React you might not have the highest possible salary but you'll never be short of job postings. There are really not a lot of analogue designers, they have fairly low turnover, and you would need to work in specific locations. If the industry contracts you are in trouble.
by Daishiman | 2026-02-18 16:39:05+00:00
The question to ask is, better than which human?

The top 25% percentile of coders in my org definitely code better than most agents. The rest? I trust the output of an LLM to be far more consistent when adding/deleting features across service layers than a human that can create accidental typos. Same thing with bog-standard React components or Docker build scripts.
by johncoltrane | 2026-02-18 16:39:08+00:00
I prefer my background dark so light colorschemes are not really an area I've explored seriously. Also, dark colorschemes are much easier to design than light ones due to the disproportionate amount of light a white, say, background emits compared to the amount emitted by text. It dramatically reduces the number of colors you can use.

I have one here: https://github.com/romainl/vim-sweet16 but it is intentionally weird and essentially unmaintained.
by justin66 | 2026-02-18 16:39:20+00:00
> Based on the story line alone, I quit when, for no apparent reason, during a tense moment in the story, the lead sales guy has a kissing session with another guy. The lead guy isn't gay. I don't think the guy he kissed was gay.

1. "Kissing session," "kissed," etc. Funny stuff. I hope you don't really think they were just looking for wine when they were off camera.

2. He's bi. We meet an ex boyfriend in a later episode, although the fact of his ahem "kissing session" would seem to be evidence enough.

3. The reason is obvious enough if you watch through the end of the dinner.
by iugtmkbdfil834 | 2026-02-18 16:39:25+00:00
Sigh. No.

<< My solution does anticipate real-world human interactions: don't give rich landowners tax breaks. This is baked into the premise of having a high tax.

If it fails to address those now ( because those are already high ), what, exactly makes you think, it will work better if we increase those taxes? If anything, increasing those taxes will become an incentive to find ways to mitigate their impact..

The solution to remove those for everyone across the board, but we can't do that. We can't have an even playing field.
by elliotbnvl | 2026-02-18 16:39:45+00:00
I used to agree completely, and a part of me still does. But the part of me that's scared that this isn't true is getting louder and louder.

I'm a novelist and software engineer. The value of one of those skills is trending to zero. I'm not seeing much to suggest, in the face of the hockey stick of doom, that the other isn't.
by 52-6F-62 | 2026-02-18 16:39:54+00:00
I think, in time, it will be shown to be the real, persistent differentiator. And far more valuable.

But it's also not a moat in the same way. It's accessible to everyone, but you have to actually disregard the parts of yourself that want to drive hard in some direction just for money or power or external validation.

From the look of things right now, it may take some pain before that really gets to shine.
Show HN: ShopLurker
by tkp-415 | 2026-02-18 16:39:58+00:00
Released this a few years ago with my partner. It scrapes the inventory of multiple skateboard shops and lets users search the combined results.

Figured Hacker News might appreciate it, but also concerned an influx of traffic might crash it. Guess this is a stress test.

Built from scratch with PHP and MySQL / MariaDB :)

Shoutout to php -s localhost and scp
Show HN: Nonprofit Results-Based Management logic model skill for OpenClaw
by vassilbek | 2026-02-18 16:40:11+00:00
Hi HN! I built an open-source OpenClaw skill for nonprofit and NGO teams that need donor-ready program logic models.

What it generates:
-A 5-level results chain (Inputs -> Activities -> Outputs -> Outcomes -> Impact)
-Theory of Change (if/then pathway + assumptions)
-Specific-Measurable-Achievable-Relevant-Time-bound outcome indicators
-Sustainable Development Goals alignment
-Monitoring and data collection plan

Who it is for:
-Nonprofit program managers
-Monitoring and Evaluation / Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and -Learning specialists
-Grant writers and NGO consultants

Repo:
https://github.com/vassiliylakhonin/Nonprofit-RBM-Skill-For-...

I would really value feedback on:

Clarity of outputs for real grant workflows
Missing metrics/templates for NGO Monitoring and Evaluation teams
Gaps in donor alignment (United States Agency for International Development / United Nations / European Union formats)
by hnbad | 2026-02-18 16:40:13+00:00
The tell-tale phrase of a soon-to-be victim in a relationship with an abuser is "he's not like that when we're alone", not "I can fix him".

There's a difference between confidence and dominance. It's difficult to grasp given how much our culture tends to conflate them as desirable traits in men but the main distinction is that one is about resilience and the other is about abuse.

Confidence is attractive. Unless you're deeply insecure (and abusers often are insecure even if they try to mask it in displays of dominance) you're likely attracted to confidence in potential partners - yes, even as a straight guy. Just like an insecure person can use dominance to mask their insecurity, a confident person can also act submissively. This isn't just true in BDSM, it's actually a social dynamic many people engage in completely naturally.

An abuser (or I guess the pop-psych term is usually "narcissist" but let's not open the can of worms on whether that is ever applied "correctly") will often seek out a confident partner they can manipulate into a position of vulnerability they can take advantage of to control them.

The problem with power is that it is nearly inseparable from abuse. Abuse will inevitable arise from any power imbalance because the mere circumstance of being in a position of power can easily lead to absuses of power unless you're extremely diligent about your use of it. A healthy social dynamic always requires a balance of power - even if there may be a local imbalance in any one-on-one dynamic it can be offset by the wider network if it is stable and strong enough. If you look at powerful men in modern society almost none of them are actually confident. The few who are tend to paradoxically stand out for their humility and deference (i.e. taking credit for their losses and sharing credit for their accomplishments). But this is of course much more difficult than starting out from a position of power and fearfully lashing out at any potential rival.
Show HN: The Answering Machine – A screenless AI phone for kids with questions
by tdaltonc | 2026-02-18 16:40:13+00:00
I built an AI voice agent inside a retro orange rotary phone for my 4-year-old. He picks up the handset, asks a question, and gets a spoken answer. No screen; no app; the phone is the whole interface.
Behind the scenes, a set of AI agents process the conversations and recommend books, outings, and activities to parents based on what their kid(s) is curious about. The idea is to turn a child's questions into real-world experiences (library books, construction site visits, tide pool trips) without anyone having to plan a curriculum.

67 MODE: There's also a privacy mode (dial 67) for older kids to ask questions they might not want to discuss with their parents. Safety guardrails still apply, but no summaries are shared.
Hardware is a Grandstream ATA bridging an analog phone to Cartesia's voice API + Claude. The philosophical write-up is at the link above; the technical README is at https://github.com/TDaltonC/the-answering-machine.
by atomicnumber3 | 2026-02-18 16:40:28+00:00
"The value of human thinking is going down."

No! I fundamentally reject this.

The value of unoriginal thinking has gone down. Thinking which is quotidian and pedestrian has become even more worthless than it already was.

The value of true, original human thinking has gone up even higher than it ever has been.

Do we think no new companies will ever succeed now? Of course not. Who, then, will succeed? It will be innovators and original thinkers and those with excellent taste.

Why did stripe make big inroads in developer spaces even if they are in an ultra competitive low margin market? They had excellent taste in developer ergonomics. They won big not because they coded well or fast (though I know pc thinks their speed is a big factor, I think he is mostly incorrect on that) but because they had an actual sense of originality and propriety to their approach! And it resonated.

So many other products are similar. You can massively disrupt a space simply by having an original angle on it that nobody else has had. Look at video games! Perhaps the best example of this is how utterly horribly AAA games have been doing, while indie hits produce instantly timeless entries.

And soon this will be the ONLY thing that still differentiates. Artistic propriety, originality, and taste.

(And, of course, the ever-elusive ability to actually execute that I also don't think LLMs will help with.)
by jonas21 | 2026-02-18 16:40:48+00:00
When people say "it's a skill issue", this is what they mean.

If you say: "Generate a strong password", then Claude will do what's reported in the article.

If you say: "Generate a strong password using Python", then Claude will write code using the `secrets` module, execute it, and report the result, and you'll actually get a strong password.

To get good results out of an LLM, you need spend a few minutes understanding how they work. And this is a good demonstration because it's so simple.
by rappatic | 2026-02-18 16:41:12+00:00
Half of these examples aren't even lies. The right column of this table is full of whataboutisms and fabricated statistics. For example,

> Zuckerberg: "We don't allow people under the age of 13 on our service. So if we find anyone who's under the age of 13, we remove them from our service."

> What the evidence says: Internal document stating the goal for Meta to be the most relevant social products for kids worldwide. To do so, Meta will focus on "each youth life stage, ‘Kid’ (6-10), ‘Tween’ (10-13), and ‘Teen’ 13+."

The fact that Meta eventually wants to appeal to kids doesn't mean they currently allow kids on their platform.

And here's an example of a fabricated statistic:

> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. (Link)

That link leads to a PDF which says "The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social
media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram." This is a completely different statistic: the percentage of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media vs. the percentage "of all child sex trafficking" (the vast majority of which does not occur through social media).

Doing stuff like this destroys the website's credibility when it comes to the actual lies.
by riffraff | 2026-02-18 16:41:36+00:00
I think the title on HN doesn't reflect all that is in TFA, but rather the linked article[0]. Fowler's article is interesting tho.

I do like the idea that "all code is tech debt", and we shouldn't want to produce more of it than we need. But it's also worth remembering that debt is not bad per se, buying a house with a mortgage is also debt and can be a good choice for many reasons.

[0]: https://thenewstack.io/ai-velocity-debt-accelerator/
by norbert515 | 2026-02-18 16:42:36+00:00
While building has becomes way cheaper (and probably is going to become even cheaper in the future), is building something exceptional really that much cheaper now?

AI has certainly made it so much simpler to just pump "something" out (slop), but did it actually make building something that went through hundreds and thousands of iterations significantly cheaper?

I also like to think AI is really raising the bar for everybody. In the past, you could easily get away launching a product with a crappy landing page and a couple of bugs here and there, is that still the case? Don't people just expect a perfect landing page at this point (when's the last time anybody specifically talked/ thought about responsiveness?) paired with a flawless onboarding etc.?
by moregrist | 2026-02-18 16:42:37+00:00
I was there in the 90s. I built a few bad static HTML pages. It wasn’t hard. There are lots of stories of non-CS / non-technical people making stuff from the dotcom era.

Making a dynamic page was harder. Integrating with a payment system was almost magical; there’s a reason PayPal became big.

But what was truly hard, and continues to be hard, is building a page, either static or dynamic, that people actually want to visit.
by PurpleRamen | 2026-02-18 16:42:44+00:00
> I challenge anyone to work out what this code does

It's unusual, but pretty obvious. In single steps it's basically this:

a, b = 1, [0, 1, 2, 3]
b[a] = b

which would be b[1]=b because a==1. So this creates a self referencing list. The deeper reason here is, everything is a pointer to data in memory, even if in source code we see the actual data. That's why b[1] is storing the pointer to the list, not the data of the list.

If someone is doing BS like this, they deserve spanking. But banning the whole concept because people are unaware or how something is to be used properly is strange. But then again, it seems people have a bit of a problem how python really works and how it's different from other languages.
Show HN: LockFS
by 0xGhostInAJar | 2026-02-18 16:42:52+00:00
LockFS is a small open-source Java tool that encrypts files individually instead of bundling everything into a single container.

Many vault systems rely on large encrypted blobs or container files. They can become complex to handle as they grow and complicate backups across mixed storage sizes.

LockFS takes a file-level approach:
- Each file is encrypted independently
- No monolithic container growth
- Files can be added, moved, or removed without rewriting a large archive

Contributions and feedback are welcome.
by gorgoiler | 2026-02-18 16:43:57+00:00
The claude.ai web UI has a bug right now. If you inline some code by typing an opening backtick then the closing backtick swallows your space, puts the next letter you type after the code, then everything else back inside the code span.

One day we might be able to write software without bugs. That day is clearly not here yet.

(Firefox in Linux if anyone wants to repro. Can’t file a bug as it’s a closed, proprietary piece of software.)
by thoughtfulchris | 2026-02-18 16:44:09+00:00
> The people winning mostly had a head start. Or they have money. Usually both.

It feels like that doesn't it? But, as one counter-point, OpenClaw. :)

Btw I did a deep-dive into AI moats last week and wrote a blog post about it. Relationships were most likely the strongest moat from my research - but definitely having a large amount of money in reserves helps. https://www.cjroth.com/blog/2026-02-11-moats-in-the-age-of-a...
by swiftcoder | 2026-02-18 16:44:12+00:00
> My needs are simple

Congrats, but I think you may be in a small minority when it comes to developers shopping for laptops.

Personally, I had to upgrade from a late-model i9 MacBook Pro to this M2 MacBook Pro, because the npm + docker setup at work was taking upwards of 20 minutes for a production build...