MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by JKCalhoun | 2026-02-10 20:50:48+00:00
I'm 61 (retired when I was 57).

I too began with BASIC (but closer to 1980). Although I wrote and published games for the Macintosh for a number of years as I finished up college, my professional career (in the traditional sense) began when I was hired by Apple in 1995 and relocated to the Bay Area.

Yeah, what started out as a great just got worse and worse as time went on.

I suspect though that to a large degree this reflects both the growing complexity of the OS over that time as well as the importance of software in general as it became more critical to people's lives.

Already, even in 1984 when it was first introduced, the Mac had a rich graphics library you would not want to have to implement yourself. (Although famously of course a few apps like Photoshop nonetheless did just that—leaning on the Mac simply for a final call to CopyBits() to display pixels from Adobe's buffer to the screen.)

You kind of have to accept abstraction when networking, multiple cores, multiple processes become integral to the machine. I guess I always understood that and did not feel too put out by it. If anything a good framework was somewhat of a relief—someone else's problem, ha ha. (And truly a beautiful API is just that: a beautiful thing. I enjoy working well constructed frameworks.)

But the latter issue, the increasing dominance of software on our lives is what I think contributed more to poisoning the well. Letting the inmates run the asylum more or less describes the way engineering worked when I began at Apple in 1995. We loved it that way. (Say what you want about that kind of bottom-up culture of that era, but our "users" were generally nerds just like us—we knew, or thought we knew anyway, better than marketing what the customer wanted and we pursued it.)

Agile development, unit tests, code reviews… all these weird things began to creep in and get in the way of coding. Worse, they felt like busywork meant simply to give management a sense of control… or some metric for progress.

"What is our code coverage for unit test?" a manager might ask. "90%," comes the reply from engineering. "I want to see 95% coverage by next month," comes the marching orders. Whatever.

I confess I am happy to have now left that arena behind. I still code in my retirement but it's back to those cowboy-programmer days around this house.

Yee haw!
by prirun | 2026-02-10 20:51:10+00:00
There are big economic differences and expectations between when I was growing up in the 60's and now.

My parents married right out of high school, which was pretty much the norm I think. I lived on a dead-end street where nearly every house had kids my age. Dads worked, moms didn't. Moms might babysit, iron, do laundry for others, etc., but moms took care of the house and the kids. The houses were 850 sq ft, most with 3 (small!) bedrooms, a kitchen a living room, and 1 bath. We lived in that house until I was 8 and my sisters were 6 and 2, so 5 of us in 850 sq ft.

My dad worked as a bag boy at Kroger during high school and could:
- get married
- buy a house after a year married
- start a family at 20
- had 1 car for the family
- had a boat
- had a motorcycle
right out of high school. There's no way an unskilled high-school kid could do that today. They'd be lucky to have a car and be able to fill it with gas and have car insurance.

I don't think most people today would consider that lifestyle feasible, but at the time, it was fine. I don't think it's doable today because both parents have to work since inflation over the decades has had a dramatic effect on prices.
by wqaatwt | 2026-02-10 20:51:19+00:00
> not because they "are impossible" but

Well during the “dark ages” and much of the middle ages it was certainly the official position of the Catholic church that witchcraft did not and could not exist.

They tried banning it many times (the belief in witchcraft) and it was certainly considered heretical to think you were capable of performing magic or accusing anyone else of that.

Besides the theological arguments, it just wouldn’t have made any sense to legitimize pagan beliefs (which were still widespread at the time) by admitting that they were anything else that superstition.

Of course that kind of changed in the early modern period. Generally the protestants were quite a bit more into these type of superstitions and paranoia but of course the Catholic Church succumbed to it to.

However e.g. the Spanish Inquisition generally continued prosecuting people who believed in witchcraft or accused others of being witches.
by whitemyrat | 2026-02-10 20:51:32+00:00
Yes, I can remove the login. I only use your email for communication such as news, updates, and bug fixes (I’m not collecting any additional data)

I’m curious, if you already have MacWhisper, what makes you interested in Scripta? What motivates you to buy it (Am I right we are talking about lifetime payment or you are ready even for monthly subscription)?
by jryio | 2026-02-10 20:51:44+00:00
There have been a few of these kanban[1] user interfaces over claude code or some other agent (open claw).

These are all proto orchestrators. No one has discovered/converged on what agent orchestration actually looks like.

Other projects include conductor.build, gas town (infamously), and others.

Another layer of abstraction in the infinite castle of computer science.

1: https://www.vibekanban.com/
by linkage | 2026-02-10 20:51:58+00:00
This is unadulterated cope.

America has 40% more traffic fatalities per km driven than the European Union and has less stringent emissions standards (especially for the Hilux's category, which is actually why giant SUVs became so popular over the years).

The US government doesn't even bother with these spurious pretexts anymore. They openly admit that they want to coddle local automakers to ensure that the government has a supply chain of transportation vehicles in wartime. It's quite literally socialism for the entire American auto sector.
by 01100011 | 2026-02-10 20:52:29+00:00
My last x-ray in 11/2022 was perfect. Good joint spacing and no degenerative changes. That's over 3 years ago now though.

One thing I think changed for me was that I switched to WFH full-time and wearing crocs all day. My arches subsequently collapsed. I have joint stiffness now as well, but the x-ray didn't show anything so I think it's perhaps sinus tarsi pain from the compression due to over-pronation.
Show HN: Aps – pull and sync AGENTS.md and Agent Skills across codebases
by westonplatter0 | 2026-02-10 20:52:47+00:00
I wanted a tool to pull down or sync Agentic files across multiple projects.

I didn't find a tool that supported the desired functionality, so I built what I personally wanted and needed.

Intended use cases
- access my own private and public AGENETS.md and Agent Skills
- access my company's AGENETS.md and Agent Skills
- access open source AGENETS.md and Agent Skills
- toggle parts of AGENTS.md on/off per the codebase I'm working in
- easily work with files from local file system and github
- agentic assets are version locked in a manifest file

https://github.com/westonplatter/agentic-prompt-sync
by bluGill | 2026-02-10 20:53:03+00:00
The military has an incentive to ensure there are plenty of Americans who know how to design and manufacture things. A truck and a tank have a lot in common - if war breaks out we want the ability to take people of of trucks and get them making things the military needs.

This is the same reason the Navy has for building ships in the US even though they can be done other places cheaper.
by themaninthedark | 2026-02-10 20:53:15+00:00
I would say that both sides have that view.

Most people are in a bubble and are unaware of what their tribe is doing.

I may be wrong but I think there have been Republicans who have resigned for extra-marital sex.

While we are screaming about the current POTS and his relation with Jeffery, we gave Bill Clinton a platform to speak during the 2024 Convention. When I bring that up, I get told "It's important that we beat Trump."

The Epstein was arrested in 2019, the files have been in the hands of both Democrats and Republicans. Neither group really looks like they want to prosecute anyone further; only use accusations that their opponents are in there to galvanize their base.
by federicocalo98 | 2026-02-10 20:53:53+00:00
Hey everyone
I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on recently: MCP Suite, a complete collection of 22 MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers designed to support developers across the entire software development lifecycle.

The idea was to go beyond a single tool and instead create a cohesive ecosystem of MCP servers that can actually talk to each other.

What is MCP Suite?

MCP Suite is a TypeScript monorepo that provides intelligent, composable servers covering:

Code & repository management

Scrum / Agile project management

Time tracking and productivity

Project economics & cost awareness

Developer utilities and automation

Knowledge and context sharing across tools

Each server focuses on a specific responsibility, but they’re not isolated.

The key part: server-to-server communication

All MCP servers in the suite communicate through a typed event system.
This allows workflows like:

A project event triggering updates in time tracking

Code changes influencing project metrics

Agile planning data flowing into reporting or analysis tools

The goal is to treat MCP servers like building blocks, not silos.

Why I built this

I noticed that most dev tools solve one problem really well, but fall apart when you try to connect everything together. With MCP Suite, I wanted to explore what happens when:

Context is shared

Tools are composable

Automation spans multiple domains (code, planning, economics)

Everything is open source, modular, and meant to be extended or reused.

Feedback welcome

I’d love feedback from:

People experimenting with MCP

Tool builders

Anyone interested in AI-assisted developer workflows

Repo here https://github.com/fedcal/Tech-MCP

Happy to answer questions or discuss design choices!
by jacquesm | 2026-02-10 20:54:15+00:00
> The US is also shaping up to be the principal winner in Artificial Intelligence.

There is no early mover advantage in AI in the same way that there was in all the other industries. That's the one thing that AI proponents in general seem not to have clued in to.

What will happen is that it eventually drags everything down because it takes the value out of the bulk of the service and knowledge economies. So you'll get places that are 'ahead' in the disruption. But the bottom will fall out of the revenue streams, which is one of the reasons these companies are all completely panicked and are wrecking the products that they had to stuff AI in there in every way possible hoping that one of them will take.

Model training is only an edge in a world where free models do not exist, once those are 'good enough' good luck with your AI and your rapidly outdated hardware.

The typical investors horizon is short, but not that short.
by hinkley | 2026-02-10 20:54:21+00:00
I’m not watching Rust as closely as I once did, but it seems like buffer ownership is something it should be leaning on more fully.

There’s an old concurrency pattern where a producer and consumer tag team on two sets of buffers to speed up throughput. Producer fills a buffer, transfers ownership to the consumer, and is given the previous buffer in return.

It is structurally similar to double buffered video, but for any sort of data.

It seems like Rust would be good for proving the soundness. And it should be a library now rather than a roll your own.
by exodys | 2026-02-10 20:54:24+00:00
I didn't think there would be a gain of speed or productivity, but just a (possibly ominous) idea of 'cutting out the middleman'. Granted, that middleman is very important.

Natural language is not the best language for formal descriptions of projects, but it is the one that humans use most day to day. Perhaps a chain like this would be the start of on demand programs.
by nine_k | 2026-02-10 20:54:25+00:00
State agencies are often good at choosing right long-term targets. State agencies are often bad at the actual procurement, because of the pork-barrelling and red tape. E.g. both private companies and NASA agree that spaceflight is a worthy target, but NASA ends up with the Space Shuttle (a nice design ruined by various committees) and SLS, while private companies come up with Falcon-9.
by supern0va | 2026-02-10 20:54:41+00:00
>Stomach paralysis is apparently a known side effect [1]. There are also lots of anecdotes about lesser (but still foul) digestive surprises that are too unpleasant for me to bother elaborating on here.

These are real, but they're also not permanent, and are why you start on a low dose to evaluate how your body reacts to the medication. My spouse is a long time GLP-1 user (coming up on four years now) and had mild (or more) bouts of several of these digestive related systems.

However, within six months these had greatly diminished. And by the one year mark, even at the highest dose, they were essentially gone and have remained a non-issue since.

You should certainly be mindful of side effects, and follow the recommended dosage scale up, which should be monitored by your doctor.

>I was on my thiccboi swag for the latter half of last year and am presently working it off by rebuilding my fitness base with kettlebells and cardio. I'd rather do this than GLP-1s not because I'm some sort of iron-willed badass so much as I'm simply distrustful of anything that messes with one's metabolism so severely. While these drugs are useful for the morbidly obese and diabetics I simply can't imagine how or why anybody would go on them for aesthetic or off-label purposes.

I do think folks with obesity fall into one of two camps (or somewhere on a spectrum between): those that are in that place because they don't put in any effort, eat whatever they want, don't workout, and so on.

And then there are folks like my spouse. They were able to lose weight in the past, but only through continued suffering. To be "just" overweight, they needed to be working out constantly and in a state of always feeling hungry. They never reached an equilibrium where it wasn't agony to maintain that weight, and after months/years would always rebound.

For them, a GLP-1 was the only thing that ever quieted the food noise. They workout constantly still and are in the best shape of their life. It wasn't entirely the GLP-1, but that gave them the tool to quiet the noise and get to a state where fitness could be fun/sustainable, and now they're killing it.

So, the TL;DR is that some people need this tool, and it's not necessarily an either/or. It can be one part in a series of positive changes that lead to better health and well-being.
by cedws | 2026-02-10 20:54:49+00:00
>The nice thing is a programmer with an LLM just steps in here, and course-corrects

This does not seem to be the direction things are going. People are talking about shipping code they haven't edited, most notably the author of Claude Code. Sometimes they haven't even read the code at all. With LLMs the path of least resistance is to take your hands off the wheel completely. Only programmers taking particular care are still playing an editorial role.

When the code is constructed by an LLM, the human in the driving seat doesn't get a chance to build the mental models that they usually would writing it manually. This stifles the ability to see opportunities to refactor. It is widely considered to be harder to read code than to write it.

>And in general, the cleaner your codebase the cleaner LLM modifications will be

Whilst true, this is a kind of "you're holding it wrong" argument. If LLMs had model of what differentiates good code from bad code, whatever they pull into their context should make no difference.
by JCattheATM | 2026-02-10 20:55:00+00:00
Drug smuggling doesn't always destroy lives, sometimes it's just giving people something that shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Rape can very much be a crime of passion and a mistake. Terrorism can be the result of indoctrination. Rape while less likely to be a mistake also doesn't deserve the death penalty.

Yes, all these offenders deserve a second chance. Extreme penalties to set a deterrent are not justice. Just barbarism. Very primitive people.
by pdimitar | 2026-02-10 20:55:06+00:00
You are getting too worked up about this, not to mention cherry-picking.

Debian Trixie, to my knowledge, comes with Linux kernel 6.12 LTS. Many people with more modern hardware want the most modern Linux kernel -- currently 6.18 -- to support their devices. There are also countless stabilization patches (I heard some of my acquaintances praising their Linux kernel upgrades as finally giving them access to all features of various Bluetooth periphery but did not ask for details).

Having a modern kernel is important. With Debian though, it's a friction.

Can it still be done? Sure, or at least I hope so as I want to repurpose my gaming machine as a remote worker / station and the only viable choice inside WSL2 is Debian. I do hope I can somehow make Debian install a 6.18 kernel.

Furthermore, you putting the word "need" in quotes implies non-determinism or even capriciousness -- those two cannot be further from the truth.

Arch and Fedora can't come to WSL2 soon enough.

...and none of that is even touching on the issue of much older versions of all software in there. I want the latest Neovim, for example. For objective developer experience reasons.

Debian stable is for purists or server admins. Not for users.
by trinix912 | 2026-02-10 20:55:47+00:00
We have had these apps in various EU countries for quite a while and it's been fine. You can get a prepaid SIM from a grocery store and register it with them, and so on. You can always SEPA transfer the money if you don't want to use this.

It's also more convenient than giving out an opaque UUID to your friend to transfer you money or something similar.

The bigger problem I see with this is it being one more service locked exclusively to Android and iOS devices, but it's the same with most currently used banking apps anyways.
by jonahx | 2026-02-10 20:56:13+00:00
> Im saying that the origin of complex numbers is the ability to do arbitrary rotations and scaling through multiplication, and that i being the sqrt of -1 is the emergent property.

Not true historically -- the origin goes back to Cardano solving cubic equations.

But that point aside, it seems like you are trying to find something like "the true meaning of complex numbers," basing your judgement on some mix of practical application and what seems most intuitive to you. I think that's fruitless. The essence lies precisely in the equivalence of the various conceptions by means of proof. "i" as a way "to do arbitrary rotations and scaling through multiplication", or as a way give the solution space of polynomials closure, or as the equivalence of Taylor series, etc -- these are all structurally the same mathematical "i".

So "i" is all of these things, and all of these things are useful depending on what you're doing. Again, by what principle do you give priority to some uses over others?
Show HN: HN Digest – AI Summaries and Insights for Hacker News Threads (BYOK)
by davkap92 | 2026-02-10 20:56:22+00:00
Vibe coded, open source Chrome extension that summarizes discussions using your own API key (OpenAI or OpenRouter).

Features:

Thread TL;DRs and sentiment analysis
"Find Interesting Comments" filter

Vanilla JS, Manifest V3, no tracking
by famouswaffles | 2026-02-10 20:56:23+00:00
>Even if interpretability of specific models or features within them is an open area of research, the mechanics of how LLMs work to produce results are observable and well-understood, and methods to understand their fundamental limitations are pretty solid these days as well.

If you train a transformer on (only) lots and lots of addition pairs, i.e '38393 + 79628 = 118021' and nothing else, the transformer will during training, discover an algorithm for addition and employ it in service of predicting the next token, which in this instance would be the result of an addition.

We know this because of tedious interpretability research, the very limited problem space and the fact we knew exactly what to look for.

Alright, let's leave addition aside (SOTA LLMs are after all trained on much more) and think about any other question. Any other question at all. How about something like:

"Take a capital letter J and a right parenthesis, ). Take the parenthesis, rotate it counterclockwise 90 degrees, and put it on top of the J. What everyday object does that resemble?"

What algorithm does GPT or Gemini or whatever employ to answer this and similar questions correctly ? It's certainly not addition. Do you Know ? No. Do the creators at Open AI or Google know ? Not at all. Can you or they find out right now ? Also No.

Let's revisit your statement.

"the mechanics of how LLMs work to produce results are observable and well-understood".

Observable, I'll give you that, but how on earth can you look at the above and sincerely call that 'well-understood' ?
by Syzygies | 2026-02-10 20:57:00+00:00
I began studying 3-manifolds after coming up with a novel way I preferred to draw their presentations. All approaches are formally equivalent, but they impose different cognitive loads in practice. My approach was trivially equivalent to triangulations, or spines, or Heegaard splittings, but I found myself far more nimbly able to "see" 3-manifolds my way.

I showed various colleagues. Each one would ask me to demonstrate the equivalence to their preferred presentation, then assure me "nothing to see here, move along!" that I should instead stick to their convention.

Then I met with Bill Thurston, the most influential topologist in our lifetimes. He had me quickly describe the equivalence between my form and every other known form, effectively adding my node to a complete graph of equivalences he had in his muscle memory. He then suggested some generalizations, and proposed that circle packings would prove to be important to me.

Some mathematicians are smart enough to see no distinction between any of the ways to describe the essential structure of a mathematical object.
by bogzz | 2026-02-10 20:57:04+00:00
Fun fact, the Serbian parliament building has two statues of horses riding men in front of it.

Which is really apt because in Serbian "konj", or horse, is a colloquial word for moron. So, horses riding people is a perfect representation of the reality of the Serbian government.

Another fun fact, the parliament building in HL2's City 17 was modelled from that building.
by tasuki | 2026-02-10 20:57:16+00:00
> But if it turns out that these friends have no desire to spend time with _me_ anymore - without any kids involved

See the problem is the kids. You can't quite make them go away that easily. My guess would be your friends would love to spend some time with you but can't, because logistics.

> where do I profit from that friendship?? It often gets quite asymmetrical and boring.

Friendships are not for profit. If you want profit, start a business.
by einpoklum | 2026-02-10 20:57:27+00:00
> ISIS may have acquired Toyota Hilux vehicles thanks to the perpetual cycle of U.S. involvement in Foreign Military Sales with the Middle East

No surprises there. A lot of ISIS' actual weaponry was stuff the US had equipped the crony Iraqi military with, and was just picked up by ISIS when the Iraqi soldiers retreated - like a weapons cache in a computer game: Move over the building and your ammo slider goes up magically.