MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ProllyInfamous | 2026-02-25 20:56:15+00:00
"You must learn the rules so you can properly break them." —paraphrasing Picasso

----

As blacksheep of an intellectual family (lawyers, politicians, engineers), I've spent the majority of my employment around fellow bluecollars.

Despite my education (left medschool, decades ago) it scares my family when I speak in the colloquial jargon of my electrician co-workers. If I don't codeswitch back into the grammatically correct language of our upbringing, my brothers value what I have to say less ("what you said sounds dumb even though I understood you better").

Isn't the whole purpose of language to communicate the realities of World? As their brother, I think they mostly write to obfuscate intentions... I prefer the honesty of pure dumb.
by georgemcbay | 2026-02-25 20:56:37+00:00
> People in the world have limited experience about war.

Most (but not all) people have empathy, which allows them to understand the harm of their actions even without direct experience.

I don't think I will ever trust that any AI has empathy even if it gives off signals that it does.

I only trust that it exists in people because of my shared experience with their biology.
by alephnerd | 2026-02-25 20:57:18+00:00
This is why I feel the recentish (last 10-15 years) shift in decoupling CS curricula from EE and CE fundamentals (which only 10-15 years ago would have been treated as CS) in the US is doing a massive disservice to newer students entering the industry.

DSP, Control Engineering, Circuit Design, understanding pipelining and cacheing, and other fundamentals are important for people to understand higher levels of the abstraction layers (eg. much of deep learning is built on top of Optimization Theory principles which are introduced in a DSP class).

The value of Computer Science isn't the ability to whiteboard a Leetcode hard question or glue together PyTorch commands - it's the ability to reason across multiple abstraction layers.

And newer grads are significantly deskilled due to these curriculum changes. If I as a VC know more about Nagle's Algorithm (hi Nagle!) than some of the potential technical founders for network security or MLOps companies, we are in trouble.
by dastbe | 2026-02-25 20:57:28+00:00
one thing to add for passive healthchecking and clientside loadbalancing is that throughput and dilution of signal really matters.

there are obviously plenty of low/sparse call volume services where passive healthchecks would take forever to get signal, or signal is so infrequently collected its meaningless. and even with decent RPS, say 1m RPS distributed between 1000 caller replicas and 1000 callee replicas, that means that any one caller-callee pair is only seeing 1rps. Depending on your noise threshold, a centralized active healthcheck can respond much faster.

There are some ways to improve signal in the latter case using subsetting and aggregating/reporting controllers, but that all comes with added complexity.
by ryancoleman | 2026-02-25 20:57:29+00:00
Achille and Soatto (AWS/Caltech) model AI reasoning agents as compute-capable stochastic dynamical systems and ask: can chain-of-thought reasoning solve any computable task? They show the key resource is inference time and that training data can exponentially reduce the time needed.

Found via https://www.amazon.science/blog/intelligence-isnt-about-para...
by nazgul17 | 2026-02-25 20:57:35+00:00
Worth pointing out that calculating p-values on a wide set of metrics and selecting for those under $threshold (called p-hacking) is not statistically sound - who cares, we are not an academic journal, but a pill of knowledge.

The idea is, since data has a ~1/20 chance of having a p < 0.05, you are bound to get false positives. In academia it's definitely not something you'd do, but I think here it's fine.

@OP have you considered calculating Cohen's effect size? p only tells us that, given the magnitude of the differences and the number of samples, we are "pretty sure" the difference is real. Cohen's `d` tells us how big the difference is on a "standard" scale.
by trickypr | 2026-02-25 20:57:36+00:00
So your benchmarks are primarily just “how fast is go’s c interop” rather than any algorithmic improvement on tree-sitter?

Edit: yep, you are just calling a c function in a loop. So your no-op benchmark is just the time it takes for cgo to function. I would not be able to get any perf benefits from e.g. rust
by ibejoeb | 2026-02-25 20:57:36+00:00
I worked on something like this in 2000-1. We were attempting to identify the native language and origin region of authors based on aberrant modes in second languages (as a simple case, a french person writing english might say "we are tuesday.") It was accurate and fast with the sota back then; I think you could one-shot a general purpose LLM today.
by Glyptodon | 2026-02-25 20:57:51+00:00
I will say in my city I tried the bus twice and the number one reason I never used more is that it was incredibly slow. And the frequent stops were absolutely a contributing factor. People could pull the chord to get off nearly anywhere and did. And a trip that might take 15 minutes by char could take 45 minutes to an hour and fifteen.

That said, I do agree that this being the number one issue everywhere or even where I live is far from certain.

As a driver, the number one thing I hate are bus stops near intersections without dedicated bus lanes.
by cvoss | 2026-02-25 20:58:00+00:00
I appreciate you including a few minor mistakes in this very post:

> I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context[s]. Not like I have ~a~ perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :)

> This applies not only [to] work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

I conclude you are real.
Ask HN: What do I do now that software engineering is dead?
by eerichmond33 | 2026-02-25 20:58:03+00:00
I truly believe that most hard skills i.e. coding, math, etc are just gone in the near future... or at least so scarce that it would be extremely optimistic to think you could land that job.

I have no idea how to handle this from a career perspective. I'm getting my masters, so it isn't like I have job experience and can easily transition into a broader management role.

I'd love to hear how you are thinking about this.
by bigstrat2003 | 2026-02-25 20:58:24+00:00
I think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't.

That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.
by blorenz | 2026-02-25 20:58:24+00:00
Terrific project. I use Strawberry GraphQL so about all of my endpoints will be /graphql unfortunately. It would be nice if it could parse off a header to qualify which bucket it goes to. That way I could send over the operation and django-xbench takes care of it.

I see you are going have N+1s on the roadmap. I currently use django-zeal which does a fantastic job detecting them but there isn't a visualization. I'm keenly watching where you go with this.

I need more django perf in my life.
by jfengel | 2026-02-25 20:58:29+00:00
Not all of the people, to be sure. But a very large minority -- well over a third. And that third is pretty enthusiastic about it, despite (and even possibly because of) his crimes.

The bar to removing him from office is extremely high. It requires 2/3 of the Senate. Right now they couldn't muster so much as half. Even after the next election, it won't be anywhere near enough.

If the rest of the world feels uneasy about a country with at least 1/3 of its population enthusiastic about being run by a criminal... I don't blame them for pulling away from the country as a whole.
by stared | 2026-02-25 20:58:31+00:00
I am scared of two things.

First, people being rubber stamps for AI recommendations. And yes, it is not unreasonable that in a dire situation, someone will pass their judgment (day).

Second, someone at the Pentagon is connecting red buttons to OpenClaw.
"You are right, firing nukes was my mistake. Would you like to learn more facts about nukes before you evaporate?"
by tetha | 2026-02-25 20:59:17+00:00
> The primary motivating factor by far for these CLI agents always seems to be expedience in completing the task (to a plausible definition of "completed" that justifies ending the turn and returning to the user ASAP).

Curiously enough, step one of becoming a good system operator is to learn how to do things. Step two is learning when not to do things and how to deal with a user trying to force you to do things. And step three is learning how to do things you should not do, just very carefully. It can be a confusing job.

But that's why any kind of AI agent stays very far away from any important production access. People banging configs in uncontrolled ways until something beneficial happens is enough of a problem already.
by Arrowmaster | 2026-02-25 20:59:50+00:00
Disagree, the best way to pass secrets is by using mount namespaces (systemd and docker do this under /run/secrets/) so that the can program can access the secrets as needed but they don't exist in the environment. The process is not complicated, many system already implement it. By keeping them out of ENV variables you no longer have to worry about the entire ENV getting written out during a crash or debugging and exposing the secrets.
by teekert | 2026-02-25 21:00:05+00:00
I feel a certain comfortableness when I don't know these things. It's annoying, and yet it brings me many things as well. When I drive off in my car, I half visualize the clutch plates coming into contact with each other etc etc etc.

But my kids call any internet connection WiFi. My wife didn't understand why she couldn't print with the WiFi switch off (back when we had switches). And every time I try to tell them "how the internet flows", I take them to the hotspot and tell them what WiFi is, how the UTP cable goes to the modem and the fiber goes into the ground and somewhere it gets information from some other computer. And I tell them why they have less issues with our local Minecraft server then when he gets invited to a worlds on someone's Playstation across town (in Bugrock).

It's tiring in a way, even more so for people around me. And still, it also brings me many nice things.
by xp84 | 2026-02-25 21:00:26+00:00
Spot-on analysis. I agree that transport should operate on a basically break-even basis, but offset in two ways:

1. Where the Government wants to subsidize some group (e.g. help the disadvantaged by giving them discounts) they should pay the fair price to the transit agency out of the budget of Welfare, not drag on the financials of the transport agency. In other words, it shouldn't be possible that the transport agency is insolvent only because most of their customers are paying next to nothing. Discussions about whether we should spend a certain sum on subsidizing the poor to ride the bus/train/etc are purely welfare budget discussions.

2. The Government should move additional money into the system when they realize an expansion of transport helps further societal goals: e.g. congestion pricing funds should help to expand transit, or the government pays part of the cost to build new rail service to reduce congestion on the roads.
by EA-3167 | 2026-02-25 21:00:34+00:00
Genuinely shocking. "We were totally fine with this being used to target people for surveillance and killing, but now you've crossed our arbitrary ethical fig-leaf so here's a big stink." I won't be surprised if they reach an eventual compromise that represents what the Pentagon wanted all along, while Anthropic can continue their chicken little act... all while building the very thing they claim to fear.
by ctmnt | 2026-02-25 21:00:50+00:00
Wait, are you suggesting that OP broke in to your server and stole code and is republishing it as these repos?

I have questions. Have you reviewed the code here to see if it matches? What, more specifically, do you mean when you say someone broke in? What makes you think that this idea (which is nice but not novel) is worth stealing? If that sounds snarky, it’s not meant to; just trying to understand what’s going on. Why is that more likely than someone using Claude to vibe up some software along the same lines?
by technothrasher | 2026-02-25 21:01:33+00:00
> closes the door on [...] being accused of practicing law illegally

Does it? So I can say, "I'm not your lawyer, but I'm happy to go ahead and give you specific legal advice on your case." and I can't be accused of illegally practicing law? I was under the impression that this could still get you into hot water. But not being your lawyer, due to the fact that I am not a lawyer at all, I don't know if it is true or not.
by llm_nerd | 2026-02-25 21:01:42+00:00
>Except that the people who joined on behalf of Palestine have never controlled Gaza

They literally, directly controlled Gaza until 2006. So what's with the lies?

There is good evidence that they lost control because Netanyahu covertly supported Hamas. Riling up fundies to do vile things is good business when your goal is getting a massively armed idiocracy simp nation to do your bidding.
by inglor_cz | 2026-02-25 21:02:01+00:00
"What we'd now call the developed world."

The developed world of now is much more extensive than the developed world of the 1860s, and the South was very backward until the 1950s or so. In the 1850s, it was seriously lagging behind the North in industrial power, which is one of the reasons why they lost the war. This would point to a yet another chicken-and-egg problem. Nonfree labour tends to cement premodern societal and economic structures, which perpetuate existence of non-free labour, unless disrupted from the outside. The Islamic world didn't give up slavery voluntarily either.

I am not sure if we can call the South of the 1860s "developed", even relatively to the rest of the Western civ. By what criteria?

"The Russians you mention managed it in 1723"

Serfdom in Russia was abolished after the Crimean War, and the Tsar used the money gained by the Alaska Purchase to pay off part of the due compensations to the nobles.

Yes, these institutions were not equal. Different cultural and historical development. Still, a Russian serf of the 1850s was a very non-free person, tied to the land and dependent on whims of his lord or lady. Few would care if a drunk noble whipped him to death, even though theoretically he should not be doing that. A rough equivalent in category.
by lazide | 2026-02-25 21:02:02+00:00
The issue (for the masters, and besides any ethical issues) is being a slave master is a very tenuous position, and prone to revolts.

Too capable (but also valuable!) slaves tend to be self sufficient and strong enough to throw you off.

Too weak (and therefore non-valuable!) slaves tend to be easy to control - but are a huge drain on the system, including ‘master’ management, which is often the most constrained resource anyway in any hierarchical system.
by com2kid | 2026-02-25 21:02:23+00:00
My point is the tech is nothing new.

Every person holding a cellphone up in their hands could also be pointing a camera around at people, a camera with much higher fidelity, computing power, and one that can take much longer videos.

This is just panic about a new form factor. The same thing happened when cell phones came along, with the exact same talking points.
by eddy162 | 2026-02-25 21:02:23+00:00
Work in the industry: way too many planners and transit consultants are fixating on too many stops as being a problem, likely since it's the one piece of infrastructure they can control when roads and traffic lights are designed for cars not people.

Depending on the road network and land-uses, removing stops only 200-metres apart to make them 400-metres apart (the industry standard) could decrease access to transit within a 5-minute walk by anywhere from 10-50%+, so it's limited to where you can actually apply it without penalizing (ie. putting them outside of a 7-10-minute walk) so many customers that they look for alternatives.

In Europe stop spacings are much longer even for local routes (over 400-800-metres), but this is because everyone generally lives within walking distance for their errands, so transit is used only for longer, more commute-like trips, where a longer walk for faster travel times makes sense. Accessibility is also less of a priority there so they're less sensitive to requests from seniors and those with disabilities, with many buses not being wheelchair accessible. In US/Canada, a lot of transit riders live over a 20-30-minute (often with hostile walking conditions like crossing highway ramps) walk from the nearest grocery store, school, pharmacy, etc., so they'd oppose adding 2-3-minutes of walking to shorten a 10-minute bus ride.

Moreover, closely spaced stops are really only an issue in older (pre-war) downtowns where frequent stops are the result of decades of requests from residents (especially seniors) and from schools/churches/grocery stores/retirement homes/medical clinics. Out in the suburbs, buses usually bypass most stops, and schedules take that into account. And in places with amazing land-use like Pheonix and Vegas, you have long stretches of nothing so of course there'll be higher average stop spacings.

Lastly, much of the time-savings from express routes (that skip stops) and bus stop consolidation/balancing, is from being more in sync with the lights, which are usually designed for through traffic (ie. a green wave). Transit Signal Priority can help achieve significant savings (over 10-30%+) without removing any stops, though moving stops to after the light makes it more effective (and even that can be politically difficult).
Show HN: TinyCard – A minimalistic & functional e-Card site, like tinyletter
by szemy2 | 2026-02-25 21:02:35+00:00
My brother just had his 39th birthday and as we live in different cities I sent a present to him directly from the shop (it was a gym bag for those who are curious).

The shop didn't let me add a postcard or anything personal to the package so I went looking for an easy/fast eCard service that I considered aesthetically pleasing.

It was a very frustrating search. I thought of creating it with Figma but didn't feel like spending more time building a postcard design (also I wanted it to open in a cool way!!). So I created an app :D (cue Rick & Morty "lets-build-an-app" guy)

This was created with the sentiment how tinyletter (RIP) offered a functional/minimal solution to bloated software.
by LightBug1 | 2026-02-25 21:02:53+00:00
I'll dispute that.

While I recall many at the time calling it a genocide due to the sanctions, the thrust of the military action was an illegal war.

Israel, by contrast, systematically murdered civilians, journalists, starved a civilian population with impunity and with government intent, and ... the list is tragically too long. Size and numbers have nothing to do with it.

Israels actions were ruled a genocide in the ICJ, the UN, among many other genocide experts (including Jewish experts).

The Israeli's had/have actual genocidal intent. Just read the reprehensible words of some of the current Israeli cabinet. Not some radical fringe, but the actual Israeli cabinet.

Sure, you mention you're not defending Israel, but the implication that there is some double standard here (perhaps "antisemitic" given your focus on labelling) is in itself a defense of Israel.

The current "administration" is a disgusting body, and the Zionist ideology, in its current form, is an absurd, preposterous ideology which gives birth to a population who dehumanise their "enemy" in exactly the same way as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews (not my words, but the words of Jewish scholars).
Show HN: Synergetic-SQR – A 4D rendering engine with bit-exact rotation
by j291920 | 2026-02-25 21:03:08+00:00
I’ve been exploring the intersection of alternative geometry and numerical
stability. This is a proof-of-concept 3D renderer that abandons the standard
Cartesian (XYZ) basis in favor of Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetic Geometry (a
4D tetrahedral coordinate system).

I’m not a professional graphics programmer, so I worked with Gemini CLI to
pair-program the core engine and the Metal-cpp boilerplate. We based the math
on Andrew Thomson’s 2026 framework for Spread-Quadray Rotors (SQR).

The Core Problem:
Standard graphics engines rely on sin/cos approximations. Every time you
rotate an object, floating-point error (transcendental drift) accumulates.
Over long-running simulations, the geometry literally "warps."

The Solution:
By implementing Andrew’s framework using a Rational Surd field extension
(Q[sqrt(3)]), we’ve achieved bit-exact rotation.

Paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400414222_Spread-Quadray_Rotors_-v11_
Feb_2026_A_Tetrahedral_Alternative_to_Quaternions_for_Gimbal-Lock-Free_Rotatio
n_Representation

Key Features:
* Algebraic Determinism: A startup benchmark proves that rotating 360 degrees
returns the engine to the exact starting bit-pattern.
* Surd-Native Shaders: The Metal kernel performs algebraic arithmetic
natively on the GPU, avoiding transcendental approximations.
* Linear Jitterbugging: The complex VE-to-Octahedron transformation is
handled as a simple linear interpolation in 4D space.
* Topological Stability: In a live 60FPS loop, the SQR system is ~10x more stable than an industry-standard matrix.
by rickydroll | 2026-02-25 21:03:20+00:00
You are right, I was not asked to give up going to the wilderness; I just want to go to the wilderness of my choosing and not be constrained by someone else's transportation.

Funny thing about scheduling. I have to plan to leave an hour earlier than I need to, and even then, I'm frequently late. Yet, my hyperfocus kicks in when I sit in the car and go through the rituals of "I'm driving now." The vigilance can be exhausting, but usually only bothers me when I'm leaving an observing site at 3 o'clock in the morning or I'm driving at twilight in deer country.
by ctmnt | 2026-02-25 21:03:36+00:00
Hard to say. Claude’s very good at writing READMEs. In fact, Copilot often complains about docs that sound like they’re about current capabilities when in fact they’re future plans or just plan aspirational.

Without downloading and testing out your software, how can we know if it’s any good? Why would we do that if it’s obviously vibed? The dilemma.

I’m not at all against vibe coding. I’m just pointing out that having a nice README is trivial. And the burden of proof is on you.
by arcade79 | 2026-02-25 21:03:53+00:00
> And now we are at a situation where nuclear escalation has already started (New START was not extended).

This is a massive understatement. Russia has announced, and probably tested, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik . This is basically Project Pluto reloaded, but now as a Russian instead of a US missile.

I remember reading about Project Pluto some 25 years ago or so. It was terrifying to read about. And now Russia has realized it.