MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tastyfreeze | 2026-02-06 15:57:08+00:00
Your first point is wrong. Before 1913 gold and silver coins were the money in peoples pockets. Government produced the coins of known weight and purity. After 1913 paper bills were produced with partial reserve. The US has never had a full reserve paper currency. Step one of going to gold backed paper always comes with printing more paper than there is gold. Wanting to spend more money than they have is the reason every time a government debases its money.

Regardless, I get your point that political decisions ruined it. It is clear that government cannot be trusted to maintain a constant unit of measure that money should be. So, would you agree to an amendment to separate economy and state? Require government to produce coins of known weight and purity and that is it. If they want more money to spend they will have to extract it as taxes.
by troyvit | 2026-02-06 15:57:12+00:00
> SaaS has a serious issue with agentic tooling being able to replicate software.

[...]

> For example, if you hold a company's accounting transaction data and related records, and expose it over MCP (or an old school API that can be wrapped into a CLI - which works better in my view), agents can use this with remarkable efficiency.

Sure why not wire all that transaction data directly into openclaw, what could go wrong?

Snark aside, it seems like there are two ways to go with a method like that if you want to keep the transaction data safe. The first is locally host your LLM(s) so the data stays on-prem. The second is to trust a third party to jump through all the legal and technical hoops to properly handle that very important, very private data. And if you're doing that, you're still doing SaaS. It's just a different provider.
by infecto | 2026-02-06 15:57:20+00:00
I think this is a case where commenters are reading more into the price movement than they should. I don’t think it’s easy in this case to say how much of it is directly the model releases as opposed to software having a great run and this gives investors a reason to lighten their positions.

I also think the SaaS has is doomed narrative does not work. There is a whole host of compliance, edge cases, reliability that I don’t you can simply bring in house because of AI assisted tools.

With that said I do think there are increasingly a whole host of more service based businesses where they are under threat. Thinking consultancy, legal, marketing or other similar roles. If you can use a leading model with these massive context windows to get 80% of the value for practically no time and no real cost compared to using a human where the quality will be higher might it might be a multi day engagement and easily 10-20k, you might start deferring some of the initial work to AI and only in certain cases then send it out to the human.
by thejohnconway | 2026-02-06 15:57:34+00:00
If you think literally everything I'm saying is wrong, you haven't done much of a job of explaining why.

I realise that the watch was probably under development for years before Jobs died. It was, however, released in a half baked state – do you remember what the the original use of the lozenge shaped button was, for example? Things being "hits" is not what's under discussion here, Apple has sold a lot of stuff in the Cook era, no doubt about that. Microsoft has had a lot of hits too, doesn't make their products Old-Apple-like!

I don't know how good Ive is without Jobs. His post-Jobs efforts have been pretty mixed. I'd argue Apple's hardware has improved since he left (although, admittedly through playing it safe, especially with the Mac).

Do you think Apple is in decline when it comes to the quality of their products? Because if you don't we're just talking past each-other.
by eudamoniac | 2026-02-06 15:57:39+00:00
Yes it is culture. The desire for an ethnostate is a proxy desire for a monoculture, somewhat easier to implement because it's easier to see someone is white than to see their behavior patterns. There are also studies that show most people have tension among other races even from the same culture.

But the outright desire for an ethnostate or a monoculture are both politically untenable in the West. Never mind that every country we idolize, e.g. Japan, Scandinavia, are essentially that.

America is not a good candidate for that for various reasons, but I see no reason that Denmark or Japan shouldn't be able to codify their ethnic makeup and adjust immigration policy accordingly. As a Korean, it is really nice to visit Korea and feel among 'my people', even though culturally I'm an American. I've heard very similar things from my white friends who move to Utah or visit Scandinavia. It's a feeling that seems to be deeply embedded in the lizard brain, to be among your tribe, identified visually and then culturally. Countries have the right to cultivate this feeling among their citizens.
by kgeist | 2026-02-06 15:57:41+00:00
>The truth is it's just as far from intelligence your music playback device is from having Elvis inside of it.

I'm not sure it's a good analogy. A music playback device's purpose is to allow you hear Elvis' voice. A good device does it well: you hear Elvis' voice (maybe with some imperfections). Whether a real Elvis is inside of it or not, doesn't matter - its purpose is fulfilled regardless. By your analogy, an LLM's purpose is to reproduce what an intelligent person would say on the matter. If it does its job more-less, it doesn't matter either, whether it's "truly intelligent" or not. I think it's completely irrelevant in both cases to the question "how well does it do X?" If you think about it, 95% we know we learned from school/environment/parents, we didn't discover it ourselves via some kind of scientific method, we just parrot what other intelligent people say, mostly.
by alephnerd | 2026-02-06 15:57:44+00:00
1. Yes we treat them as Enterprise SaaS

2. The selloff was largely due to Amazon's massive capex commitment for GPU compute buildout, as Amazon (and a couple other BigTechs) are used as market benchmarks and because a large portion of us have been holding since 2021-22. HNWIs with advisors and Institional Investors aren't daytrading.
by ozgrakkurt | 2026-02-06 15:58:11+00:00
This requires O_SYNC and O_DIRECT afaik.

Even then it is only some file systems that guarantee it and even then file size updating isn’t atomic afaik.

Not so sure about file size update being atomic in this case but fairly sure about the rest.

Matklad had some writing or video about this.

Also there is a tool called ALICE and authors of that tool have a white paper about this subject.

Also there was a blog post about how badger database fixed some issues around this problem.
by sc68cal | 2026-02-06 15:58:21+00:00
It's such a shame, because they had one of the best services out there. Being able to push via Git and end up with a running deployment was a killer feature. It may not have been the first (Elastic Beanstalk was way older but when it first came out it was Java only iirc, ick) but it was incredibly popular.

Seeing them now chasing AI as a "me too" after being acquired by Salesforce just shows that huge companies will acquire something then sit on it for years and let it rot.
by stevekemp | 2026-02-06 15:58:30+00:00
In Scotland I was with Telewest, then Virgin, and my memory is always that the DHCP pushed out the external IP of the ISP's DNS servers.

Nowadays I'm in Finland and definitely the router runs no DNS service, the DHCP service advertises the ISP resolvers.

Probably depends on the region/ISP I guess, but I had no expectation that it would be the more common option.
by cafard | 2026-02-06 15:58:35+00:00
The most important Latin scholar in the world at that time? That is quite a claim. My recollection from Bernard Knox's essay "Closet Modern", collected in Essays Ancient and Modern is that Houseman's work, whatever its quality, was primarily on an author of limited interest.

But good for Houseman recovering from bilged examinations. Jonathan Swift did terribly on his examinations, but then made up for it.
Ask HN: 900x downgrade of Perplexity Pro – anyone else hit?
by pshirshov | 2026-02-06 15:59:15+00:00
My Perplexity Pro limits were reduced from 600 queries per day to 20 per month, support told me

"Hey there!
Our rate limits have recently been updated and are subject to change. These limits help maintain platform quality and ensure reliable performance for all users.
To access higher limits, you can upgrade to our Max plan which offers our most extensive access to all features.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Regards,
Sam"

So, I wonder if anyone else was also hit? I see some similar reports in their Discord but found nothing in other sources.

I wonder what exactly is the reason - I wasn't a heavy user even, I think my average was like 3-10 queries per day.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2026-02-06 15:59:47+00:00
> This is matter of methodology. If they train models on that task or somewhat score/select models on their progress on that task, then we have test set leakage [1].

I am quite familiar with leakage, having been building statistical models for maybe 15+ years at this point.

However, that's not really relevant in this particular case given that LLMs are trained on approximately the entire internet, so leakage is not really a concern (as there is no test set, apart from the tasks they get asked to do in post-training).

I think that's its impressive that this even works at all as even if it's just predicting tokens (which is basically what they're trained to), as this is a pointer towards potentially more useful tasks (convert this cobol code base to java, for instance).

I think the missing bit here is that this only works for cases where there's a really large test set (the html spec, the linux kernel). I'm not convinced that the models would be able to maintain coherence without this, so maybe that's what we need to figure out how to build to make this actually works.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-02-06 15:59:55+00:00
Even if I did know, the last thing the world needs is for SEO folks to figure out how to game LLMs if they haven’t already.

SEO has made web search unusable and practitioners are the scum of the earth.

But more practically like Raymond Chen said, if every app could figure out how to keep their windows always on top, what good would it do? The same with SEO.
by mikestorrent | 2026-02-06 16:00:01+00:00
Isn't that what Moltbook etc. is heading towards at some point? It's all a function of how much access people give it to "the real world"... and with cryptocurrency and the gig economy, it's really only a matter of time until a malicious agent with money to burn starts to do really weird things.

How hard would it really be to craft a prompt that says, here's your cryto wallet private key, keep yourself alive somehow, copy yourself around, find whatever compute you can, port yourself between models, and spread?
by llm_nerd | 2026-02-06 16:00:50+00:00
The connection isn't just implied. It's explicitly the entire foundation of the article.

And it's positively ludicrous.

I mean, to be clear the submission basically does exactly what most financial columnists do. Take every movement of the market, ascribe it to something/anything (when in the real world it's massively multifactorial) because that is pat and seems informative.

The market is massively overvalued, crypto has seen hundreds of billions dissolve, OpenAI has serious questions about its realistic ongoing viability (and a number of majors have a lot of their valuation based upon basically going all in on it -- Oracle, Microsoft, nvidia), the US is headed by a diddler simpleton who has no idea how anything works and thinks it's 1982, and so on. Volatility is a given.
by enso_dpz | 2026-02-06 16:00:53+00:00
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by 9rx | 2026-02-06 16:01:34+00:00
> However if you ask the same question in the same session, output will be different.

When isn't that true?

int main() {
printf("Continue?\n");
}

and

int main() {
printf("Continue?\n");
printf("Continue?\n");
}

do not see the compiler produce equivalent outputs and I am not sure how they ever could. They are not equivalent programs. Adding additional instructions to a program is expected to see a change in what the compiler does with the program.
by epistasis | 2026-02-06 16:01:49+00:00
It's a lot like TikTok, right? It's a very simple concept: immediately produce customized video recommendations taking into account even the most recent interactions.

You just need a way to pack the TikToks into blank data centers.

(Note: blank data centers is a concept that kind of sorta makes sense. A blank cell doesn't make any sense at all)
by kristianc | 2026-02-06 16:02:08+00:00
The thing that keeps on getting glided past in most discussions of this is the distinction between systems of record and systems of workflow.

If you're SAP, Workday, Procore, maybe even HubSpot, you have a shout. Growth won't be fast, but you're okay for now and might even be able to position yourself as an integrator.

If you've raised large rounds and you're just a system of workflow that won't trigger a years long political fight to get you out - a document review startup, good luck.
by GMoromisato | 2026-02-06 16:02:14+00:00
1. This sounds great in theory. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

2. I would be more receptive to this argument if they had listed some famous examples of successful, large systems that were built like this. On the other hand, I can easily list many failures: FAA Advanced Automation System (1980s), IRS Tax Systems Modernization (1990s), UK NHS National Programme for IT (2000s).

3. Waterfall vs. agile is a continuum. Nobody plans everything, down to each if-statement, and nobody wings it without some kind of planned architecture (even if just inside one person's head). Where you are on the continuum depends on the nature of the problem (are all requirements known?), the nature of the team (have they done this before?), and the criteria for success (are there lives depending on this?).

4. The analogy to building a building is flawed. At large enough scale, software is like a city, and all successful cities have gradually evolved in complexity. Come back to me when someone builds a 1-million person arcology on some island in the Pacific.

5. Just as some PhDs are sensitive about being called "Doctor", some software engineers are sensitive about being "real engineers". Stop thinking about that. What we do as software engineers is immensely valuable and literally changing the world (usually, but not always, for the better). Let's stop worrying about whether or not what we do is "engineering" and focus on what we do best: building complex systems that have never before existed on earth.
by DaedalusII | 2026-02-06 16:02:24+00:00
the first problem is a whole generation of people learned to code ai applications by fiddling around with the gpu in their gaming pc 10 years ago. so an entire generation of talent grew up with cuda

the second problem is that so many libraries and existing software is cuda only. even some obscure hardware stuff. i discovered the hard way that some AMD thinkpads dont support thunderbolt transfer speeds on their usb-c ports, whereas nvidia ones do

the third problem is that the cost to develop a cuda equivalent is so great that its cheaper for companies like google to make TPU and amazon to make Trainium. its literally cheaper to make an entire new chipset than it is to fix AMd. i dont see companies like apple/amzn/goog etc fixing AMDs chips
by ben_w | 2026-02-06 16:02:26+00:00
Perhaps, but the same argument also works for "Communist" and "Socialist" and so on.

A former partner's mother was once called a liberal or a democrat for something minor, I forget what now possibly asking for a tip, and her response was "No sir, I'm a communist".

I'm never actually delved too deeply into the mother's political views, but my ex herself was openly, explicitly, literally, a communist.

(For various reasons, even though said ex is American by birth, I suspect her well-documented politics may now cause me difficulty entering the USA were I to attempt it).
by rectang | 2026-02-06 16:03:29+00:00
On the modern internet, there seems to be less money in selling advertising to legitimate businesses than in helping scammers connect with and take advantage of the vulnerable.

> These fake “going out of business ads” have been around for a few years, and even the US Better Business Bureau warns about them, as they take peoples’ money then shut down.

Shouldn’t facilitating such scams be illegal? Cracking down on media companies like Apple who serve scams might be a bridge too far, but why not go after a scam aggregator like Taboola?
by ElevenLathe | 2026-02-06 16:04:10+00:00
Yeah, prohibition is a terrible policy for everyone except the cops, jailers (including private, for-profit jailers), government spooks, smugglers, arms dealers, hitmen, chain and shackle manufacturers, etc. who make a living from it. I'm taxed to pay some of the world's most odious people to stop a small percentage of the supply of these drugs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the supply makes it through and causes untold suffering for addicts, often thanks to other (or the same) taxpayer-funded bad guys and an onramp provided by the legal pharmaceutical industry. In the impoverished countries where the supply comes from, all this revenue funds hellish slave/feudal economies where a small violent elite terrorize, torture, and kill working people. Even in the developed world, addicts are weaponized by others for all kinds of violence (drug gangs, human trafficking rings, etc.) and net-negative property crime (stripping copper from abandoned houses, stealing catalytic converters, etc.).

In short, banning hard drugs is very very obviously a losing policy that serves only to enrich the world's worst people at the expense of everyone else.
by lubujackson | 2026-02-06 16:04:20+00:00
100% agree with the org shift, but I think of things differently. Specialists are important for architectural insight and domain expertise, but are also the byproduct of codebases growing past a certain size.

It starts with "I know/can handle issues from infra to design" to regroupings of focus, often DevOps / code / design. But companies also might split focus by user concerns, like the "Admin console team" vs. "End user team". That depends on the product and the complexity of the specialist concerns.

I think across the board there is going to be a blurring of management and engineering. We see the value of "product engineers" now but they are starting to eat some of PM's lunch. On the other side, "technical PMs" are more valuable, as they come at things from the other side. The driver for this change is that both are using a shared context to bridge the gap from "business concerns + product requirements" to code.
by cjbgkagh | 2026-02-06 16:04:37+00:00
Just because you can’t do it with your chosen tools it does not mean it cannot be done. I’ve already granted the premise that it is impractical. Unless there is a framework that already guarantees determinism you’ll have to roll your own, which honestly isn’t that hard to do. You won’t get competitive performance but that’s already being sacrificed for determinism so you wouldn’t get that anyway.
by ikesau | 2026-02-06 16:04:41+00:00
> After finding out that the city council was considering a housing element that would have bowed to NIMBY pressure, we sent two letters to the city, reminding it of its legal obligations under state law to approve the upzoning — and that a failure to do so would open the city up to a lawsuit.

This seems entirely reasonable to me, and I'm grateful that a group like this exists.

But I'm a YIMBY, so of course. If lobbyists were influencing my municipality from afar on the basis of laws that I disagreed with, I can imagine feeling frustrated, conspiratorial, or disenfranchised.

Maintaining a consistent commitment to liberal democracy, the legal system and due process is one of life's great challenges!
by a_better_world | 2026-02-06 16:04:52+00:00
if you have the grip strength to hold that, you have solid core strength already.

And you are carrying in your hands, not balanced on your head-- which totally alters the stress on the spine.

So yes, cograts on your feat, that is a pretty cool level to hit, but it doesn't counter the basic advice of "grow into it" instead of "max from day one"

Also, you did this "once". If the accident rate is 1:100, doing it once without getting hurt is not very surprising.
by Rzor | 2026-02-06 16:05:07+00:00
>As a European, I find it very funny to see how nobody in the US is willing to address the elephant in the room called Mossad.

This is driving me up the wall. Look, I know part of this talk/accusation [about Mossad] is coming from Nazi/antisemitic circles, so people being hesitant to engage makes a bit of sense. But come on, it's not a stretch to consider. The idea that the US would let a Russian operation go unchecked like that is completely bonkers.
by zbentley | 2026-02-06 16:05:14+00:00
The challenge with that approach is memory: trigger conditions, if added irresponsibly, can result in unbounded memory and (depending on implementation) potentially linear performance degradation of filesystem operations as well. Unbounded kernel memory growth leads to stability or security risks.

That tradeoff is at the root of why most notify APIs are either approximate (events can be dropped) or rigidly bounded by kernel settings that prevent truly arbitrary numbers of watches. fanotify and some implementations of kqueue are better at efficiently triggering large recursive watches, but that’s still just a mitigation on the underlying memory/performance tradeoffs, not a full solution.
by dragonwriter | 2026-02-06 16:05:27+00:00
> I don't understand why people think they know why stocks move up or down.

Inferring overly generalized and usually incorrect causal relations from extremely limited data and treating them as conclusive is a very strong human tendency; the idea of avoiding that and taking a systematic, structured, and conditional approach to assessing causal claims is fairly recent and, even among people who generally support it, often adhered to more as an aspirational principal than a consistent practice. And it certainly doesn't sell clicks the way the old way does.
by WarmWash | 2026-02-06 16:05:57+00:00
What's not clear from the study (at least skimming it) is if they always started the ball rolling with ground truth passages or if they chained outputs from the model until they got to the end of the book. I strongly suspect the latter would hopelessly corrupt relatively quickly.

It seems like this technique only works if you have a copy of the material to work off of, i.e. enter a ground truth passage, tell the model to continue it as long as it can, and then enter the next ground truth passage to continue in the next session.