MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by crystal_revenge | 2026-02-24 00:52:42+00:00
We're not selling vibe slop, the "vibe slop" tools which work for one person enable of automation of tasks for the services we sell. Whether or not we use AI behind the scenes is entirely irrelevant to the service we're providing other than that it allows our margins to be higher and our speed of implementation to be faster.

I absolutely agree that it's not logical to think "oh we'll sell our AI stuff", that's the old model (which is just a variation on SaaS). I suspect a lot of HNers can't imagine a "product" that isn't code, but that's not at all what I'm describing.

The products that most people on HN have traditionally built are used by other companies to make money by allowing those processes to be scaled. AI, in many new cases, eliminates the need for a 'software' middle man. The case I'm describing is "I know how to make money doing X if only I could scale it up with out hiring people" and my offering is "I can scale it up without hiring people".

This is increasingly where I think the future of work is headed, and it's more than fine if you aren't convinced.
by lo_zamoyski | 2026-02-24 00:52:43+00:00
> Does it really bother you that people care about their heritage?

I'm making an observation. It's not a unique observation. People in countries of ancestry find it ridiculous when Americans far removed from their culture visit and claim to be "one of them", or worse, like a member of "the family". I'm sure you don't enjoy people who make fraudulent claims about themselves either, especially when it is an attempt to establish a false camaraderie with you.

I think the mid-century pressure to assimilate into corporate American culture, along with all the tactics used by the state to disrupt ethnic neighborhoods and communities like scattering them across newly-created suburbs to hasten assimilation, left people disoriented, traumatized, and feeling culturally homeless. There's a nostalgia for the ethnic neighborhood that was lost (in the case of Italian neighborhoods, you can see it reflected in movies like "The Godfather"). Assimilation would have happened on its own, eventually, but this was an engineered process of rupture.

I also question your characterization of the phenomenon as "caring about one's heritage". It's one thing to take an interest in one's ancestry. That's perfectly fine and perfectly normal, but that's not what is at issue. I can look at my family tree and note whatever ancestors of other ethnic backgrounds there might be. It's another to claim as heritage and as identity some culture that your family shed generations ago. Culture is lived in a society, not a gene you inherit.

(Incidentally, this is why some Black Americans dislike the term "African American". Black Americans have been in the US longer than most Americans of European ancestry. They aren't "African". They're a cultural group that emerged in the America South. The case is similar with Jamaicans, Barbadian, St. Lucians, etc.)

> What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you care?

How about: why are you so bothered by this observation? It seems quite personal to you, which should perhaps be something bracketed if you wish to be objective.

> People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget everything about their past

The most you can claim on the basis of these residual bits of knowledge and culture is Italian influence. Just because the Boston Brahmins know their English ancestry, or have English ancestry, doesn't mean they're English.

An "Italian American" generations removed from Italy is not the same as an "Italian", and so on. That's not a denial of influence or origin. It's just factually incorrect to say they are the same. Culturally, they are not.

> Comes off as gatekeeping people who would otherwise be your relatives.

It's interesting you call this gatekeeping. I am not the cause of such facts, and so I am not the one drawing up the boundaries of reality. I am merely recognizing them.
by arctic-true | 2026-02-24 00:52:51+00:00
Researchers looked at GPT-3 in 2023 and saw “sparks of AGI”. The saying “feel the AGI” became widespread not long after, if I’m remembering right. We’ve been saying AGI is right around the corner for a while now. And of course, if you predict the end of the world every day, you’ll eventually be right. But for the moment, what we have is an exceptionally powerful coding assistant that can also speed up entry-level work in various other white collar industries. That is earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting. But given how competitive and expensive the AI game has become, that is not enough, so it needs to be “superintelligence” - and it’s just not.
by ssl-3 | 2026-02-24 00:54:12+00:00
It's easy to buy one plane ticket when a person has a specific plan -- to attend a meeting or a conference, or to match up with an airbnb timeslot or something.

It's harder to buy one plane ticket for the lowest cost amongst all the different ways that plane tickets can be bought, and harder yet to do so with a lack of specificity.

So, for instance: Maybe I don't have a firm plan. Maybe I'm very flexible.

Maybe all I want to do is say "Hey, bot. I want to go visit my friend in Florida sometime in the next couple of weeks and spend a few days there as inexpensively as I can. He's in Orlando. I can fly out of Detroit or Cleveland; all the same to me. If I drive to the airport myself, I'll need a place to keep my car at or near the airport. I also want to explore renting a car in Orlando. I pack light; personal bag only. Cattle class is OK, but I prefer a window seat. Present to me a list of the cheapest options, with itinerary."

That's all stuff that a human can sort out, but it takes time to manually fudge around dates and locations and deal with different systems and tabulate the results. And there's nuances that need covered, like parking at DTW is weird: It's all off-site, and it can be cheaper and better to rent a room for one night in a nearby hotel that includes long-term parking than to pay for parking by itself.

So the hypothetical bot does a bunch of API hits, applies its general knowledge of how things flow, and comes back with a list of verified-good options for me to review. And then I get to pick around that list, and ask questions, and mold it to best fit my ideal vision of an inexpensive trip to go spend time with a friend.

In English, and without ever dealing with any travel websites myself.

"Right. So I go to the Detroit on Tuesday and check in at the hotel any time after noon, and take the free shuttle to the airport the next morning at around 0400 to the Evans terminal. Also, thanks for pointing out that this airport is like a ghost town until 0600 and I might want to bring a snack. Anyway, I get on the flight, land at Orlando, and they'll have a cheap car waiting for me at Avis. This will all cost me a total of $343, which sounds great. If that's all I need to know right now, then make it so. Pay for it and put it on my calendar."

(And yeah, this is a problem that I actually have from time to time. I'd love to have a bot that could just sort this stuff out with a few paragraphs.)
by mschuster91 | 2026-02-24 00:54:22+00:00
> We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything.

Yeah, but that only works for so long as the AI doesn't brute force a command that hard-bricks the device. Say, it causes a voltage controller to give out way too high voltages by a command, burns e-fuses or erases vital EEPROM data (factory calibration presets come to my mind here).
by yowayb | 2026-02-24 00:55:35+00:00
I think this paragraph from the wikipedia article captures it nicely:

>Many observers disagree that any meaningful "productivity paradox" exists and others, while acknowledging the disconnect between IT capacity and spending, view it less as a paradox than a series of unwarranted assumptions about the impact of technology on productivity. In the latter view, this disconnect is emblematic of our need to understand and do a better job of deploying the technology that becomes available to us rather than an arcane paradox that by its nature is difficult to unravel.
by alwillis | 2026-02-24 00:56:39+00:00
All of the major LLMs have re-useable prompts now, so once someone makes a skill [1] that does it, anyone can use it.

Even now, with OpenClaw and all of the spinoffs, it's possible to have n agent do this today.

[1]: https://claude.com/blog/equipping-agents-for-the-real-world-...
by redwood | 2026-02-24 00:58:13+00:00
Thank you for saying this. It reminds me of class tests where you always had to wonder if something was a trick question and you never really knew... it was always after the teacher. Which frankly is fine in open-ended questions where you can explain your rationale or how different interpretations would lead you to different paths but a terrible situation when it comes to multiple choice. I remember being very frustrated by those
by cowboylowrez | 2026-02-24 00:58:21+00:00
I've already thought about it from the US's perspective and here's my path forward.

If government does not want kids to have access to the naughty bits of the internet but thinks there's something worth sharing with children then the government should provide a public internet for kids and THATS the site that will ask for a login known to belong to a kid. We already do public schooling with public funding and we do not let rando adults sit in classrooms with kids and they get a school id. Boot <18's off the public internet AT THE SOURCE when internet connectivity is PURCHASED / CONTRACTED FOR with a valid adult id / proof of age, but allow them vpn access into whatever the government thinks the child should have access to, like the schools page, I would say online encyclopedias or wikipedia type things but I'm not sure if government wants children to read about the variety of so many different things on this planet we're sorta trapped on and lets face it, restricting communications of the kids to points outside the control of parents is exactly what the government is complaining about, the government does not want kids to have free access to information.

Think of a phone or tablet that can only access the network through either a proxy or vpn but otherwise locked down. It certainly seems like it doesn't require much programming, heck have trump vibe code it for all I care.

I mean yeah, parents could just teach their kids the tough stuff because thats how it used to work anyways, well that and the libraries and schools but those can be pruned of bad books and bad teachers at the request of government anyways right? The kids could also be interviewed periodically by government to inventory what topics they have discussed with their parents to weed out the 't' or 'g' words.

I mean yeah I don't see a place for facebook in that intranet but isn't that sort of the point, we all know big social media will be incentivised to promote engagement with less regard for safety, so why do kids need facebook anyways? The instagrams and ticktalks are worse although maybe government should make a child friendly ticktalk type school social network, call it trumps school for kids for all I care, folks in power right now and a significant part of the US believe that trump knows whats good for kids right?

I mean obviously the libraries have to be REALLY REALLY cleaned up but thats just a detail. But why are parents forcing internet wierdos onto their kids with these smartphones / porno studios in their pockets? What do they think chester the molester on ticktalk is gonna have the kid upload their id? even if he does, do we really want that? c'mon man
by k310 | 2026-02-24 00:58:33+00:00
In that case, I'm pretty sharp.

Two things I have noticed.

1. When I leave the list at home before a long drive to shop, the really important items have to be recalled. This favors short lists in general. Seriously, for most personal tasks, if your list is longer than say, 6 important items, you are overloading both your workload and memory. My opinion.

2. Last night, I noticed that my shopping list disappeared "somewhere" in my trip, despite the fact that I tied a pen to the little notebook with a cord.

Age creeping in? Not really. The damn thing(s) had fallen (as usual) between the car seat and the console, as I discovered after unloading groceries. I am making plans to stuff that space with some foam or bubble wrap to prevent this most noxious (and knuckle-scraping) failure mode.

This has been a problem for how long? 120 years?

Sometimes, I take a phone photo of the list.

I only left the phone home once, but was close enough to home to go get it. Usually there's a bluetooth indicator on the now-ancient 2018 infotainment display.

> Better lists, fewer impulsive decisions

Not really, at least for me. "-)

Generally, psychology doesn't work for me. My daughter has an Honors Psychology degree, and I am advising her to tell me the opposite of what she suggests, in honor of my cantankerous and contrarian nature.
by summm | 2026-02-24 00:59:03+00:00
They actually already do in the EUDI wallet reference implementation. There, as this is part of a more general ID system, they probably want to avoid that people duplicate or export IDs.
In case of a privacy preserving age check, the fear could be that a copied private key could be enough to generate unlimited age proofs, indistinguishable from the original app instance.
In another thread someone gave an even lazier argument: the eudi wallet requires hw backed keys by law regardless, and the laziest implementation would be device attestation...
by gerdesj | 2026-02-24 01:01:33+00:00
Right: Dear Mr eigen-vector - allow it to be Frozen themed! Ideally add a crappy MIDI style "Let it go" sound track on a loop with a note missing and for perfect torture - shift the notes 1/16 or so of a tone. You can of course do the same with "baby shark" but would anyone notice the changes 8)
by throwaway2037 | 2026-02-24 01:02:00+00:00
That headers looks pretty reasonable to me. I don't see anything misleading or ambiguous about it. Whenever I am heavily modifying some licensed code, I always make sure to include a similar header.

> I'm going to ahead and say there are copyright law nightmares, right here.

I am confused. My first thought was maybe the original Linux driver was GPL'd, but it is not. It is ISC'd. Look here: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/wi...

// SPDX-License-Identifier: ISC
/*
* Copyright (c) 2010 Broadcom Corporation
*/
by sagebird | 2026-02-24 01:02:08+00:00
This is an interesting project, congrats. I have a similar project and goals (free, light, fast portable os-like-dev environment) at http://shiro.computer, http://shiro.computer/about ( https://github.com/williamsharkey/shiro ).

You may find bits of Shiro's code useful as it has massive shimming work to get Claude Code, npm/node, git, various grep tools and isomorphic git and git diffs to work, and some weird features like virtual servers that create virtual ports to communicate to frames.

All the unix tools that Claude code are supported as well. It is also a typescript project and has similar architecture, and MIT license so there may be parts you can just straight import without much hassle.

Probably the hardest part to keep architecturally clean is the shimming required in js eval environment to make Claude Code and non-browser-native packages to run. But it is very nice once you have an agent able to work inside your browser os.

Great job and thanks for sharing Lifo. I am certain this will catch on once the implementations become more solid.
by ndriscoll | 2026-02-24 01:02:25+00:00
It's actually a linear (more generally, abstract) algebra thing. (All, Differentiable, Smooth, or all sorts of other sets of) functions form a vector space. The derivative is a linear operator (generalized matrix). If you have a linear equation Ax=b, then if you can find some solution X, the general solution set is X+kerA, where kerA (the kernel or nullspace) is the set of all v where Av=0. What's the kernel of the derivative operator (i.e. what has 0 derivative)? Constant functions. So the general solution is whatever particular antiderivative you find plus any constant function.

You can do this sort of "particular solution plus kernel" analysis on any linear operator, which gives one strategy for solving linear differential equations. e.g. (aD^2+bD+cI) is a linear operator (weighted sums and compositions of linear operators are linear), so you can potentially do that analysis to solve problems like af''+bf'+cf=g. In that context you say the general solution is to add a homogeneous solution (af''+bf'+cf=0) to a particular solution (my intro differential equations class covered this but didn't have linear algebra as a prereq so naturally at the time it was just magic, like everything else presented in intro diffeq).
by senectus1 | 2026-02-24 01:02:32+00:00
the real question is who is going to pay for the AI resource?
NONE of them are turning a profit.
NONE of them look to EVER turn a profit...

they're forcing it down everyones throats atm for mostly free, that will stop eventually. once it does the real cost of running these (currently) constantly growing services is going to start being charged to the users. the actual cost is going to be not very affordable.

in the end I suspect only tax payers will be paying for them via the only real owners... Governments.
by fragmede | 2026-02-24 01:03:35+00:00
So the work being judged is a piece from 2000 theorizing about 2010, or 10 years hence. If we were to make similar guesses about the future from here, the question is: what does 2036 look like?

At the cost of looking dumb in 10 years, and also today, here are some vague notions of mine. The big one of course is where will AI be in 10 years. My prediction is we're still going to be arguing about AGI, except no one cares anymore because it's good enough, just like the Turing test isn't as interesting either. There will be several AI religions/cults. Expect to see insular communes/communities of high-trust that are xenophobic and only interact with outsiders as necessary.

Robotics will have advanced to a point where some level of society has a robot maid to "go get me a beer" that also folds and puts away clothes.

Biology will have advanced so men are no longer necessary to provide DNA for offspring (this already works in mice). Artificial wombs will mean women aren't necessary for offspring either. This will reshape society even more than AI did.

Capitalism won't have fallen. UBI will be tried in some places and result in a tide of depression and suicide, but linking the two won't be politically viable.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm way off the mark, but my time machine's just as good as yours, so :p
by jleyank | 2026-02-24 01:03:48+00:00
If you want to be “liberal arts snarky” about things, discontinue computer degrees of any form as pure wastes of time. Either AI will render them obsolete, or coursework and schooling are poor approximations for hacking and getting starts through things like Y Combinator.

I grew up in ancient times but I was hacking away before I headed off to uni, and I didn’t take a cs course once there. But I’ve made a career out of development. It’s not the books, it’s the practice.
by nanobuilds | 2026-02-24 01:04:27+00:00
Imagine if regular TV with age warnings in the beginning of programs made you fax your ID to the channel headquarters before you could watch PG13+ or whatever movie. This is obviously a privacy nightmare and a suboptimal solution.

A good solution that respects privacy and helps reduce the exposure to harmful content at a young age is not very obvious though (but common sense and parental guidance seems to be the first step)
by levkk | 2026-02-24 01:04:55+00:00
So many, where to begin.

1. People don't design schemas to be sharded, although many gravitate towards a common key, e.g. user_id or country_id or tenant_it or customer_id. Once that happens, sharding becomes easier.

2. Postgres provides a lot of guarantees that are tricky to maintain when sharded: atomic changes, referential integrity, check constraints, unique indexes (and constraints), to name a few. Those have to be built separately by a sharding layer (like PgDog) and have trade-offs, usually around performance. It's a lot more expensive to check a globally enforced constraint than a local one (network hops aren't free).

3. Online migrations from unsharded to sharded can be tricky: you have to redistribute terabytes of data while the DB continues to serve writes. You can't lose a single row - Postgres is used as a store of record and this can be a serious issue with business impact.

We're taking increasingly bigger bites at this apple. We started with basic query routing and are now doing query rewrites as well. We didn't handle data movements previously and now have almost fully automatic resharding. It takes time, elbow grease and most importantly, willing and courageous early adopters to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude.
by mrtksn | 2026-02-24 01:05:04+00:00
I don’t think you understand how startups work.

In startups 2x isn’t enough, you usually expect 100x or 1000x returns. That’s the main idea behind investing: You give your money to someone who may have better use of it so you may get it back multiple but may also lose it.

As for the website you linked it appears to be promoting a trading bot and I don’t see any promise of guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam. Maybe I missed it, can you point it out?
by rfv6723 | 2026-02-24 01:06:08+00:00
This outlook is as short-sighted as the 2000 fiber optic bust. Critics then thought overcapacity meant the end, yet that infrastructure eventually created the modern internet. Capital does not walk away from a fundamental shift just because of one market correction. While specific companies may fail, the long-term value of the technology ensures that investment will continue far beyond a five-year window.
by runarberg | 2026-02-24 01:06:16+00:00
I was stating an opinion, not a fact, and I was interpreting history according to that opinion. That is I am arguing for a certain historical framework from which I judge historical moments.

I also don‘t think mine is a widely unpopular opinion either. That scholars of democracy and human rights agree that a democracy should not be able to vote them selves into a dictatorship, that human rights are worth something more than what can be ousted by a popular demand. So I don’t think this is an unreasonable historical framework, from which I judge the actors of this history of.
by magicmicah85 | 2026-02-24 01:06:24+00:00
I recently turned to list making for offloading all the mental tasks and organizing my life better. Running low one ggs? "Hey siri, add eggs to my groceries list". Random thought I want to google? "Hey Siri, remind me later to look up XYZ topic". I've even setup a few iOS shortcuts that connect into my Obsidian notes so that I can quickly dictate notes about books I'm reading or ideas I want to capture for later writing.

I don't know if it makes me sharper but I am able to remain focused on the present and offload the thought to future me. This has been enormously helpful and makes me wonder why I never did it regularly beyond grocery lists. Even those lists would be a mad scramble of "what do I need" looking around and almost always forgetting something I need.