MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by danaris | 2026-02-08 13:37:17+00:00
What rapid acceleration?

I look at the trajectory of LLMs, and the shape I see is one of diminishing returns.

The improvements in the first few generations came fast, and they were impressive. Then subsequent generations took longer, improved less over the previous generation, and required more and more (and more and more) resources to achieve.

I'm not interested in one guy's take that LLMs are AGI, regardless of his computer science bonafides. I can look at what they do myself, and see that they aren't, by most very reasonable definitions of AGI.

If you really believe that the singularity is happening now...well, then, shouldn't it take a very short time for the effects of that to be painfully obvious? Like, massive improvements in all kinds of technology coming in a matter of months? Come back in a few months and tell me what amazing new technologies this supposed AGI has created...or maybe the one in denial isn't me.
Exploring hardware-authenticated file encryption in Python
by Lif28 | 2026-02-08 13:39:28+00:00
I’ve been experimenting with a way to encrypt files where the encryption keys never touch the host machine and are stored exclusively on a physical USB device. Files are encrypted using AES-256-GCM, and without the USB key they become permanently inaccessible.

I’m interested in feedback on the overall design and any obvious mistakes in the approach.

For reference, there’s a small open-source example implementation here: https://github.com/Lif28/Aegis — it’s experimental and educational, not production-ready
by piva00 | 2026-02-08 13:39:30+00:00
You live in the bubble where taxation is only to redistribute to wasteful means. In that bubble you get blinded by black-and-white thinking that can never achieve any kind of nuance to actually address issues, only seeing issues in it all is not conducive to creating concrete criticism which is the first step to change. You can only be cynical, and contrarian.

So yeah, seems exhausting, being mad at it all because you can't think in specifics, just a general sense of madness and outrage at a black hole of frustration.

Unfortunately you live in that bubble.

Sorry you live in a broken society, maybe do something to change it.
by direwolf20 | 2026-02-08 13:39:30+00:00
For decades, Microsoft only made Visual C++ for Windows, and alternatives like DJGPP weren't very good. This isn't unreasonable, it's just how programming works when you target a platform. Visual C++ relies on Windows because it's a Windows program, and Xcode is written for MacOS, not for Java or Electron.

What is stopping you from writing an open source alternative to Xcode that runs on Linux?
by nerdsniper | 2026-02-08 13:39:38+00:00
I looked into this for the M1 MBA and it had the exact same performance at full load as the MBP...for 7 minutes. Then the thermal throttling hits and it slows down. I'm not sure what the time limit is for newer models. Regardless, the MBA's aren't offered with Pro/Ultra chips, which I desire (and would thermally throttle much sooner than 7 minutes).

My recommendation to friends asking about MBP / MBA is entirely based on whether they do anything that will load the CPU for more than 7 minutes. For me, I need the fans. I even use Macs Fan Control[0], a 3rd party utility, to control the fans for some of my workflows - pegging the fans to 100% to pre-cool the CPU between loads can help a lot.

0: https://crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control
by lelanthran | 2026-02-08 13:39:47+00:00
> You said

>> some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.

You are correct, I did say that, but that's because the probability of that is so close to 1 that it's not worth splitting hairs about.

Can that fail to happen? Sure, but for the planet to heat up even by an exceptionally high 10c and have few places near the average is a vanishingly small possibility, and would almost certianly require a change in the earth's orbit.

> and provided no basis for that claim.
by royal-amrah | 2026-02-08 13:40:13+00:00
Hi HN, I’m the developer of Alerio.

I built this because I manage a few production servers. Recently, my main API became unresponsive at 3 AM. I had uptime monitoring set up (Grafana/Uptime Kuma), but the standard push notification was too short/quiet to wake me up, especially since my phone was on "Do Not Disturb".

Existing solutions like PagerDuty felt like overkill (and too expensive) for my personal projects.

So I built a native Android app that acts as a dedicated pager.
It listens for incoming Webhooks and triggers a full-screen VoIP call using Android's ConnectionService API. This allows it to:
1. Bypass Silent Mode and DND restrictions legally.
2. Ring continuously until I wake up and acknowledge the incident.
3. Multi-device support (added in v1.1)

Tech Stack:
- Backend: Go (Fiber) + PostgreSQL
- Mobile: Kotlin (Native)
- Realtime: WebSocket + FCM

It has a free tier for hobbyists. I'd love to hear your feedback on the reliability and the approach.

Happy to answer any technical questions!
by HumanOstrich | 2026-02-08 13:40:45+00:00
Good to know it works for some people! I think it's another issue where they focus too much on MacOS and neglect Windows and Linux releases. I use WSL for Claude Code since the Windows release is far worse and currently unusable do to several neglected issues.

Hoping to see several missing features land in the Linux release soon.

I'm also feeling weak and the pull of getting a Mac is stronger. But I also really don't like the neglect around being cross-platform. It's "cross-platform" except a bunch of crap doesn't work outside MacOS. This applies to Claude Code, Claude Desktop (MacOS and Windows only - no Linux or WSL support), Claude Cowork (MacOS only). OpenAI does the same crap - the new Codex desktop app is MacOS only. And now I'm ranting.
by jesperordrup | 2026-02-08 13:40:53+00:00
I'm sure you can find some formulations that are AI written. Because I've used AI for structuring content and developing site.

As I wrote somewhere else this is made with AI, not by AI.

Ive been singing and developing for years. I'm not the expert but using others. Also, anyone finding anything that looks remotely wrong, I'll happily receive the feedback and update.

And use chatgpt, but use it the same way. Be curious if it's correct.
by ithkuil | 2026-02-08 13:40:58+00:00
It's a complicated journey but we're getting there. It's not like you immediately figure out the diagnosis and understand what's the best way to treat it.

And every child is different because it's often not just ADHD but also other things.

But we're in a much better position now to help him.

My main point is that from my experience "gifted children" very often come with all other sorts of problems that put them in the category of special needs children and it's not just that they are mentally one step ahead of their peers.
by rngfnby | 2026-02-08 13:42:42+00:00
New Mac arm user here.

Replaced a good Windows machine (Ryzen 5? 32 Gb) and I have a late intel Mac and a Linux workstation (6 core Ryzen 5, 32 Gb).

Obviously the Mac is newer. But wow. It's faster even on things that CPU shouldn't matter, like going through a remote samba mount through our corporate VPN.

- Much faster than my intel Mac

- Faster than my Windows

- Haven't noticed any improvements over my Linux machines, but with my current job I no longer get to use them much for desktop (unfortunately).

Of course, while I love my Debian setup, boot up is long on my workstation; screensaver/sleep/wake up is a nightmare on my entertainment box (my fault, but common!). The Mac just sleeps/wakes up with no problems.

The Mac (smallest air) is also by far the best laptop Ive ever had from a mobility POV. Immediate start up, long battery, decent enough keyboard (but If rather sacrifice for a longer keypress)
by graphpilled | 2026-02-08 13:42:56+00:00
There's a demo on the landing page that walks through it. Basically you input any idea—no matter how vague—and the system generates branching directions you could take it. You explore the branches, and when you're satisfied you can export and the system generates a technical screenplay based on your choices.
There's no "right" first prompt—I've thrown some of my dumbest ideas at it just to see where the system takes me. That's kind of the point.
Regarding adding your own branches—yes, that's on my roadmap. Letting users create their own options and shape the graph more directly. Still a work in progress!
by etrvic | 2026-02-08 13:43:24+00:00
I had the same problem last year, re-indexing all the files fixed it for me[1].

That being said, macOS was definitely more snappy back on Catalina, which was the first version I had so I can't vouch for Snow Leopard. Each update after Catalina felt gradually worse and from what i heard Tahoe feels like the last nail in the coffin.

I hope the UX team will deliver a more polished, expressive and minimal design next time.

[1] - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102321
by dgb23 | 2026-02-08 13:43:26+00:00
Some people do to a degree. Just not quite in the sense that this headline suggests.

There are now approaches were the prompt itself is being structured in a way (sort of like a spec) so you get to a similar result quicker. Not sure how well those work (I actually assume they suck, but I have not tried them).

Also some frameworks, templates and so on, provide a bunch of structured markdown files that nudges LLM assistance to avoid common issues and do things in a certain way.
by DrewADesign | 2026-02-08 13:43:49+00:00
I know there is demand — I even know a few people in high-level dev roles, one easily in the 99th percentile for pay, that were taken from their regular, important dev tasks to make agents for paying clients.

I’m not worried about the technology flourishing. I’m worried about my fucking retirement, know what I mean? The question isn’t whether there is demand, it’s how much demand there is, because they’re betting on having all the demand. I don’t have a ton of money. People getting this wrong in a way my financial advisor can’t outmaneuver is an existential threat to my ability to not live in crumbling public housing in a few decades.

We’re talking about this needing to meaningfully move towards making whole digit percentages of the US GDP, soon. Not only are these initiatives largely unprofitable, they’re increasing their expenses based on hopes and vibes. I think a whole lot of people are so focused on short-term gains and being king of the hill that sustainability is a distant afterthought — just like it was in the .com era. I have zero faith in the current cohort of tech leaders to get this right.
by telotortium | 2026-02-08 13:43:55+00:00
Unfortunately GitHub doesn’t let you easily review commits in a PR. You can easily selectively review files, but comments are assumed to apply to the most recent HEAD of the PR branch. This is probably why review agents don’t natively use that workflow. It would probably not be hard to instruct the released versions of Opus or Codex to do this, however, particularly if you can generate a PR plan, either via human or model.
by SatvikBeri | 2026-02-08 13:44:24+00:00
I do this. For example, the other day I made a commit where I renamed some fields of a struct and removed others, then I realized it would be easier to review if those were two separate commits. But it was hard to split them out mechanically, so I asked Claude to do it, creating two new commits whose end result must match the old one and must both past tests. It works quite well.
by the_harpia_io | 2026-02-08 13:44:56+00:00
the shame around vibe-coded stuff is real but honestly - most of the code out there wouldn't survive scrutiny either, AI-generated or not. the difference is that vibe coding fails in predictable patterns. weirdly verbose error handling that doesn't actually handle the error, auth flows that work great until you send a malformed header, things like that.

for notifications specifically, the risky bits would be: what happens if an app sends a notification payload that's malformed or huge, how do you handle permission checks if the notification system process restarts mid-filtering, and whether the filtering rules can be bypassed by crafting notifications with weird mime types or encoded text.

if you wrote tests for those edge cases (or even just thought through them), you're already ahead of 90% of shipped code, vibe-coded or not. the scrutiny you're worried about is actually healthy - peer review catches stuff automated tools miss.
by armchairhacker | 2026-02-08 13:45:06+00:00
Old voice assistant

> User: “Turn on the damn light!”

> AI: “Sorry, I’m not sure what you said” [needed the exact phrase “turn on the light”]

New voice assistant

> User: “Turn on the damn light!”

> AI (thinking): “The user said to turn on the light. But they were rude and I’m feeling quirky today, so let’s run the shower instead.”
by wtcactus | 2026-02-08 13:45:58+00:00
They actually should be able to, for the most part.

The original idea of state exists to ensure 3 things:

- Protection of the territory of the state

- Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen

- Protection of the private property of the citizen

This is why people started organizing in societies and allowing the existence of a ruler class. These 3 things.

You will always need some amount of military to be part of the state. But what most countries waste today (the USA for instance), is pornographic. The state should only be allowed (by taxation) enough military to defend their territory, not to exert control over the all planet like the USA wants to do.
by danaris | 2026-02-08 13:46:35+00:00
But...that's just a complete non sequitur.

The proposition wasn't "all the viable land/fishing spots will be destroyed". No one has been arguing that.

It was "when we lose this viable fishing spot, another spot that was not viable will become viable".

And there is zero basis for that.

So either you have massively failed to state your position clearly, or you are so blatantly moving the goalposts, the dragmarks can be seen from space. Which is it?
by nerdsniper | 2026-02-08 13:46:43+00:00
I do believe Apple are still the fastest single-core (M5, A19 Pro, and M3 Ultra leading), which still matters for a shocking amount of my workloads. But only the M5 has any noticeable gap vs Intel (~16%). Also the rankings are a bit gamed because AMD and Intel put out a LOT of SKU's that are nearly the same product, so whenever they're "winning" on a benchmark they take up a bunch of slots right next to eachother even though they're all basically the exact same chip.
by berkes | 2026-02-08 13:47:12+00:00
This field is highly competitive. Much more than I expected it to. I thought the barrier to entry was so high, only big tech could seriously join the race, because of costs, or training data etc.

But there's fierce competition by new or small players (deepseek, Mistral etc), many even open source. And Icm convinced they'll keep the prices low.

A company like openai can only increase subscriptions x10 when they've locked in enough clients, have a monopoly or oligopoly, or their switching costs are multitudes of that.

So currently the irony seems to be that the larger the AI company, the more loss they're running at. Size seems to have a negative impact on business.
But the smaller operators also prevent companies from raising prices to levels at which they make money.
by c0brac0bra | 2026-02-08 13:47:21+00:00
This reminds me of the rumors of the cult Aum Shinrikyo testing nuclear weapons in the outback. They had previously released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

It was lightly detailed in Bill Bryson's book, "In a Sunburned Country", but I don't think there was any confirmation what they were doing was nuclear.
by RickJWagner | 2026-02-08 13:47:33+00:00
Reddit is a rich field of attack for all sorts of nefarious actors. Through the use of bot armies they can stir up trouble and encourage harmful behavior.

Nothing is easily tied to an actual human being, which is what differentiates it from free public speech. An entire discussion might appear to have thousands of people shouting for some political action, when it’s really one small team or even a single actor orchestrating it.

I think the government has been slow to respond, really. It’s a PsyOps battlefield.
by ajross | 2026-02-08 13:47:33+00:00
> First of all, Apple CPUs are not the fastest.

The cores are. Nothing is beating a M4/M5 on single CPU performance, and per-cycle nothing is even particularly close.

At the whole-chip level, there are bigger devices from the x86 vendors which will pull ahead on parallel benchmarks. And Apple's unfortunate allergy to effective cooling techniques (like, "faster fans move more air") means that they tend to throttle on chip-scale loads[1].

But if you just want to Run One Thing really fast, which even today still correlates better to "machine feels fast" than parallel loads, Apple is the undisputed king.

[1] One of the reasons Geekbench 6, which controversially includes cooling pauses, looks so much better for Apple than version 5 did.
by blame-troi | 2026-02-08 13:47:38+00:00
A couple of years on Mounjaro here. Huge QOL benefits for me. I’m on it for diabetes but enjoy the weight loss benefits. I’ve read some articles saying that these meds are like the hotel California. Once on always on.

At my age this doesn’t bother me but I do wonder if there’s a lower maintenance dose that would work for those who got all the weight loss benefits they are going to get via medication alone.
by CrimsonRain | 2026-02-08 13:47:47+00:00
No wonder. You are selfish. Only think of how you can earn money without proving any benefit to society. All you know is how to drive a horse carriage and now taxies scare you. You feel threatened.

More power to society if my skills become easily replaceable. I can learn new things, contribute to society in different ways. I'm not afraid.
by insuranceguru | 2026-02-08 13:48:00+00:00
sandboxing is really the only way to make agentic workflows auditable for enterprise risk. we can't underwrite trust in the model's output, but we can underwrite the isolation layer. if you can prove the agent literally cannot access the host network or sensitive volumes regardless of its instructions, that's a much cleaner compliance story than just relying on system prompts.
by Narciss | 2026-02-08 13:48:08+00:00
I did a bit of digging into why you think agentic coding is “not there yet”, and I think you are bashing a tool you have very little experience with and are using a bit wrongly.

Nothing wrong with that, except that as opposed to any other tool that is out there, agentic coding is approached by smart senior engineers that would otherwise spend time reading documentation and understanding a new package/tool/framework before giving conclusions around it with “I spun up Claude code and it’s not working”. Dunno why the same level of diligence isn’t applied to agentic coding as well.

First question that I always have to such engineers is “what model have you tried?” And it always ends up being the non-SOTA models for tasks that are not simple. Have you tried Claude Opus?

Second question: have you tried plan mode?

And then I politely ask them to read some documentation on using these tools, because the simplicity of the chat interface is deceptive.
Recursive Deductive Verification: A framework for reducing AI hallucinations
by salacryl | 2026-02-08 13:48:17+00:00
:
I've been working on a systematic methodology that significantly improves LLM reliability. The core idea: force verification before conclusion.
The Problem:
LLMs generate plausible-sounding outputs without verifying premises. They optimize for coherence, not correctness.
RDV Principles:

Never assume - If not verifiable, ask or admit uncertainty
Decompose recursively - Break complex claims into testable atomic facts
Distinguish IS from SHOULD - Separate observation from recommendation
Test mechanisms first - Functions over essences, reproducible behavior over speculation
Intellectual honesty over comfort - "I don't know" is valid

Practical Results:
Applied as system instructions, RDV significantly reduces:

Hallucinations (model stops instead of confabulating)
Logical errors (decomposition catches flaws)
Unjustified confidence (verification reveals gaps)

Example:
Without RDV: "The best solution is X because Y" (unverified assumption)
With RDV: "What are we optimizing for? What constraints exist? Let me verify Y before recommending X..."
Implementation:
Can be added to system prompts or custom instructions. The key is making verification a required step, not optional.
This isn't about restricting capability - it's about adding rigor. Better verification = more reliable outputs.
Open question: Could verification frameworks like this be built into model training rather than just prompting?
by gschizas | 2026-02-08 13:48:35+00:00
The character "μ" itself is called μι or μυ (both pronounced "me"), and is the exact equivalent of Latin "m". For some reason, English speaking countries tend to pronounce it "mew" (they also pronounce "π" as "pie"). But English speaking countries mispronounce so many words it's par for the course anyway.

Pet peeve: I really hate when they replace "μ" with "u". Completely different letters. Of course replacing capital Latin "E" with capital Greek sigma ("Σ") is even worse.

As to the μlauncher: It's anyone's guess as to how the author meant for it to be pronounced. I'd call it "me"launcher or "micro"launcher (micro is also pronounced wrong in English BTW, it's not MY-crow, it's more like mee-CRAW )
by siva7 | 2026-02-08 13:48:44+00:00
It's insane that they concluded the builtin introspection skill for claude documentation should do a web search instead of simply packing the correct documentation in local files. I had the same experience like you, wasting tokens and my time because their architecture decision doesn't work in practice.

I have to google the correct Anthropic documentation and pass that link to claude code because claude isn't able to do the same reliably in order to know how to use its own features.
by etrvic | 2026-02-08 13:48:49+00:00
> The FAQ notes that submission rank is impacted by "software which downweights overheated discussions." A good rule of thumb for this effect is when the number of comments on a submission exceeds its score. Moderators can overrule the downranking for appropriate, not-actually-a-flame-war discussions.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented