MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by xmhatx | 2026-02-18 15:58:53+00:00
We were surprised by this, as well! We ended up making our own tooling to test a speech-to-speech system because of this gap. Voice AI is becoming more and more prevalent with real security implications. ElevenLabs just started offering insurance specific to Voice AI agents for this very reason. This was very, very recent news (Feb 12, 2026). We wrote an article about this earlier this week. https://www.securecoders.com/blog/voice-ai-insurance-aiuc1-c...
by jgeada | 2026-02-18 15:59:06+00:00
Inflation has made prices higher, but people's purchasing power has been decreasing all this time. Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades. It is why young people are marrying later, not able to afford to buy property etc. All the gains the economy has made over the past handful of decades have been captured by a small percentage of the population.
by kiliantics | 2026-02-18 15:59:17+00:00
While the idea in the post is an interesting one, the analogy to planing is terrible. The difference in results from a power planer and a hand plane (even with a pretty basic blade) is night and day. Wood planed with high quality and sharp steel has a finish that doesn't even need oil or varnish.

People talk about how non-AI code will become an artisanal craft and I think it's a bit of a stretch. The one exception might be when code has an intrinsic aesthetic quality in itself, rather than just the functional output, something like the obfuscated C code competition entries. Hand-worked wood might be crappy too, like a school woodwork birdhouse project made by a beginner, but a truly artisanally crafted piece of furniture or cabinetry has a very tangibly superior output to an IKEA bookshelf or other industrial stuff.

On the point of doing work for the sake of doing work and not for the sake of the value of the output, this is nothing new, as suggested in the blog post. But the more apt analogy would be all the "bullshit jobs" that have existed for decades in modern corporations. People who expand their teams to justify more budget to hire more people to create more work to expand their teams to get bigger budgets, etc. All the while producing nothing of real value in the company. The thing that AI seems to have done is accelerated and exaggerated this tendency, maybe since it was already the natural tendency within the logic of our corporate work culture.
by exceptione | 2026-02-18 15:59:29+00:00
> Some of the rise in billionaire spending can be explained by growth in the number of billionaires — but not much. The number of U.S. billionaires rose 85 percent between 2010 and 2023, from 404 to 748. But billionaires’ share of political contributions rose by 1700 percent.

> In short, we are in the midst of an unprecedented power grab by America’s oligarchs. This power grab is arguably the most important fact about contemporary U.S. politics. In many ways MAGA is just a symptom.

> What lies behind this power grab? An extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. (..)
> That said, even billionaires care about more than their own personal wealth. Unfortunately, their non-monetary goals are often worse than their greed.

Ouch.. Carpet bombing with truth, not sure if legal.

It is refreshing to read a piece with a broad perspective that solely focuses on real issues, instead of keeping the layman in the dark with both-sidisms or "let us poke your emotional brain with political distractions". Puts corporate media like the NYT to shame; they could have saved millions on ho-hum opinion pieces if they wanted to.

Share this piece with your network, if you wonder what role you can play. Bottom up is the only way, the top is either clobbered with private interests or still having no other thought then "I believed we could be a bit corrupt, just pushing a bit but keeping it safe, no?"
by yubblegum | 2026-02-18 15:59:59+00:00
I've sat in a room with a too big to tail banker's VP happily telling me and my boss that "we're getting rid of this whole floor".

Dateline ~2010. Location: NYC Why:Indian outsourced shops.

Now the zinger, dear hn, is this: He actually said to us (we ran a more boutique consulting firm) that "everything has to be done 3 times" and "their work is crap". But "we're getting rid of this floor".

That, imho, was due to geopolitical machinations of inducing India to become part of the West. The immediate equation of "money for quality work" wasn't working but the 'our higher ups' had more grand plans and sacrificing and gutting the IT industry in US was not a problem.

So, given the incentives these days, do not remotely pin your hopes on what these CEOs are saying. It means nothing whatsoever.
by vintagedave | 2026-02-18 16:00:10+00:00
Author here - have to say, thanks for reading all the way to the end, you don't always see people do that ;)

I put a spoiler at the top too, to avoid trying to make people read the whole thing. The real bit is that chart, which I think is quite an amazing result.

You're right re building. We're a compiler vendor, so we have a natural interest in what people should be targeting. But even for us the results here were not what we expected ahead of time.
by consumer451 | 2026-02-18 16:00:10+00:00
> you can do it even easier as a solo dev.

I get the feeling that we are in the golden age of LLM dev tools, where many tools like Claude Code are very subsidized. That will go away soon, and worse. In the most recent Dwarkesh podcast with Dario, he mentioned that not all tokens should cost the same.

He gave an example where tokens giving advice to restart a computer should be cheap. On the other hand, tokens advising a pharma company on molecules should be expensive.

In the near future I can imaging CC replying:

> That's a great idea, this will solve the problem in production! However, this will be charged at 20x. Would you like me to proceed?
by boring-human | 2026-02-18 16:00:22+00:00
> I still haven't found one to equal Railroad Tycoon 3, which has this kind of neat reactive diffusion field pricing engine.

My feelings exactly. I still play it regularly for this reason alone. A really amazing game under the hood.

The Rhodes Unfinished scenario is probably my favorite. On the highest-difficulty level, it starts out as a hard map, then becomes an insatiable resource grab. By the end you're building vanity suspension bridges over chasms and digging tunnels the width of Kilimanjaro.
by the_harpia_io | 2026-02-18 16:00:23+00:00
the ecosystem fragmentation thing hit me pretty hard when i was trying to set up a consistent linting workflow across a mono-repo last year. half the team already using biome, half still on eslint+prettier, and adding any shared tooling meant either duplicating config or just picking a side and upsetting someone

i get why the rust/go tools exist - the perf gains are measurable. but the cognitive overhead is real. new engineer joins, they now need 3 different mental models just to make a PR. not sure AI helps here either honestly, it just makes it easier to copy-paste configs you don't fully understand
by xvilka | 2026-02-18 16:00:28+00:00
As a text interface lover and someone who dived deep into terminal quirks, I do think you have a valid point. We need to design a text interface without all the legacy cruft, better suited for modern needs (including colors), and better mixed-mode output and interaction, something similar to what we have with Jupyter, for example (without the Web/JS/Python baggage though). It would require rebuilding whole ecosystem from scratch though, thus unlikely to happen any time soon.
by jmclnx | 2026-02-18 16:00:50+00:00
> I wish we could have put it on the show, where no one would’ve watched it

So true, the Streisand effect in full view. I think it got 95 million views on youtube. If just on the show with no comment from the US admin, probably would not break 5 million.

This admin is doing more harm to itself trying to censor people than if they ignored Colbert.
by Encounter | 2026-02-18 16:01:12+00:00
From https://asahilinux.org/about/

> Apple allows booting unsigned/custom kernels on Apple Silicon Macs without a jailbreak! This isn’t a hack or an omission, but an actual feature that Apple built into these devices. That means that, unlike iOS devices, Apple does not intend to lock down what OS you can use on Macs (though they probably won’t help with the development).
by bzzzt | 2026-02-18 16:01:12+00:00
I don't see Microsoft backing down from their SaaS push: it's necessary for authentication and authorization in all their Office 365 (or whatever it's called now) applications, also on platforms not running Microsoft clients. Beside that Entra is an OIDC server which makes it possible to integrate other SaaS applications in a domain which is near impossible to do if you only have local authentication.

Of course, you can still run local AD which synchronizes with Entra, but that means you get the worst of both worlds: you are paying for the cloud software but still have to manage your own servers.
by skeeter2020 | 2026-02-18 16:02:16+00:00
This doesn't seem surprising, but I also don't think it's that important. First, how do they stack up against humans creating supposedly random passwords? Are they better than my "favourites"? Second, is the relative strength of a password - beyond trivial - the crux problem here? It seems a msitake to focus on "strongest password ever" when people are using simple passwords, sharing passwords or resources aren't even secured at all. Sure, don't use an LLM to generate your password, but let's take care of the basics and not over-focus on looking for more reasons to hate LLMs.
by bob1029 | 2026-02-18 16:03:54+00:00
The analogy that an LLM is simply an amplifier is apt for most general business.

If you've already got a very effective team with clear vision/goals, this technology will almost certainly help to some degree.

If you've got a sinking ship of a business, this technology will likely drag you down faster.

You always have to work backward from the customer into the technology. AI will never change that. I've found myself waffling on advice to some clients regarding AI because whether or not they can effectively leverage it depends more on what the people in the business are willing to do than what the technology can do.
by bunderbunder | 2026-02-18 16:04:03+00:00
Kind of fascinating that the first couple comments to be posted both start with a declaration of the author’s opinion of Colbert.

I read it as a pretty straightforward acknowledgment that we’ve reached a point in public discourse where people pay at least as much attention to who is making a point as we do to the actual point being made.

I wonder if finding common ground is even possible as long as that kind of tacit ad hominem remains baked into the way we think about public discourse.
by TheAntiEgo | 2026-02-18 16:04:05+00:00
What if the solution to America's education crisis has been around since the founding fathers?
In this episode of the Super Debate Podcast, I sit down with John Hines, national champion debate coach, NSF-funded researcher, and CEO of DebaterHub, to talk about why debate needs to return to the center of education, and what happens if it doesn't.
by zo1 | 2026-02-18 16:04:20+00:00
It's human nature scaled up. Just isolate and zoom in on any single injustice or "how the sausage is made" scenario that you are privy to in your industry. Just a random water-cooler discussion about agreeing to a certain tech framework, or being 5% more likely to promote the project who's team is led by your friend, etc.

...And it gets worse and worse the higher I go in my career. Nothing is logical, nothing is purely organic and merit based. It's all marketing, promotion, personal-preference and plain old backroom deals. No amount of banging your head against any wall with logic or pros/cons can dissuade those in power from changing their mind, unless you force their hand with blatant lies/facts/bad-optics.
by Hasz | 2026-02-18 16:05:11+00:00
> I'm not saying there isn't value in there, but this habit people have of acting like it's all relevant to safety and screeching about "written in blood" is exactly what creates room for unrelated stuff to exist in the code.

meh, I understand the point, but it is about your risk tolerance being different than whoever writes the code. I have a long list of complaints about the NEC, (including AFCI requirements), but IMO, these kinds of requirements do save some amount of lives -- the issues comes down to how much do you value your own life, and/or the lives of others. The tradeoff, as always, is cost -- inspections, permits, impact studies etc push up the cost of new and remodel jobs substantially.

Where I really take issue with different code is when we hammer down on a specific issue of small significance while neglecting a more significant problem. For example, I have never in my life seen an inspector check the torque of a main lugs, polaris connectors, etc. Might just be my inspectors, but I have seen way more failures due to loose or over tightened connections than anything else.

I am all for gradually raising the bar for safety, but it has to rise faster than the increased cost, along with a level raising of the bar across all facets.
by AreShoesFeet000 | 2026-02-18 16:05:25+00:00
I don’t define anything. The truth is just that there’s no profit extraction without charity work. I’ve done lots of it. If you’ve done it, you know too.

As dark as it may seem to strip romantism out of which you call humanity, not only there isn’t a just salary for those who bear the weight of the machine, but also there’s isn’t even a salary per se.

If for you humanity is just doing seemingly nice guy work without question, call me a monster.
by WorldMaker | 2026-02-18 16:05:34+00:00
A sometimes easier solution now in TS/JS is to use a simple template interpolation function (template tag) to inline the parameters and let the library autonumber them.

const x = 42
const id = 'example'
const { rows } = pgquery`Update t set x = ${x} where id = ${id}`

The pgquery function can convert that into the $1 and $2 that Postgres expects, but the source code is a little easier to read and has named parameters.

Of course, it potentially makes debugging the query from the database side a little harder because the query itself in its running form is still going to show the $1 and $2 placeholders so you'd have to count "holes" to figure which is which when trying to grep which source line is generating that query. I know that's why some frown on this template-based auto-placeholders because they want the code to better resemble the queries as they run in Postgres.

(Also yeah, it might be nice if Postgres also supported named placeholders like some of the other SQL databases do.)
by bhamm-lab | 2026-02-18 16:06:26+00:00
Wrote up some notes from upgrading my local llama.cpp setup on AMD Strix Halo hardware and testing a batch of newer open models.

Main findings:

- Kimi Linear 48B works well as a generalist on my hardware (fast, consistent).

- Qwen3 Coder Next is my new default for coding tasks.

- Aggressive quants (Q2_K_XL) on massive models (200B+) can still be useful for long-running/background tasks, even if they aren't interactive.

Happy to answer questions about the dual AI Max+ 395 setup or how I run models in kubernetes.
by nerdjon | 2026-02-18 16:06:46+00:00
Again nowhere am I saying an alternative to trust, I can trust AA without blindingly trusting. Human error and malicious actors don’t immediately remove trust in a larger group, but it is also up to you to take some responsibility to protect yourself.

Even the simple act of manually choosing the torrent you are going to seed is already more of a sanity check than what your tool is doing. You could decide that your personal safety guidelines are that you will seed older torrents but not new ones just to make sure that some time passes and nothing was snuck in.

Is that perfect, no. But you know a lot more about what is happening on your device than a piece of software that just chooses what it is going to download and seed automatically. And you know before anything happens, not after.

Personally my biggest problem there is not choosing to use a tool like this or even how you wrote it. My problem is that you don’t make any mention of this on GitHub and that you’re incredibly dismissive of any concerns about running this way. If this is how you want it to work fine, but simply acknowledge that there are risks involved that go beyond just simply trusting AA and you are asking for blind trust.
by vunderba | 2026-02-18 16:07:19+00:00
I wouldn't try to focus too much on the alchemy that makes some posts turn into gold while others remain lead.

I will say that I often click on the submitter's profile and if I see very low karma, or karma only related to their own submissions, then it makes me think that they're only on HN to promote themselves.

Giving back (in the form of comments, feedback, etc) is an important part of what makes this community great.
by samtheDamned | 2026-02-18 16:07:50+00:00
I feel like this could have done without the ableist quip, however I also see this in my industry as well, especially among higher-ups. Funnily enough this was the topic of another discussion yesterday[0].

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038125

Edit: Which I see was just shared by someone else here hours before me, so I guess I'm not all that safe from the brain rot myself haha.
by TheRealPomax | 2026-02-18 16:08:02+00:00
Same, I read the first few and it just read as conspiracy theory material, where the "evidence" that refuses the claim has nothing to do with the claim unless you're already halfway down the koolaid pitcher.

Always better to leave the "maybe, if you squint, but just as easily no" stuff out if you're trying convince others that there's a serious, objective problem with receipts.
by ceejayoz | 2026-02-18 16:08:05+00:00
> I would call that being confused about the distinction between law making and law enforcement…

I think you're confused. Facebook does neither. Facebook makes and enforces their own policies, not laws.

> It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them.

They should staff a human review/appeals process again, then. They used COVID as the excuse to discard that cost center.
Show HN: Atom – Safer Version of OpenClaw with Episodic Memory
by rush86999 | 2026-02-18 16:08:12+00:00
Atom is what you would want if you wanted OpenClaw to run your business. Here are the key differences:

- Governance and audit trails
- You want graduated autonomy (agents earn trust over time)
- You need structured episodic memory for learning and graduation
- You require real-time visibility into agent operations
- Canvas UI - not just a terminal with AI accessibility without using images for visual memory
- Want to still use OpenClaw 5000+ skills safely
by thayne | 2026-02-18 16:08:40+00:00
The OP specifically says why that isn't ideal:

The mainstream solution is to use truecolor and gain access to 16 million colors. But there are drawbacks:

Each truecolor program needs its own theme configuration.
Changing your color scheme means editing multiple config files.
Light/dark switching requires explicit support from program maintainers.
Truecolor escape codes are longer and slower to parse.
Fewer terminals support truecolor.
by palmotea | 2026-02-18 16:08:40+00:00
> Far from "harming my cause", vindictiveness wins elections.

If it does, it's a pyrrhic victory. You'll complete the destruction of everything the Democrats claim to defend.

> Weakness toward the fascist idiots currently tearing this world appart only made them stronger, and worsened the situation.

Has Donald Trump corrupted you, turning you into your own kind of fascist? That kind of strong(=being vindictive)/weak binary thinking is very Trumpian.

> but I reserve the right to not extend my empathy to those who consistently chose mindless hate over actual solutions.

FYI, that's what one kind of mindless hate looks like to the hater. Especially since you're being very broad with it (e.g. including "his idotic voter base").

> Also, I am absolutely better than Trump and his supporters: I'm not a child rapist and I don't support those who are.

I don't think so: the vast majority of Trump's supporters are also not child rapists and don't support those who are.

I'd suggest you give politics a rest, unless you want to turn into what you seem to despise.
by marssaxman | 2026-02-18 16:08:45+00:00
What difference does that make in solving the actual problem? The real story here is not "some lousy Microsoft employee ripped off this guy's graphic", but "people using AI image generators may receive near-copies of existing media instead of new content, with no indication that this has happened".

If this has been discovered once, it must be happening every day. What can we do about that? Perhaps image generators need to build in something like a Tineye search to validate the novelty of their output before returning it.
by Aurornis | 2026-02-18 16:08:46+00:00
> Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people

> Meta (and other social media) needs regulation

The first obvious flaw in your logic is that you jumped from "Facebook causes harm" to "other social media needs regulation".

It should be obvious why that's broken logic.

The second problem is that this is just the classic "think of the children" fallacy: You point out a problem, say it affects children, and then use that to shut down any debate about regulation. It creates a wide open door for intrusive regulation.

This isn't new. It's been going on for decades. Yet people still walk right into this trap over and over again.

So to answer your question:

> Which step in this logic do you not accept?

The step I don't accept is the real core of the problem: The specifics of the regulation, but you conveniently stopped your logic chain before getting to that.
by neobrain | 2026-02-18 16:09:24+00:00
For me, it has been ready as a daily driver for more than a year. Battery life is shorter than macos but still long enough that I don't have to think about it (which I can't say about any x86 laptops, even when they use iGPUs).

The notable missing features are external displays (an experimental kernel branch is publicly available though) and the fingerprint sensor. That's about it, though. Given the amount of polish combined with the hardware, it's arguably the most polished Linux laptop experience you'll get.
by Andrex | 2026-02-18 16:09:34+00:00
Snippets were already getting Google in legal hot water (with Yelp in the US and news agencies in Australia in particular IIRC) long before LLMs and AI scraping. It's a debatable gray area of Fair Use growing out of early rulings on DMCA related cases, and also Google's win over the Author's Guild at SCOTUS.
by rdiddly | 2026-02-18 16:09:38+00:00
The Luigi Mangione method? United Healthcare's brief couple-week spasm of not being complete dicks and borderline fraudsters to people with legitimate insurance claims, was encouraging in this regard. Unfortunately, to take this position you have to condone murder. And I don't see it doing anything to redistribute wealth - it just passes it on to their spouses or kids. On the other hand, if the spouse is a Melinda Gates or MacKenzie Scott type, having them be in charge might be an improvement.
by MarsIronPI | 2026-02-18 16:09:56+00:00
The only thing my X230 struggles to do is run LLMs locally. My needs are simple, and I think normal people (i.e. probably not most people on this site) don't have needs that are any more demanding than mine.

Granted, this is running GNU/Linux rather than Windows. If you're running Windows then yeah, they show their age.