MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by OfflineSergio | 2026-02-09 00:32:50+00:00
I'm working on a new compontent for viewing PDFs in original format and structure but show text highlighting while a specific piece of the PDF is being played in the TTS engine.
This for my app (https://with.audio). Which already supports PDF parsing and TTS of PDF files. WithAudio currently converts the input PDF to Markdown and performs TTS and synchronized text highlighting on the Markdown content. I want to do this on the original rendered PDF content itself.

Initial results are promosing Extracting the text and figuring out which lines belong to the same paragraph and then try to map those to the original positions in the PDF...
by btrettel | 2026-02-09 00:33:03+00:00
This was interesting as I face a lot of issues maintaining my own notes accumulated over the past 15 or so years. The approach discussed might work great for the OP, but I'm skeptical this would work for me. I've found a lot of value in the "boring" maintenance tasks. Thinking about where to place something has caused me to make exactly the sort of connections the OP wrote about wanting to find. I work with a combination of a directory hierarchy, text search, and links (symlinks, URLs, bibliographic citations) which serve the same purpose as the tags and links the OP discussed. Links are how I express a lot of connections, in fact. So I don't see the organizing as some sort of non-core operation that's "labor" and not "thinking". For me, it's both.
by piskov | 2026-02-09 00:33:12+00:00
The pattern matching and absence or real thinking is still strong.

Tried to move some excel generation logic from epplus to closedxml library.

ClosedXml has basically the same API so the conversion was successful. Not a one-shot but relatively easy with a few manual edits.

But closedxml has no batch operations (like apply style to the entire column): the api is there but internal implementation is on cell after cell basis. So if you have 10k rows and 50 columns every style update is a slow operaton.

Naturally, told all about this to codex 5.3 max thinking level. The fucker still succumbed to range updates here and there.

Told it explicitly to make a style cache and reuse styles on cells on same y axis.

5-6 attempts — fucker still tried ranges here and there. Because that is what is usually done.

Not here yet. Maybe in a year. Maybe never.
by nlowell | 2026-02-09 00:33:15+00:00
With a bit of tuning, you can get models like Claude to output Mermaid-style diagrams. I built this as a feature into the tasks, so that you can hit a toggle which adds a prompt asking the agent to create a Mermaid diagram during or after the task execution. I pull this diagram back into the GUI and display it with the task information. So user flow is like:

-User creates task as usual but toggles the "mermaid diagram" option on

-Agent takes additional step during execution to create diagram

-User sees that diagram on the task details panel for that task

If you specify in your overall task prompt what kind of diagram you want or what you want it to show, it will take your specifications into account. It's just a prompt control + automatically pulling that diagram back into the task tracking.
by fluoridation | 2026-02-09 00:33:19+00:00
>What does "single core gaming performance" even mean for a CPU that doesn't have an iGPU?

Just a guess, but I would interpret it to mean how fast the CPU can issue commands to the GPU (which is usually, though not always, done in a single thread). For example, that could be measured by choosing a graphically lightweight game at minimum settings together with the best possible GPU and measuring the framerate. I.e. Making sure the bottleneck is the CPU, how high does the framerate go?

Whether the package includes a GPU or not is irrelevant, because what is being compared is the CPU part of the package, not the GPU. Whether they both happen to live within the same package or even the same die is irrelevant.
by frumplestlatz | 2026-02-09 00:33:28+00:00
> I mean correct me if you have actual data to prove me wrong, but my memory at the time is that build times were really not a problem.

I never had cause to build quake, but my Linux kernel builds took something like 3-4 hours on an i486. It was a bit better on the dual socket pentium I had at work, but it was still painfully slow.

I specifically remember setting up gcc cross toolchains to build Linux binaries on our big iron ultrasparc machines because the performance difference was so huge — more CPUs, much faster disks, and lots more RAM.

That gap disappeared pretty quickly as we headed into the 2000s, but in 1997 it was still very large.
by terminalshort | 2026-02-09 00:34:00+00:00
This is inevitable. Ragebait is noting inherent to social media or feed algorithms. Cable news is a 24/7 feed of ragebait. The feedback you provide to the social media (or cable news) algorithm is whether or not you chose to watch it, not why. This is not in conflict with what you want. If you didn't want to hate watch, then you wouldn't do it. That you want it for negative reasons doesn't take away from the fact that you do, in fact, want it.
by II2II | 2026-02-09 00:34:56+00:00
> What's the alternative outcome?

Once upon a time, people saw computers (then the Internet) as a way of lifting people up rather than pushing people down. They saw it as a way of equalizing people's access to knowledge, rather than subjecting them to a fire hose of information. They believed that it would encourage discourse to bring people together, rather than dividing people along ideological lines.

Yeah, we were naive.
by tim333 | 2026-02-09 00:35:06+00:00
I'm not clear how the bond markets should behave if they say expect agi in five years. Do long bonds go up or down?

Thinking about it long bond should mostly reflect the rate of inflation which depends much more on monetary policy than tech. Like after WW1, Germany and the US had much the same tech but Germany had hyperinflation and the US very little because Germany printed a lot of money and the US was on the gold standard.

The equity markets seem quite keen on NVDA stock though.
by fcantournet | 2026-02-09 00:35:09+00:00
This looks like a fairly typical engineer's solution to a complex social problem: it doesn't really solve the problem, introduces other issues / is gameable, yet unlikely to create problems for the creator.
Of course creator answers any criticism of the solution with "Well make something better". That's not the point: this is most likely net negative, at least that is the (imo well supported) opinion of critics.
If the cons outway the pros, then doing nothing is better than this.
by tptacek | 2026-02-09 00:35:13+00:00
You can only think of 2 notable films since 2022?

* American Fiction

* The Holdovers

* Oppenheimer

* Perfect Days(!)

* Nosferatu

* Conclave

* Challengers

* The Mastermind

I can rattle off more but those seem pretty hard to argue with. All of them are better than EEAAO.
by agentultra | 2026-02-09 00:35:30+00:00
The introduction of looms wasn’t what displaced workers.

It was capitalists seeking profits by reducing the power of labour to negotiate.

We didn’t mass layoff carpenters once we had power tools and automation.

We had more carpenters.

Just like we had more programmers once we invented compilers and higher level languages.

LLMs just aren’t like power tools. Most programming tools aren’t like power tools.

Programming languages might be close to being “power tools,” as they fit in the “centaur” category. I could write the assembly by hand or write the bash scripts that deploy my VMs in the cloud. But instead I can write a program, give it to a compiler, and it will generate the code for me.

LLM generated code fits in the reverse-centaur category. I’m giving it instructions and context but I’m not doing the work. It is. My labour is to feed the machine and deliver its output. If there was a way to remove me from that loop, you bet I’d be out of a job in a heartbeat.
by DrewADesign | 2026-02-09 00:35:49+00:00
I don’t understand why people are so resistant to the idea that use cases actually matter here. If someone says “you’re an idiot because you aren’t writing good, structured prompts,” or “you’re too big of an idiot to realize that your AI-generated code sucks” before knowing anything about what the other person was trying to do, they’re either speaking entirely from an ideological bias, or don’t realize that other people’s coding jobs might look a whole lot more different than theirs do.
by escapeact | 2026-02-09 00:36:11+00:00
i've been frustrated with search on documentation sites for a while. if you don't use the exact same words as the docs, you get nothing useful back. like searching "background jobs" when the page is called "Background Tasks", or "file uploads" when the docs say "Request Files." the page you need exists, keyword search just doesn't find it.

so i built sift. it's a CLI that indexes your markdown into a SQLite file, and a web component that loads it in the browser via range requests. the ML model runs client-side through Transformers.js — no server, no API keys, just static files.

keyword results show up immediately through FTS5, and once the model loads (~2s) they upgrade to semantic.

pip install sift-search
sift index ./docs -o public/sift-index.db

here's a side-by-side on FastAPI's full docs so you can see the difference: https://siftsearch.netlify.app/compare.html

would appreciate feedback from anyone running a docs site. (first release, happy to hear what's broken)
by postalcoder | 2026-02-09 00:36:40+00:00
I've added a bunch of features to the comments-viewing side of https://hcker.news.

Among them:

- Sticky comments

- A minimap

- Thread lines

Also, working on making an RSS feed for the filtered timelines (not out yet).

This project has been really gratifying. It's gotten way more traction than I could have expected and I've gotten so much great feedback and ideas on it.
by keyringlight | 2026-02-09 00:36:51+00:00
One hypothetical I wonder about is what the windows ecosystem would be like if third parties could make distributions of windows, if somehow that could be licensed and enough windows building/packaging was opened up. It'd be interesting to see whether collaborations of projects would form where they pull out MS parts and substitute their own, presumably with the constraint that they maintain compatibility. I imagine it'd take a while for any commercial products thinking of getting involved to figure out sharing, trust, and how to offer it in a way companies or individuals might want to donate/pay for.
by rigrassm | 2026-02-09 00:36:59+00:00
One of my favorite Easter eggs that I discovered on my own was the "Elvis has left the building" message you get when you ran over the entire line of Elvis impersonators walking down the street. I Can't remember off the top of my head if it was GTA 2 or 3.

My #1 favorite was accidentally discovering that if you shoot some missiles at the Statue of Liberty in Twisted Metal 2.
by brookst | 2026-02-09 00:37:05+00:00
I can’t speak for anyone else, but Claude Code has been transformative for me.

I can’t say it’s led to shipping “high quality projects”, but it has let me accomplish things I just wouldn’t have had time for previously.

I’ve been wanting to develop a plastic -> silicone -> plaster -> clay mold making process for years, but it’s complex and mold making is both art and science. It would have been hundreds of hours before, with maybe 12 hours of Claude code I’m almost there (some nagging issues… maybe another hour).

And I had written some home automation stuff back with Python 2.x a decade ago; it was never worth the time to refamiliarize myself with in order to update, which led to periodic annoyances. 20 minutes, and it’s updated to all the latest Python 3.x and modern modules.

For me at least, the difference between weeks and days, days and hours, and hours and minutes has allowed me to do things I just couldn’t justify investing time in before. Which makes me happy!

So maybe some folks are “pretending”, or maybe the benefits just aren’t where you’re expecting to see them?
by konaraddi | 2026-02-09 00:37:05+00:00
https://odap.konaraddi.com

Started working on a site to document anti patterns in online discourse. Not quite logical fallacies but more so unproductive expressions that aren’t conducive to pleasant, productive, and focused discussion. The site is a bit rough right now and a work in progress.

I want the internet to be a better place for discourse and I think a reference or guide on anti patterns in replies could help make a dent in the right direction.
by peteforde | 2026-02-09 00:37:08+00:00
If you keep digging, you will also find that there's a small but vocal sock puppet army who will doggedly insist that any claims to productivity gains are in fact just hallucinations by people who must not be talented enough developers to know the difference.

It's exhausting.

There are legitimate and nuanced conversations that we should be having! For example, one entirely legitimate critique is that LLMs do not tell LLM users that they are using libraries who are seeking sponsorship. This is something we could be proactive about fixing in a tangible way. Frankly, I'd be thrilled if agents could present a list of projects that we could consider clicking a button to toss a few bucks to. That would be awesome.

But instead, it's just the same tired arguments about how LLMs are only capable of regurgitating what's been scraped and that we're stupid and lazy for trusting them to do anything real.
by Sparkyte | 2026-02-09 00:37:46+00:00
Yep it is why the work getting over the threshold is just as long as it was without AI.

Someone mentioned it is a force multiplier I don't disagree with this, it is a force multiplier in the mundane and ordinary execution of tasks. Complex ones get harder and hard for it where humans visualize the final result where AI can't. It is predicting from input but it can't know the destination output if the destination isn't part of the input.
by iugtmkbdfil834 | 2026-02-09 00:38:21+00:00
Interesting.

<< What principles could a person have that would put them in the center of US politics right now?

Any? All? None? Everything in between? The question itself is rather faulty, which prompted me to respond the way I did. There is a reason for it too beyond pure rhetoric: centrists overlap with US independents so their goals are not as easily labeled ( I suppose ).

Maybe I am approaching it the wrong way.

What do you think each side of US American politics are defined by what principle now?

<< Playing both sides makes you an enemy of civil society.

See.. it is almost as if you did not read my opening paragraph. Statement like that by itself is not exactly conducive to dialogue. I normally would not care, but I note it as we are attempting to have a conversation. Statement like that undermines it for a simple person like me.

<< Where is your centrism?

Oh boy.

<< What is the center between these two positions?

In the middle?

<< When you act like maybe there's something to the obvious and boldfaced lie that the two recent killings by ICE* were done in self-defense then you are shifting the scope of acceptable conduct towards lawlessness.

I can give you Pretti. Despite some previous engagements suggesting he was not just 'some rando, who was at the wrong time at the wrong place', his death was less defensible in the context than Good's ( she actually did swipe that officer.. ). We can argue all day over intentions and whatnot, but that is basically where middle ground lies: in taking each thing as its own case. But we will not do any of that, will we.

<< The solution isn't in the middle of two wrong answers, it's something else entirely.

Color me intrigued. What is the answer?
by wizzwizz4 | 2026-02-09 00:38:54+00:00
They don't have the sum total of all human knowledge: a lot isn't digitised. Even a large portion of academic knowledge is tied up in oral tradition: how much more is this the case for other fields of endeavour? One cannot learn the local social conventions about waiting tables from reading Not Always Right.

Even in domains where (virtually) all the knowledge is available, and most tasks are exact variations of what has come before, like programming, the most powerful AI systems are mediocre, bordering on competent. Outside this idealised case, they may have "infinite patience for our questions" (up to the token limit, anyway), but they largely lack the capacity to provide answers.

Medical research is about the best example you could pick for something that current-gen AI systems cannot do. Most of the information about the human body is located in human bodies, and wholly inaccessible to every AI system. An extremely important part of medical research is identifying when the established consensus is wrong: how is AI to do that?

There is no reason to believe that LLMs will ever meaningfully contribute to medicine, in much the same sense there is no reason to believe that lawn ornaments will. Pen-and-paper calculations, and the engineering / manufacturing / etc work of humans, took us to the moon: the computers acted as batch processors and task schedulers, nothing more. Medical research done by humans is responsible for the past century of medical improvements. As much as I like computers, they won't be people for the foreseeable future.

Death is horrifying, but an unfounded belief that AI will save you is not a healthy coping mechanism. If you're looking for religion, there are far better ones. And if you don't think you're looking for religion, perhaps the "death gives life meaning" philosophies might suffice? All Men are Mortal by Simone de Beauvoir was presumably some comfort to its author, who also wrote:

> There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

(quotation from A Very Easy Death via https://martyhalpern.blogspot.com/2011/04/j-r-r-tolkien-quot...)
by mopsi | 2026-02-09 00:39:00+00:00
Noam Chomsky, the man who has spent years analyzing propaganda, is himself a propagandist. Whatever one thinks of Chomsky in general, whatever one thinks of his theories of media manipulation and the mechanisms of state power, Chomsky's work with regard to Cambodia has been marred by omissions, dubious statistics, and, in some cases, outright misrepresentations. On top of this, Chomsky continues to deny that he was wrong about Cambodia. He responds to criticisms by misrepresenting his own positions, misrepresenting his critics' positions, and describing his detractors as morally lower than "neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists."

From the intro of a lengthy examination of Chomsky on Cambodia: https://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm
by pan69 | 2026-02-09 00:39:02+00:00
I am in the early stages on building a passion project called Metric Me - A dashboard for your body.

https://metricme.app/

Over two decades ago I was diagnosed with high blood pressure (for which am I have been on meds for about 15 years). I also have low platelets (red blood cells, basically means that I bruise easily and that small cuts don't heal fast). At any rate, I do blood tests on a regular basis to keep things in check. I have been keeping track of test results, weight and blood pressure result for nearly 20 years, but the data lives in a text file on my desktop. I wanted to build something more substantial for this for quite some time now, so, this is it.
by Nition | 2026-02-09 00:39:07+00:00
There's been plenty of talk on models becoming very good at detecting when they're in a simulation. This X thread mentions how Opus 4.6 may have behaved in a particularly immoral way because it could tell it was a simulation and not real life.

I do wonder: Surely you would want your benevolent AI to refuse bad behaviour in any situation, real or not. Or else bad actors could simply pretend it's all a simulation à la Ender's Game.
by habinero | 2026-02-09 00:39:33+00:00
> I found the latest models to have much better safety and instruction following capabilities. Combined with other security best practices, this lowers the risk.

It does not. Security theater like that only makes you feel safer and therefore complacent.

As the old saying goes, "Don't worry, men! They can't possibly hit us from this dist--"

If you wanna yolo, it's fine. Accept that it's insecure and unsecurable and yolo from there.
by smoe | 2026-02-09 00:39:49+00:00
In my opinion, it has always been the “easy” part of development to make a thing work once. The hard thing is to make a thousand things work together over time with constantly changing requirements, budgets, teams, and org structures.

For the former, greenfield projects, LLMs are easily a 10x productivity improvement. For the latter, it gets a lot more nuanced. Still amazingly useful in my opinion, just not the hands off experience that building from scratch can be now.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-09 00:39:51+00:00
> That's not good enough.

Agreed. However, the number of people who live 100+ miles from a fast charger rounds to zero. Something like 85-90% of the US population lives within a metro area, and even in the least "EV friendly" states probably has a fast charger within 10-20 miles at most.
by 0000000000100 | 2026-02-09 00:40:05+00:00
Then you are boned unless it was architected well. LLMs tend to stack a lot of complexity at local scopes, especially if the neighboring pages are also built poorly.

E.g pumping out a ton of logic to convert one data structure to another. Like a poorly structured form with random form control names that don’t match to the DTO. Or single properties for each form control which are then individually plugged into the request DTO.
by pluralmonad | 2026-02-09 00:40:49+00:00
Sorry, I should have specified this was with GHC CLI. I suppose that might not behave similarly to the GUI extension. But it definitely happened on Thursday. One prompt, ctrl-c out and it said 13 premium messages used. It was reading a couple of large files and Opus doesn't seem to let the harness restrict it from reading entire files... just a couple hundred lines at a time.

and now I see your comment mentions that explicitly. The output was quite unambiguous. :shrug:
by fragmede | 2026-02-09 00:40:53+00:00
if you oversimplify things, you lose the point. I moved houses. I took all of my stuff from my old house, moved it into a new house. Later, I moved all of that stuff back out of that house when I moved out of that one. Was moving my stuff into that house pointless, then? I could have just skipped a step and put it all in storage and then just not had any furniture for the entire time and saved money. In fact, if you don't eat anything, you'll save tons of money!

Why is it useless to track who dug which hole?
by skwashd | 2026-02-09 00:41:40+00:00
Last week I released Gata Router - https://github.com/gata-router

Gata is an open source automated L1 ticket triage tool for Zendesk. It costs pennies per ticket for it to route tickets to the correct team.

During development I was regularly seeing over 90% accuracy. The average for humans is 60-80%.

The whole thing runs in your AWS account.

There's more information in the release announcement - https://www.proactiveops.io/archive/meet-gata-the-automated-...