MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hirvi74 | 2026-02-23 03:09:35+00:00
I don’t know anyone in my life who, given enough time, could recite entire epics like Homer’s The Odyssey the way some of the Ancient Greeks could. But I wouldn’t say modern people are cognitively “less capable” than those Ancient Greeks. Organisms adapt to their environments or perish -- the mind is no different.

Given the current technological landscape, I think we may eventually have to admit that Gen Z and the ones after have adapted to their environments, too. Maybe retaining information is simply less valuable as a skill (like memorizing entire epics) when easy access to a modern Library of Alexandria is right at our fingertips? Yes, it's painful to think about and uncomfortable on some level. It's probably like how Socrates felt about reading and writing when he described it as, "an elixir not of memory, but of reminding" and that reliance on it will "produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it."

Though, one caveat that is important to mention is that education is not valued on a mass cultural level in this country, comparatively speaking. But that is a discussion for a different time.
by eqvinox | 2026-02-23 03:09:47+00:00
> I need an ARM64 machine. Period.

This feels a little off base; what the author needs is a fast and efficient machine. Why would the architecture matter?

It may be the current state of affairs that Apple ARM systems are great at this. But (1.) that doesn't mean other ARM systems are good at it, and (2.) doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.

(And in all honesty, a lot of non-Apple ARM systems are just garbage in either performance, efficiency, or both.)
by musicale | 2026-02-23 03:09:56+00:00
I tend to agree with Knuth - technical history is extremely valuable to both practitioners and researchers in computing, and there isn't enough of it.

While it is understandable that computing practitioners and researchers want to look forward to the next "new" thing rather than backward to "old" things, ignoring computing history means that we are often reinventing the wheel, repeating old mistakes, etc., all while lacking an understanding of how and why things are the way they are today. And perhaps missing out on a great deal of fun and intellectual engagement as well.

Fortunately is some activity in terms of writing up and analyzing the technical history of computing, and I certainly appreciate the work of the CHM, journals like Annals of the History of Computing, the work of retrocomputing hobbyists, and the work of the scholars mentioned in the article. But (as the article notes) there are few economic and career incentives - in history or in computing - to produce this important work.

The article validates Knuth with these statements:

> For different reasons, outlined below, neither group has shown much interest in supporting work of the kind favored by Knuth. That is why it has rarely been written.

> Most of this new work is aimed primarily at historians, philosophers, or science studies specialists rather than computer scientists

> Work of the particular kind preferred by Knuth will flourish only if his colleagues in computer science are willing to produce, reward, or commission it.

The second part of this last sentence isn't wrong, but sidesteps the first point. One might similarly criticize history departments for failing to reward or commission technological literacy.
by jerf | 2026-02-23 03:10:07+00:00
Oh dear. I'm afraid I'm not going to the take the requisite dozens of hours to be sure by learning this keyboard and making a truly "fair" comparison, but I'd bet I'm faster swiping with the current keyboard than I would be on this one. Swiping is why I can use words like "comparison" or "requisite" on a phone without giving it much thought anymore. I'm still faster on a real keyboard, especially as I rarely get those "tried to write 'hello', got 'grump'" sorts of errors with a keyboard, but it's a lot closer than it was when mobile devices first came out out and Palm's Graffiti input was considered a major breakthrough. (Laughable by modern standards.)
by dakolli | 2026-02-23 03:10:54+00:00
Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers.

Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time..

The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.
by jonjacky | 2026-02-23 03:11:31+00:00
Interesting project, so I'll comment.

Have you benchmarked it against CPython? apython is still a bytecode interpreter, like CPython. And, CPython is compiled to machine code, as
apython is assembled to machine code. So we wouldn't expect a huge speedup.

A skilled assembly language programmer might be able to write faster code
than the C compiler can make from CPython. Is that you? I see the code was written with Claude - does Claude write faster assembly code than the C compiler? Or did you tune the assembly code by hand, or somehow train Claude to write fast code for this application?
by goblin89 | 2026-02-23 03:11:37+00:00
Streaming is no replacement for a physical music library.

It’s not only that a lot of good music is not on streaming: music also get removed. I have a smart playlist that gets automatically populated with songs in my library that are not available (evidently pulled from Apple Music), and it is growing with tunes that I like and that are sometimes impossible to find elsewhere. If I had the foresight to get actual copies, I could still listen to them.
by atomicfiredoll | 2026-02-23 03:11:40+00:00
> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

I think a lot of Fedi people want that, but the community is still small. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.

I'm not a Loops user atm though.
by telman17 | 2026-02-23 03:12:02+00:00
No, thus why I said it could be boiled down to.

However as I say in another comment, most of my family are educators so these experiences represent what they've been dealing with for the past 20+ years.

> before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!"

I think both could be true and I'm not excluding either. The issues I've heard almost always come down to entitled parents who don't want to raise their own kids but have the schools do it for them, then complain when their kid brings home a disciplinary document for not being able to follow simple conduct rules in class.
by malshe | 2026-02-23 03:12:08+00:00
This dataset looks interesting but the site doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in data integrity.

On the Charts page the selected time range is 12/01/2025 to 02/28/2026 and shows 106,603 employees affected. But the horizontal bar chart with state level data shows numbers in millions. For example, CA has more than 2 million and IL has more than 1.7 million employees affected. Then the layoff map at the bottom shows only layoffs in Texas.
by burnt-resistor | 2026-02-23 03:12:34+00:00
Worker could mean IC only, or IC and managers.

Managers could include owners or not.

A worker is worth the least the employer thinks they'll stay for. I've heard one too many new, smart-ass line manager say "oh, I got her/him cheap".

To advocate for oneself as a worker, it requires continuous calibration, documentation of results, and well-timed initiative to expand within degrees of freedom that would be desirable to maximize bottom-line results directly or indirectly.

> Workers can sleep at night don’t usually have to submit to court interviews under oath.

Boundaries. Those aren't the problems of a worker. It's best to be an excellent worker if one is going to be a worker, but that's still not enough. It also requires communication: advocacy, persuasion, and showcasing results to get the job, keep the job, and then to periodically justify and negotiate more income above the rate of inflation. Below the rate of inflation is a pay cut.

Be exceptionally useful, helpful, and professional.. just don't help managers find ways to pay you less or work yourself out of a job unless you already have a thriving side-hustle. ;) 996 and crash schedules are for the birds.
Show HN: OpenBrowserClaw – No Mac Mini. No VPS. No Cloud Deploy. Just Open a Tab
by sachaa | 2026-02-23 03:12:42+00:00
I was wondering... why do we need a Mac Mini, a VPS, or a Docker container to run OpenClaw?

Your browser already has a secure sandboxed OS, a database, a filesystem, and a JS engine. What if we just... used those?

So I built OpenBrowserClaw inspired by the simplicity of NanoClaw but running entirely in a browser tab.

- Claude API with full tool-use loop

- Shell commands in a v86-emulated Alpine Linux (yes, a Linux VM in WASM, in your browser)

- File I/O via OPFS

- Data persistence in the browser local storage

- Telegram integration over plain HTTPS

- Zero runtime dependencies

No server. No deploy. No infra. Open a tab, paste your Claude API key, start chatting.

It even works as a PWA, install it on your phone if you want.

The whole thing is MIT-licensed and open source:
https://github.com/sachaa/openbrowserclaw

Or just try it right now without cloning anything:
https://www.openbrowserclaw.com/

Sometimes the best server is the one you already have open.
Show HN: Coasty.ai – We just hit SOTA on OSWorld (computer-use agent benchmark)
by PrateekJ17 | 2026-02-23 03:13:02+00:00
Hey HN,

We've been heads down building Coasty for the past few months and wanted to share a milestone, we just achieved state-of-the-art results on OSWorld, the most comprehensive benchmark for computer-use agents.
For those unfamiliar, OSWorld tests whether AI agents can actually use a computer the way a human does navigating real desktop environments, clicking through UIs, filling out forms, managing files across apps.

We're building an agent execution platform for computer-use AI. Think of it like Vercel but for AI agents that operate full desktop environments. You give Coasty a task, and it spins up a sandboxed environment where an agent can see the screen, move the mouse, type, and complete end-to-end workflows things like filing expenses, canceling subscriptions, filling out insurance forms, or navigating legacy enterprise software.
Why this matters

Most "AI automation" today is really just API glue between apps that have APIs. But the vast majority of business workflows still live in UIs that were designed for humans, healthcare portals, government forms, internal tools that will never get an API. Computer-use agents unlock automation for all of that.
What's next

We're opening up early access. If you're dealing with painful, repetitive computer workflows (especially in healthcare, insurance, legal, or ops), we'd love to talk.

Happy to answer questions about our approach, the benchmark, or anything else.
by zythyx | 2026-02-23 03:13:04+00:00
The AI generated images of kids in the "Community Creations" section is a little bit weird... might be better to keep the kids more cartoony like the main image (Pixar-style - though obviously be careful of Copyright there).

Haven't played much with the other generation tools, but it's genuinely a cool idea and one I've thought of creating myself as a dad to a 2.5 year old.
by daemonologist | 2026-02-23 03:13:07+00:00
Google watermarks their images; I believe it's a sort of subtle rainbow striping that can survive basic filters/transforms. https://deepmind.google/models/synthid/ Other providers might do something similar but I'm not aware of any.

Otherwise no. There are lots of common tells, and some classifiers that might be better than guessing (at least within a given test set) but nothing reliable.
by nebula8804 | 2026-02-23 03:13:30+00:00
Do you think the housing market can crash on its own?

Here is my crazy theory: After only one year of the second Trump admin, the US now seems to have damaged one of its greatest assets: namely attracting the cream of the crop. One second order effect of this is now we are entering population decline. If it becomes terminal, who is going to take out a 30 years mortgage on the overpriced houses? As boomers die off, we might see a collapse. There might be a scenario where a future Trump like character fumbles the bailout(or refuses to do it) and the housing market finally is allowed to burst.
by ryanckulp | 2026-02-23 03:13:44+00:00
you can import ~700 plugins from core to Terminus (Hanami build) or the Laravel build in 1 click. maybe you came on board before that was a reality. we and the community have been rapidly developing multiple self hosted servers with all kinds of features and in different frameworks for comfort. in no marketing materials have we ever claimed that OSS clients were the same as the main web app. in fact that’s why we offer a BYOD license for the web app only. we’ve invested hundreds of thousands into open source so that people can get the TRMNL experience without paying us a penny.
by bubblewand | 2026-02-23 03:14:10+00:00
> you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier

No stats, but it’s extremely real.

I know lots of teachers. Parents who flip shit if their kids can’t answer their texts while in class are common. Parents who call their kids in class just to chat are less common, but not as one-in-a-million as you’d think.

The attitude you (I’m assuming) and I were raised with, when it comes to school, is less universal than you perhaps believed. And I mean among adults.
by bonsai_spool | 2026-02-23 03:14:15+00:00
> Article didn't explain why tech doesn't work in education. It's biological. We evolved to learn from and interact with other humans, preferably the same group over a long time

All of this is so far from anything evolution would have selected for that we can pick our favorite argument: 'well humans are unique in our tool use, so we should be encouraging kids to learn new tools instead of explicit teaching (like montessori)' or 'well humans never learned to read until about 100 years ago and computers can read for us so don't teach this new-fangled reading stuff'

It's not a helpful frame. The language thing is totally distinct—that really is an innate human thing among children. So again we can't make useful evolution-based claims about adult language education.
by seanmcdirmid | 2026-02-23 03:14:38+00:00
This only works if you can isolate your society from having to compete with others. Like American kids will have to compete with Chinese kids who are learning AI in middle school, and not just “I can write a prompt” AI. But then those kids are also starting to learn calculus while our middle schools claim algebra is too advanced for 8th graders. Sigh.
by Thorrez | 2026-02-23 03:14:54+00:00
>But Google are banning entire accounts, with years, even decades, of personal history, photos, even phone accounts and app development projects.

Source? It seems to me only the anti-gravity access was blocked. The link says

> Our product engineering team has confirmed that your account was suspended from using our Antigravity service.

> there’s no way we can restore our accounts to use Antigravity anymore yeah?

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.
by ilaksh | 2026-02-23 03:15:05+00:00
No, I am just assuming that the number of popular movies is not going to increase by 100 X. So say it increases by a factor of 10 somehow. That still requires far fewer humans to produce them and leaves most people without a job or a viable business. They can make movies, but the size of the audience isn't going to be enough to make a living for most of them.
by tangotaylor | 2026-02-23 03:15:54+00:00
> is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?

Yes, here is Dr. Horvath's (the neuroscientist mentioned in the article) written testimony which cites some studies.

The table in Section 3 is particularly damning. It shows how a classroom intervention worsened or improved outcomes relative to the baseline. Note that the worst intervention is the "1-to-1 laptops row".

Unclear if they mixed interventions, I'd have to read the mentioned studies. If the interventions were done in isolation then that's basically a longitudinal study which is a pretty clear smoking gun.

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/A19DF2E8-3C69...
by hypersoar | 2026-02-23 03:15:55+00:00
Oh, I don't have much at all, yet. I decided to use a piece tree, which is what VS Code calls the data structure they used. I implemented part of that, then realized that VS Code does it that way partly because of limitations with V8. So now I don't even know if I want to go forward with using it or switch to something simpler.
by gck1 | 2026-02-23 03:16:02+00:00
Is that... Why Google released Antigravity, an IDE, no less, when even my non-tech dentist is using claude code in cli? And why Anthropic is pushing their desktop apps, skills, and all these integrations their models can build in a day?

Are they betting on their software, not their LLM deciding if they survive or not if competitive open source model is dropped? Oh boy, the market is going to have some fun times when realization hits.
by ninjagoo | 2026-02-23 03:17:01+00:00
Google is a company well down the path of enshittification, they even got rid of their motto "Don't be evil".

As a consumer, you're better served by using services from companies earlier in that lifecycle, where value accrues to you, and that's not Google, and likely not many other big providers.

When those newer companies turn, you switch. Do not allow yourself to get locked into an ecosystem. It's hard work, but it will pay dividends in the long run.
by ryanckulp | 2026-02-23 03:18:58+00:00
what do you think it should be called? for ~$15 optional one time bucks people get 24/7 access to the entire engineering team, me, prioritized feature dev, and can earn monthly payouts from our Creator Fund. we don’t charge a subscription, obviously i’m partial but this model has serves us well. and most of the developer edition fee goes right back to the community via bounties, perks, etc.
Show HN: I scraped 5,700 YC companies to find what niches are now getting funded
by not_pineapple | 2026-02-23 03:19:45+00:00
Pulled founder info, status, company data, and batch details for 5,700 YC companies. Exported it all as JSON (300k lines) and threw it into an AI model to find patterns.

Wanted to see what YC keeps funding on, what sectors have the highest concentration of active companies, and where the momentum is right now.

Made the dataset exportable so you can run your own analysis.

Curious what patterns others find.

here's the link to a video showcasing the actual data:
https://x.com/om_patel5/status/2025058794145829370?s=20
by freeopinion | 2026-02-23 03:21:46+00:00
I think it might be more insightful to say "laptops in the hands of students are worse than books in the hands of bad teachers".

A bad teacher can say "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" and the student can ignore the book, or vandalize the book or whatever. But when the student has a computer with an internet connection, they can vandalize the computer, ignore the website, or jump on an unrelated website.

I'm tempted to think that the laptop makes the situation worse. Some student who might have read part of the chapter out of pure boredom during classtime is now driven by dopamine to jump on the distraction.
by dhayabaran | 2026-02-23 03:22:46+00:00
The core technical problem: Google subsidizes Antigravity tokens via aggressive prompt caching optimized for their own clients. Third-party tools break those cache hit rates, potentially increasing serving costs 5-10x per request.

That's a legitimate economic concern. But the enforcement is indefensible — zero-tolerance instant bans on paying subscribers with no warning, no graduated response, and near-zero support.

Anthropic had the same problem with Claude Code third-party tools. They communicated first, flagged it, gave people time to adjust. That's how you enforce policy without torching customer trust.

If the penalty for a gray-area OAuth usage is an instant ban with no appeal, the platform isn't buildable.
by dugvuivnhuihnvu | 2026-02-23 03:23:53+00:00
If you haven't already looked into PCs for People, they might be a low-cost option for your school: https://www.pcsforpeople.org/tech-for-nonprofits/#Eligibilit...

PCs for People is a non-profit organization whose mission is to bridge the digital divide (e.g. through sales of low-cost refurbished computers, internet access, and digital skills training).

They refurbish and sell computers to eligible organizations, including schools and offer bulk orders (6+ units) via email at "partner [at] pcsforpeople [dot] org".

If the order is 5 units and below, you use their publicly available online store link at pcsrefurbished.com/sales/salesHome.aspx
by manjose2018 | 2026-02-23 03:24:44+00:00
https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/

1. Find older Intel Core Based Windows Laptops (at least 6GB of RAM)
2. Put ChromeOS Flex on them
3. Students will be sad it is still ChromeOS, but they will be happy it is like 3x faster.

I had an old Windows laptop laying around and I did this for my 80 yr old parents and they were super happy.
by zdragnar | 2026-02-23 03:25:26+00:00
What are you smoking? Access to porn has been legally restricted in every state to 18+ for decades. Adding the Internet only made things easier because nobody enforced it the same way they were already enforcing brick and mortar stores that had the exact same materials.

Likewise, there are plenty of rules and regulations around adult content on broadcast airwaves managed by the FCC.

Challenging adult content as "free speech" has happened and already settled precedent at the Supreme Court.

Yes, individual states are still trying to figure out how to actually best enforce the laws on the books at the Internet level, but there's no pretending that it is just a few states that actually have those laws.
by apsurd | 2026-02-23 03:25:41+00:00
This makes me think about "main character energy."

Now that i'm an uncle, I see firsthand how much the little ones love to see themselves. They always want to play with my phone to make silly videos, of mostly themselves. it is creative though, and not always all about them. (it's mostly about them). they do stop-motion with little figurines and legos, now i love those!

Anyway, sorry you're just the messenger of all this, but i can't help but think we probably shouldn't reinforce an entire reality that is literally always them being the main character. Given it happens naturally in this digital age, I'd probably go out of my way to balance it vs drive it home 100x