MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by escapecharacter | 2026-02-08 15:13:32+00:00
I’m working on a product related to “sensemaking”. And I’m using this abstract, academic term on purpose to highlight the emotional experience, rather than “analysis” or “understanding”.

It is a constant lure products and tools have to create the feeling of sensemaking. People want (pejorative) tools that show visualizations or summaries, without thinking about the particular visual/summary artifact is useful, actionable or accurate!
by tangotaylor | 2026-02-08 15:13:33+00:00
> Your manager sees you shipping faster, so the expectations adjust. You see yourself shipping faster, so your own expectations adjust. The baseline moves.

This problem has been going on a long time, Helen Keller wrote about this almost 100 years ago:

> The only point I want to make here is this: that it is about time for us to begin using our labor-saving machinery actually to save labor instead of using it to flood the nation haphazardly with surplus goods which clog the channels of trade.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1932/08/put-you...
by solidsnack9000 | 2026-02-08 15:13:51+00:00
Uber was found liable under the doctrine of "apparent agency" -- although Uber drivers are independent contractors, they are presented to the end user in a way that conveys a strong impression of acting on behalf of the company -- being agents of the company. Therefore, their independent contractor status is no obstacle to holding Uber responsible for their conduct.

Case: 2:2025cv04276

https://dockets.justia.com/docket/arizona/azdce/2:2025cv0427...
by layer8 | 2026-02-08 15:13:54+00:00
> I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before.

Maybe they made us feel magic, but actual magic is the opposite of what I want computers to be. The “magic” for me was that computers were completely scrutable and reason-able, and that you could leverage your reasoning abilities to create interesting things with them, because they were (after some learning effort) scrutable. True magic, on the other hand, is inscrutable, it’s a thing that escapes explanation, that can’t be reasoned about. LLMs are more like that latter magic, and that’s not what I seek in computers.

> We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality.

I always preferred the Star-Trek-style ship computers that didn’t exhibit personality, that were just neutral and matter-of-fact. Computers with personality tend to be exhausting and annoying. Please let me turn it off. Computers with personality can be entertaining characters in a story, but that doesn’t mean I want them around me as the tools I have to use.
by ben_w | 2026-02-08 15:14:16+00:00
> there are just too many competitors

This ought to be a signal that the market is already being served, that it is unlikely to be a big opportunity to make more money.

Even with advertising, what you have in such a market is an all-pay auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction

The end point is nobody makes any profit on apps, because all the money that ought to be profit goes to paying for a bidding war on ad slots.
by taway1874 | 2026-02-08 15:14:46+00:00
But ... but ... your productivity as an engineer shoots up! You can take on more tasks and ship more!
-- Dumbass Engineering Director who has never written a line of code in their life.

Unfortunately, with these types of software simpleton's making decisions we are going to see way more push for AI usage and thus higher productivity expectations. They cannot wrap their heads around the fact (for starters) that AI is not deterministic so that increases the overhead on testing, security, requirements, integrations etc. making all those productivity gains evaporate. Worse (like the author mentioned), it makes your engineer less creative and more burnt-out.

Let's be honest here. Engineers picked this career broadly for 2 reasons, creativity and money. With AI, the creativity aspect is taken away and you are now more of a tester. As for money, those same dumbass decision makers are now going to view this skillset as a commodity and find people who can easily be trained in to "AI Engineers" for way less money to feed inputs.

I am all for technological evolution and welcome it but this isn't anything like that. It is purely based on profits, shareholders and any but building good, proper software systems. Quality be damned. Profession of Software Development be damned. We will regret it in the future.
by ff2400t | 2026-02-08 15:14:57+00:00
Because of Linux's Fragmentation there are so many different UI being created right now and so much more experimentation.
There is KDE with endless customization, Gnome for the people who are okay with a more opinionated UI, Cosmic the completely new Desktop Environment and of course the good old lxde. I have to use Windows at work these day and every single one of these makes the Windows feel like it's more suited for Old People because of how slow it can be.
by woeirua | 2026-02-08 15:15:37+00:00
This is no different then carpentry. Yes, all furniture can now be built by machines. Some people still choose to build it by hand. Does that make them less productive? Yes. Will they ever carve furniture by hand for a business? Probably not. Can they still enjoy the act of working with the wood? Yes.

If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.
by acedTrex | 2026-02-08 15:15:47+00:00
I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period.

And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER.

I'm fundamentally convinced that my deep long term understanding of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the long term.

It also stands to reason that any task that i deem to NOT further my goal of learning or deep understanding that can be done by an LLM i will use the LLM for it. And as it turns out there are a TON of those tasks so my LLM usage is incredibly high.
by VikRubenfeld | 2026-02-08 15:15:56+00:00
We've all seen that if you are interacting with an AI over a lengthy chat, eventually it loses the plot. It gets confused. It appears to me that it's necessary, when coding an AI, to keep its task very limited in terms of the amount of information it needs to complete the task. Even then you still have to check the output very carefully. If it seems to be losing focus, I start a new task to reduce the context window, and focus on something that still needs to be fixed in the previous task.
by defenestrated | 2026-02-08 15:16:25+00:00
I use FilterBox and Buzzkill.

FilterBox does seem to be superior with an inbuilt offline ML model to filter spam notifications, whilst also having a robust set of heuristic filtering options.

It's also amongst the snazziest apps to use with a design that delights. Best lifetime IAP I made 7+years ago.

FilterBox: https://filterbox.catchingnow.com/
Comparison post: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/hsq7ep/buzzkil...
by testemailfordg2 | 2026-02-08 15:16:44+00:00
Feel hand/human written code of an experienced individual should be more valuable for a business than one created by agents. Surely, agents and humans might be using the same underlying frameworks or programming languages, but the value difference depends on the breadth and depth of experience. Agents gives you the breadth but an experienced individuals give you the depth in understanding/problem solving.
by ProllyInfamous | 2026-02-08 15:16:53+00:00
You might consider then getting four 40gbps nVME enclosures, and then RAIDing multiple together (e.g. in a big stripe, you could get 160gbps throughput, only limited by # physical interfaces). Each slice could be +TBs.

Obviously increases your failure rate, but if you're constantly updating the same models (and not creating your own) you don't really need redundancy.
by slfnflctd | 2026-02-08 15:17:15+00:00
To be generous and steelman the author, perhaps what they're saying is that at each layer of abstraction, there may be some new low-hanging fruit.

Whether this is doable through orchestration or through carefully guided HITL by various specialists in their fields - or maybe not at all! - I suspect will depend on which domain you're operating in.
by disiplus | 2026-02-08 15:17:41+00:00
This is real, so im a freelancer, i used this small invoicing platfrom to create invoices for my customers. At "work" im working on accounting systems, and erp-s. So with AI, why would i pay monthly for invoicing when i can build it myself. After i day i had invoicing working. Like the simple thing where you get PDF out. Then i started implementing doube-entry booking. And support different tax systems. And then, but we need a sales part then crm, then warehouse. Then projects to track time and so on. And now i have a full saas that i dont need and im not going to waste time on competing in that market. Now im thinking of puting it as open source.
by ArtTimeInvestor | 2026-02-08 15:17:45+00:00
So a minus of about 45% from the all time high three months ago?

If this is it for this cycle, that would indicate the volatility of Bitcoin went down significantly.

Taking a look at the Bitcoin to USD price chart, I see roughly these numbers:

2013: $1,100 -> $238 = -78%

2017: $19,000 -> $3,500 = -82%

2021: $68,000 -> $16,000 = -76%

It will be interesting to watch if the volatility really stays this low suddenly. If so, one could point to the institutional adoption over the last years as the reason for this. When I ask Gemini for the number of public companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets over the last years, I get:

2023: 67

2024: 79

2025: 190

And a similar trend for Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs. Twice as many in 2025 than in 2023.
by clejack | 2026-02-08 15:18:27+00:00
When I was in my mid 20s, I interned at a machine shop building automotive parts. In general, the work was pretty easy. I was modifying things via cad, doing dry runs on the cnc machine, loading raw material, and then unloading finished products for processing.

Usually there was a cadence to things that allowed for a decent amount of downtime while the machine was running, but I once got to a job where the machine milled the parts so quickly, that I spent more time loading and unloading parts than anything else. Once I started the first part, I didn't actually rest until all of them were done. I ended up straining my back from the repetitive motion. I was shocked because I was in good shape and I wasn't really moving a significant amount.

If I talk about excessive concern for productivity (or profit) being a problem, certain people will roll their eyes. It's hard to separate a message from the various agendas we perceive around us. Regardless of personal feelings, there will always be a negative fallout for people when there's a sudden inversion in workflow like the one described in this article or the one I experienced during my internship.
by idiotsecant | 2026-02-08 15:18:45+00:00
We don't just have a generation problem (although we have that too, to a lesser degree). We fundamentally have a storage, transmission and distribution problem.

The system for moving power around is at least as complex and expensive as the systems for generating it. Probably significantly more.

If we don't solve those problems we can build as many solar plants as we want, they're worse than useless unless we can move that power around.

We need massive investments in high voltage transmission and hydroelectric pumped storage before we can utilize significantly more storage. These are not technical problems, but political ones.
by throwaway2037 | 2026-02-08 15:19:11+00:00
Before I even read the blog post, my first thought was: "Bullshit, this feels like clickbait. Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL2) [one of the most popular gamedev libs for indy games] is written in pure C." I guess that the only backdoor to this clickbait argument in 2026 can be: "My graphics/audio libary is written in pure C, but I use bindings with language X (C++/Rust/Zig/etc)."
by webdevver | 2026-02-08 15:19:16+00:00
its kind of fun now, in the 'post crypto' era.

i used to think, well the 'serious' stuff is stocks, PMs, RE, etc., but crypto is a 'shitcoin', a 'gamble'.

but infact, it recently dawned on me, its (almost) the other way around. everything is a 'shitcoin'. your real estate is a 'shitcoin', and can get 'rugged' with crime rates, or tax band shifts, or legislative changes with the sole purpose of winning populist votes. stocks can (and have) been getting rugged. gold got rugged recently (although now recovered.) cash gets rugged with money printing (but everyone already knows that.)

for a long time i felt an implication that there's a 'safe house' for your resources, like in a video game, but at your choosing you can 'leave' the safe house for a risky win. but thinking about it more - that's a very 90s US-centric viewpoint of 'the end of history' - no, you can get absolutely screwed doing the 'right thing', playing 'smart'. you can do your homework and get deep fried anyway.

i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?
by alex_c | 2026-02-08 15:19:20+00:00
I joke that I'm on the "Claude Code workout plan" now.

Standing desk, while it's working I do a couple squats or pushups or just wander around the house to stretch my legs. Much more enjoyable than sitting at my desk, hands on keyboard, all day long. And taking my eyes off the screen also makes it easier to think about the next thing.

Moving around does help, but even so, the mental fatigue is real!
by apitman | 2026-02-08 15:19:39+00:00
It depends on your threat model. Mine includes the compiler vendors abandoning the project and me needing to make my own implementation. Obviously unlikely, and someone else would likely step in for all the major languages, but I'm not convinced Go adds enough over C to give away that control.

As long as I have a stack of esp32s and a working C compiler, no one can take away my ability to make useful programs, including maintaining the compiler itself.
by reisse | 2026-02-08 15:19:43+00:00
It's expected for Tether to print when the crypto market cap is growing, because most crypto trades in USDT. So you cannot reliably say what is the cause and what is the consequence here.

Then, if the price was pumped and the liquidity didn't match it, it'd be a perfect target to squeeze (because the market is so highly leveraged), at least one trading firm should've attempted it.
by dangus | 2026-02-08 15:19:44+00:00
I think the fatigue is that the technology has been hyped since long before today when it’s actually started to become somewhat useful.

And even today when it’s useful, it’s really most useful for very specific domains like coding.

It’s not been impressive at all with other applications. Just chat with your local AI chat bot when you call customer service.

For example, I watch a YouTube channel where this guy calls up car dealerships to negotiate car deals and some of them have purchased AI receptionist solutions. They’re essentially worse than a simple “press 1 for sales” menu and have essentially zero business value.

Another example, I switched to a cheap phone plan MVNO that uses AI chat as its first line of defense. All it did was act as a natural language search engine for a small selection of FAQ pages, and to actually do anything you needed to find the right button to get a human.

These two examples of technology were not worth the hype. We can blame those businesses all day long but at the end of the day I can’t imagine those businesses are going to be impressed with the results of the tech long term. Those car dealerships won’t sell more cars because of it, my phone plan won’t avoid customer service interactions because of it.

In theory, these AI systems should easily be able to be plugged in to do some basic operations that actually save these businesses from hiring people.

The cellular provider should be able to have the AI chatbot make real adjustments to your account, even if they’re minor.

The car dealership bot should be able to set the customer up in the CMS by collecting basic contact info, and maybe should be able to send a basic quote on a vehicle stock number before negotiations begin.

But in practice, these AI systems aren’t providing significant value to these businesses. Companies like Taco Bell can’t even replace humans taking food orders despite the language capabilities of AI.
Show HN: I analyzed 6 years of Hacker News data and here's what I found
by Tusharmagar | 2026-02-08 15:19:45+00:00
I built this as part of a hackathon after analyzing Hacker News data from 2020–2025. While digging through the data, I noticed a few patterns around front-page posts that I didn’t expect, so I thought I’d share them here!

One thing that stood out is how misleading title-based predictions can be.

Most attempts to predict HN success rely heavily on the title. The problem is that we’re missing a crucial top-of-the-funnel signal: clicks. Two submissions can both have 3 upvotes, but one might have been seen by 30 people and the other by only 5. On HN, these look identical.

In reality, the first likely had a more clickable title, while the second had much higher engagement. If the second gets more exposure, it often ends up taking off. But without impression or click data, we can’t tell the difference. All we see are votes.

That missing signal makes it impossible to reliably decide what a “good” HN title is based on outcomes alone, and it explains why many posts feel unpredictable even in hindsight.
by DennisP | 2026-02-08 15:20:54+00:00
You don't just want the best investment, you want several good investments that are uncorrelated with each other. Gold is better if you're looking for something to diversify your investments in the stock market, since it tends to do well when stocks are doing badly (though that's not guaranteed). Bitcoin of course has been better for really high returns, mostly when stocks are doing well. Whether that will continue is anyone's guess. Long-term returns for gold have basically matched the S&P500 total performance since the bottom of the dotcom crash.
by parpfish | 2026-02-08 15:21:23+00:00
I love the flow state, and I’m pretty sure it’s fundamentally incompatible with prompting. For me, when the flow state kicks in, it’s completely nonverbal and my inner dialogue shuts up. I think that’s part of why it feels so cool and fun when it hits.

But LLM prompting requires you to constantly engage with language processing to summarize and review the problem.
by veganmosfet | 2026-02-08 15:21:28+00:00
Imho a combination of different layers and methods can reduce the risk (but it's not 0):
* Use frontier LLMs - they have the best detection. A good system prompt can also help a lot (most authoritative channel).
* Reduce downstream permissions and tool usage to the minimum, depending on the agentic use case (Main chat / Heartbeat / Cronjob...). Use human-in-the-loop escalation outside the LLM.
* For potentially attacker controlled content (external emails, messages, web), always use the "tool" channel / message role (not "user" or "system").
* Follow state of the art security in general (separation, permission, control...).
* Test. We are still in the discovery phase.
by idopmstuff | 2026-02-08 15:21:39+00:00
> The reason is simple once you see it, but it took me months to figure out. When each task takes less time, you don't do fewer tasks. You do more tasks.

> AI reduces the cost of production but increases the cost of coordination, review, and decision-making. And those costs fall entirely on the human.

The combination of these two facts is why I'm so glad I quit my job a couple of years ago and started my own business. I'm a one-man show and having so much fun using AI as I run things.

Long term, it definitely feels like AI is going to drive company sizes down and lead to a greater prevalence of SMBs, since they get all the benefits with few of the downsides.
by candiddevmike | 2026-02-08 15:21:45+00:00
> If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.

If you can't code by hand professionally anymore, what are you being paid to do? Bring the specs to the LLMs? Deal with the customers so the LLMs don't have to?
by tempodox | 2026-02-08 15:21:55+00:00
Never, ever have productivity gains improved the lives of those who do the actual work. They only ever enriched the owners of the factories.

But with “AI” the gain is more code getting generated faster. That is the dumbest possible way to measure productivity in software development. Remember, code is a liability. Pumping out 10x the amount of code is not 10x productivity.
by brookst | 2026-02-08 15:22:39+00:00
Banshees of Insherin is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. The understatedness is critical to the humor and story; it’s a juxtaposition of boring people in a boring town and the batshit plots that develop.

Other recent greats are maybe Poor Things, Challengers, and Conclave.

You wouldn’t mistake any for Shawshank, but that’s ok, it’s 30 years later. Shawshank is also qualitatively different from great movies in the mid 1960’s, like Dr. Strangelove or The Graduate.
by eddythompson80 | 2026-02-08 15:23:01+00:00
It really depends on the project for me. For example,I never enjoyed writing react code (or really any UI), just the outcome of my idea materializing in a usable interface. There is nothing creative or fun for me in almost any UX framework. It’s just a ton of predictable typing (now we need a fricking box. And another box. And another stupid box…) I’m more than happy outsourcing that. However, my thoughts are too random and imprecise that actually outsourcing it before to another person always felt disrespectful to them. I don’t have to worry about that with AI. My company is paying it, and when I’m prototyping a react thing every now and then, I burn few thousand dollars a day for the lols.

If they don’t like it, take it away. I just won’t do that part because I have no interest in it. Some other parts of the project, I do enjoy working on by hand. At least setting up the patterns I think will result in simple readable flow, reduce potential bugs, etc. AI s not great at that. It’s happy to mix strings, nulls, bad type castings, no separation of concerns, no small understandable functions, no reusable code, etc. which is th part i enjoy thinking about
by idopmstuff | 2026-02-08 15:23:17+00:00
> Things that can cleanly be expressed in 1-2 sentences are whole paragraphs

Funny, I don't associate that with AI. I associate it with having to write papers of a specific length in high school. (Though at least those were usually numbers of pages, so you could get a little juice from tweaking margins, line spacing and font size.)
by CurleighBraces | 2026-02-08 15:24:15+00:00
Has anyone got any insights into what hiring software engineers looks like these days? As someone currently with a job and not hiring it is hard to imagine.

Has there been any sort of paradigm shift in coding interviews? Is LLM use expected/encouraged or frowned upon?

If companies are still looking for people to write code by hand then perhaps the author is onto something, if however we as an industry are moving on, will those who don't adapt be relegated to hobbyists?