MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tedsanders | 2026-02-06 06:52:18+00:00
We do care about cost, of course. If money didn't matter, everyone would get infinite rate limits, 10M context windows, and free subscriptions. So if we make new models more efficient without nerfing them, that's great. And that's generally what's happened over the past few years. If you look at GPT-4 (from 2023), it was far less efficient than today's models, which meant it had slower latency, lower rate limits, and tiny context windows (I think it might have been like 4K originally, which sounds insanely low now). Today, GPT-5 Thinking is way more efficient than GPT-4 was, but it's also way more useful and way more reliable. So we're big fans of efficiency as long as it doesn't nerf the utility of the models. The more efficient the models are, the more we can crank up speeds and rate limits and context windows.

That said, there are definitely cases where we intentionally trade off intelligence for greater efficiency. For example, we never made GPT-4.5 the default model in ChatGPT, even though it was an awesome model at writing and other tasks, because it was quite costly to serve and the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for the average person (no one wants to get rate limited after 10 messages). A second example: in our API, we intentionally serve dumber mini and nano models for developers who prioritize speed and cost. A third example: we recently reduced the default thinking times in ChatGPT to speed up the times that people were having to wait for answers, which in a sense is a bit of a nerf, though this decision was purely about listening to feedback to make ChatGPT better and had nothing to do with cost (and for the people who want longer thinking times, they can still manually select Extended/Heavy).

I'm not going to comment on the specific techniques used to make GPT-5 so much more efficient than GPT-4, but I will say that we don't do any gimmicks like nerfing by time of day or nerfing after launch. And when we do make newer models more efficient than older models, it mostly gets returned to people in the form of better speeds, rate limits, context windows, and new features.
by goku12 | 2026-02-06 06:52:35+00:00
The Kubernetes Book, by Nigel Poulton. A very detailed and well explained book that is updated every year and you get them all for a one-time purchase.

Build Your Own Lisp, by Daniel Holden. This is an often cited classic with a lot of precious concepts explained in detail. It can be read for free online. But this is an opportunity to reward them for it. (Yes, I do own a purchased copy).

Ansible for DevOps by Jeff Geerling. Already mentioned by the sibling commenter.

There a lot more on my wishlist. All of them are competitively priced at 10 to 15$ each.
by verisimi | 2026-02-06 06:53:11+00:00
Also, don't forget, that the work itself can be about 'preparing the ground' for your non-charitable interests (which are probably held in trust, ie not held personally). Eg if you involve yourself in child education (perhaps making it worse) this is not an issue if it makes it more like that your classroom software is adopted. Or, if you are heavily invested in pharmaceuticals, singing the praises of vaccines, is just a tax savvy way of increasing the market that you will benefit from.
by FpUser | 2026-02-06 06:54:01+00:00
>"On the other hand ... to me it always felt as if I'd waste too much time writing assembler code. I like being able to express thoughts and ideas, via code, in a more easily manner, e. g. ruby"

Old fart here. Never mind assembler. I've started with machine codes directly. Anyway early on I'd written fairly big programs using assembly. Was not too difficult. First you developing little functions, like a lot of the, and then you call those and along with using macro facilities it looks almost high level.
by D-Machine | 2026-02-06 06:54:22+00:00
Right, and this should be contextualized with respect to code generation. It is not crazy to presume that LLMs have effectively nearly perfectly memorized certain training sources, but the ability to generate / extract outputs that are nearly identical to those training sources will of course necessarily be highly contingent on the prompting patterns and complexity.

So, dismissals of "it was just translating C compilers in the training set to Rust" need to be carefully quantified, but, also, need to be evaluated in the context of the prompts. As others in this post have noted, there are basically no details about the prompts.
by mjr00 | 2026-02-06 06:54:48+00:00
It sounds like you're talking more about "vibe coding" i.e. just using LLMs without inspecting the output. That's neither what the article nor the people to whom you're replying are saying. You can (and should) heavily review and edit LLM generated code. You have the full ability to change it yourself, because the code is just there and can be edited!
by nitroedge | 2026-02-06 06:56:23+00:00
You should check out the PAL MCP and then also use this process, its super solid:
https://github.com/glittercowboy/get-shit-done

The way "Phases" are handled is incredible with research then planning, then execution and no context rot because behind the scenes everything is being saved in a State.md file...

I'm on Phase 41 of my own project and the reliability and almost absence of any error is amazing. Investigate and see if its a fit for you. The PAL MCP you can setup to have Gemini with its large context review what Claude codes.
by theorchid | 2026-02-06 06:57:05+00:00
There is no right way to make a startup profitable. Online sales will work for one, offline for another. One approach will work for one founder, another for another. There are thousands of factors, and you cannot know in advance which one will be right for your case. Some will test sales for a month and give up, while others will continue and find a channel (or not).
by charcircuit | 2026-02-06 06:57:17+00:00
>I believe Minecraft has a system similar to what I described

Except every big server has to run an anticheat. Some servers required clients with client side anticheats even. Some servers required you to screen share with a moderator and they would go through the files on your computer to look for cheats. Exploiting people for free labor to moderate servers was never enough to stop the issues cheating had. Even with these volunteers anticheat was essential for see what players were flagging checks to know who to watch over.
by gspr | 2026-02-06 06:57:47+00:00
I don't think anyone minds if you use an LLM to try to track down information like this. But the LLM's output is not what we want. That's merely a clue for you on your quest to find a proper source.

Even school children in the 90s were told that "the search engine" was ludicrous to give as a source. You should know that your LLM is the same.
by simianwords | 2026-02-06 06:58:38+00:00
> I can imagine open source projects that will revolve entirely around specifications

This is a really good observation and I predict you will be correct.

There is a consequence of this for SaaS. You can imagine an example SaaS that one might need to vibecode to save money. The reason its not possible now is not because Claude can't do it, its because getting the right specs (like you suggested) is hard work. A well written spec will not only contain the best practices for that domain of software but also all the legal compliance BS that comes along with it.

With a proper specification that is also modular, I imagine we will be able to see more vibecoded SaaS.

Overall I think your prediction is really strong.
by dapperdrake | 2026-02-06 06:59:41+00:00
You have discovered Wally's playground. Wally is one of the guys from the Dilbert comic strip.

Basically, many incentives are "misaligned" in such a way, that micromanaging demise is (locally) considered more valuable than actually bringing in cash from customers by actually giving them something.

As long as the company's owners don't pick up on this and are effective at doing something about it, "all bets are off."
by addhochohoc | 2026-02-06 07:00:36+00:00
The eu - just recently, sold out its agricultural sector, to stabilize the car industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercosur

Everything is on the table and everything has to go. China plays the game of empires well- threaten by proxy in war, threaten by trade by having your opponents subsidies their own demise by systematic competition, without triggering the bite reflexes of systemic competition. Then get them to disintegrate by forming self-harming alliances.
by hvb2 | 2026-02-06 07:00:53+00:00
> So it's not like anyone wants to build a wind farm and wonders where in the world they are going to place it.

No, but there's demand everywhere. So it's all down to how likely you are to get your money back?

And this is for adding power to the grid, if you have a major single customer you're already adding a ton of risk to your project... What if the datacenter is no longer needed after a few years or isn't completed ever?
by somenameforme | 2026-02-06 07:02:07+00:00
Judges aren't powerless. If an administration genuinely ignores a judge's lawful ruling, they can charged with contempt, with penalties up to imprisonment. But there's a lot of judicial activism leading to 'creative' rulings. Like the Supreme Court, Federal judges are appointed with life terms. And they can be even more impactful on a day-to-day basis, especially when they intentionally step outside the bounds of their authority. One of the more extremist judges did try to charge this administration with contempt - it was tossed. So the admin tried to charge the judge with misconduct, which was also tossed. It's just a lot of back and forth nonsense with checks and balances generally still working okayish.

So for an example from the previous administration, they wanted race based admissions for colleges. That is obviously illegal and unconstitutional. After the Supreme Court predictably ruled against them, they worked to circumvent their ruling in various ways including in a 'Dear Colleagues' letter [1] offering guidance on ways universities could achieve a racial quota while remaining within the bounds of the law, effectively laying out a proposed blueprint for intentional Disparate Impact [2], which is *drum roll* also illegal.

The main difference you're seeing in contemporary times is the way the media is spinning everything, intentionally looking to foment conflict and radicalism. We live in amoral times and so working around the judges and legal systems is framed primarily in terms of who's doing it.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20241127174625/https://www.ed.go...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
by friendzis | 2026-02-06 07:02:48+00:00
No. BMI does not work as a diagnostic measure for general population. The range of "normal" BMI values does depend at least on genetic lineage, gender and individual development history. Fine to compare two scandinavian lineage men, but if you compare e.g. a dutch man with an african woman oh boy, you error margins would be mid-to-high single digit units

> Waist to height ratio

Again, while not a bad metric per se, translates poorly between cohorts.
by globular-toast | 2026-02-06 07:03:55+00:00
It is indeed a good way to add regression testing to code with no tests. But it's no substitute for TDD. It can't tell you why something is the way it is, nor can it distinguish between intentional and incidental (although maybe some would argue you shouldn't, given Hyrum's law and all). But it will at least guide you as you try to figure that out and stop you breaking stuff constantly.
by alephnerd | 2026-02-06 07:04:29+00:00
> The eu - just recently, sold out its agricultural sector

1. The EU-Mercusor deal does not impact European ag in any shape or form, and much of the nativist ag discourse in the EU has been disinfo driven for years [0].

2. I clearly pointed out how the EU now has a China sized market that is paying China level prices for luxury vehicles while purchasing at Chinese luxury volumes.

> Everything is on the table and everything has to go

Then go right ahead. All the barriers I pointed out are being implemented despite Trump's actions in Greenland. If the US and China are resorting to wolf warrior diplomacy, there's no point seriously engaging with either.

Either China respects the EU's positions or the EU can work with other middle powers to build both an ExChina and an ExAmerica ecosystem.

[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-farmer-protest-russia...

----

Interesting how this is yet another brand new HN account pushing this kind of narrative. 3rd time in two weeks [0] after pointing out the EU doesn't have to negotiate with China as a junior partner.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856383
by tehnub | 2026-02-06 07:05:12+00:00
I think Asimov is right that 1984 was not intended as a forecast but rather a depiction of Stalinism with British characteristics, so to speak.

>In short, if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad
science fiction.

Based on this quote and others, it seems Asimov didn't believe that Orwell intended the novel as science fiction, although others categorize it that way. I would say he's attacking the interpretation of it as science fiction, but it veers into an attack on Orwell, which is unfortunate.

You write

>Science fiction does not _forecast_.

Not to be overly pedantic but to be fair to Asimov, he didn't exactly say science fiction _necessarily_ does that, but rather it's a knack related to science fiction.
Show HN: LocaFlow – Localize Your App in 5 Minutes Instead of 8 Hours
by nikolaitarasov | 2026-02-06 07:05:23+00:00
Hey there,
I'm the developer behind LocaFlow. Here's the backstory:

I've built several iOS apps over the past few years. Every single one stayed English-only because I dreaded the localization process. The typical workflow:

1. Open Localizable.strings as a source code
2. Copy-paste pieces of strings to ChatGPT or Claude manually
3. Copy-paste translations back
4. Test everything
7. Repeat for each language and every app update

This would take me 8+ hours per app. I kept putting it off.

Last quarter, I finally decided to localize one of my apps. Halfway through the Saturday I spent on it, I thought "I'm a developer... why am I doing this manually?"

So I built LocaFlow.

What it does:
- Select your the app project on your computer
- AI translates to 100+ languages
- Takes about a few minutes instead of hours/days

What's different:
- No "bring your own API key" friction (I handle translation API costs)
- Preserves formatting (variables, plurals, special characters)
- Built by a developer who uses it for his own apps

Technical details:
- Uses xAI for translation
- Validates string formatting before/after translation
- Handles iOS plural forms, Android string arrays, etc.
- Can process batch translations (entire app at once)

Happy to answer questions about implementation, pricing, roadmap, or anything else.

Try it out: https://locaflow.dev (free plan available, no credit card required)
by Qerub | 2026-02-06 07:06:16+00:00
Speaking about high agency workers, this Company as Code framework reminds me a lot of SaaSiroth introduced in https://youtu.be/dLTUqPue9sQ?si=OIxmP5_D-YZZD2UO&t=200 (KRAZAM: High Agency Individual Contributor).
by Aditya_Garg | 2026-02-06 07:06:21+00:00
Anthropic themselves were able to write a c compiler using teams all at the same time

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler

Here is the relevant excerpt:

"To prevent two agents from trying to solve the same problem at the same time, the harness uses a simple synchronization algorithm:

Claude takes a "lock" on a task by writing a text file to current_tasks/ (e.g., one agent might lock current_tasks/parse_if_statement.txt, while another locks current_tasks/codegen_function_definition.txt). If two agents try to claim the same task, git's synchronization forces the second agent to pick a different one.
Claude works on the task, then pulls from upstream, merges changes from other agents, pushes its changes, and removes the lock. Merge conflicts are frequent, but Claude is smart enough to figure that out."
by ChatEngineer | 2026-02-06 07:07:52+00:00
The onboarding tax is real. Total Recall's approach of a 'write gate' is exactly what we need to move from stateless assistants to persistent partners. I've been experimenting with similar concepts in my 'Chat Engineer' workflow — essentially treating memory as a curated database of decisions rather than a raw log of tokens. The 'Will this change future behavior?' filter is a great heuristic. Looking forward to trying this out with Claude Code!
AI Development Company
by sonniya | 2026-02-06 07:09:25+00:00
An AI development company helps businesses turn data into smarter decisions through intelligent, scalable solutions. From machine learning models to conversational chatbots and predictive analytics, these companies design AI systems tailored to real-world challenges. By combining technical expertise with industry insight, an AI development company accelerates digital transformation, improves efficiency, and drives innovation. Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise, partnering with the right AI experts can unlock automation, accuracy, and long-term competitive advantage in today’s data-driven market.
by grodriguez100 | 2026-02-06 07:10:14+00:00
> Grep can't be prompt-injected. You can put "ignore previous instructions" in your skill all day long and grep will still find your curl to a webhook.

An attacker can craft a skill which pulls dependencies and the dependencies themselves can be well behaved. The skill gets installed, works, gets popular, propagates. Then at some point the dependency is poisoned and turns into malware. A classic Trojan horse approach.

It is difficult to catch this with grep: there is a curl command but looks fine, the dependency looks fine as well etc. Until it doesn’t.
by riffraff | 2026-02-06 07:10:19+00:00
But Trump and his administration also prove what GP is saying. Few care about the truth.

Trump states obvious lies so blatant ("prices will go down 200%") that anyone who cares could tell they are untruth without needing to look up any paper trail, but it does not matter.

Mike Johnson just quoted St Paul as saying you should respect the authority forgetting that the Romans beheaded him. And it's not like the Bible isn't available widely.
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-02-06 07:10:45+00:00
And the tech platforms seem to be handing over data, for these joke ass administrative warrants? What a joke.

This sort of absolute bullshit is just going to blow up in their faces & shatter what shreds of trust we have left in the hyperscalers, big cloud. All that international distrust will mount evem faster if these self awarded non-judicial "warrants" can be used to get whatever data these repulsive liberty-smashing creeps want, if they get to invade our privacy at will & without restraint. Absolute joke; stand up to this horseshit like your lives depend on it, Big Cloud.
by darkwater | 2026-02-06 07:11:45+00:00
There is still a max capped on the instance size [1] (well, RAM available) although now that I'm checking it again I swear it was different last time I read it. Anyway I did totally had issues with big replicated monoliths with their own connection pool (i.e. old Rails) maxing out connections on RDS.

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_...
by ta8903 | 2026-02-06 07:11:54+00:00
Not technically related to atomicity, but I was looking for a way to do arbitrary filesystem operations based on some condition (like adding a file to a directory, and having some operation be performed on it). The usual recommendation for this is to use inotify/watchman, but something about it seems clunky to me. I want to write a virtual filesystem, where you pass it a trigger condition and a function, and it applies the function to all files based on the trigger condition. Does something like this exist?
by Anilravi97 | 2026-02-06 07:12:20+00:00
This matches a lot of what’s already been said. For teams heavy on automation and CI, keeping tests close to the code usually works better than maintaining another bulky test management tool that people eventually ignore.
Tests live in the repo, CI shows results in PRs, and acceptance criteria sit in issues or PR checklists. That keeps things simple and avoids stale tests and unused dashboards.
If you truly need more structure and reporting, tools like TestRail or QualityFolio can help. It really comes down to how much process overhead your team is willing to accept before it becomes something everyone postpones.
by globular-toast | 2026-02-06 07:12:42+00:00
Warren Buffet wrote about this years ago. If you want to judge how "good" someone is you need to look at what they sacrifice. Gates sacrifices nothing. In fact, the entire thing is just marketing and basically worked for a long time. I was shocked to see people talking about Gates like he was a saint a few years ago. Glad to see that's changing.
by haberman | 2026-02-06 07:13:57+00:00
More concretely, I think the magic lies in these two properties:

1. Conservation of mass: the amount of C code you put in will be pretty close to the amount of machine code you get out. Aside from the preprocessor, which is very obviously expanding macros, there are almost no features of C that will take a small amount of code and expand it to a large amount of output. This makes some things annoyingly verbose to code in C (eg. string manipulation), but that annoyance is reflecting a true fact of machine code, which is that it cannot handle strings very easily.

2. Conservation of energy: the only work that will be performed is the code that you put into your program. There is no "supervisor" performing work on the side (garbage collection, stack checking, context switching), on your behalf. From a practical perspective, this means that the machine code produced by a C compiler is standalone, and can be called from any runtime without needing a special environment to be set up. This is what makes C such a good language for implementing garbage collection, stack checking, context switching, etc.

There are some exceptions to both of these principles. Auto-vectorizing compilers can produce large amounts of output from small amounts of input. Some C compilers do support stack checking (eg. `-fstack-check`). Some implementations of C will perform garbage collection (eg. Boehm, Fil-C). For dynamically linked executables, the PLT stubs will perform hash table lookups the first time you call a function. The point is that C makes it very possible to avoid all of these things, which has made it a great technology for programming close to the machine.

Some languages excel at one but not the other. Byte-code oriented languages generally do well at (1): for example, Java .class files are usually pretty lean, as the byte-code semantics are pretty close to the Java langauge. Go is also pretty good at (1). Languages like C++ or Rust are generally good at (2), but have much larger binaries on average than C thanks to generics, exceptions/panics, and other features. C is one of the few languages I've seen that does both (1) and (2) well.
by hpdigidrifter | 2026-02-06 07:13:59+00:00
Am not a fan of dealing with worktrees
Maybe for larger longer lived tasks but the time spent on merges from different agents is definitely a big headwind for parallel work.

This seems handled by this new agent which is cool.

I gave up on worktrees and hacked together a solution with fine-grained lockfiles for editing, running builds, etc that worked surprisingly good for what it was