MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AJ007 | 2026-02-19 18:46:25+00:00
Thinking about this a little more -> "nature of LLMs and intelligence"

Bloated apps are a material disadvantage. If I'm in a competitive industry that slow down alone can mean failure. The only thing Claude Code has going for it now is the loss making $200 month subsidy. Is there any conceivable GUI overlay that Anthropic or OpenAI can add to make their software better than the current terminal apps? Sure, for certain edge cases, but then why isn't the user building those themselves? 24 months ago we could have said that's too hard, but that isn't the case in 2026.

Microsoft added all of this stuff in to Windows, and it's a 5 alarm fire. Stuff that used to be usable is a mess and really slow. Running linux with Claude Code, Codex, or Pi is clearly superior to having a Windows device with neither (if it wasn't possible to run these in Windows; just a hypothetical.)

From the business/enterprise perspective - there is no single most important thing, but having an environment that is reliable and predictable is high up there. Monday morning, an the Anthropic API endpoint is down, uh oh! In the longer term, businesses will really want to control both the model and the software that interfaces with it.

If the end game is just the same as talking to the Star Trek computer, and competitors are narrowing gaps rather than widening them (e.g. Anthropic and OpenAI releases models minutes from each other now, Chinese frontier models getting closer in capability not further), then it is really hard to see how either company achieves a vertical lock down.

We could actually move down the stack, and then the real problem for OpenAI and Anthropic is nVidia. 2030, the data center expansion is bust, nVidia starts selling all of these cards to consumers directly and has a huge financial incentive to make sure the performant local models exist. Everyone in the semiconductor supply chain below nvidia only cares about keeping sales going, so it stops with them.

Maybe nvidia is the real winner?

Also is it just me or does it now feel like hn comments are just talking to a future LLM?
by Uehreka | 2026-02-19 18:46:25+00:00
> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text…

Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable).

I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these things increasingly do). Really elegant code is cool to read, but many tools I use daily are closed source, so I have no idea if their code is elegant or not. I only care if it works.
by Sparyjerry | 2026-02-19 18:46:27+00:00
Doge.gov already has the most transparent listing of everything they are cutting. This other website that starts out its header with "Tracking The Damage" is clearly a biased attempt by democrats to discredit a program that was started by republicans. It's actually kind of sad people don't realize that the two-party system involves tribalism where no matter how good something is, the other side will call it bad if it wasn't their idea.
by dang | 2026-02-19 18:46:37+00:00
I doubt that it's employees, but I agree that some of those accounts look like genAI and have banned them.

All:

(1) Generated comments aren't allowed on HN - this rule predates LLMs but obviously applies even more now: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(2) If you see accounts that look like they're mostly posting genAI comments, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. That's how I found my way to these cases.
by Retr0id | 2026-02-19 18:46:40+00:00
This aligns with an article I titled "AI can only solve boring problems"[0]

Despite the title I'm a little more optimistic about agentic coding overall (but only a little).

All projects require some combination of "big thinking" and tedious busywork. Too much busywork is bad, but reducing it to 0 doesn't necessarily help. I think AI can often reduce the tedious busywork part, but that's only net positive if there was an excess of it to begin with - so its value depends on the project / problem domain / etc.

[0]: https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/boring-ai-problems.htm...
by matthewowen | 2026-02-19 18:47:08+00:00
I think that having some difficulty and having to "bloody your forehead" acts as a filter that you cared enough to put a lot of effort into it. From a consumer side, someone having spent a lot of time on something certainly isn't a guarantee that it is good, but it provides _some_ signal about the sincerity of the producer's belief in it. IMO it's not gatekeeping to only want to pay attention to things that care went into: it's just normal human behavior to avoid unreasonable asymmetries of effort.
by solarisos | 2026-02-19 18:47:10+00:00
The shift from 'building cool stuff' to 'navigating endless layers of abstraction and compliance' is definitely wearing people down. It feels like we spend more time managing the 'noise' around the work (Slack, Jira, AI-generated emails) than actually writing code that solves problems. I've found that working on a small side project with a very constrained, 'old school' tech stack is the only way I can still find the joy in it lately.
by wolvoleo | 2026-02-19 18:47:11+00:00
Oh that's not my philosophy at all. I don't like too much automation because I'm very fussy as to what I want at one moment. It all depends on my mood which home assistant doesn't know. Sometimes when I enter a room I want the lights on, other times I don't, stuff like that. Like when the curtains are open and I'm walking around half naked. And sometimes I just like the dark and sometimes I need bright lights. Sometimes I need heat and sometimes sitting in 16 degrees (C) is totally fine. Yeah I'm weird I know :)

Also I'm really chaotic in terms of schedule. My mood and behaviour changes by the day.

I use it more as a monitoring and control tool.

Not saying your way is bad, it's more as HA is intended. But I'm just saying it won't work for me.
by epistasis | 2026-02-19 18:47:27+00:00
I notice a reticence for people to speak plainly about things these days, because certain topics must be danced around at the edges in order for there to be any productive conversation.

Canada's PM Carney spoke recently about the Power of the Powerless essay and the shared lie, when the Green Grocer puts up the "Workers of the world unite" sign. And I kind of fear that shared reticence to speak plainly is causing an even larger inability to talk about the matter at hand than trying to approach it delicately around the edges to convince those who are so hard to communicate with.
by fredliu | 2026-02-19 18:47:52+00:00
We are in this transition period where we'll see a lot of these, because of the effort of creating "something impressive" is dramatically reduced. But once it stabilizes (which I think is already starting to happen, and this post is an example), and people are "trained" to recognize the real effort, even with AI help, behind creating something, the value of that final work will shine through. In the end, anything that is valuable is measured by the human effort needed to create it.
by lapetitejort | 2026-02-19 18:47:54+00:00
Yesterday I had two hours to work on a side project I've been dreaming about for a week. I knew I had to build some libraries and that it would be a major pain. I started with AI first, which created a script to download, extract, and build what needed. Even with the script I indeed encountered problems. But I blitzed through each problem until the libraries were built and I could focus on my actual project, which was not building libraries! I actually reached a satisfying conclusion instead of half-way through compiling something I do not care about.
Show HN: Searchable compression for JSON/NDJSON (skip ~99% pages; sub-ms lookups
by Tetsuro | 2026-02-19 18:47:54+00:00
Hi HN — I built SEE (Semantic Entropy Encoding), a schema-aware, searchable compression format for JSON/NDJSON.

Goal:
Reduce the “data tax” (storage/egress) and the “CPU tax” (decompress/parse) by keeping data searchable while compressed.

What’s different:
- Page-based layout + Bloom filter skipping + a small directory index
- Fast exists/pos/eq-style lookups without full decompression

Proof-first (no meeting required):
- A 10-minute offline Demo Pack (wheel + sample .see + scripts + OnePager)
- A DD Evidence Pack designed for reviewers (mismatch-zero checks, audit status, verification file list)

I’m exploring either:
(A) acquisition (asset purchase), or
(B) an exclusive license with a strategic buyer with a clear integration path.
Evaluation slots are limited.

Repo + release assets are linked in the comments.
Happy to answer technical questions here.
by imglorp | 2026-02-19 18:47:55+00:00
As Ken Iverson noted in "Notation as a Tool of Thought"[1], yeah the syntax absolutely matters. The same program might resonate and make sense in one language but be incomprehensible if translated 1:1 in another.

Computer languages are for humans to understand and communicate.

1. https://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.p...
by Tetsuro | 2026-02-19 18:48:10+00:00
Links:
- Repo: https://github.com/kodomonocch1/see_proto
- Release (Demo + DD packs): https://github.com/kodomonocch1/see_proto/releases/tag/v0.1....
- NDA / enterprise inquiry form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScV2Ti592K3Za2r_WLU...

If you want to verify quickly:
1) Demo: run the offline Demo Pack (~10 minutes)
2) DD: confirm pack_verify PASS + mismatch=0 + audit PASS (see the release notes checklist)
by tonymet | 2026-02-19 18:48:11+00:00
When apps were expensive to build , developers at least had the excuse that they were too busy to build something appealing. Now they can cope by pretending to be an artisanal hand-built software engineer, and still fail at making anything appealing.

If you want to build something beautiful, nothing is stopping you, except your own cynicism.

"AI doesn't build anything original". Then why aren't you proving everyone wrong? Go out there and have it build whatever you want.

AI has not yet rejected any of my prompts by saying I was being too creative. In fact, because I'm spending way less time on mundane tasks, I can focus way more time on creativity , performance, security and the areas that I am embarrassed to have overlooked on previous projects.
by skeledrew | 2026-02-19 18:48:25+00:00
But they don't want the subscription to be quota'd like that. The API automatically does that though, as different models use different amounts of tokens when generating responses, and the billing is per token. And quite literally is having the user account for the actual costs of usage, which is the thing said users are trying to avoid, on their own terms, and getting upset about when they aren't.
by ryandrake | 2026-02-19 18:48:26+00:00
It's kind of freeing to put a software project together and not have to sweat the boilerplate and rote algorithm work. Boring things that used to dissuade me. Now, I no longer have that voice in my head saying things like: "Ugh, I'm going to have to write yet another ring buffer, for the 14th time in my career."
by jtr1 | 2026-02-19 18:48:29+00:00
I tend to agree, this has been my experience with LLM-powered coding, especially more recently with the advent of new harnesses around context management and planning. I’ve been building software for over ten years so I feel comfortable looking under the hood, but it’s been less of that lately and more talking with users and trying to understand and effectively shape the experience, which I guess means I’m being pushed toward product work.
by squaresforsales | 2026-02-19 18:48:37+00:00
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by solarisos | 2026-02-19 18:48:56+00:00
I've started viewing imposter syndrome not as a lack of confidence, but as a signal that I'm pushing into a territory where I'm actually learning. The day I stop feeling it is probably the day I've stopped growing. It also helps to remember that most of the 'experts' we admire are just better at hiding their own uncertainty while they figure things out in real-time.
by apexalpha | 2026-02-19 18:48:59+00:00
Meh.

Being 'anti AI' is just hot right now and lots of people are jumping on the bandwagon.

I'm sure some of them will actually hold out. Just like those people still buying Vinyl because Spotify is 'not art' or whatever.

Have fun all, meanwhile I built 2 apps this weekend purely for myself. Would've taken me weeks a few years ago.
by adrian_b | 2026-02-19 18:49:02+00:00
Maybe I was lucky, but I never had any serious problems in Linux with any of the many Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops that I have used during the last 2 decades.

The most serious problem that I had was about 10 years ago in a Lenovo laptop with NVIDIA Optimus (i.e. where the NVIDIA GPU does not have direct video outputs, but it must pass through the Intel GPU). At that time, I spent a couple of days until succeeding to make NVIDIA Optimus work OK in Linux. With the Intel GPU, Linux worked fine since the beginning. This happened because at that time the Linux NVIDIA driver did not support Optimus, so you had to install a separate program to be able to select which GPU shall be used by an application. I do not know if any laptops with Optimus still exist today.

Except for that case, I never encountered any hardware compatibility problem that could not be solved in minutes or a few hours of most. For contrast, with Windows I have seen many problems that could not be solved in weeks, even with the assistance of IT support personnel from multiple continents, because nobody, not even the "professionals", had any idea about what Windows is really doing and what may be wrong.

It is true that some of the laptops that I have used had a few features that I have never used, so I do not know if they worked in Linux. For instance I have never used a fingerprint reader or a NFC reader.
by techblueberry | 2026-02-19 18:49:02+00:00
What's interesting is how AI makes this problem worse but not actually "different", especially if you want to go deep on something. Like listicles were always plentiful, even before AI, but inferior to someone in substack going deep on a topic. AI generated music will be the same way, there's always been an excessive abundance of crap music, and now we'll just have more more of it. The weird thing is how it will hit the uncanny valley. Potentially "Better" than the crap that came before it, but significantly worse than what someone who cares will produce.

DJing is an interesting example. Compared with like composition, Beatmatching is "relatively" easy to learn, but was solved with CD turntables that can beatmatch themselves, and yet has nothing to do with the taste you have to develop to be a good DJ.
by alt227 | 2026-02-19 18:49:05+00:00
Excellent attitude. This needs to be adopted by more people IMO.

Why are people trying to keep the earth the same as what they think it should be forever? We are a blot on the history of the earth, The human race will perish when considtions on the planet no longer suit us, just like many other large species before us. The planet will warm and cool over millions of years long after we are gone, and nature will continue to evolve many more wierd and wonderful things.

Humans need to hurry up and accept that they really dont matter at all to the planet.
by rbanffy | 2026-02-19 18:49:20+00:00
I would imagine variables that are passed to functions would be considered ABI-visible. If the compiler is smart enough, it can keep the pointer wide when it’s passed to a function that’s also being compiled and act accordingly on the other side, but that worries me because this new meaning of “pointer” is propagating to parts of the code that might not necessarily agree with it.
by minimaxir | 2026-02-19 18:49:26+00:00
> Not more blog posts, more emails, more boilerplate — but something structurally new?

This is a point that often results in bad faith arguments from both AI enthusiasts and AI skeptics. Enthusiasts will say "everything is a remix and the most creative works are built on previous works" while skeptics will say "LLMs are stochastic parrots and cannot create anything new by technical definition".

The truth is somewhere in the middle, which unfortunately invokes the Golden Mean Fallacy that makes no one happy.
by adev_ | 2026-02-19 18:49:30+00:00
> One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.

That has nothing to do with startup and economy. Equality in front of the law is one of the most basic property of any decent democracy.

It is even the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
by bcrosby95 | 2026-02-19 18:49:30+00:00
What if the AI produces writing that better accomplishes my goal than writing it myself? Why do you feel differently about these two acts?

For what it's worth, the unifying idea behind both is basically a "hazing ritual", or more neutrally phrased, skin in the game. It takes time and energy to look at things people produce. You should spend time and energy making sure I'm not looking at a pile of shit. Doesn't matter if it's a website or prose.

Obviously some people don't. And that's why the signal to noise ratio is becoming shit very quickly.
by LeifCarrotson | 2026-02-19 18:49:47+00:00
I've been a Garmin user for 14 years and I wish someone would take the GPS, heart rate, and IMU sensors out of my Fenix and put it in an open-source product.

But GPS is really hard to get right, especially if you want weeks of battery life.

Garmin have been a decent company (in the ethical/moral sense) to be a customer of for many years, but I think they're slowly losing that reputation. Yes, my 2018 hardware still does everything it did in 2018, no, I don't pay for or currently have a need for Connect+, but they're running out of hardware optimization opportunities to push people to new devices, and appear to be seeking alternative ways to maintain growth.
by lesuorac | 2026-02-19 18:49:48+00:00
Who are these "experts" and what did they actually say? I feel like whenever I see these arguments its somebody making a straw man.

Although I mean trivially a non-rebated tax will cause inflation because it increases prices ... and recessions are called by NBER after you leave one so a year is way to little time.

Planes have actually been falling out of the sky. I'm not sure its from Social Security cuts but I mean if your stance is "planes falling out of sky = issue with social security cuts" then uh your evidence is in [1].

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/ups-louisville-plane-crash-ntsb-e...
by jihadjihad | 2026-02-19 18:50:00+00:00
> Ideas are then further refined when you try to articulate them. This is why we make students write essays. It’s also why we make professors teach undergraduates. Prompting an AI model is not articulating an idea.

I agree, but the very act of writing out your intention/problem/goal/whatever can crystallize your thinking. Obviously if you are relying on the output spat out by the LLM, you're gonna have a bad time. But IMO one of the great things about these tools is that, at their best, they can facilitate helpful "rubber duck" sessions that can indeed get you further on a problem by getting stuff out of your own head.
by Rijanhastwoears | 2026-02-19 18:50:01+00:00
So, my original comment really boils down to the idea that "public perception has nothing to do with objective stats". To which your response is ... citing a paper at me.

To reiterate, citing studies that show that smoking causes cancer in chain smokers does ... nothing. You are citing studies, but I am not the chain smoker; I am just the guy talking about chain smokers.

One more time, I wish we lived in a world where public perception was swayed by objective studies, but we don't.

Julia is fast, yes, but when a university sys-admin rolls their eyes at hearing its name, you have lost the battle for well and good.
by matheusmoreira | 2026-02-19 18:50:34+00:00
Amazing, this is a life saving feature for C developers. Apparently it's not complete yet? I will apply this to my code once the feature is included on LLVM and GCC.

Would be nice if the annotations could also be applied to structure fields.

struct bytes {
size_t count;
unsigned char * __counted_by(count) pointer;
};

void work_with(struct bytes);
by delecti | 2026-02-19 18:50:35+00:00
They weren't starting from scratch 200 years ago either. Tillers were standard in boats for thousands of years, it was a perfectly reasonable way to steer a vehicle.

Likewise, at first a purely textual interface was a perfectly reasonable way to interact with a computer terminal, but the addition of mice changed the game, as did higher resolution displays and widespread adoption of touchscreens. We're 80 years into screens, 60 years into computer mice, and 20 years into touchscreens. Clearly lots of interface changes are just to keep the designers at a company busy, but it's also silly to be confident that we've nailed UX/UI standards.
by majorchord | 2026-02-19 18:50:47+00:00
Syntax is what keeps me away from Rust. I have tried many times to get into it over the years but I just don't want to look at the syntax. Even after learning all about it, I just can't get over it. I'm glad other people do fine with it but it's just not for me.

For this reason (coming from C++) I wished Swift were more popular because that syntax is much more familiar/friendly to me, while also having better memory safety and quality of life improvements that I like.