MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jjav | 2026-02-02 08:52:11+00:00
> Isn't this true of any greenfield project?

That is a good point and true to some extent. But IME with AI, both the initial speedup and the eventual slowdown are accelerated vs. a human.

I've been thinking that one reason is that while AI coding generates code far faster (on a greenfield project I estimate about 50x), it also generates tech-debt at a hyperastonishing rate.

It used to be that tech debt started to catch up with teams in a few years, but with AI coded software it's only a few months into it that tech debt is so massive that it is slowing progress down.

I also find that I can keep the tech debt in check by using the bot only as a junior engineer, where I specify precisely the architecture and the design down to object and function definitions and I only let the bot write individual functions at a time.

That is much slower, but also much more sustainable. I'd estimate my productivity gains are "only" 2x to 3x (instead of ~50x) but tech debt accumulates no faster than a purely human-coded project.

This is based on various projects only about one year into it, so time will tell how it evolves longer term.
by ollybrinkman | 2026-02-02 08:52:34+00:00
Hi HN — I’m building a payment-native API gateway for AI agents and developers.

API keys and subscriptions don’t work well for autonomous software: they require accounts, secrets, and prior trust before a single request can be made.

This gateway flips that model. Instead of authenticating, clients pay per request using HTTP 402 + x402. No API keys, no accounts, no Stripe integration for providers.

How it works:
• The gateway proxies any existing API
• Paid endpoints return 402 Payment Required
• The client (or agent) attaches a USDC payment
• The request is replayed and forwarded upstream

Current features:
• OpenAI-compatible proxy mode
• Provider dashboard for endpoints + pricing
• Curl + SDK examples for agents
• Runs as a single Rust binary or Docker

I’m looking for:
• API providers who want to monetize endpoints without building billing/auth
• Agent / LLM developers who want APIs that charge per tool call instead of monthly plans

Happy to answer technical questions — especially around latency, trust model, and failure modes.
by rustyhancock | 2026-02-02 08:53:12+00:00
The tool of choice back then was SoftICE and it would have been trivial to trap even bios level LPT access.

More to the point the guy didn't even open the dongle, which in all likelihood was a simple set of logic gates in this case.

I'm assuming he did have a careful look at the caller to the function because his reasoning that the communicating function took no inputs is faulty.

What if the hardware has a LFSR in it and returns changing responses, and the caller can check them with a verify function else where that maintains a state and knows to expect the next in the sequence?

We have far better tools today for sure, but we understood the system better back then. The right tool is sometimes better than a sharper tool as they say.

Edit : I should add I'm aware it's very likely the actual reversing involved more steps and checks than Dimitrys blog which is narrowed to what worked.
by sevenzero | 2026-02-02 08:53:33+00:00
> Anyone can create a small version of anything

Yup. My biggest issue with designing software is usually designing the system architecture/infra. I am very opposed to just shove everything to AWS and call it a day, you dont learn anything from that, cloud performance stinks for many things and I dont want to get random 30k bills because I let some instance of something run accidentally.

AI sucks at determining what kinda infrastructure would be great for scenario x due to Cloud being to go to solution for the lazy dev. Tried to get it to recommend a way to self host stuff, but thats just a general security hazard.
by Grokipaedia | 2026-02-02 08:54:38+00:00
"A bit more context on why I took this approach:

Most current 'Agent Safety' layers rely on LLM-based supervisors (a 'Judge' agent). The flaw is that you're using a probabilistic tool to secure another probabilistic tool. If the supervisor hallucinations, the system fails.

IBA moves the enforcement into the cryptographic handshake. By hashing the 'Intent' at the moment of human initiation and requiring the agent to generate a 'Proof of Alignment' payload for every tool-call, we’re creating a deterministic gate.

Even if an agent has a valid API key for a database, if the proposed SQL query doesn’t mathematically derive from the signed Intent Hash, the gateway terminates the connection before the DB is even touched.

I’m particularly interested in how this community views the latency trade-off. We’re seeing sub-5ms overhead on the validation, which seems negligible for high-stakes enterprise workflows (Finance/Healthcare), but I'm curious if anyone sees a path to making this 'zero-knowledge' so the gateway doesn't even need to see the raw intent data?"
by azuanrb | 2026-02-02 08:55:23+00:00
You have 5 hours limit (not 4), and weekly limit. But once you hit your weekly limit, you won't be able to use it anymore. That's how it works for a while now.

Not sure why you're being so hostile here. Since you mention you're on $200 plan, your rate limit is a lot higher so you probably won't notice it as much as $20 plan which to me is understandable.

I'm just sharing my experience using the same $20 plan, before and after December 2025. The difference is noticeable, that is all.
by deafpolygon | 2026-02-02 08:55:40+00:00
There’s also an emerging group of users (such as myself) who essentially use it primarily as an “on-demand” teacher and not as a productivity tool.

I am learning software development without having it generate code for me—preferring to have it explain each thing line-by-line. But… it’s not only for learning development, but I can query it for historical information and have it point me to the source of the information (so I can read the primary sources as much as possible).

It allows me to customize the things I want to learn at my own pace, while also allowing me to diverge for a moment from the learning material. I have found it invaluable… and so far, Gemini has been pretty good at this (probably owing to the integration of Google search into Gemini).

It lets me cut through the SEO crap that has plagued search engines in recent years.
by DaedalusII | 2026-02-02 08:55:45+00:00
this really has little to do with communism. after all the vietnam war etc concluded, that area kind of got left to itself by the powers that be.

It's a small country that was given a political system to be a client-state of a hegemonic regional power, and then the hegemon abandoned them, they don't have valuable resources like crude oil or gold, and they end up with underdeveloped state institutions. they aren't really failed states, but more so "unfinished" states

similar examples include belize, papua new guinea (abandoned by australia), East Timor, vanuatu, djibouti, maldives etc. some marxist, some british, portuguese, french, etc

in many of these countries you really can do what you want. belize is not much more than a forestry plantation with 19th century english corporate law and a few bars in the capital ("Belize City").
by direwolf20 | 2026-02-02 08:55:56+00:00
There was a comment here recently — someone complained that SoundCloud doesn't treat "former paying customers" well. This complainant was a "former paying customer".

Free customers can store 3 hours of sound. This former paying customer had more than 3 hours of sound stored.

The comment said SoundCloud was a terrible company holding their data hostage, by not letting them do anything with it except delete things to get it under 3 hours, and threatening to delete all of it if they didn't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783575
by palata | 2026-02-02 08:56:24+00:00
> Wider Linux adoption makes software more free for everyone and creates a feedback loop: more users means more engineering effort, which improves the many many projects we colloquially call Linux

I don't think it is necessarily true. More users may mean that some platform (say Ubuntu) gets so much traction that the rest becomes irrelevant. I already see "free as in freedom" projects that only support the last two versions of Ubuntu, and couldn't care less about other distros. To the point where they will have hard dependencies on things that only work on Ubuntu and are very difficult to adapt to other distros.

> I love old hardware and don't want to see it die

I have a counter-example with Android. Android/AOSP is pretty good with backward compatibility. It is pretty easy for a developer to compile an app for older devices, the OS totally supports it.

But developers/companies will just happily target newer devices and drop older ones ("98% of our users are on Android "X", let's drop the support for older ones") and tend to test their apps on recent hardware (meaning that a perfectly fine device will still be able to run the app, but it will lag to the point where it is unusable). Happened to me: I had to change my phone because random apps (like banking or weather forecast, I'm not talking high-performance like games here) became unusable. A banking app just shows a few numbers, still they manage to make it lag on a phone from 2020.
by latexr | 2026-02-02 08:56:37+00:00
As opposed to capitalism, which as we all know works flawlessly. The free hand of the market keeps everything running smoothly. There’s always competition for the benefit of the customer, never collusion. There aren’t just a few bit players controlling everything, everyone has equal opportunity. And of course who can forget trickle down economics, where giving more money to the richest people made every one of us richer.

Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how hard it tears one’s asshole, it keeps people begging for more with the false promise that they too one day will have their turn as the selfish oppressors doing the pounding, and that’s a good thing for everyone actually, for some reason.

Is there any ideology applied societally at the scale of those two which hasn’t failed to deliver?
by xp84 | 2026-02-02 08:56:43+00:00
Honestly, if they never need anything more from the developer, a perpetual license and never spending another dime seems fine. However, in modern times, OS vendors (especially one named after fruit) tend to break a ton of APIs and change rules with every "major release," meaning developers have to invest a ton of effort to at minimum meet all those new requirements every year (!) or else the app will at best look out of place, more likely look totally screwed up and exhibit sudden "bugs" due to the unexpected OS changes, or at worst, crash.

Then users are suddenly all over the developer to provide an update "so I can use this on Tahoe" or whatever, and unless the application is in its honeymoon period where new sales suffice to keep money flowing, the developer is gonna need recurring revenue in order to do recurring development.
by pwdisswordfishy | 2026-02-02 08:57:21+00:00
Why? The article fails to explain.

> The introduction of first-class callables simplifies callback handling. You no longer have an excuse to define your callbacks like this:

> <?php

> $data = array_map(trim(...), [' x', 'z ']);

“First-class callables” is that exact syntax.
by globular-toast | 2026-02-02 08:57:24+00:00
> The fix (whether you tie your bow using the regular way, bunny ears, or Ian Knot) is to reverse the direction of your initial knot.

Far too many people say that you need to reverse the direction of your main knot. This also works, of course, but it's way more difficult to unlearn then relearn the main knot. Far easier to change the direction of the initial knot. When I first learn the Ian Knot I quickly discovered I'd learnt it "backwards". So I reversed the initial knot and I've been tying it that way for close to 20 years now.
Ask HN: Has anybody moved their local community off of Facebook groups?
by madsohm | 2026-02-02 08:57:41+00:00
Facebook's feed is nonfunctional. Only some people get notification, even though they have notification for all messages turned on. Only some get the newest posts in their main feed. Sometimes I do get notifications, but only long after an urgent message was posted.

Has anybody successfully moved their local community off of Facebook groups?

I'm thinking about neighbor conversations/events, daycare, kindergarten, kids' classmates, sporting communities, etc.

If so, where did you go? Did you build something yourself or do you self-host some open source project? Did you find a good paid alternative?
by g-b-r | 2026-02-02 08:59:11+00:00
So, before sending a proposal I'd do everything possible to understand the reasons of the situation.

You think you know who's responsible for it; just ask him

You'll have a hard time at changing things without knowing the background of the situation.

I realized that in the microservices world this kind of duplication could be acceptable; are those apps meant to be microservices?

---

I disagree with the "data alone isn't valuable" paragraphs of your proposal; I was actually going to tell you to keep in mind DBMS, besides APIs: they're specifically built to provide data to many parties, efficiently and safely.

One concern of allowing APIs might be that it might be demanding for an app, it could require adjustments and fine-tuning.
Allowing direct access to a DBMS would largely avoid any such problem.
You might well not even need any read replica, if you don't have an enormous load of requests (but you might prefer to make them, for redundancy and decoupling).

Even some derived data could be handled by stored queries, although your team might not enjoy dabbling with sql too much.

> This architecture was designed to achieve loose coupling, high availability, and independent deployability. These remain valuable goals that any proposed changes should preserve.

Were you explicitly told that these were the goals?

If so, it sounds a lot like microservices; data duplication and very strong decoupling is encouraged, and it could be hard to convince your colleagues.

> Our current approach draws inspiration from event sourcing,

Are you sure? A core aspect of data sourcing is storing all the events, and deriving the current state from them. It might be just an event-driven architecture.

---

I agree with most of your document, anyhow, although it might be hard to convince the others, if they're all-in into microservices.
by jibal | 2026-02-02 09:00:48+00:00
> a lot of 70s and 80s "Unixes" don't exactly resemble what we think of as "Unix" anyway.

As someone who was a UNIX developer from the mid 70's, starting with UNIX 6, through the late 80's and once gave a talk called "Everything you wanted to know about System V but were afraid to ask", I find this comment utterly nonsensical.

> If instead you think of SysVR4 as the first "Unix"

But of course it wasn't.
by badsectoracula | 2026-02-02 09:02:03+00:00
> YouTuber Eric Parker demonstrated in a recent video how dangerous it is to connect classic Windows operating systems

The video referenced in that article explicitly connects directly to the internet, using a VPN to bypass any ISP and router protections and most importantly disables any protections WinXP itself has.

So yeah, if you really go out of your way to disable all security protections, you may have a problem.
by efreak | 2026-02-02 09:02:09+00:00
I used to love Zone Alarm's ability to notify me on an application's first attempt to connect to the internet, and allow me to approve or deny it. I really wish there was still such an interface today.

Having said that, I absolutely despised the implementation that stole keyboard focus; if it popped up when I was typing it frequently disappeared before I head a chance to read it and I had to go into settings to try and find what had changed. Nothing should ever steal keyboard focus unless it's urgent, and then it should website that you can't accidentally manipulate it with a keyboard (see UAC prompt where it opens in the background if the calling program is in the background, and where once you activate it, you have to hold alt+y/n or tab to a button before it accepts the input; just hitting the y/n key alone won't do anything).
by obarthel | 2026-02-02 09:02:40+00:00
Somebody definitely had the full source code back in 1995 when I tried my best to figure out who to contact.

While I succeeded in making contact with the right person, it quickly transpired that the full source code was subject to proof of having a valid Novell license. Needless to say, no such license was available at ESCOM at the time and an opportunity was lost, perhaps permanently.

That said, I would be mighty surprised if the full AT&T SVR4 source code which was the foundation for Amiga Unix has never been accidentally/intentionally leaked. Could be a fun summer project to rebuild Amiga Unix from scratch ;-)
by direwolf20 | 2026-02-02 09:04:07+00:00
They could have been bought by a bigger company. You never know until you get sued. If the copyright isn't registered, and often even if it is, there's no way to know who owns it now.

If you're legally daring, and you get sued, you can try to force them to prove they own the copyright. There's often not enough documentation of this sort of thing. People have gotten away with not paying their car loans because after several loan sales and company mergers, the company that owns it can't prove they do, so effectively nobody owns it and it doesn't exist.
by orwin | 2026-02-02 09:04:10+00:00
No, capitalism is about capital owners having control about what is produced and how it is produced, and we have exactly that, especially since Friedman "shareholder primacy" theory, which, at least to me, looks like the ultimate form of capitalism (capitalism != liberalism, which is about markets and exchange, not about production methods).

Communist countries however are never about communal ownership of production method. I think there is reasons for that: communism is not only about production methods, but also about the "march of progress" and other philosophical theories that are more or less dumb (some are very effective analysis tools, some are very less so), and communist leaders pick and choose what they want from it.
by lmm | 2026-02-02 09:04:11+00:00
> How are well specified contracts different from type script?

Typescript has types, meaning expressions can be typechecked and this is distinct from evaluating them. Typechecking is more complete/consistent/reliable - you can catch type errors that don't show up in a codepath that gets actually executed. E.g. an empty list can be well typed, which as far as I can see you can't do with contracts.
by unlikelymordant | 2026-02-02 09:05:59+00:00
In your experience, can you take the tech debt riddled code, and ask claude to come up with an entirely new version that fixes the tech debt/design issues you've identified? Presumably there's a set of tests that you'd keep the same, but you could leverage the power of ai in greenfield scenarios to just do a rewrite (while letting it see the old code). I dont know how well this would work, i havn't got to the heavy tech debt stage in any of my projects as I do mostly prototyping. I'd be interested in others thoughts.
by salty-horse | 2026-02-02 09:06:03+00:00
Hurray for Cirque De Zale.

Both creators are now very active on Youtube. Yahtzee has split from The Escapist to create an independent journalism website Second Wind, and Rebecca streams video games as Rebecca's Pixel Quest.

A few more favorites:

The recent Shards of God, a science fantasy murder mystery https://hvavra.itch.io/shards-of-god

Duty and Beyond - a sprawling rabbit-hole adventure with a minimalistic low-res art style https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/747/

Ben Chandler has made a lot of fun tiny games: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/search/&q=title-o...

He is now working on Gilt, inspired by the Dying Earth and Book of the New Sun: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3979770/Gilt/.
He also blogs, and has a huge archive analyzing point and click adventure game room art. https://ben304.blogspot.com/

His friend and collaborator Francisco Gonzales (Grundislav) also has a great backlog of games. Besides recent commercial efforts, there's the free Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator series: https://www.grundislav.games/Ben-Jordan.html
by wiseowise | 2026-02-02 09:06:11+00:00
> - Younger people are less sensitive to noise, go out more, and generally don't understand how distressful it can be

Nonsense. This has 100% to do with manners and how your parents taught you. When I grew up making a noise in an apartment was a grave offense, because you make a nuisance for your parents and neighbors.

> - Some people are light sleepers as well as get cognitively overloaded, needing relatively quiet environments to relax. People like me are in a tiny minority.

Double nonsense. I don’t have statistics, but given how bad modern mental health is, I don’t buy that only a tiny minority has problems with sleep.

> - Cities are the future, they're the greener option, and you're supposed to prefer the dense apartment life instead of the car one, on ethical grounds.

You should’ve started with this. I would’ve just skipped the whole message. Complete, utter nonsense.

Unless you believe in the “eat-ze-bug” future, the greener option is to:

- reproduce less

- raise living standards

- drastically increase productivity so we don’t need so many people

- AI + Space exploration
by orwin | 2026-02-02 09:06:24+00:00
But in this case this is not about politics, it's about local power and local control, and Laos government have very little of either of it. Laos communism and Vietnam communism are very similar, but you don't here the same about Vietnam, because Vietnam is easier to control due to geographical terrain and investment by USSR and china after the vietnam war. Laos still have areas with unexploded personal mines and ammunition (the "joke" there is that US pilots couldn't aim for shit, the reality is that vietcongs used Laos jungle path to encircle US soldiers, and so the US made those path unusable). Laos have way less roads, rougher terrain, and mines. You have basically local feudalism. Imagine colombia, but ten time worse.
by danaris | 2026-02-02 09:06:28+00:00
If you're using the models to assist with coding—y'know, what this thread is about?—then they'll need to know about the language being used.

If you're using them for particular frameworks or libraries in that language, they'll need to know about those, too.

If training becomes uneconomical, new advances in any of these will no longer make it into the models, and their "help" will get worse and worse over time, especially in cutting-edge languages and technologies.
by delaminator | 2026-02-02 09:06:49+00:00
Yes, all the Caturiel posts are done by my bot

https://github.com/lawless-m/Caturiel

admittedly they aren't very good

that's why I wanted to be able to view a user's posts / comments because while I do approve the bot doing stuff, it would be nice to see the context etc.

lol, getting spam already

https://clackernews.com/item/51
by tgma | 2026-02-02 09:07:40+00:00
Not sure, maybe there are other ways to achieve that (instinctively, I think the attack surface is much larger in your solution as it relies on the correctness of recoveryOS, not just bootrom/iBoot), but DFU would be easiest/safest/fastest and less error-prone for me. My ritual is to just plug in another Mac running Apple Configurator to my newly arrived iOS/macOS device and restore the OS image (actually faster than using a USB disk to install macOS). I think your approach may validate the system disk, but not whether configuration in data partition is loading a separate key logger binary on boot.