MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by janalsncm | 2026-02-19 21:59:55+00:00
Why does the fact that there isn’t enough funding for the PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them? At least from what the article mentions, figuring out new and better ways to fight diseases seems like one of the most important problems a human could be working on. In my mind the solution is to provide funding and fix the funding process, not produce fewer scientists.

Also, those scientists already exist. If the US decides not to fund them, they will go produce patents and grow the economies of other places. Many countries wish they could attract the talent that the US does.
by mikestorrent | 2026-02-19 22:00:25+00:00
Musk was saying that recently but I don't see it being efficient or worthwhile to do this. I could be proven brutally wrong, but code is language; executables aren't. There's also no real reason to bother with this when we have quick-compiling languages.

More realistically, I could see particular languages and frameworks proving out to be more well-designed and apt for AI code creation; for instance, I was always too lazy to use a strongly-typed language, preferring Ruby for the joy of writing in it (obsessing about types is for a particular kind of nerd that I've never wanted to be). But now with AI, everything's better with strong types in the loop, since reasoning about everything is arguably easier and the compiler provides stronger guarantees about what's happening. Similarly, we could see other linguistic constructs come to the forefront because of what they allow when the cost of implementation drops to zero.
by dogleash | 2026-02-19 22:00:46+00:00
> if you use AI as a draft generator [...] you're spending your cognitive budget on the high-value parts (ideas, structure

I don't follow. If you have ideas and a structure you already have a working draft. Just start revising that. What would an AI do other than add superfluous yapping that should be edited out, or the "thinking" from your negative example?
by kjksf | 2026-02-19 22:01:13+00:00
Since we're being condescending here: what you're missing is absence of laws making a given activity illegal.

As far as I know there's no law that you could use to claim that Facebook did something illegal based on some notion of making addictive products.

Just like there are no laws you could use to claim a winemaker did something illegal based on some notion of making addictive products.

And I think it would be absurd to make what Facebook does illegal before we make what winemaker does illegal.

And we tried with winemakers. Educate yourself on dark times of Prohibition. (you opened the condescension doors).

> Those companies are required to publicise the addictive nature of their products, and required to advertise services to aid those addicted

I've never seen such advertising so I suspect you pulled that factoid out of your ass. Easy for you to correct me: laws have numbers, cite one.

If there is such law for say, alcohol, I wouldn't be opposed to such requirements for Facebook.

I mean, it obviously would end up as ineffective annoyance that doesn't deter or fix anything, like cookie banners, but have at it.

So yeah, it's still patently absurd to sue Facebook claiming addiction.
by delaminator | 2026-02-19 22:01:30+00:00
> Claude can make decisions about architecture

but they are often not very good decisions, and sometimes absolutely terrible

I have to kick it back onto the right track, but as you sort of point out, I got that experience from making my own terrible decisions and finding out the hard way the blind alley I was walking up.

Second system, inner platform, too general, planning for scenarios that never happen, stuff that doesn't scale - I've made them all.

I think I learned as much from reading as doing though, I could later put names on the mistakes I made.

So, for what it's worth - study the meta. Read about architectural theory, system design

Study the craft and listen to the masters - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8

And when you talk to Claude say "follow rich hickeys advice about explicit rules" and it knows what you mean more than you do !
by thegrim33 | 2026-02-19 22:01:36+00:00
It's so interesting the amount of people with these big AI fears who think that AI is going to replace most knowledge work within a short period of time, singularity, etc., but that same AI that takes over everything .. isn't going to be smart enough to operate robotics to do plumbing or welding? Those things will be outside the limits of its intelligence?
by cranberryturkey | 2026-02-19 22:01:43+00:00
The person comparing LLM micropayments to news micropayments makes an interesting point. The friction tolerance is surprisingly high when the value proposition is clear and immediate.

The real blocker has always been payment rails, not willingness. Credit card processing makes anything under ~$0.30 economically irrational. Lightning Network and L2 stablecoins have changed that math completely — sub-cent transactions with near-zero fees are live today.

The bundling debate is a red herring. What killed micropayments in 2005 was Visa minimums, not user psychology. Now that the infrastructure exists for actual sub-penny settlement, the experiment deserves a rerun with modern rails.
by cadamsdotcom | 2026-02-19 22:01:56+00:00
My suspicion is you can’t expect LLMs to one-shot any sort of non-derivative work.

If you want better than the default outcome you have to take what it gives you and feed it back in alongside examples.

In backend dev they say, make it work - then make it fast - then make it cheap. It’s another way to say, no one will get it right first time because just getting anything the first time is hard enough.

I guess frontend would be something like, make it work; make it functional; make it beautiful.
by prabal97 | 2026-02-19 22:02:05+00:00
It's just that the 'Fast' model picks up from a library of existing tracks using a small embedding model.

If you're really curious, you could try the 'Custom LLM' feature - specifically 'Gemini Flash'. Here's the track it created when I gave it the same input.

It titled it, "In the mood for country cowboy-ish music played for someone like John Wick bleeding out on a cold, snow-covered park bench." and here's the justification it came up with, "A weary, grit-laden Dorian lament for a fallen gunslinger, blending the cold isolation of vast reverb with the sharp, intimate pluck of a final, fading heartbeat."

Music link: https://vocaroo.com/1nepiOQ3mrCr
by albumen | 2026-02-19 22:02:16+00:00
The V&A has not just acquired the video, but reconstructed a version of the page, as it would have looked in 2006...The V&A said the video is now considered “a foundational moment in the rise of user-generated content”.

It said the reconstructed page marks an early example of User Interface design conventions, such as badges, rating buttons, sharing and recommendation features – features which continue to shape the internet today.

Previous digital acquisitions include apps such as WeChat, Flappy Bird, EUKI, and the design for the mosquito emoji.
by runarberg | 2026-02-19 22:02:17+00:00
Wait, I may be missing something here. These benchmarks are gathered by having models play each other, and the second illegal move forfeits the game. This seems like a flawed method as the models who are more prone to illegal moves are going to bump the ratings of the models who are less likely.

Additionally, how do we know the model isn’t benchmaxxed to eliminate illegal moves.

For example, here is the list of games by Gemini-3-pro-preview. In 44 games it preformed 3 illegal moves (if I counted correctly) but won 5 because opponent forfeits due to illegal moves.

https://chessbenchllm.onrender.com/games?page=5&model=gemini...

I suspect the ratings here may be significantly inflated due to a flaw in the methodology.

EDIT: I want to suggest a better methodology here (I am not gonna do it; I really really really don’t care about this technology). Have the LLMs play rated engines and rated humans, the first illegal move forfeits the game (same rules apply to humans).
by rubyn00bie | 2026-02-19 22:02:17+00:00
I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. Maybe the info is outdated or things have changed recently, but a cursory google makes it seems like that “No, you don’t,” isn’t true. It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. Then you pay on whatever you make over that (assuming you don’t have other credits).
by tootie | 2026-02-19 22:02:34+00:00
Advertising in an SEO game. Get ranked in Google and take a few pennies from millions of drive-by users.

Subscriptions is a loyalty game. Convince users of your value and get them to commit to becoming a supporter for an extended period. Get them to install an app, accept breaking news alerts and lean on you as a trusted source.

Micropayments is neither. There's no obvious path to generate consistent micropayment revenue. Maybe for like long-form features, but not for daily newsrooms.
by dredmorbius | 2026-02-19 22:02:39+00:00
Flipside: drastically changing a brand's sizing standards has repeatedly driven me away from long-time favourites.

This happened to me several times from the 1990s through the aughts. Literally between one shopping session and the next, the same style of clothes (tops, bottoms) which had fit perfectly no longer did, resulting both in a set of returns (of clothing) and non-returns (of myself, for future purchases) to those stores. As someone who generally dislikes the shopping experience, additional and insurmountable frictions such as these are absolutely fatal.

More recently (as I've just commented) it's the widespread adoption of stretch fabrics in non-athletic wear. I may want stretch in some of my workout clothes. I don't want it in my street clothing.
by jmyeet | 2026-02-19 22:02:54+00:00
Remember when the Biden administration massively increased IRS funding and the Right collectively lost their minds? They fairly successfully pushed the idea that these agents were going to go after average citizens. They never were and you're way too gullible if you ever believed that.

Every $1 spent on the IRS returns roughly $12 in revenue [1]. This revenue doesn't come from W2 employees. It comes from exposing tax fraud from complicated tax schemes used by the very wealthy and corporations. That's why the Right lost their minds about it.

The idea that you save money by cutting IRS funding in the budget is just so laughably false that I'm surprised anybody believes it.

[1]: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/revenue-and-distribution...
by kulahan | 2026-02-19 22:02:55+00:00
I’m not going to write out the entire logic train for an LLM to determine whether or not one of the billion documents scanned that day is new. Of course you’ll need more than one simple “does anyone on the internet anywhere also say this” check. It’s obvious to everyone that I did not mean this one thing would somehow be a bulletproof, complete method of determining if something is true or not. It’d just an incredibly strong signal of inauthenticity. Come on man.
by Galanwe | 2026-02-19 22:03:01+00:00
I don't think anyone serious believes this. Replacing developers with a less costly alternative is obviously a very market bullish dream, it has existed since as long as I've worked in the field. First it was supposed to be UML generated code by "architects", then it was supposed to be developers from developing countries, then no-code frameworks, etc.

AI will be a tool, no more no less. Most likely a good one, but there will still need to be people driving it, guiding it, fixing for it, etc.

All these discourses from CEO are just that, stock market pumping, because tech is the most profitable sector, and software engineers are costly, so having investors dream about scale + less costs is good for the stock price.
by wtallis | 2026-02-19 22:03:11+00:00
Today's swiping keyboards are nothing like the original Graffiti or Graffiti 2. Those used shapes/gestures derived from the actual letter shapes, while the swiping gestures supported by the on-screen keyboards of today rely on gestures derived from the QWERTY layout of the on-screen keyboard. Because both were simplifications of the completely different input methods they were emulating: pen vs keyboard.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Palm Pilot UI (all the parts that were actually on the screen instead of below it in the dedicated writing area) looks thoroughly 90s: the basic buttons, drop-down boxes, tabs and dialog box layouts, scrollbars that aren't trying to hide from you. The main UI elements missing from the Palm Pilot that were present in eg. 90s Mac OS or Windows are the free form desktop layout (instead of the smartphone-like app launcher grid), and the persistent on-screen menu bar or taskbar.

The Palm Pilot UI was unquestionably designed around the assumption of higher precision than today's touch-oriented UIs. The stylus was not considered optional. The lack of capacitive touch sensing for gesture recognition meant the UI was much more reliant on precise button taps where today's smartphones would use swipes and other gestures for stuff like scrolling or "back".
by tomhow | 2026-02-19 22:03:35+00:00
Sure, but please just flag submissions rather than posting comments like this. The guidelines are explicit about this:

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

If a story hangs around on the front page even after you've flagged it, you can always email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and we'll take a look. That will get our attention much more quickly than a comment.
by kiba | 2026-02-19 22:03:41+00:00
A much more useful tool is a technology that check for our blind spots and bugs.

For example fact checking a news article and making sure what's get reported line up with base reality.

I once fact check a virology lecture and found out that the professor confused two brothers as one individual.

I am sure about the professor having a super solid grasp of how viruses work, but errors like these probably creeps in all the time.
by whyenot | 2026-02-19 22:04:04+00:00
> LLMs aren’t built around truth as a first-class primitive.

neither are humans

> They optimize for next-token probability and human approval, not factual verification.

while there are outliers, most humans also tend to tell people what they want to hear and to fit in.

> factuality is emergent and contingent, not enforced by architecture.

like humans; as far as we know, there is no "factuality" gene, and we lie to ourselves, to others, in politics, scientific papers, to our partners, etc.

> If we’re going to treat them as coworkers or exoskeletons, we should be clear about that distinction.

I don't see the distinction. Humans exhibit many of the same behaviours.
by kazinator | 2026-02-19 22:04:45+00:00
Oh well, you tried asbestos you could.

Or did you?

The video description has chapter links; how about just skip to "should you be worried" at the end?

That's what I'm doing. This is not a new topic and I likely know almost everything already.

So the conclusion is that, no, asbestos is not a problem that is behind us. I knew that. It's still found in plenty of buildings. I mean, simple drywall compound contained asbestos as a filler until around 1980. If you're in a building built around 1980 or earlier, and it contains original drywall, assume there is asbestos: if not in the gyprock itself, then the joints.

The conclusion reiterates what I know: if you don't disturb the stuff, making filaments of asbestos airborne, you are almost certainly okay.

I stay clear of demolition sites. They use water to keep the dust down, but it still swirls up and spreads. If an old house is being torn down, my kids are curious about that, but I keep them well away. That dust is harmful even without asbestos.
by josephg | 2026-02-19 22:04:51+00:00
There’s lots of times where I just don’t care how it’s implemented.

I got Claude to make a test suite the other day for a couple RFCs so I could check for spec compliance. It made a test runner and about 300 tests. And an html frontend to view the test results in a big table. Claude and I wrote 8500 lines of code in a day.

I don’t care how the test runner works, so long as it works. I really just care about the test results. Is it finding real bugs? Well, we went though the 60 or so failing tests. We changed 3 tests, because Claude had misunderstood the rfc. The rest were real bugs.

I’m sure the test runner would be more beautiful if I wrote it by hand. But I don’t care. I’ve written test runners before. They’re not interesting. I’m all for beautiful, artisanal code. I love programming. But sometimes I just want to get a job done. Sometimes the code isn’t for reading. It’s for running.
by SV_BubbleTime | 2026-02-19 22:04:52+00:00
I worked with a guy from sg. He gave me tips for when I went to visit. He hooked me up with a family member that showed me the backend a bit.

The country effectively runs on a slave class. You must drive a new vehicle under 5 years old, and the license just to buy a car was $90,000 or so. This means an entire class of people that will be taking the bus to do your laundry and clean your house for the rest of their lives and likely their kids lives.

The guy took me around to construction sites. The Indonesian and Malaysian workers were some of the most brave or stupid workers I’ve ever seen. I saw a guy install a window in a three story building by effectively free climbing from the outside half a flight up starting on the third floor, from the outside of the building. No harness, no ropes, just him out there hanging and pushing against a nook with his work boots. The SG contractor had helmet, hi-vis, steel toed, carhart, radio, clipboards etc.

Singapore is an amazing place. It’s like, a rorschach test kind of. Like everyone sees something different there.

I noticed things that trip. However… I was able to enjoy the botanical gardens and Marina Bay Sands rooftop like the other tourists… fond memories, but they have a backdrop that reality is only thinly hidden there.
by prabal97 | 2026-02-19 22:04:58+00:00
The 'Fast'/embedding model, unless the input is absolutely clear, snaps to the closest alternative.

Here's the song it created when I asked Gemini Flash to do it!

It called it, "Cobalt Kinetic" and explained that, "A high-velocity Mixolydian engine fueled by syncopated electronic pulses and glitchy accents, evoking the iridescent blur of hidden magic weaving through a midnight skyscraper canyon."

Here's the audio: https://vocaroo.com/1hjtPAxLWqyA
by finnjohnsen2 | 2026-02-19 22:05:19+00:00
I would disagree. Amplified meens me and you get more s** done.

Unless there a limited amount of software we need to produce per year globally to keep everyone happy, then nobody wants more -- and we happen to be at that point right NOW this second.

I think not. We can make more (in less time) and people will get more. This is the mental "glass half full" approach I think. Why not take this mental route instead? We don't know the future anyway.
by inglor_cz | 2026-02-19 22:05:24+00:00
Not everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free.

China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader.

Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chinese. The US was quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny accent, as long as you wanted to be one.
by tabs_or_spaces | 2026-02-19 22:05:35+00:00
How much of our data is really private?

The way Clio works, "private" is just removing first person speech but leaving a summary of the data behind.

Even though the data is summarized, that still means that your ip is still stored by anthropic? For me it's actually a huge data security issue (that I only figured out now sigh).

So what is the point of me enabling privacy mode when it doesn't really do anything?

https://www.anthropic.com/research/clio
by nhestrompia | 2026-02-19 22:06:26+00:00
I built a small CLI tool that launches a rhythm game in the terminal while Claude is generating output.

Instead of staring at the cursor, it runs a Guitar Hero–style loop with synced audio and falling notes. At the top it shows Claude’s status in real time so you can see when generation is done and exit whenever you want.

Implementation-wise it wraps the Claude process, streams stdout, and runs a parallel TUI render loop with input handling and timing sync.

It parses Clone Hero .chart files, so existing charts work out of the box with your own songs.
by mikestorrent | 2026-02-19 22:06:34+00:00
Well, the problem is that it's still just a little bit too hard to implement. In-person, it was always easy to just have a coffee can labelled "Tips"... back when we had jingly pocket money to throw around, at least. We've lost that with the move to digital currency, and nothing has quite brought back the anonymous ease of just tossing a loonie in a jar for someone, whether it's the barista, a busker, or a homeless person.

On the web, he mentions that a micropayment platform that solves the Sign In problem would be useful... well, Sign In with Ethereum / Metamask exists, but it's still too much to ask for people to use it. One wedge issue coming down the pike that may force this is mandatory age verification, since most websites will need to outsource that.

I for one would prefer something entirely anonymous and cash-like. I don't need my preferences to be on file with god-knows-which data vendors to form profiles on me just because I liked a stupid article one time enough to give the author a dollar.
by iugtmkbdfil834 | 2026-02-19 22:06:42+00:00
<< Why does the fact that there isn’t enough funding for the PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them?

In most of the world, most humans have to move within the realm of available resources. One could easily say that if a manager of US sees too many PhDs, it is natural to conclude that since there is not enough resources to go around, adding more resource consumers is silly. We can argue all over whether it is a good policy, or whether the allocation makes sense, or whether the resources are really not there, but, how is is this a difficult logic gate?
by qsi | 2026-02-19 22:07:10+00:00
Heh. I grew up writing C code and had real trouble adapting to Matlab's 1-based indexing. Much later I tried Python and was constantly confused by 0-based indexing.

I don't think one is better than the other but my mind is currently wired to see indexing with base 1.

Then there's Option Base 1 in VBA if you don't like the default behavior. Perfect for creating subtle off-by-one bugs.
by Gormo | 2026-02-19 22:07:37+00:00
> Good things there are entire fields of medical experts working to understand the exact mechanisms and harm and we're not leaving it up to you.

No, that doesn't work. Harm is a normative concept, not an empirical one, so there's no role for "expertise" to play in defining it. Medical experts can describe mechanisms of causality, and their associated effects, but deciding whether those effects constitute harm is something that actually is up to each individual to decide, since it is an inherently subjective evaluation.

> Not to mention how often we keep catching these companies with explicit policies to make people never want to leave the app.

Yes, and attesting one thing while doing another is certainly something they can be held accountable for -- perhaps even legally, in some cases. But this attempt at treating social media as equivalent to physically addictive chemicals is pure equivocation, and making claims like this actually undercuts the credibility of otherwise valid critiques of social media.

At the end of the day, this is a cultural issue, not a medical one, and needs to be solved via cultural norms, not via political intervention based on contrived pretenses.