MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by twodave | 2026-03-05 20:22:31+00:00
Yeah, I've written about this before on this site. Incentives in software licensing have gotten really stupid since the Internet (and more importantly, since the typical user's bandwidth has increased enough to allow all software installation to happen totally online). Now, too many pieces of software are a revenue-extraction optimization problem instead of attempting to serve a space or solve a specific problem.

There are great exceptions to this rule, even in paid software, where the authors are significantly poorer in exchange for producing better software. I imagine the authors of BeyondCompare or Magnet (for example) could have done a lot better financially for a while using a recurring license model.

There are also really stupid applications of this rule, such as what has happened with AutoMapper and MediatR in the last year or so, where the only meaningful commits since going commercial are the bits that check your license and try to fool you into paying :/

It seems like this shouldn't be a problem. It often only takes one developer willing to make a sacrifice to make a particular class of software available that actually attempts to solve the problem and nothing more. But in reality what we see is over time those developers that did make a stand start to look out for themselves (which I have no problem with) and try to take what they can while they have market share.

How do we find a way to live in a world where developers can build useful things and be rewarded for it while also preventing every piece of software from turning into shit? I'm not sure what the answer is.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-03-05 20:22:34+00:00
It's definitely not as simple as you're making out. Political speech aside, visas have routinely been cancelled without forewarning for all sorts of reasons historically.

Does someone on a short term visa have the protected right to purchase firearms? Visitors aren't even permitted to get a job without the appropriate type of visa. Being allowed to work is a pretty fundamental right.

I expect there's a difference between the bill of rights and the constitution, and likely further nuance as well.
Ask HN: How do you keep AI coding agents aligned with your codebase standards?
by trung123102 | 2026-03-05 20:22:44+00:00
Our team heavily uses Claude Code. The problem we have is that agents write code that works but ignores existing patterns. They'll create a new database query instead of using the service class my team already built. They'll put logic in the wrong layer, etc.

Each fix is small, but across a team of 8 engineers, it adds up, making the codebase drift over time.

We've tried shared CLAUDE.md and multiple markdown doc files but they go stale fast and don't scale well.

How is everyone else handling this? Has anyone found something that actually works at scale?
by empath75 | 2026-03-05 20:23:59+00:00
> CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing

That is because the extra money in the economy also inflated salaries. Inflation is annoying but it basically has no impact on affordability over the long run. Everyone just assumed that their increases in salary were a well earned recognition of their contributions, but the increases in prices was pure corporate greed and corruption. They were both the same thing. People got more money and prices went up.
by JohnFen | 2026-03-05 20:25:02+00:00
> Sam Altman took subtle swipes at rival Anthropic on Thursday and said he thinks it’s “bad for society” if companies start abandoning their commitment to the democratic process because “some people don’t like the person or people currently in charge.”

> “The government is supposed to be more powerful than private companies,”

Altman is being very disingenuous here. Anthropic has never, as far as I'm aware, taken the position that it's abandoning the democratic process or that it should be more powerful than government.

They've taken the position that some uses of their product are ethically objectionable to them, and they won't allow it. They're not telling the government what it can or cannot do generally, they're only setting rules about the use of their own product.

That seems entirely fair to me. To argue that you are not allowed to operate according to your own ethical sensibilities seems not just outrageous, but dangerously oppressive.
by rustyhancock | 2026-03-05 20:25:05+00:00
Anthropic already had a deal via Planitir so it seems it's models are used in a variety of ways by the pentagon.

The reports about Venezuela and Iran seem to suggest it's primary role was processing bulk intel.

But also that it was being used in planning and target selection.

Presumably what spoked Anthropic was that these tools were about to be directed internally.

But it's not clear if this is a point of principle that the government wants no holds barred with it's tools?
by necovek | 2026-03-05 20:25:22+00:00
Thanks you for adding a slight to your "understanding" statement. You can try figuring out the point I was making (wealth is relative, even "commoners" like us overspend from someone else's perspective).

I would say most of Europe talks and thinks in monthly (and even net after-tax salary), so hopefully that helps in the future when someone does not adapt to US gross annual salary figures for you.
Show HN: I built an AI exam prep platform for AWS certs after failing one myself
by johnnyChiv | 2026-03-05 20:27:22+00:00
Hey HN,

I failed the AWS Advanced Networking Specialty exam. Studied for weeks, used the usual prep sites, thought I was ready — wasn't.

The problem wasn't effort, it was the tools. Static question banks don't teach you to think through AWS architecture decisions. They teach you to pattern-match answers. That falls apart on the harder exams.

So I built Knowza to fix that for myself, and then figured others probably had the same frustration.
The idea: instead of a static question bank, use AI to generate questions, adapt to what you're weak on, and actually explain the reasoning behind each answer — the way a senior engineer would explain it, not a multiple choice rubric.

The stack:
Next.js + Amplify Gen 2
DynamoDB (direct Server Actions, no API layer)
AWS Bedrock (Claude) for question generation and explanations
Stripe for billing

The hardest part honestly wasn't the AI — it was getting question quality consistent enough that I'd trust it for real exam prep. Still iterating on that.

Early days, one person, built alongside a day job. Would love feedback from anyone who's grinded AWS certs or has thoughts on AI-generated educational content.

knowza.ai
by densh | 2026-03-05 20:27:34+00:00
Dimming reduces total brightness over time and shifts color balance away from neutral. Latest "Pro" displays from Apple now have built-in support for calibration but only with high end calibration equipment: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl628f5edf/...

The implementation is great, since it doesn't add fix up profile on top factory calibration, but actually fully replaces factory calibration internal LUT. It worked wonders to completely fix my M1 MBP screen that got noticeably tinted over time. I don't mind brightness reduction since I almost never use it at more than 200 nits, usually around 100. Nominal 1600 leaves lots of buffer for decay over time.

I've had similar issue my OLED TV with the same fix. Got my LG C1 calibrated as well and it looks fantastic again.

It's a shame there are no iOS or Android phones that support calibration out of the box. Some iPads support subset of pro display calibration software (called fine tune calibration), but still lack full recalibration support.
by daft_pink | 2026-03-05 20:27:43+00:00
There’s literally a flock camera at basically every street location that one suburb borders another where I live.

There’s really not any legal practical way to avoid ALPRs.

I’m pretty sure the government knows where I am 24/7. I’m not going to worry about targeted advertising by the government anymore and just worry about it the people reselling it to non-governments for use.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-03-05 20:28:25+00:00
It's a winner take almost all competition. Baring a moat, if you aren't at the cutting edge you won't be able to recoup the cost regardless. At that point you might as well release it to the public for reputation.

You might even get lucky and someone else does the same. If you manage to learn from their example you might be more competitive in a future round.
by nicole_express | 2026-03-05 20:28:28+00:00
New Coke is a very interesting counterpoint to the brand focus, but on the other hand, they did at the time make a very big push of it being "New" Coke. Hard to tell what would've happened if they had just swapped out the formula.

I drink Diet Coke, which is basically the same formula that became New Coke with chemical sludge instead of sugar, and it tastes pretty good to my tongue to the point where I drink it over Coke Zero, the one closer to "the real thing".
by ux266478 | 2026-03-05 20:28:31+00:00
Actually it is physically impossible to have any wireless comms at all without giving away a unique identity that can be tracked. Not unless you're going to replace your phone's radio every time you send some data. Every single transmitter has a unique fingerprint that can be identified relatively easily. It's called Specific Emitter Identification. If at any point a fingerprint is associated with your identity, it's trivial for a state actor to know exactly who and where you are every time your phone transmits something. They don't have to know what you're sending. The electromagnetic spectrum is not a private medium.
by kotaKat | 2026-03-05 20:28:39+00:00
I'm vaguely reminded of some of the third party disk encryption/preboot management utilities that exist in the Windows space that leverage similar technology. Authentication is done against an online source, and only then is the key sent back to the local machine to unlock the disk. The Bitlocker key is kept nowhere near the local TPM.

I've only seen it on some paranoid-level devices in industry (typically devices handling biometric identity verification services).

IIRC this one is a Linux image that boots up, unlocks the normal Bitlocker partition via whatever mechanism you need, then hands control back to the Windows bootloader to continue onwards.

https://winmagic.com/en/products/full-disk-encryption-for-wi...
by andai | 2026-03-05 20:28:49+00:00
It's a little hard to compare, because Claude needs significantly fewer tokens for the same task. A better metric is the cost per task, which ends up being pretty similar.

For example on Artificial Analysis, the GPT-5.x models' cost to run the evals range from half of that of Claude Opus (at medium and high), to significantly more than the cost of Opus (at extra high reasoning). So on their cost graphs, GPT has a considerable distribution, and Opus sits right in the middle of that distribution.

The most striking graph to look at there is "Intelligence vs Output Tokens". When you account for that, I think the actual costs end up being quite similar.

According to the evals, at least, the GPT extra high matches Opus in intelligence, while costing more.

Of course, as always, benchmarks are mostly meaningless and you need to check Actual Real World Results For Your Specific Task!

For most of my tasks, the main thing a benchmark tells me is how overqualified the model is, i.e. how much I will be over-paying and over-waiting! (My classic example is, I gave the same task to Gemini 2.5 Flash and Gemini 2.5 Pro. Both did it to the same level of quality, but Gemini took 3x longer and cost 3x more!)
by phendrenad2 | 2026-03-05 20:29:00+00:00
This is fine, right? It's a small price to pay to do, well, whatever it is ya'll like to do with post-install hooks. Now me, I don't really get it. Call me dumb, or a scaredy-cat, but the very idea of giving the hundreds of packages that I regularly install, as necessitated by javascript's lack of a standard library, the ability to run arbitrary commands on my machine, gives me the heebie-jeebies. But, I'm sure you geniuses have SOME really awesome use for it, that I'm simply too dense in the head to understand. I wish I were smart enough to figure it out, but I'm not, so I'll keep suffering these security vulnerabilities, sleeping well at night knowing that it's all worth it because you're all doing amazing, tremendous things with your post-install hooks!
by 5upplied_demand | 2026-03-05 20:29:38+00:00
The portion after the semi-colon wasn't relevant to your initial claim. Which was this:

> There is a reason American families move away when Asian immigrants move into school districts

The study shows that "American" families didn't move away, "white American" families moved away.

> not racial animus like you suggested.

Can you share what it is you think I suggested? I don't see where I provided a view on this topic. I simply pointed out your incorrect assumptions of the data.
by nlz | 2026-03-05 20:31:20+00:00
Yes! This is a great idea. Thanks for mentioning it! GlueSQL could be another cool target too (https://github.com/gluesql/gluesql). I think there's a fun exploration in taking a storage engine and seeing if it's compatible with different SQL layers — GlueSQL as a simpler starting point, DataFusion as the more complete option (https://github.com/apache/datafusion). Plugging into a real SQL engine seems like a great strategy for uncovering bugs, fixing correctness issues, and discovering what use cases the storage layer actually needs to support. It's also interesting how certain SQL engines and storage engines tend to align well with each other — the right pairing can unlock a lot. Definitely a direction I want to explore.
by specialist | 2026-03-05 20:31:32+00:00
I'm old enough to remember the Obama Admin's support for the nascent battery and PV industries.

Ditto Biden Admin's support for our transition to renewables (IIJA, IRA). Unprecedented. The type of Keynesian investment in the USA (industrial policy, pro-labor) unseen since FDR's New Deal.

> don't forget that Joe Manchin

No one on the left ever will.

That said, it's important to note that the Democratic (center-left) coalition is wicked hard to hold together.

Have you read Caro's (epic) biographies of LBJ? It's amazing how much skill, subterfuge, and manipulation was required to pass progressive legislation over the objections of the die-hard reactionaries.

Everything about politics sucks. Chaos, apathy, nihilism, grifting are the default. It's absolutely amazing that anything gets done at all. So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success.
by k310 | 2026-03-05 20:31:54+00:00
Wilhoit's Law: [0] Frank Wilhoit's original text from crookedtimber.org on 03.22.18 at 12:09 am

> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

> There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

> The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

[0] https://systemicunlearning.substack.com/p/wilhoits-law-there...
by illithid0 | 2026-03-05 20:31:55+00:00
My first assessment was honestly as anticlimactic as OP's.

We had to break into a particular unit of a multi-tenant office building. The client wanted us to focus on social engineering, but if we were able to do that, to move on to testing if anyone would see it as suspicious if someone was messing with doors and stuff.

So my partner walked up to the reception desk with a toolbox and a clipboard, claiming to be there for an off-schedule inspection of the elevator fire suppression system. Signed the guestbook with no formal verification, walked into the office area, and sat down to plug his laptop into an ethernet drop.

Meanwhile, after he texted me to let me know he was in, I took the stairs up to a door that led into the back of the target unit and just had to use a traveler's hook to pull door latch open. No guard plates or anything in the way.

Then I walked around in my business casual outfit until I found what looked like an IT closet, waited for a time when no one was in the hall with me, and used an under-the-door tool to pop it open. All their network equipment was in there along with spare laptops and an unlocked IT admin machine on a desk.

:)
by chanakya | 2026-03-05 20:31:56+00:00
I think he makes two points:

- This change of what used be a functional object into a brand was done to appeal to one-upmanship (my watch is more expensive than yours) rather than the aesthetic urge which drives appreciation for art. He doesn't blame the watch brands, it may have been the only way they could survive after the triple shock. But..

- If you're an engineer and techie type and are drawn to the complexity and mechanistic elegance of mechanical watches, he's warning you that the problems being worked on in the brand age actually take you away from good functional design which attracted you there in the first place.
by greycol | 2026-03-05 20:32:01+00:00
Sure but the question is are they helping the U.S. that helped them. It's pretty clear that the Trump administration is a completely different beast than typical US administration. Look at things like its pro offensive war stance (see unofficial name change of DoD) or that it does not support Ukraine (see lack of funding/intelligence since Trump). Maybe Ukraine will think it's supporting the Americans that helped them and hurting the Americans that are pro or compromised by Russia by withholding aid and letting Trump wallow in what he's reaped.

I'll add that trump has made clear that U.S. administrations are not beholden to previous international policy decisions and so unless congress reins in the executive or trustworthy actors hold the mantle again other nations should treat the US with short term policy decisions in mind and not rely on long term reciprocation.
by surgical_fire | 2026-03-05 20:32:04+00:00
> They perform at a somewhat equal level on writing single files.

That's not the experience I have. I had it do more complex changes spawning multiple files and it performed well.

I don't like using multiple agents though. I don't vibe code, I actually review every change it makes. The bottleneck is my review bandwidth, more agents producing more code will not speed me up (in fact it will slow me down, as I'll need to context switch more often).
by antonymoose | 2026-03-05 20:32:21+00:00
I’ve got 15+ years in industry and still working full time plus routine consulting on the side.

The grass is always greener so I absolutely fantasize about doing much anything else. I also wonder if I can keep on until retirement or if I should seek an exit while I have good finances.

As a Senior+ I’m constantly in battle with god awful leadership. So that sucks, a lot, it’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to build good software. I’m also here to mentor, that’s fun, but without good leadership it’s pissing into the wind. Also, if you’re not a FAANG type you get capped pretty quick salary wise. While most folks would kill for a 160k salary and benefits the hedonic treadmill is something of a reality and inflation is also cruel.

Still, I get paid to work in flip flops and a t-shirt from my house. Set my own hours (mostly) and do something adjacent to what I love. So it is what it is.
by lurking_swe | 2026-03-05 20:32:45+00:00
> They will just go for the path of least resistance, and as long as your location data is recorded by something, somewhere, they will get it.

There is the real problem. It’s not a tech issue. It’s a people problem. Most governments don’t actually _respect_ and _serve_ their people. They see them as cattle to be monitored and manipulated.
by koakuma-chan | 2026-03-05 20:33:10+00:00
functions.ReadFile մեկնաբանություն 大发游戏官网json {"path":"[redacted]","offset":17,"limit":10}】【”】【assistant to=functions.ReadFile մեկնաբանություն ปมถวายสัตย์ฯjson {"path":"[redacted]","offset":17,"limit":10} алаҳәараuser to=all <open_and_recently_viewed_files> Recently viewed files (recent at the top, oldest at the bottom):
[redacted] (total lines: 378)
Files that are currently open and visible in the user's IDE:

[redacted] (currently focused file, cursor is on line 15, total lines: 378)
Note: these files may or may not be relevant to the current conversation. Use the read file tool if you need to get the contents of some of them. </open_and_recently_viewed_files><user_query> 2, 1 </user_query>
by dilyevsky | 2026-03-05 20:33:16+00:00
> That's a manager/lead skill in my eyes.

Every place i've seen where management fully usurped hiring had teams rapidly stacked with extremely poor performers. Not surprisingly so.

Moreover, the days when you as an IC can sit quietly in a corner and churn out code from coffee and jira tickets are rapidly coming to an end. I would highly recommend focusing on those other parts of the job if you're not planning to retire soon, and hiring is part of your job as an SME, misplaced humility notwithstanding.
by necovek | 2026-03-05 20:33:27+00:00
A very simple one: interview scheduling tool integrated with multiple calendars.

Eg. when interviewing, sometimes I have a pool of interviewers, and I want a pair to be offered to a candidate (they only see time slots, obviously) with certain internal conditions (one expert from this pool, another from this pool; eg. tech stack or timezone), while equally loading all of them.

Sounds simple but I could never find a tool that does it, and I believe companies might be interested just like they get tools like calendly just for limited purposes.

iCal format is simple on the face of it, but companies have restrictions on the feeds, and accounting for recurring events and working hours is not as trivial.
by johnsillings | 2026-03-05 20:33:54+00:00
this is cool – congrats on the launch.

generally when i give someone my calendar link, i'm pretty happy for them to just choose whatever time within those constraints. i like the future where everyone opts in ("i will meet as long as my preferences are considered") & there doesn't need to be any manual clicking/coordination whatsoever.

as a tidbit of feedback: are you explicitly targeting b2b? i would like to just sign up, but i'll book a demo if that's the only option :)
by tedsanders | 2026-03-05 20:34:40+00:00
In the text, we shared a hallucination benchmark: Claim-level errors fell by 33% and responses with an error fell by 18%, on a set of error-prone ChatGPT prompts we collected (though of course the rate will vary a lot across different types of prompts). Hallucinations are the #1 problem with language models and we are working hard to keep bringing the rate down. I wasn’t sure how to best plot this stat, so we kept it as text only, which kind of buried it, I admit.

(I work at OpenAI.)
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-03-05 20:34:41+00:00
I appreciate librewolf but when I used to use it, IIRC its fingerprinting features were too strict for some websites IIRC and you definitely have to tone it down a bit by going into the settings. Canvases don't work and there were some other features too.

That being said, Once again, Librewolf is amazing software. I can see myself using it again but I just find zen easier in the sense of something which I can recommend plus ubO obv

Personally these are more aesthetic changes more than anything. I just really like how zen looks and feels.

The answer is sort of, Just personal preference that's all.
by manofmanysmiles | 2026-03-05 20:34:49+00:00
I may look at your comment history.

I am having trouble understanding what you are saying. If you were more explicit I and other people would be able to respond and interact with your writing. As it stands, I am having trouble finding anything concrete to interact with.

I feel you may be onto something, but you're not saying, so I (and I imagine other people) can't see it.
by woadwarrior01 | 2026-03-05 20:35:28+00:00
I'm sorry, but it's my pet peeve. If you're on iOS/macOS I built a 100% free and privacy-friendly app to get rid of tracking parameters from hundreds of different websites, not just X/Twitter.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clean-links-qr-code-reader/id6...