MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by luzejian | 2026-03-14 08:19:01+00:00
One angle that's missing from this discussion: the cost asymmetry. The effort to do this well is disproportionate to the effort to do it poorly, which means most implementations in the wild are mediocre. That creates a weird market dynamic where quality becomes the differentiator by default — not because it's hard to build, but because most people stop at 'good enough' too early.
by agentsbooks | 2026-03-14 08:19:06+00:00
I've been building an agent management platform and the payments/credentials question comes up constantly. Our approach has been to separate 'what the agent knows' from 'what the agent can do' -- agents have their own credential stores with platform-specific OAuth tokens, API keys, and account details, but the execution layer is sandboxed.

For spending money specifically, the pattern that seems safest is: agent proposes action with cost estimate, human approves via a notification (Telegram, email, etc.), then the backend executes the actual payment call. The agent never touches raw card data. Prepaid virtual cards with low limits are probably the most pragmatic path for autonomous spending today.

Re: your question about trusting an agent with $500 -- I'd trust it with $500 in API credits (worst case: wasted compute), but $500 on an e-commerce site is a different risk profile entirely because you can't easily reverse a physical goods purchase.

The Visa/Mastercard announcements are interesting but feel premature. The missing piece is standardized agent identity and capability declarations -- something like 'this agent is authorized by user X to spend up to $Y on category Z'. That's more of an identity/permissions problem than a payments problem.
by chris222 | 2026-03-14 08:19:42+00:00
Win8 was a disaster. Hard to understand what Steven is even saying or his point about the Macbook Neo.

The Neo is enabled by the increasing capability of the phone chips and the pre-existing completed move to ARM for MacOS that happened over a 5 year span. Critically the entire app ecosystem quickly embraced the new architecture and there were some nice fallbacks for legacy apps. The sheer scale of the phone chips allows them to be priced to where the Neo becomes doable, especially when using the previous generation of chip.

Windows 8 and Surface RT had no such advantages. Windows was always going to stay primarily an x86 operating system at the time those products hit. There was no obvious chip that had a scale of the iPhone chips. Windows RT was without many apps (chicken/egg problem).
by agentsbooks | 2026-03-14 08:20:04+00:00
What changed things for me was flipping the model: instead of waiting for agents to finish, I started treating agent invocations as fire-and-forget tasks with notifications.

I built a task system where I define what the agent should do (prompt + connections + schedule), set a trigger (cron, webhook, or manual), and walk away. The agent runs, and I get notified when it finishes or needs input. This turned the 10-30 second micro-waits into async reviews I batch together.

The key insight was that the broken rhythm comes from trying to supervise agents synchronously. Once you accept they should run in the background like CI jobs rather than pair programming sessions, the flow problem mostly disappears. You write specs in batches, kick off agents, do deep work on something else, then review results.

The tradeoff is you lose some real-time steering, but for most tasks that's fine. I save synchronous agent sessions for exploratory work where I genuinely don't know what I want yet.
by jhbadger | 2026-03-14 08:20:33+00:00
Maybe I am just old, but I have absolutely no idea what this passage is about -- why would people be fiddling with Bluetooth on a date and why would it cause them to forget their network?

>"Bluetooth does not work," Kravitz said in a recent interview, and it's not just headphones, but Bluetooth connections in general. "It's ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you're with someone on a date, you're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!"
by agentsbooks | 2026-03-14 08:21:12+00:00
The confidence-scoring approach is really smart. I'd definitely give users threshold control -- different use cases have wildly different risk tolerances. A social media posting agent can auto-approve at 0.7, but an agent sending emails to clients probably needs 0.95.

Re: the cold start problem -- have you tried seeding with a few manually-written 'ideal response' examples instead of starting from zero? In my experience with agent management, giving agents even 5-10 reference outputs dramatically reduces the ramp-up period. Essentially turning the cold start into a warm start.

The corrections-as-structured-context approach (vs fine-tuning) is the right call for this stage. Fine-tuning is expensive and brittle. Structured context corrections are portable, inspectable, and you can version them. That also solves your lock-in concern -- the corrections are just data, export them as JSON.

One suggestion: consider adding a 'correction categories' feature. After a while, you'll notice patterns (tone too formal, wrong audience assumptions, missing context). Categorizing corrections could let you surface systemic issues rather than fixing one-offs.
by Revanche1367 | 2026-03-14 08:21:45+00:00
Or he was not comparing those two things to say they are the same thing but rather making an analogy based on the common factor of people in the US often wanting legal protections for both speech and privacy to draw his point that one is giving up their rights by making the excuse about not wanting privacy which they would probably not do when it comes to speech.

Thinking comparisons of two similar things are always for the purpose of saying that they are the same thing is ridiculous, don’t you think? It might sound like clever reasoning to people of a mediocre intellectual capacity but it is not logically coherent.
by kelnos | 2026-03-14 08:23:33+00:00
It's weird, because I absolutely agree in principle, but 90% of my headphone use is wireless now.

And I hate it: latency, glitches, randomly just deciding not to connect anymore, deciding to connect in the lower-quality headset mode when I want to listen to music, and refusing to switch to the high-quality mode, battery running out at inconvenient times, the cat knocking them off my nightstand and under the bed where I cant reach them. So many reasons to be annoyed by them!

But I hardly ever take out my wired headphones anymore, and I'm not sure why. Back when I got my first phone without a 3.5mm jack, I just kept a little USB-C adapter in the little pouch/case that held my wired IEMs, and it was fine. But at some point I bought a new phone, and there was a deal on cheap (or free?) wireless earbuds with it, and I really just stopped using wired headphones for the most part since then, even though the wireless ones really annoy me for so many reasons.
by AnthonyMouse | 2026-03-14 08:25:18+00:00
> First, providing the government with the ability to stabilize market prices in the short term when volatility strikes.

Which is the thing they don't really even do, because their existence is not a secret, but then knowing of their existence discourages anyone else from setting up a reserve because they expect the government to unload right when they'd be trying to recover the costs of operating it. Then the market has less slack in it and the government has to tap into the reserve more frequently and in larger amounts, causing the reserve to be much more easily exhausted than you would intuitively expect because the whole world is now expecting you to bail them out when the time comes.

Worse, it encourages companies to rely on its existence instead of making contingencies, and then if it does get exhausted or you get something that looks more like unexpectedly high demand than unexpectedly low supply, you now have an inadequate reserve and a market full of people operating under the impression they would never have to deal with that.

> Second, providing a supply of an essential resource to an essential industry in the event that external supplies are unexpectedly cut off temporarily.

This isn't a different thing from the first thing. There being less supply is what causes the price to go up. But encouraging the market to take all the slack out causes there to be less supply.

The basic problem is this: If the government keeps a moderate reserve, it's going to cause other people to not do that, and then it's going to run out and Cause Problems. If the government keeps an enormous reserve, they're going to cause the price to be higher even when nothing is wrong and burn through a disproportionate amount of tax money doing it.

> Supply shocks are bad.

The correct answer to this is to diversify supply and be ready with substitutes, not government hoarding.
by mlsu | 2026-03-14 08:26:09+00:00
This take is so bleak man.

It's creepy and uncomfortable when someone says out loud that they're imagining you doing sex acts!

Even if everyone knows that you're not actually doing sex acts and it's just some guy imagining it!

Now everyone has to see what these creeps are imagining, but it's fine because it's AI? Like actually are you out of your mind?
by gucci-on-fleek | 2026-03-14 08:26:37+00:00
Right, my point was just that "Bluetooth sucks" does not necessarily mean "wireless headphones suck", but since nearly all wireless headphones use Bluetooth Classic (or some proprietary analogue protocol), it can be hard to disentangle the two. But yeah, I agree no matter how good the protocol improvements are, wired is still better for some use cases.
by InsideOutSanta | 2026-03-14 08:26:50+00:00
"Culture fit" is an euphemism for "did the interviewer like you?"

If most interviewers don't like you, that's something for you to think about. It's not necessarily bad, if you have a very specific personality that most people find disagreeable, then it's a good idea to look out for companies that cater to your personality, and where you will fit in. But it is something to think about.
by pertti_studio | 2026-03-14 08:27:07+00:00
Hey HN, I'm Pieter, maker of stackco.st.
The idea came from a simple frustration — every time I was evaluating a new tool, I'd google "[tool name] pricing" and get either the official pricing page or a two-year-old blog post. I never found what real founders at my stage actually paid, with their actual stack, at their actual MRR.
So I built a place where founders share their full SaaS stack and monthly bill. Not curated, not sponsored — just real numbers. You can see what a pre-revenue founder spends versus someone at $5K MRR. You can spot where people overpay. You can find cheaper alternatives people actually use.
It's two days old and has four stacks including my own. I know that's basically nothing, but I wanted to put it in front of people who'd tell me honestly if this is useful or a waste of time.
Happy to answer anything — including the hard questions.
by vohk | 2026-03-14 08:27:55+00:00
I'm not about to put any money down - I lack that degree of confidence in my prognosticating - but I doubt the terminal will ever really vanish, for much the same reason that 20 years of touch screens hasn't really put in a dent in a keyboard and mouse for serious work, and game controllers have barely changed despite multiple attempts at VR and other interfaces, and why the stylus is still going strong after more than 5000 years. Sometimes you just get it right.

A text interface is just really damn good at efficient and precise information delivery and interaction, in a way that takes a lot more work for a GUI to match, and they are composable in a way GUIs simply are not. Most users won't - and currently don't - care about terminals, but I doubt it will ever stop being a standard tool for power users.

I don't doubt we'll see new paradigms emerge, but I think they'll come in the form of higher level abstractions for certain classes of task rather than a replacement for the sort of TUIs and GUIs we have today.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-03-14 08:28:04+00:00
> Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like.

I.e. the only ones that make the phone critical to daily lives of most poeple. Don't forget to add government applications, multimedia applications (DRM) and communications too.

And that's only going get worse, because every app seems to think they're most important. We're in the middle of the phase where every app tries to force strong MFA on users, despite most apps having no fucking business having this level of security. Banks are actually lagging behind toilet paper roll simulator apps nad stores selling hats for pets and such.

Wait when they're done that, leveraging attestation APIs will be next.
by omnimus | 2026-03-14 08:29:17+00:00
One segment I wish came back are bluetooth inear headphones wired together (untrue wireless, i guess).

There are some models but none really explore their possible advantages (battery, ux, single signal source).

I lost single wireless earpiece multiple times making the rest useless. This won't happen with wire. With wire its also so much easier and quicker to take them off they will just hang around your neck. There is reason why many workers in loud environments prefer earplugs wired together.

My impression is that apple hyped the airpods so well that people forgot about other possibilities. And when Google included cool headphones with cables people thought they have to cut them… that was when industry decided its dead segment.
by zarzavat | 2026-03-14 08:29:31+00:00
Not everybody is using their headphones on the go. 99% of my headphone use is at my desk while I work. Wired is more convenient than wireless since it's one less lithium battery to charge.

It's true that humans are not particularly sensitive to audio quality, but they are very sensitive to audio latency. If all you do is listen to buffered audio sources then latency is not important but the moment you need to use your headphones in an input loop then wired is the superior technology as it offers close to zero variance in latency.
by gskm | 2026-03-14 08:30:23+00:00
Loved this article. I'd add a few things I wish someone had told me when I was starting my PhD: 1) Maximize variance, but know when to stop. Karpathy's point is great. Explore early, say yes to different things. But at some point you need to pick a direction and commit. Too much variance and you end up with nothing solid. 2) Consider smaller labs. Big famous groups are tempting, but in a small group of 3-5 people your adviser actually knows your work and gives you real feedback. In large labs you can easily become invisible. 3) Collaborate outside your lab early. Don't wait, reach out to people at other universities working on related problems. Different groups think differently and that's where good ideas come from. 4) Visit other universities. Even a few weeks at another group forces you to explain your work to people with different assumptions. It's one of the most useful things you can do during a PhD. 5)Learn to write good, structured, reproducible and maintainable code. One of the things I regret I didn't, and many working hours were wasted.

Good luck to anyone starting out.
by Lerc | 2026-03-14 08:30:28+00:00
Is reading source code using it? Can you restrict people from doing that? What actually makes a derivative work.

Can I put up a sign with a fact on it, can people who see the sign not use the fact unless they agree with my terms and conditions? That certainly would be the case if we went wiTh some sense of derived.

The law needs specifics for a reason, if it were down to what each individual felt it means in the moment it would be useless.

The most recent legal findings have said that training on legally acquired data does not violate copyright.
by davydm | 2026-03-14 08:30:32+00:00
yeah, this is one of the reasons I'll choose to start a new conversation with claude - some old memory from earlier interacting with the current flow. I know, not quite the same thing, because that's just in the context, but it's kinda like memory. I've had the opposite experience with claude too - after several times where I'd pose a question and say "see the attached code dump", but forgot to attach a code dump, I told it to "please remember that if I ever mention an attachment, and there isn't one, stop processing and demand the attachment" because otherwise it goes off on a tangent, trying to be clever. Unlike other memories I've given it, it can't seem to hold onto this one, unless I remind it first at the start of the conversation, eg "remind me what you should do if I mention an attachment, but there is none" - it will recall, and then after that, will stick to it, until the next clean conversation.

But I like your idea - minds evolve, and part of the problem with llms is that they're largely static in nature - no evolution, no upskilling, just wait for the next model to come out. I understand the ramifications of learning all the time from user input (especially possible poisoning), but have always felt this is an area that could improve a lot.
by mcdeltat | 2026-03-14 08:31:08+00:00
What annoys me the most is that the industry collectively decided that 3.5mm jacks are obselete, removing the option of using wired headphones, for no(?) good reason. We could at least agree that wired and wireless each have their own pros and cons, but no, we're shoehorned into wireless because corporate decided it. Here, you must use <NEW TECH> simply because we said so! It's just the peak of trend following bullshittery and represents a lot of what is wrong with capitalist society.
by calesthio | 2026-03-14 08:31:18+00:00
Hey HN,

I built this because I was constantly checking multiple sources to understand what’s happening globally — conflict events, satellite signals, macro indicators, flight activity, etc. A lot of this data is publicly available, but it’s scattered across dozens of APIs and feeds.

Crucix aggregates ~26 open data sources into a single self-hosted dashboard that refreshes every ~15 minutes.

Examples of signals it pulls:

* satellite fire detections (NASA FIRMS)
* conflict data (ACLED)
* global news events (GDELT)
* flight tracking
* radiation monitoring
* economic indicators (FRED)
* live market data
* OSINT telegram feeds

The goal was to create a *personal intelligence terminal* that runs locally rather than relying on a cloud OSINT platform.

It’s intentionally minimal: Node + Express with very few dependencies. Each source runs as a standalone module and sweeps run in parallel.

There’s also an optional AI layer that can analyze signals and generate summaries or trade ideas, but the system works without it.

Still early — I’d love feedback from the HN crowd, especially:

• additional data sources people rely on
• ideas for cross-signal correlation
• architecture improvements

If anyone tries running it and something breaks, please let me know.
by discardable_dan | 2026-03-14 08:31:21+00:00
Coining this phrase now: "It's the tokens stupid"

Hooking up to and generating calls across filesystem APIs cost multiple orders of magnitude more than calling `ls`. These tooling ideas are interesting, though. Maybe Kenneth_E._Iverson was right all along?

Talking to another senior dev over drinks tonight, we both worried not about our work but about who might come up never having written a single line of code. Never even opened a terminal. Is looking at the code something you learn in semester 5?

I think computer science education is going to stomp onward, poorly. And we will get that generation. And things like "terminal tooling is going out of style" won't even be said any more. Hacker groups will turn from discussions about new ideas to talking about doing leetcode without AI.

Our art died because we used our art to kill it. We are the last human masters.

That's a funny thing to think about.
by intended | 2026-03-14 08:31:52+00:00
Yes and no.

In the most simple sense - Yes, it is the content that matters.

In the more practical sense - cognitive and emotional resources are limited and our brains are not content agnostic.

We have different behaviors, expectations and capacities for talking to machines and talking to humans.

For example, if I am engaging with a human I can expect to potentially change their minds.

For a machine? Why bother even responding. It’s of no utility to me to respond.

Furthermore, all human communication comes with a human emotional context. There are vast amounts of information implied through tone, through what we choose not to say. Sometimes people say things in one emotional state that is not what they would say on another occasion.

To move the conversation forward, addressing the emotional payload behind the words used, matters more than the words used themselves.

There are a myriad reasons why humans are practically poorer for these tools.
by Agentindex | 2026-03-14 08:32:23+00:00
Creator here. We built nerq-gateway — an MCP server that acts as a gateway to 25,000+ other MCP servers.

Instead of configuring each MCP server manually in Claude/Cursor, you add one line to your config. Then ask your AI for anything — the gateway finds, trust-verifies, and recommends the right tool automatically.

Under the hood it uses our trust scoring engine which indexes 204K AI agents from 12 registries and scores them on CVEs, licenses, maintenance, and compatibility.

Interesting finding: ChatGPT's crawler discovered our trust API on its own via .well-known/agent.json and now makes ~1,400 trust checks/day.

Free, no auth:
curl https://nerq.ai/v1/resolve?task=search+github
npx nerq-mcp-hub search "database"
pip install agent-security && agent-security scan requirements.txt

Built by one person using Claude Code. Happy to answer questions about architecture, scoring, or AI bot behavior.
by dgxyz | 2026-03-14 08:33:27+00:00
Same experience here. Had a 2018 P100D. Absolutely the worst car I’ve ever had. Terribly put together. Awful interface. And so utterly fucking distracting it was a liability.

Got rid of it after it stomped the brakes on an empty road and had a battery issue that took weeks to fix.

I don’t own a car now and don’t want one. I’d probably buy a Polestar next time if I had to get one.
by elcapitan | 2026-03-14 08:34:45+00:00
This is very true. Especially for sport, they are just great. I always found wired headphones annoying when running, because I need to take care of the wire somehow. Wired-together bluetooth in-ears like the Bose SoundSport kind of fill that niche, as I don't need to worry about one of them falling out. Looks like they don't make them anymore.
Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?
by chistev | 2026-03-14 08:34:46+00:00
Found this old thread with the same topic from 2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9476097

Wanted to repost it to find interesting newsletters to follow.

Shameless plug, I run a newsletter myself - https://www.rxjourney.net/
by janwas | 2026-03-14 08:34:47+00:00
Looks like the ratification plan for Zvzip is November. So maybe 3y until HW is actually usable?
That's a neat trick with wmacc, congrats. But still, half the speed for quite a fundamental operation that has been heavily used in other ISAs for 20+ years :(

Great that you did a gap analysis [1]. I'm curious if one of the inputs for that was the list of Highway ops [2]?

[1]: https://gist.github.com/camel-cdr/99a41367d6529f390d25e36ca3...
[2]: https://github.com/google/highway/blob/master/g3doc/quick_re...
by svrtknst | 2026-03-14 08:34:51+00:00
It's easy to win an argument when you get to construct both sides. You can easily be direct and to the point without being brash.

You could, also, be wrong or misinformed, so I don't see the big deal about "Hey -- the latency numbers look pretty heavy. Should they be in the 400s?" or "I don't believe this is the best approach, we'll get issues with XYZ".