MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hackersk | 2026-03-01 05:26:09+00:00
What I find most valuable about this kind of project is how it forces you to understand the entire pipeline end-to-end. When you use PyTorch or JAX, there are dozens of abstractions hiding the actual mechanics. But when you strip it down to ~200 lines, every matrix multiplication and gradient computation has to be intentional.

I tried something similar last year with a much simpler model (not GPT-scale) and the biggest "aha" moment was understanding how the attention mechanism is really just a soft dictionary lookup. The math makes so much more sense when you implement it yourself vs reading papers.

Karpathy has a unique talent for making complex topics feel approachable without dumbing them down. Between this, nanoGPT, and the Zero to Hero series, he has probably done more for ML education than most university programs.
by packetlost | 2026-03-01 05:27:18+00:00
> The application should tell the user what bracket it is appropriate for

How does this work with applications that have a wide array of content of varying appropriateness, for example web browsers? The obvious thing to do is for sites to self-report for 18+ content and have the browser query the OS using this newly mandated API and refuse to download/show the associated content. You really need both sides here for this to work well.
by pdpi | 2026-03-01 05:28:42+00:00
> “You are not allowed to do illegal things” is meaningless, since they already can’t legally do illegal things.

That's not quite right.

First off, I don't expect that "you used my service to commit a crime" is in and of itself enough to break a contract, so having your contract state that you're not allowed to use my service to commit a crime does give me tools to cut you off.

Second, I don't want the contract to say "if you're convicted of committing a crime using my service", I want it to say "if you do these specific things". This is for two reasons. First, because I don't want to depend on criminal prosecutors to act before I have standing. Second, because I want to only have to meet the balance of probabilities ("preponderance of evidence" if you're American) standard of evidence in civil court, rather than needing a conviction secured under "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. IANAL, but I expect that having this "you can't do these illegal things except when they aren't illegal" language in the contract does put me in that position.
by jerf | 2026-03-01 05:28:57+00:00
Yeah, I'd definitely like to be able to edit my context a lot more. And once you consider that you start seeing things in your head like "select this big chunk of context and ask the model to simply that part", or do things like fix the model trying to ingest too many tokens because it dumped a whole file in that it didn't realize was going to be as large as it was. There's about a half-dozen things like that that are immediately obviously useful.
by tombert | 2026-03-01 05:29:06+00:00
I don’t think I was downvoted, at least I not as of the time of this writing, though I don’t generally care if I am. I already have a ton of HN karma and I also don’t want to have my name attached to an opinion I will not defend I don’t see the point of unpaid social media if not to have a place to express honest opinions.

It’s not like I am apolitical; I donate money to causes I support, and I am generally willing to argue my beliefs if it’s something I believe it. I have my opinions, many of them very strong.

I am just saying that I am not an ambassador. I don’t really have a strong desire to “convert” people, and I don’t think I am the right person for that particular job. There’s value in it and I am ok with people doing it. Just not me.
by zzo38computer | 2026-03-01 05:29:31+00:00
> So where the old toolbar used to hint you the keyboard shortcut in a tooltip every time you rested your mouse over a button, the new one doesn't

Although it is bad that it does not display the keyboard shortcuts, you can push ALT and then it will tell you which letter to push next. (I just guessed that pushing ALT might do something (possibly display a menu?), and I was correct (it did not display another menu, but it did help).) This is not quite as good as using the other keys such as CTRL, or numbered function keys, but it is possible.

(I do not use those programs on my own computer, but on some other computers I sometimes have to, and this helps, although not as well as it would to use menus and other stuff instead. However, in some cases I was able to use it because of knowledge of older versions of Microsoft Office; many of the keyboard commands are the same.)

I think the menu bar is much better, and toolbars should not be needed for most things. With the menu bar it will underline the letters to push with ALT and also will tell you what other keys to use (if any) for that command. (One thing that a toolbar is helpful for is to display status of various functions that can change, such as the current font. Due to that, you might still have a toolbar, but you do not need to put everything in the toolbar. Perhaps combine the toolbar with the status bar to make it compact.)

(Something else that would improve these word processing software would be the "reveal codes" like Word Perfect. A good implementation of reveal codes would avoid some of the problems of WYSIWYG. For spreadsheet software, arranging the grid into zones, and assigning properties (including formatting and formulas) to zones, and making references work with zones, etc, would be helpful, but I don't know that any existing software does that.)

In my own software I do try to make the display compact so that there is more room for other stuff, instead of needing to put all of the commands and other stuff taking up too much space in the screen. Good documentation is helpful to make it understandable; this would work much better than trying to design the software to not need documentation, since then the lack of doumentation makes it difficult to understand.
by jatora | 2026-03-01 05:29:45+00:00
"In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.

It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter"

I honestly can't understand how anyone sees things this way. The US isn't transitioning at all. It is and has been a complete oligarchy for at least 70 years.

I've taken to discounting any political talking-head that wont consistently acknowledge and push that axiom as THE fundamental assumption of all political discourse.
Show HN: I built a desktop app combining Claude, GPT, Gemini with local Ollama
by tsunamayo | 2026-03-01 05:29:57+00:00
I built a desktop app (PyQt6, Windows) that orchestrates multiple AI models in a 3-phase pipeline:

Phase 1 – A cloud LLM (Claude/GPT/Gemini) decomposes the prompt into structured sub-tasks
Phase 2 – Local Ollama models process each sub-task (free, private, runs on your GPU)
Phase 3 – The cloud LLM integrates the results into a coherent final answer

The motivation: cloud APIs are great at reasoning and structure but cost money. Local Ollama models are free but sometimes inconsistent. The pipeline lets you use each where it's strongest.

Also includes:
- FastAPI + React web UI (accessible from LAN/mobile)
- SQLite chat history
- ChromaDB-based RAG
- Discord webhook notifications

Stack: Python, PyQt6, FastAPI, React, Ollama, Anthropic/OpenAI/Google APIs. MIT license.
by gradstudent | 2026-03-01 05:31:05+00:00
> "Hey boos I'm telling you this shit is not cool, and there's nothing you can do to me personally because you don't know who I am."

Why does this change the calculus for management? They don't pay folks to be happy, they pay them to do their jobs. Threaten to take away the labour however and you create a bargaining position. That's how strikes and threats of strikes work. This letter is fundamentally different. For a start, have you considered the veracity of a list of anonymous petitioners? How do you differentiate the real thing from a made up list?
by LarsAlereon | 2026-03-01 05:31:39+00:00
I believe that LLMs provide an excuse for businesses to shed the excess hiring they did during the zero interest rate era. Ultimately, this question comes down to how healthy you think the economy will be in five years, rather than being related to LLMs specifically. I believe there is an AI bubble, so to me this question is asking how much of our economy is mis-invested in AI, and how quickly the rest of the economy can recover if the AI portion implodes. I'm really concerned that the level of mis-investment is high enough that when the bubble bursts it will do severe damage to the larger economy. For example, I'm worried that we'll suddenly have a bunch of abandoned partially constructed data centers, power plants, and fabs. Can the market absorb a massive glut of DRAM and NAND that was contracted for by an entity that suddenly went bankrupt? What will happen to all those warehouses full of GPUs that were waiting for rack space and power?

All of the above could mean we're facing an economic depression that will be talked about for generations. Or it could mean that it will temporarily be unimaginably cheap to start a compute-intensive business, and they will all need to hire developers.
by heypradyumn | 2026-03-01 05:31:39+00:00
Hi HN, I'm Pradyumn, a CS student.
To clarify the title right out of the gate: this is an "execution engine" for human habits, not a backend WASM runtime or task scheduler.
I built Criene to solve my own problem with the "Execution Gap." Standard to-do apps don't work for me because there are zero consequences for ignoring them. So, I built a strict, active system that uses loss-aversion psychology to force discipline.

How the core loop works:
The Brain (Not a wrapper): You give the app a goal. It hits the Gemini API once to generate a structured JSON daily roadmap.
The Stakes: You set custom "Iron Rules" and get exactly 3 "Lives" for the month.
The Engine: The app tracks daily execution on a GitHub-style heatmap. If you break your rules, the backend deducts a life. If you skip a day completely, your visual streak is killed.
The $70 Stack:
I wanted to build a zero-latency production app with virtually no budget.
The $70 breakdown: Google Play Console Lifetime Fee ($25) + Domain/assets (~$45).
Compute: Cloudflare Workers (running on the 100k/day free tier).
Database: Neon Serverless Postgres.
Frontend: React Native (Expo).
I would love some brutal, honest feedback from this community on the database architecture, the gamification loop, or how I can better optimize this stack as traffic grows. Happy to answer technical questions!
by quuxplusone | 2026-03-01 05:34:41+00:00
Current HN title: "Suspected insiders predict US attack on Polymarket." Should probably read "Polymarket insiders predict (or: trade in front of) US attack on Iran."

Although it would be more HN-worthy if there were a market on "Will the US attack Polymarket?" with as-yet-only-suspected insiders trading on that one too. ;)

I clicked curious what a "US attack on Polymarket" would look like, and was disappointed.
by CrossVR | 2026-03-01 05:34:52+00:00
> I'd suggest you read about fascist Italy to get a sense of what fascism is. So far I haven't seen Democrats repeatedly kicked out of cars in Times Square after drinking a bottle of castor oil.

January 6th had all the hallmarks of the black shirts marching on Rome. And ICE is definitely pulling people out of cars and homes in Democratic cities. But I guess everything is fine because they're not making them drink castor oil.

Immigration enforcement is necessary, but these actions clearly have less to do with people's immigration status and more to do with political reprisal.

> Trump said that he wouldn't look to be reelected for a third mandate.

They'll always say they'll follow the Constitution to legitimize themselves, but their actions don't reflect it.

> The Iran war is mainly a consequence of the Israeli influence on US politics; it has nothing to do with fascism, and it is in continuity with the previous administration.

It has everything to do with fascism, not because of its motivation, but it's lack of democratic approval. This administration has a clear disdain for the democratic process.

I sincerely hope there was some secret vote by Congress that we don't know about.

> So yeah, populism likely, a plutocracy (evidenced by the role of AIPAC in elections) but not fascism.

I would've agreed with you if we were talking about Trump's first term, that was clearly just populism. This second term goes far beyond what any populist leader has done in Europe.
by anonnon | 2026-03-01 05:35:48+00:00
Also in this genre:

> The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts at Manned Flight

Anyone banking that this technology isn't going to decrease the demand for programmers, or that it's going to offset the lost jobs with new, related ones ("prompt engineer") are kidding themselves. And frankly, it's probably a good thing, at some level, in that there are far too many people in tech with no business being there. How many "developers" are effectively just gluing bits of JavaScript together and juggling NPM dependencies, all day? And how many of them can't even accomplish this feat without a steady supply of Adderall? Ironically, these people seem to be some of the most enthusiastic AI adopters, so it's in some ways fitting that they'll likely be the first to be made redundant.
by markisus | 2026-03-01 05:36:02+00:00
Yeah if your program has a natural notion of a "frame" (eg most video games), you can do memory management by simply incrementing an integer (bump allocation). At the end of your frame, you reset the integer to zero. You can't really get any faster than that.

An additional benefit of this style of allocation over malloc/free is that you can get a lot of the same type of objects contiguous in memory so that iteration over them is a lot faster because there are fewer cache misses.
by jatora | 2026-03-01 05:36:19+00:00
Pretty leftist take. Weird. You're halfway there. It's an oligarchy through and through, run by professional fund raisers, grifters, and sociopaths - regardless of left/right. Are you aware of how many of the people who stormed the capital were FBI plants? It's absolute insanity and the whole left/right paradigm is nothing but a reality TV show. Meanwhile corporate america continues chugging along.
by zzo38computer | 2026-03-01 05:38:49+00:00
I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done that to force it to display the file name extensions for all file names, rather than hiding them even if you tell it to display them; I also dislike their decision to use spaces in file names).
by zeta0134 | 2026-03-01 05:41:07+00:00
I've been pretty happy with my Framework Desktop, though I managed to snag it before RAM prices shot through the roof. Currently, a tricked out model is around $2500.

https://frame.work/desktop

Mine sees more use as a Steam machine, but it can run decently large models. Ollama was trivial to get working, and qwen3-coder-next spits out paragraphs of text/code in seconds. I don't really do anything with that, but it's fun to mess around with. (LLMs are still pretty bad at assembly language.)
What Hackers Consider Essential (1991)
by validatori | 2026-03-01 05:44:29+00:00
essentials n. Things necessary to maintain a productive and secure hacking environment. "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, a 20-megahertz 80386 box with 8 meg of core and a 300-megabyte disk supporting full UNIX with source and X windows and EMACS and UUCP via a 'blazer to a friendly Internet site, and thou."

Raymond, E.S. & Steele, G.L. (eds.), The Jargon File [1991]
https://magic-cookie.co.uk/jargon/mit_jargon.htm#x817
by nickysielicki | 2026-03-01 05:44:43+00:00
Did you guys really think that the jurisprudential issues that became endemic after 9/11 suddenly disappeared because we discovered LLMs?

Let’s put pressure on our government to fix the FISA issues. Let’s reign in the executive branch. But let’s do it through voting. Let’s not give up on our system of government because we have new shiny technology.

You were naive if you thought developing new technologies was the solution to our government problems. You’re wrong to support anyone leveraging their control over new technology as a potential solution or weapon of the weak against those governmental issues.

That is not how you affect change in a democracy.
by kurttheviking | 2026-03-01 05:46:44+00:00
I started coaching my son's little league baseball team a few years ago, mostly because that was the only way I could keep him interested it and I just wanted him to keep playing a team sport. But, that first season showed me how incredibly rewarding the whole process can be. Every practice, every game, you see them improve. And the more you work at designing a good practice, helping each player develop skills, the better they get! And, the joy...the pure, unadulterated joy of a short stop making a a clean throw to first for an out, a hit into the grass with a quick slide into second for a double, a dash across home after a wild pitch rolls into the cage for a run on the steal! I don't get paid, of course, but it's the best job I've ever had.
by jrochkind1 | 2026-03-01 05:46:56+00:00
Anthropic wanted to put those restrictions in the contract. OpenAI said they'll just trust their own "guardrails" in the training, they don't need it in the contract. (I'm not sure I believe "guardrails" can prevent mass surveillance of civilians?)

Very gracious of OpenAI to say Anthropic should not be designated a supply chain risk after sniping their $200 million contract by being willing to contractually let the government do whatever they like without restrictions.
by hyperadvanced | 2026-03-01 05:48:18+00:00
I really feel like this point is being lost in the whole discussion, so kudos for reiterating it. LLM’s can’t be “woke” or “aligned” - they fundamentally lack a critical thinking function that would require introspection. Introspection can be approximated by way of recursive feedback of LLM output back into the system or clever meta-prompt-engineering, but it’s not something that their system natively does.

That isn’t to say that they can’t be instrumentally useful in warfare, but it’s kinda like a “series of tubes” thing where the mental model that someone like Hegseth has about LLM is so impoverished (philosophically) that it’s kind of disturbing in its own right.

Like (and I’m sorry for being so parenthetical), why is it in any way desirable for people who don’t understand what the tech they are working with drawing lines in the sand about functionality when their desired state (omnipotent/omniscient computing system) doesn’t even exist in the first place?

It’s even more disturbing that OpenAI would feign the ability to handle this. The consequences of error in national defense, particularly reflexively, are so great that it’s not even prudent to ask for LLM to assist in autonomous killing in the first place.
by retsibsi | 2026-03-01 05:48:37+00:00
I think it's dumber than that; the terms of the contract, as posted by OpenAI (https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-o...), are basically just "all lawful purposes" plus some extra words that don't modify that in any significant way.

> The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities. Per DoD Directive 3000.09 (dtd 25 January 2023), any use of AI in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems must undergo rigorous verification, validation, and testing to ensure they perform as intended in realistic environments before deployment.

> For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.

So it seems that Anthropic's terms were 'no mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous killbots', the government demanded 'all lawful use', and the OpenAI deal is 'all lawful use, but not mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous killbots, unless of course mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous killbots are legal, in which case go ahead'.
by jcgrillo | 2026-03-01 05:49:03+00:00
You can buy a 128GB mainboard from framework for $2300, so maybe somewhere a bit over $9k by the time you've got power, storage, cables, racks (they sell those too). I was thinking about getting into one of these Strix Halo setups but decided to go a slightly different route with a lot higher TDP, better throughput, and a bit less VRAM.

https://frame.work/products/framework-desktop-mainboard-amd-...
by ozb | 2026-03-01 05:49:20+00:00
eh this "plagiarism" framing is overreaching
there were two proofs in the paper: countability of algebraic numbers and uncountability of reals
countability of algebraic numbers is a rather trivial induction on countability of rationals/pairs of numbers, which Cantor already knew about
Cantor himself did prove uncountability of real numbers; Dedekind just helped him clean the proof up
to me it seems like Dedekind's assistance was the kind of thing that might merit an acknowledgement, or possibly even joint authorship if subspecialty norms are generous, but far from a novel contribution on its own; unlike the uncountability of reals which was genuinely important and nontrivial. Dedekind, like Cantor, had other very important contributions, but certainly no claim on what Cantor is known for; and the context with Kronecker meant that this would prevent the work from ever being published. Also, this article doesn't actually show Dedekind was specifically upset by the "plagiarism", there may be any number of other reasons they may have stopped corresponding; and Dedekind's "hope this is useful" comment to Cantor can be read as permission to use it for his purposes
by Nevermark | 2026-03-01 05:49:28+00:00
I don’t think the language does, or is intended to, give OpenAI any special standing in the courts.

They literally asked the DoD to continue as is.

And for the plain reason that they are not interested in reigning them in.

It is transparently written, in a completely reactive response to Anthropic’s stand, in an attempt to create a perception that they care. And reduce perceived contrast with Anthropic.

If they had any interest in safety or ethics, Anthropic’s stand just made that far easier than they could have imagined. Just join Anthropic and together set a new bar of expectations for the industry and public as a whole.

They could even have collaborated with Anthropic on a common expectation, if they had a different take on safety.

But, no. Nothing.

Except the legalese and an attempt to misleadingly pass it off as “more stringent”. These are not the actions of anyone who cares.