MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cptcobalt | 2026-03-09 16:39:36+00:00
There are two factors I see with this:

I sometimes like having my content editorialized. Some of the LLM writing tropes are ok to me—I'd delete them if I added this prompt to my instructions (but I wouldn't). But my editorial preferences—the sense of voice and tone I want the LLM to make—are rarely these tropes. Instead, I have a positive prompt of the angles I do enjoy.

However, what is cloying about these tropes for many is that they're becoming empty words. Instead of tack-sharp summaries or reductions to simple understanding, the model is spilling extra tokens for minimal value—I don't need to read "it's not X, it's Y" for the n-th time today. I'd really prefer tighter, more succinct reading that actually directly quotes sources (which modern models rarely do to avoid copyright traps).
by grep_name | 2026-03-09 16:39:39+00:00
> But producing that digital good costs time and money (anyone on HN care to disagree?)

Not disagree, but it is more nuanced than this I think. I spend a fair amount of money going to movie theaters, usually independent movie theaters but sometimes big ones, to see new releases. As I understand it, the production and funding model relies almost entirely on the box office numbers. I think when dealing with older releases, the waters are much murkier.

I end up seeing new things in person and paying a huge premium to do so. I won't pretend I do it for moral reasons or even strictly to support the creators (although I do it in part to support the independent theater itself). It does keep me from feeling bad for also running a media server, on which maybe 1% of the content is newer than 5 years old, though.

I have almost never bought a physical copy of a movie -- and in my mind the IP holders are usually terrible curators of their own content. Physical media is provided in a horribly limited and anti-consumer format, tied to ephemeral standards and technology and often embedded with advertisements and few subtitle options. Digital products are, somehow, worse. Tied to a walled garden, with no true 'ownership', sometimes platforms like Amazon video will even make their own edits to movies, removing crucial parts for no apparent reason (the wicker man, avatar) and without marking it as abridged. They often make decisions that scream 'cash grab' (i.e. years ago when TNG came on netflix, I went to stream it and was shocked at the potato quality. Later re-releases were released in an un-cropped widescreen that included things like boom mikes because of the original intended aspect ratio of the show.) DRM is a nightmare. The product I want -- a file containing the media and only the media, which I can view however I want without logging into anybody's servers -- does not exist. And if it did exist, well, I do also take issue with paying full price for a file of a 40 year old movie, for example. I know there are costs associated with remasters, etc, but most of these are not remasters (and those costs are also much much lower than outright movie production).

A notable exception is outfits like Vinagar Syndrome, who as a labor of love dig up lost media and often re-cut or remaster / distribute it, and due to the low scale and lack of demand likely do not make much if any profit off it. I often do see showings of Vinegar Syndrome releases at my indie theater though or rent them from the one remaining video rental place (I'm unsure whether or not that benefits the production company).

It probably gets more hairy for people who watch a lot of new serialized media, which I do not.

I kind of wish people would think critically about the gradient of potential consumption habits when making their media choices rather than separating into pro / anti piracy stances, because it's an interesting and multi-faceted topic with a lot of considerations to be made.
by jsattler | 2026-03-09 16:39:57+00:00
https://github.com/jsattler/BetterCapture

I'm building a lightweight screen recorder for macOS. It supports lots of features you'd expect from a professional screen recorder such as ProRes 422/4444, HEVC/H.265, and H.264, capturing alpha channels and supports HDR. Frame rates from 24 to 120fps. Can capture system audio and mic simultaneously. You can also exclude specific things from recordings, like the menu bar, dock, or wallpaper.

No tracking, no analytics, no cloud uploads, no account. MIT licensed. Everything stays on your Mac. Still early, but happy to hear feedback!
Show HN: BuildHiFi – PC Part Picker for Home Stereos
by wmeredith | 2026-03-09 16:40:03+00:00
I've been building hi-fi stereo setups for years with all sorts different budgets, different rooms, helping friends spec out systems. I even worked at a hi-fi shop for several months before I came scurrying back to tech (a good story, but, uh, out of scope here). I kept wishing for something like PCPartPicker.com but for stereo gear. A place to design and save my systems, check compatibility, and see exactly how everything works. So I built it.

No sign-in required to create builds: just hit "Start Your Build" and add parts. The signal chain diagram updates in real-time as you build and you can run a system evaluation at any time. (Sign in to save, share, fork, or publish your system.)

The problem: turntables need phono preamps (sometimes), speakers need proper power matching, digital sources need DACs (sometimes), and on and on. These issues often aren't obvious without going down the rabbit hole of online forums, facebook groups, and reddit threads. Audiophiles can be... prickly. I think more people would be able to get into the hobby of listening to hi-fidelity music (it's my no-screen therapy) if there was a better onramp.

Solution: BuildHiFi lets you design a stereo system virtually and test it out. Select parts, see exactly how they connect via signal chain visualization, and run compatibility checks to catch missing links and power mismatches.

Technical approach:

- Graph-based signal flow: Products become nodes, connections are edges inferred from port compatibility (digital, analog, phono, speaker-level domains)

- Port profile system: Standardized port definitions (direction, domain, connector, channel mode) enable automatic connection inference

- Rule engine: Eight rule domains covering completeness, phono stage, digital chain, power matching, impedance, subwoofer, room, and speaker checks — plus positive insights for good matches

- Built with Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, TypeScript, Supabase

The catalog has 1,100+ products across speakers, integrated amps, power amps, preamps, turntables, streamers, CD players, DACs, phono preamps, and subwoofers. There's also a Learn section with guides on compatibility fundamentals and a browseable parts catalog.

Long term business model is to get some affiliate partnerships with gear sellers, but for now all the "shop this part" links just do a google search for the brand and model name.

Current state: looking for tire kickers and people who will build some public systems and show them off.

TL;DR: I built pc part picker for home stereos because it's something I wanted and think there's an opportunity in the market.
by ticulatedspline | 2026-03-09 16:40:35+00:00
They make trackball clickers[1] (often with a laser since they're for presentations), and other single handed devices, a search for "finger mouse" surfaces a few different devices

I don't know if any of them have PTT with microphone but you should be able to pair the clicker with a regular bluetooth headset, while the headset may be on all the time you might be able to use something like joy-2-key and a macro/hotkey utility to map the button press to mic mute.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Handheld-Finger-Trackball-Po...
by EdNutting | 2026-03-09 16:41:13+00:00
This is the modern internet at work. People assume that a completely neutral statement that (to reword my original comment into a longer form) "here's a link to the same post from previously, because you might want to see it was there" and assume there's some kind of complaint or problem and take offense to their own assumption, and then downvote.

It's completely the opposite of HN "assume good faith" policy. Sigh.
by zer00eyz | 2026-03-09 16:41:46+00:00
The failure here is to see that the "plan" has been on the books, and being refined for well over 30 years (1979 the Shah is deposed).

This is the JOB of the military... and it has been for a long time. I would think there is even modern version of "war plan red" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red ) somewhere.
by sazz | 2026-03-09 16:42:01+00:00
WTF about your understanding of the German power grid, I would say.

Germany is not in a position to continuously meet its own electricity needs, but is dependent on daily aid deliveries of electricity from abroad. The electricity needs of industry cannot be met in a market-oriented manner, but taxpayers have to spend additional money so that industry can continue to produce at all.

The absurdly high prices for electricity in Germany prevent any competitiveness. Ignoring all of this can only be described as WTF – what country do you actually live in?
by jaxn | 2026-03-09 16:42:03+00:00
I used something like this tool to create 10 different fonts of my handwriting. Then I wrote scripts to randomize which font was used for each character, ensuring that no word had that same variant of a single letter. It worked incredibly well for a personalized printed mail campaign. It really did look hand written.

edit: basically what DANmode replied to the same parent. I did this 10 years ago while running for political office.
by basilikum | 2026-03-09 16:42:23+00:00
> Germany was relatively fine, industrially speaking, while it still had a working relationship with Russia and especially with cheap Russian gas. It all went to the gutters when the Americans imposed their imperial will on them, on the Germans (see also the Nord Stream fuck-up), and it has been a steady downhill road for the Germans since then.

That's quite the reversal of facts. Germany cut off Russian gas after imperial Russia started a full invasion on Ukraine. That was Germany's decision and has little to do with the US. The US also did not force Russia to invade Ukraine and to targeted kill Ukrainian civilians for their decision to strive for freedom, democracy and prosperity rather than being a corrupt satellite state to Putin's terror.

Energy prices undoubtedly skyrocketed after that, but that's just the immediate result of finally breaking with the politically engineered dependence on Russia. For decades Germany made itself reliant on Russian gas. What might have started as optimism after the cold war and the hope for good mutually beneficial relations with Russia turned into corruption and irresponsible ignorance and short term thinking at best.

Energy prices in Germany are so high because the German government deliberately sabotaged the shift to renewables. German politics made Germany dependent on fossil fuels that you can burn exactly once and that Germany has to continuously, expensively dig out of the ground and keep importing because Germany lacks enough natural gas. Digging something out of the ground to burn it once is not economic when the alternative of harvesting the sun and wind that just keep on giving you energy indefinitely exists. But Germany decided to deliberately stall building grid technology and farms for harvesting free unlimited energy. Instead they turned to Russia to get gas for cheapish in the exchange for letting Putin live out his imperialist plans. Russia's aggression is not new. They invaded Georgia in 2008 and started the war against Ukraine in 2014. Germany started building the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, which would have even furthered its dependence, in 2015, after all that. And they kept the plan when Russia backed Assad and commited war crimes against the Syrian people.
by ndiddy | 2026-03-09 16:42:23+00:00
From the Github repo (https://github.com/ExxistanceDC/Segagaga-English-Translation), the translation went through a process called MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes.

> What I call the “playtesting translation” — a base translation that allowed the artists and playtesters to get started early and understand what they were working on — was developed using a combination of DeepL and ChatGPT 4o/4.5. That translation then went through a substantial, months-long human translator review. I don't think that the end product feels “machine-translated,” but that’s ultimately for you, the player, to judge.
by romellem | 2026-03-09 16:42:35+00:00
Some of these missing checks were why Flow was an attractive choice when weighing [Flow vs Typescript][1].

For example, it wasn't until Typescript 2.0 that we got null checks!

- https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release-notes/t...

function getLength(s: string): number {
return s.length; // Runtime crash if s is null/undefined
}

getLength(null); // TypeScript <2.0 would not error here

[1]: https://djcordhose.github.io/flow-vs-typescript/2016_hhjs.ht...
by c0balt | 2026-03-09 16:42:48+00:00
You can try to buy physical media. A surprising amount of shows and movies are still published as Blu-rays.

The release there is usually a bit delayed to streaming releases though and will set you back more if you buy it new. The used market can be your friend here, especially for older media. IME local libraries might also have quite a good offering depending on their funding and priorities.

The clear downside here is that you can't really follow along with others though (if that's your jam) as these releases are mostly in-full and not per-episode.

The only DRM-free video TV media sources are usually non-legitimate (torrents etc.). Many shows/movies are also interestingly ripped from streaming sites first though. You can of course legally format shift your physical media for private use to non-DRMed files depending on your region.
by nagisa | 2026-03-09 16:42:52+00:00
The humanity has all the knowledge and tools it needs at this point to have anybody: individual persons, counties, countries, continents be much more self-sufficient in energy, in a way that makes economic (and all sorts of other) sense.

I am glad to personally be largely independent of molecule-sourced energy March to October. Hoping that the countries affected by oil instability take this as an opportunity to learn this lesson as well.
by observationist | 2026-03-09 16:43:09+00:00
So glad you're taking the hit for the rest of us. Your sacrifice is totally worth the .001% difference you make, every little bit counts.

Why is it people can clearly see the recycling scam for what it was, but the idea of coal or carbon fuels makes them entirely unable to handle any sort of thinking that isn't entirely superficial and one-sided?

Maybe, like everything else in life, it's a complex series of tradeoffs, costs, and benefits, and you decide whether the cost is worth the benefit.

And if a policy being pushed doesn't make sense when all the costs and benefits are accounted for, then someone is doing something shady and making a shit ton of money, especially if there's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and politicized talk.

Ireland's being used for things and it's obvious those in power don't care about and don't think the Irish people being affected by these sorts of policies can or will do anything about it. As that largely seems to be the case, I have to wonder if we're going to see a repeat of what seems to happen every time a government thinks that about the Irish and takes advantage of them.
by p-o | 2026-03-09 16:43:19+00:00
>For many years we had to rely on our own internally developed fork of FFmpeg to provide features that have only recently been added to FFmpeg

I really wonder if they couldn't have run the fork as an open source project. They present their options as binary when it fact they had many different options from the get go. They could have run the fork in an open-source fashion for developers of FFmpeg to see what their work was and be able to understand what the features they were working on was.

Keeping everything close source and then contributing back X amount of years later feels a little bit disingenuous.
by aftbit | 2026-03-09 16:43:38+00:00
Strongly disagree. If you're relying on Python garbage collection to free file descriptors in a loop, you have a subtle bug that will rear its head in unexpected and painful ways (and by some unwritten law of software, most notably either at 3 AM or when you have an important demo scheduled). This is true whether you're running in CPython or PyPy. It's not hard to avoid - use `with` or `try...finally`. It's not some newfangled language feature. It's not a surprise - you can't write good RAAI code in Python. It's a sign of someone with a poor grasp of the language they're using. If you find things like this, you should fix them, even if you never intend to use PyPy.
by quesera | 2026-03-09 16:43:43+00:00
I think you misinterpreted GP's emphasis.

But still, egg and dairy animals are culled when productivity drops. The human equivalent would be killing all male babies, and females after age ~40.

I can't think of a reasonable argument that this is more "humane" than the human equivalent of meat farming, where all human offspring would be harvested at age ~15.
by alephnerd | 2026-03-09 16:44:06+00:00
Germany could have sourced from Niger - who's entire uranium supply chain is owned by hook and by crook by France's Orano.

> Natural gas is used heavily in chemistry and the steel industry

Absolutely, and Germany could have defended it's ability to access NatGas from outside Russia or the MidEast if they collaborated like France's TotalEnergie and their Indian JV partners did when expanding capacity in Mozambique and Angola.

---

The reality is German politicians are a reflection of the German people (as you guys are fond of telling us Americans).

Germans would gladly choose vassalage instead of restarting and expanding conscription, investing in industrial subsidizes, and adopting a hard power foreign policy strategy.

Merz only started these kinds of policies in mid-late 2025, and while it is a good start, it is too little too late.

Germany used to have one of the most respected armed forces in NATO and was the linchpin of the Yugoslav Wars, but German voters decided to whittle away that legacy.
by MonkeyIsNull | 2026-03-09 16:44:07+00:00
ahh right, wrong error. This is the one I get:
Uncaught Error: Minified React error #418; visit https://react.dev/errors/418?args[]=HTML&args[]= for the full message or use the non-minified dev environment for full errors and additional helpful warnings.

That's from an incognito window on Chrome
by empath75 | 2026-03-09 16:44:10+00:00
> has no idea how a writer brainstorms

This isn't true in general, and not even true in many specific cases, because a great deal of writers have described the process of writing in detail and all of that is in their training data. Claude and chatgpt very much know how novels are written, and you can go into claude code and tell it you want to write a novel and it'll walk you through quite a lot of it -- worldbuilding, characters, plotting, timelines, etc.

It's very true that LLMs are not good at "ideas" to begin with, though.
by localkin | 2026-03-09 16:44:19+00:00
LocalKin – a 15MB single-binary AI agent runtime, written in Go, free and open source.

No Python. No Docker. No dependency hell. Just one binary.

What makes it different:

- Soul System: define your agent's identity, persona, and behavior in a plain .soul.md file. Swap souls to get completely different agents from the same binary.
- Self-Forging: the agent can write its own skills and load them at runtime. It literally extends itself.
- Voice Mode: offline JARVIS-style voice interface, no cloud required.
- Works with Ollama (local) or Claude (cloud) — same binary, same config.
- Pioneer Edition (29MB, $9.99 one-time): adds robotics/voice/advanced features, runs on Raspberry Pi with GPIO control.

I built this because I was tired of Python dependency hell every time I wanted a local agent. The entire runtime is a single Go binary with zero external dependencies.

Core is completely free and open source. No license key, no account, just download and run.

https://github.com/LocalKinAI/localkin
Show HN: I built a harness that blocks AI from building until ambiguity < 0.2
by q00 | 2026-03-09 16:44:19+00:00
Most AI coding failures happen before the first line of code. The human shows up with a half-formed idea, the model fills in the gaps with assumptions, and 3 hours later you have working code for the wrong problem.

Ouroboros runs a Socratic interview before execution. It scores ambiguity:

Ambiguity = 1 - Σ(clarity_i × weight_i)

If the score is above 0.2, it keeps asking. No code until the spec is locked.

Once running, it doesn't loop by count — it loops until convergence:
Similarity = 0.5 * name_overlap + 0.3 * type_match + 0.2 * exact_match

When similarity hits 0.95 across iterations, it stops. It also detects pathological patterns (stagnation, oscillation, wonder loops) and breaks them explicitly.
Built on the Claude SDK with parallel sessions — each node in the AC tree gets its own bounded context so autocompact doesn't silently corrupt state mid-run.

MIT licensed. Would be curious what this community thinks about the convergence threshold choices.
Show HN: Execute local prompts in SSH remote shells
by tgalal | 2026-03-09 16:44:40+00:00
Instead of giving LLM tools SSH access or installing them on a server, the following command:

$ promptctl ssh user@server

makes a set of locally defined prompts "magically" appear within the remote shell as executable command line programs.

For example, I have locally defined prompts for `llm-analyze-config` and `askai`. Then on (any) remote host I can:

# on remote host
$ llm-analyze-config /etc/nginx.conf
$ cat docker-compose.yml | askai "add a load balancer"

the prompts behind `llm-analyze-config` and `askai` execute on my local computer (even though they're invoked remotely) via the llm of my choosing.

This way LLM tools are never granted SSH access to the server, and nothing needs to be installed to the server.

Github: https://github.com/tgalal/promptcmd/

Docs: https://docs.promptcmd.sh/
by scoofy | 2026-03-09 16:45:04+00:00
"It's 1 person, the bartender, deciding what's good or bad for all their patrons. And this is, I'm not sure what, but gives bartenders at bars too much power to moderate bar conversation the way they like vs giving the individual patron the choice to decide on their own. Call it whatever you like."

It's called moderation the space you operate. If you don't like it, start your own damn instance. You don't have any right to make people tolerate you if they don't want to.
by swaminarayan | 2026-03-09 16:45:24+00:00
“Context rot” with AI coding tools is definitely real. After a few sessions the agent forgets earlier decisions, and you end up repeating the same planning conversation again.

Storing the plan and discussion as Markdown in Git is an interesting approach. It basically treats the agent’s reasoning as part of the project history, not just the final code.

Curious if others here are doing something similar to keep context across sessions.
by keybored | 2026-03-09 16:45:25+00:00
Uninformative title? I’m getting a whiff of AI cont— oh right there it is.

Today it’s how AI is a superpower for the already by-far the most powerful military in the world. Okay sure why not.

In the case of Maduro was that an amazing feat? Massacring the whole bodyguard entourage? Capturing a head of state who might have been a willing accomplice?

How does this square with bombing civilian targets in Iran? Another superhuman stalker-micro move?