MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hansvm | 2026-03-12 01:46:28+00:00
It's been a year since I've actively given out take-homes for hiring, but I'm not sure I agree that everyone will use AI. I designed half the questions to be impossible for current-gen AI to answer without the candidate actually knowing what's going on [0], and only ~1% of candidates who responded did poorly on that half and not the other half (and, if we're worried about LLMs being better than I think, not all that many candidates passed most questions either).

[0] The most reliable strategy I've found for that is choosing questions where the wrong answer is the right answer for some much more common question. Actually spending a few seconds and solving the problem easily lets a human pass, but an LLM with insufficient weights or training data (all of them) doesn't stand a chance.
by Swizec | 2026-03-12 01:48:21+00:00
> And worth noting that in a sane world, a broad 10% productivity improvement across industry would be a once-in-a-lifetime, headline-making story, not a disappointment

The biggest risk in software development is building the wrong thing. Digging yourself into a hole 10% faster is _worse_. You now have more backtracking to do!
by smilindave26 | 2026-03-12 01:48:39+00:00
> For almost all software I write, I do care about the process. I’m typically designing software as part of research, and me doing the design and implementation work creates knowledge that I will then share.

Similar here. For a lot of software I write, I don't really know what the essential "abstraction" I need is until I'm actively writing it. The answers, when I get them right, look obvious in retrospect. Sometimes, starting with Claude Code, I can get there, but my mindset is that I'm using this tool to generate software that helps me immerse myself in the problem space. It's a different pace to the process - sometimes it speeds me up, sometimes I end up taking bad concepts a lot further than I normally would before getting to the better path
by Anon1096 | 2026-03-12 01:49:20+00:00
It's potentially worth 100k to the right person. If OP really feels that it's worth 100k to them then they can always buy it back at the auction. Otherwise, someone who thinks they can use it better will pick it up.

Personally, if it were my account and I had tweeted a total of 5 times in the last 10 years I'd just get some random other 20 character long handle and go on with my day.
by Refreeze5224 | 2026-03-12 01:49:58+00:00
No, the assumption is that companies are more interested in cutting labor costs than productivity. Even if you screw up and need to hire back 50% of those you fired, you still cut the labor costs of the 50% still fired. And you can pretend to be a cool, thought-leading, "AI-native" company, which might be enough to juice your share price enough to offset any actual productivity loss.

Capital will always be in opposition to the cost of labor and want to make it as close to zero as possible, and AI is a plausible story for attempting that, regardless of the reality of AI efficiency.
by crossroadsguy | 2026-03-12 01:50:01+00:00
Apple's proofread is essentially spell-check and punctuation until it isn't and even in a few-sentence-long para you'd see it has sneakily changed a lot and Apple being Apple you, the customer, obviously has no way to set it to "only fix spelling, punctuations and leave everything else including grammar as it is" and I've a feeling a lot of folks are at least using proofread or something on those lines. But then I really don't think browser's "spell check" ought to be kosher either if the content has to be the human's because those mistakes are also makes such text human and in some way unique. I don't think it's an easy line to draw but weird seeing just comments "targeted" here.
by kthaker1224 | 2026-03-12 01:51:01+00:00
The 1,600 number blew my mind, and then I realized Atlassian employs almost 16,000. Kind of crazy.

Either way, I'd expect that those 1,600 people using AI to solve Atlassian's big problems would be better for the company in the long-run than reducing headcount with the same level of output
by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS | 2026-03-12 01:51:40+00:00
So all you need to do is know somebody's name for that voting station. And since we're not checking IDs, when the "right" person shows up, how do we know they're the right person?

I have to show ID to get into my local zoo, but not to vote someone onto the board in charge of the zoo. That doesn't make sense.
I made a Chrome extension to export an entire Gemini chat
by backrun | 2026-03-12 01:51:50+00:00
I built a Chrome extension to make it easier to export Gemini conversations into formats that are actually usable for work.

The main problem I ran into was that copying content from Gemini into documents was more tedious than it should be. Long chats, lists, code blocks, and structured answers often needed cleanup before they could be shared or reused.

So I made a tool that lets you export either selected messages or an entire Gemini chat in a few clicks. The output can be saved as PDF, Word DOCX, Google Docs, or Notion, depending on what you want to do next.

I also added a few basic formatting controls like font family, font size, and text color, since I often wanted exports to look a bit more consistent before sending them to someone else or keeping them as internal notes.

A few workflows I had in mind:

- exporting a full Gemini thread to PDF for sharing or archiving

- turning Gemini output into an editable Word document

- sending a conversation to Google Docs for collaboration

- moving useful chats into Notion for documentation or knowledge management

The extension supports both partial export and full-thread export, so it works whether you want to save a small part of a conversation or need a gemini export entire chat workflow without copy-paste.

>> Website: https://backrun.co/gemini-exporter
>> Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gemini-exporter-save-gemi/lgipeakgdkcgnkdljeagconfbfeolidj

I’d love feedback on:

- formatting quality for longer conversations

- handling of code blocks, lists, and headings

- which export destination is most useful in real workflows
by Rapzid | 2026-03-12 01:51:54+00:00
You know.. I keep thinking this might be a good thing in some ways. AI spam could save us from the worst of the current social media status quo, the toxicity of the attention "economy", but flooding it so thoroughly nobody wants to engage with it anymore. Maybe the world can collectively "wake up" and "go outside" by turning towards local and more intimate communities for social interactions..

It's a shame though that this is gonna kill so many sites and projects. Sure we have ChatGPT, but also with things like Google AI summary getting so much better traffic to sites is going to plummet. Without people visiting I think the incentive, heck even motivation, for a ton of the sites is gone. We've seen it with sites like Stack Overflow, but it's probably going to happen to just about everything..

Things are definitely going to change in significant ways. The internet of the past is definitely dead, it just doesn't know it yet.
by SanjayMehta | 2026-03-12 01:52:06+00:00
I have a 2008 iMac with (I think) 16Gb of RAM which is used for just Firefox. I've been meaning to upgrade it to Linux but that generation didn't boot from USB, need to burn a CD.

All our intel MacBooks now run Linux just fine. The oldest is 2012, with 4Gb but most are 8 or 16Gb.

I would always recommend more RAM first over a faster processor; back when I would build desktop machines for Windows, I would use the second best CPU and put the savings into RAM.
by reliabilityguy | 2026-03-12 01:52:48+00:00
> But I do not see them as the international turbo villains they've been painted as.

Iran founded Hizbalah in Lebanon. You can read what Hizb had done to Lebanon on the internet. Iran exported its ideology all over the Middle East right now: Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. It is a mistake to thing about Islamic Revolution as something not interested in spreading itself.
by komali2 | 2026-03-12 01:53:06+00:00
This is interesting to me because I'm a degenerate "massive comment" guy. People have gotten mad at me for it before, I'll take a comment from them, break it down, address it portion by portion with citations, and then ask their thoughts. It's probably an obsessive level of engagement that people aren't really interested in, which is fair, but I don't know how else to get my point across in its totality.

Also there's some subset of users on this site who are rate limited, such as me. So for me that manifests in avoiding post for post conversations and more seeking to engage in an exchange of essays where I try to predict future points and address them, to save comments, which obviously results in long comments.
by jwilliams | 2026-03-12 01:53:15+00:00
I wrote a short bit on a similar topic the other day[^a]. Just because something is faster or even measurably better, that doesn't translate to end productivity.

1. You might be speeding up something that is inherently productive (the "faster horses" trope). I see companies using AI to generate performance reviews. Same company using AI to summarize all the new performance stuff they're getting. All that's happening is amplified busywork (there is real work in there, but questionable if it's improved).

2. Some things are zero sum. If you're not using AI for marketing you might fall behind. So you adopt these tools, but attention/etc are limited. There is no net gain, just competition.

3. You might speed one part up (typing code), but then other parts of your pipeline quickly become constraints. It might be a long time before we're able to adapt the end-to-end process. This is amplified by coding tools being three strides ahead.

4. Then there are actual productivity improvements. One of these PRs could have been "translate this to German". That could be one PR but a whole step-change for the business.

So much of what is happening falls in buckets 1+2+3. I don't think we've really got into the meat of 4 yet.

a: https://jonathannen.com/ai-productivity/
by heavyset_go | 2026-03-12 01:53:40+00:00
For every "20 min max" take home assignment, there will be people who are willing to spend 4+ hours doing it to outshine candidates who have jobs, families and lives.

If you want to make it more of a fair consideration of time, consider moving your take home to interviews, that way there isn't a time cost asymmetry. You can enforce your "20 min max" claim this way, you can judge a candidate's performance, thought process and filter out anyone who is LLMing or spending inordinate amounts of time on them.

You will also make a better impression on candidates by investing your time in them in the same way they are with you. Maybe you're hiring kids out of college without experience, but you only have to do so many take home tests before you realize that they're a waste of time, and pass on potential employers who throw them at you, or you learn to just send them your hourly rate for the test.
by JohnBooty | 2026-03-12 01:53:53+00:00
Right, I mean even a fast SSD has an order of magnitude less throughput, and 2-3 orders of magnitude higher latency from RAM. No dispute there. If you are doing random access across 16GB of data and your machine only has 8GB of physical RAM, you're in the pain zone.

OTOH, if you are using multiple RAM-heavy apps that aren't actively hammering that RAM (e.g. an instance of Photoshop that is using 10GB but is just idling or whatever) then MacOS and their stupid fast SSDs handle that pretty seamlessly.

Most use cases are probably somewhere in the middle.
by pepoluan | 2026-03-12 01:53:56+00:00
What's so bad about Python's virtualenv? It's a good way to have an LKGC (Last Known Good Configuration). When a CVE happens, you spin up a new venv and do smoke test, canary test, blue/green deployment, and so on.

If the update breaks things, you go back to the old venv. If the update goes well, then you just delete the old venv.

Not implementing security updates the right way is just human laziness and has nothing to do with the language in use.
by rmunn | 2026-03-12 01:54:02+00:00
Most of those 62 lawsuits were thrown out on procedural grounds, such as lack of standing (which I think was a bad reason: if the losing candidate doesn't have standing to challenge an allegedly fraudulent voting system, then who does?). But that means they never reached the fact-finding stage, so citing those cases as meaning "there was no fraud" is not supported by the evidence. The cases thrown out on procedural grounds only mean "no conclusion was reached on whether the facts alleged in the complaint were true".
by briantakita | 2026-03-12 01:54:27+00:00
> Then you should have no issue with people using LLMs to communicate more clearly.

My raw thought: I wonder how many people are really objecting to the loss of exclusivity of their status derived from their relative eloquence in internet forums. When everyone can effectively communicate their ideas, those who had the exclusive skill lose their advantage. Now their core ideas have to improve.

Same idea, LLM-assisted: I wonder how many objections to LLM-assisted writing really stem from protecting the status that comes with relative eloquence. When everyone can express their ideas clearly, those who relied on polished prose as a differentiator lose that edge. The conversation shifts to the quality of the underlying ideas — and not everyone wants that scrutiny.

Same ideas. Same person. One reads better. Which version do you actually object to?
by rukuu001 | 2026-03-12 01:54:32+00:00
I've noticed a considerable drop-off in HN commenters who are unable to deal with the substance of a comment if it contains errors in spelling or grammar, so I don't think this is the issue it used to be.

It's still daunting posting in a second language, and LLMs are an attractive solution to that (depending on your definition of 'solution').
by esprehn | 2026-03-12 01:54:41+00:00
The web doesn't work without dynamic feature detection. I couldn't find anything in the component model about how this is expected to work.

The DOM is not a static interface, it changes both across browsers based on implemention status and also based on features enabled on a per page load basis.

The multi browser ecosystem also mainly works because of polyfills.

It's not clear how to polyfill random methods on a WIT interface or how to detect at runtime which methods exist.

OTOH the JS bridge layer we use today means you can load JS side polyfills and get wasm that's portable across browsers with no modifications. There's more to the ecosystem than just performance.
by MareSerenitatis | 2026-03-12 01:54:51+00:00
I’ve spent the last 13 years developing a formal framework called the ALQC (Ahnend Logical Q-State Core) to solve a problem I encountered in 2013 regarding signal entropy and system collapse.

The core of the project is a formal logic that operates on a non-orientable Klein Bottle topology. Most systems fail when "error" or entropic debt (Q2) accumulates. The ALQC treats this debt as a propulsion variable. By enforcing a 110/144 connectivity governor on a Latin Square lattice, the system reaches a "Liquid Threshold" where informational friction is metabolized into recursion via a topological parity flip.

Essentially, it’s a way to ensure that the "Path Out" of a data transformation is structurally identical to the "Path Back" (Total Symmetry), preventing the blow-ups common in high-complexity simulations.

I’ve formalized the invariant proofs in a 218-page manuscript and implemented the logic in a C99/Python kernel (the Emergent Void engine). I’m looking for feedback specifically on the 110-limit governor and the stability of the lattice under high-stress states.
I’m looking for feedback specifically on the 110-limit governor and the stability of the lattice under high-stress states. I’m especially interested in whether anyone has seen similar 'liquid thresholds' in information-theoretic models.
by SonOfKyuss | 2026-03-12 01:55:07+00:00
No the assumption behind the statement and many others on this topic is not AI is more productive than Human + AI, it’s that 9 (or 8 or 6) humans + AI is more productive than 10 humans. No one is suggesting getting rid of all workers, but many are saying they can get rid of a significant percentage of them. It remains to be seen if that end up being true but it is fundamentally different from what you are describing
by wlesieutre | 2026-03-12 01:55:09+00:00
They're suggesting a hypothetical lineup would be cleaner if that weren't the case.

I don't disagree, but Apple seems to treat the Mini as an afterthought side project that gets updated every 3 years or so, compared to the mainline iPad being updated yearly from 2017 to 2022. Then it had a gap until 2025, apparently taking a while to get the slim bezel redesign down to the affordable model.

If the mini were the default affordable entry point they'd need to keep it up to date but they've decided not enough people want a mini for it to be worth that effort.
by kylecazar | 2026-03-12 01:55:44+00:00
Maybe add a category for posts and comments about AI on HN :)

"Stories about AI" is not offensive to me. Its influence on the industry is undeniable and if I'm feeling tired of that content I just won't engage with it.

AI-writing is another story, but yeah -- HN is downstream of that problem. You can encourage people not to submit articles that seem to be LLM authored, but it won't work.
by MetaWhirledPeas | 2026-03-12 01:55:49+00:00
I don't have a problem with that. First off it's not very common. Second off it can add to a conversation, just as it can with in-person discussions. If you feel like it doesn't, don't upvote and don't reply. There's no value in pretending we're Woodward and Bernstein every time we leave a comment.
by abustamam | 2026-03-12 01:55:53+00:00
That's contingent on the competition offering a similar experience and quality, at a smaller price point. As a parent comment pointed out, no LEGO knockoff has been able to provide the same experience as LEGO.

I think what the commenter is getting at is that it's not even about competition. People get mad when companies charge more than is necessary to make what they deem a reasonable profit.

Of course, as you mention, in capitalism, a competitor is free to go in and undercut the leading brand, but they have to be able to sell why they're better AND cheaper.
by komali2 | 2026-03-12 01:56:03+00:00
One trend I noticed here and, annoyingly, in my co-op, is that people will take a really dense and complex topic that's either currently engaged in deep conversation with multiple people or ripe for it, and then post a link to a Chatgpt conversation with a tag like "I didn't have time to get my thoughts together but here's a Chatgpt overview/some suggested solutions!" For me that's the equivalent of "I googled that for you," aka extremely rude.

Thanks, if I wanted Chatgpt's middle-of-the-bellcurve ass response I would have put the five seconds of effort in myself to type the question into its input field.
by stevefan1999 | 2026-03-12 01:56:03+00:00
Hah, you took the bait.

What I could just do is obfuscate it a little bit and you can't tell whether it is AI-generated or not. If I just read that AI-generated snippet, and wrote a "human" version of it, would that still count as "AI-generated"

The idea of that rule is that we don't want HN to be Moltbook, not that it actually wanted to ban AI-comments.
by schipperai | 2026-03-12 01:56:07+00:00
cupcake looks well thought out!

You are right that bash is turing complete and I agree with you that a sandbox is the real answer for full protection - ain't no substitute for that.

My thinking is that there's a ton of space between full protection and no guardrails at all, and not enough options in between.

A lot of people out there download the coding CLI, bypass permissions and go. If we can catch 95% of the accidental damage with 'pip install nah && nah install' that's an alright outcome :)

I personally enjoy having Claude Code help me navigate and organize my computer files. I feel better doing that more autonomously with nah as a safety net
by robocat | 2026-03-12 01:56:47+00:00
A pattern I've seen from the smart people in my life is how they find tricks to train themselves.

Like teaching oneself to avoid a disparaging inner voice. Or a jiujitsu move from the rational mind to retrain poor emotional responses.

This article is a great example of someone doing that to themselves.

School doesn't teach us how to learn. Even worse, school doesn't help us focus on topics that are deeply important.

We learn almost by mistake.

Gaining wisdom sometimes feels like a random walk: and I think it would be nice if it could be more intentional.
by hedora | 2026-03-12 01:56:59+00:00
For the 95% irrelevant and 5% relevant groups, I wonder what percentage of resumes come in through a third party recruiter.

I get tons of spam that could be generated by even a basic LLM based on public information about me, but for positions that are not a reasonable fit.

Apparently, it is common for such cold calls to come from “recruiters” that are not affiliated with the hiring firm, but are trying to collect some sort of referral bounty.

I have no idea why an HR department would be dumb enough to set up such a pipeline (by actually paying for the third party “service”), but I guess once they have the program in place, they also need an LLM to screen spam applications.
by dfxm12 | 2026-03-12 01:57:25+00:00
AI is not a source. A Google search result page is not a source. Hopefully, these things help you find a source. If you're posting something you feel the need to source, post the source along with your comment! For example, don't say "according to a Google search, x"... say something like "according to Microsoft's documentation I found from a Google search, x" and provide a link to Microsoft learn page...
by tom_ | 2026-03-12 01:57:32+00:00
You're sort-of right, I think, because you do need an Apple account to sign in to the Mac App Store to get current Xcode in the first place - but the $99 is entirely optional!

For distributing your program without the fee, you'll probably moan about the hoops that people have to jump through to run your stuff: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac - and I can't say I love this myself, but people can run your stuff, and no fee necessary.

(I've got a couple of (somewhat niche) FOSS things for macOS, and I build the releases using GitHub Actions with whatever default stuff the thing uses, then make up DMGs that people can download from the GitHub releases page. I added a bit in the documentation about visiting the security dialog if you're blocked - and that seems to have been sufficient.)
by caminante | 2026-03-12 01:58:19+00:00
Nah. They're conflicted and goal seek backwards from your wacky vision.

Look at NEOM in Saudi.

McKinsey took 130M in a year to recommend a 500B investment in a 105 mile city in the desert. Sunk 50B and project was revised to take 50 years and 8 trillion.

It's impressive salesmanship how they were able to bilk such a large sum and support interim approvals for the regime to launder favors. I can see people wanting that "conflict."
by tptacek | 2026-03-12 01:58:28+00:00
Part of the ethos of HN is that we don't do content/subject silos; it's a way in which HN is very distinct from Reddit. I don't think this will happen and I think if it does it's a bad idea (not least because I don't think a site dominated by software developers is going to separate itself from AI, any more than it will separate itself from programming language discussions), but I understand the impulse. They're not the funnest stories to comment on.