MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: BiomeSyn – a sandbox for long-term artificial evolution
by yangkecoy | 2026-03-04 16:30:48+00:00
Ten years ago I built a very small simulation about ducks.

There were two types:
selfish ducks that kept food, and altruistic ducks that shared.

In the initial runs, selfish ducks dominated.
But when I added a simple memory mechanism – allowing ducks to remember who helped them – cooperation suddenly became stable when resources were scarce.

That small experiment kept bothering me.
What would happen if the environment itself became much more complex?

So over the years I kept extending the simulator.

First it became a planetary environment engine:
https://coyoteke.com/GameEngineForPlanets/

Then a sandbox for generating different worlds:
https://coyoteke.com/GameEngineForPlanets/genWorld.html

Once ecosystems appeared, I needed a way to design digital genomes:
https://coyoteke.com/GameEngineForPlanets/genomix/

While running these ecological simulations I started noticing something unexpected:
the encoding of traits (binary vs Gray code) significantly changes evolutionary dynamics under higher mutation pressure.

To test that observation, I eventually ran large GPU simulations and wrote it up as a research paper.

But during that process I realized the more interesting artifact might actually be the simulation environment itself.

So I turned the system into an open benchmark sandbox:

BiomeSyn
https://biomesyn.com/

Most AI benchmarks evaluate agents on short, static tasks.

BiomeSyn explores a different question:

Can an agent survive and keep adapting in a continuously evolving world?

Looking back, the whole system slowly evolved from that tiny duck experiment ten years ago.
by pjmlp | 2026-03-04 16:30:56+00:00
Except most Germans don't buy Surface Laptops, and there are much cheaper options with 8 GB, naturally they lack a glowing apple to show off at Starbucks.

It is also actually 800 euro if you want a proper SSD storage in 2026.

And as mentioed, get out of German economy, into the southern and eastern countries, or over the Mediterrean to see who gets a Neo outside the well in life families, or maybe bundled with a cable TV contract bound to five years.
by aurelien_gasser | 2026-03-04 16:30:58+00:00
Redbook | Staff Software Engineer | REMOTE (US) | $200k-$250k

Redbook is the new software of reference for cattle feed yards. We're digitizing the $90B cattle industry, the largest vertical in agriculture. We have built the only cloud-based product in the industry that connects field operations and financials. The market is resonating with our solution with more than 100 customers using the product. We plan to completely change how farmers manage their businesses and money.

We're hiring a Staff software engineer to help us integrate with other agtech products, build new features, and scale our platform. Upcoming projects include integration with futures market, tooling to streamline customer onboarding, integrations with hardware, and much more!

https://app.dover.com/apply/redbook-software/fa6c1d33-5de6-4...
by wpm | 2026-03-04 16:31:04+00:00
Somewhere on my list of projects is "Gut a 12" Powerbook and put the guts of a modern M series Macbook in it". The chassis is so spacious and the Macbook Air logic boards are so small, physics is not going to be a problem. Just hooking up screens, the keyboard and trackpad (using the original, natch), and ports. There's already a high-res display swap you can do in that chassis to get to 1400x1050.
by NTT_Prime | 2026-03-04 16:31:21+00:00
To ensure the integrity of the "Zombie Assets" audit and to mitigate the risk of "Digital Execution" by the platform, I am moving all further forensic disclosures and raw data verification to a secure, independent channel.

For security researchers at Mountain View, independent auditors, or journalists looking to verify the VIP Protocol logs and the forensic evidence:

Contact me directly at: NTT_Prime@proton.me

The truth is now decentralized. Deleting the account does not delete the data.
by deborahjacob | 2026-03-04 16:31:42+00:00
Stealth | Founding Engineer (Distributed Systems) | San Francisco | ONSITE

We are building cost attribution and observability for AI workflows. We correlate application traces, model usage, and infrastructure costs to compute cost-per-outcome for each customer for AI systems so that AI teams can do outcome-based pricng.

We're looking for a founding engineer to build the core data platform: ingestion pipelines, cost computation, and analytics infrastructure that scales from thousands to millions of workflow runs.

You should have experience building distributed systems and working with OpenTelemetry traces and data pipelines. Experience with AI evaluation systems is a plus.

Comp: $150k + 0.75% equity.

If interested, send a short note and GitHub to deborah [at] botanu dot ai
by bilbo0s | 2026-03-04 16:31:52+00:00
They probably have tried, but you have to have more cash than those researchers feel they can get starting their own lab. When you consider the fact that their new startup lab would have the entire nation of China as, in effect, a captive market; you start to see how almost any amount of money would be too little to convince them not to make a run at that new startup. If money is their aim.

I think Alibaba needs to just give these guys a blank check. Let them fill it in themselves. Absent that, I'm pretty sure they'll make their own startup.

I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with.
by progbits | 2026-03-04 16:31:58+00:00
Not sure cost saving is the priority.

I got solar installed by the local power company and while it's well done and was a great deal regarding the price, the inverter stats are locked behind a really terrible app. At least there isn't a subscription cost but I wouldn't be surprised if they add one someday.

Would gladly pay more for fully open and serviceable replacement.
by bubblewand | 2026-03-04 16:32:13+00:00
What software do they need to compete with chromebooks? It has a browser (it could have several browsers, if you want). I personally prefer all their productivity software to Google’s or Microsoft’s, and it’s not a close race, but you can use those on it too. Accessibility, I was shocked to find is kinda awful on Chromebooks when I had to try to configure it, considering their target markets are kids and the elderly, while Apple’s the gold standard at that.
by runjake | 2026-03-04 16:32:24+00:00
> So what segment does it target in your opinion?

- Low end consumer

- College students

- People who have a desktop computer, but want a cheap portable for on-the-go.

> The "surface" market is minuscule

Probably so, but then again, I see a lot of Surface devices out and about and they are fairly popular with non-teacher education staff. While they aren't competing with Chromebooks or Apple on volume, I'd bet they're doing well.
by butILoveLife | 2026-03-04 16:32:36+00:00
>The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch.

This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia.

My Science PhD buddy looked at the journal title and the claim, then said: "Its true!"

I look at him with horror. Who cares about the journal, I want to know data and methodology.

I've basically never forgiven Academia since this. I see even Ivys put out bad research and journals will publish bad research (Replication crisis and the ivy fake psychology studies)

For outsiders, there is a prestige to being a PhD or working as a professor. Now that I'm mid career and lived through the previous events I mentioned + seeing who stuck with academia... These are your C grade performers. They didnt get hired by industry, so they stayed in school. They are so protective of their artificial rank because they cannot compete in Industry. Its like being the cool person on the tennis team. They are locally cool, but not globally cool.
by drillsteps5 | 2026-03-04 16:32:41+00:00
Some people strongly prefer to have an external battery that can be swapped (as in pull a tab, remove the battery, and plug in another, which is fully charged). Older Thinkpads (T480 and earlier) had a second, smaller, battery inside that would keep the laptop running while the main (external) battery is being replaced.

I've been using various Thinkpads for 10+ years and have yet to use this feature. But hey, to each his own :)
by mbreese | 2026-03-04 16:32:48+00:00
Pen input is the one factor that forced one of my kids to a Windows laptop for school (a Surface Pro). It was a required feature for his school. Seeing how much he uses it for note taking, I get it. So yes, drawing is a key feature for schools.

Another school uses iPads with keyboards for the same purpose, so I'm not sure where the school market is for these. Maybe only older kids, but a lot of edu-tech is expecting some kind of touch/pen input.
by tedd4u | 2026-03-04 16:33:02+00:00
The original Maven was a Google project but pressure led to Google backing out.

Palantir’s version of Maven evolved from the original and controversial Project Maven, which was launched in 2017 to use then-cutting edge artificial intelligence algorithms to find potential targets in “overhead imagery” -- largely drone and satellite imagery — that was coming in too fast for harried human analysts. While Google (temporarily) dropped out of the program over anti-war objections from its workforce, other tech firms helped add more capabilities to Maven, with Palantir taking the lead with its prototype award in 2021.

From https://breakingdefense.com/2024/05/new-contract-expands-mav...
Show HN: Miku-cursor-kit – A small Hatsune Miku themed project
by NubPlayz | 2026-03-04 16:33:07+00:00
I recently built and published my first npm package called Miku Cursor Kit.

It’s a small React component that replaces the default mouse cursor with an animated pixel-style Miku cursor.

The package is fully bundled, works with Next.js, Vite, and plain React, and doesn’t require users to manually import assets or styles.

You can install it with:

pnpm add miku-cursor-kit

(check out github readme to know how to install)

If anyone has feedback on the package structure, bundling setup, or ways to improve it, I’d really appreciate it,

GitHub: https://github.com/NubPlayz/miku-cursor-kit
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/miku-cursor-kit
by Aurornis | 2026-03-04 16:33:30+00:00
Fully agreed on the point that interviewers should prompt and push candidates in the right direction.

The best thing someone can do to learn how to perform well in interviews is to sit on the other side where you’re interviewing candidates. Some candidates will get stuck on arguing some irrelevant point or trying to fight against the interview question for too long in an interview. Once you see how much it hurts the interview process you learn to never do it yourself.
by pm90 | 2026-03-04 16:33:50+00:00
You’re thinking along similar lines as I am. The article talks about “visibility” in the end. This might be a document that is written. Or it could be a demo thats shared. Or a simple shout out in slack.

As engineers, we tend to keep away from the limelight and quietly get shit done and be happy with it. But professional growth and recognition requires visibility somehow. We need to be creative on how to achieve that.
Show HN: Decipher x Claude Code – Infra to auto-generate and maintain E2E tests
by mrosenfield | 2026-03-04 16:33:58+00:00
Hey HN — I'm Michael from Decipher (https://getdecipher.com). We build infrastructure for autonomously generating and maintaining end-to-end tests.

Today we’re launching our Claude Code integration.

We built this because as teams ship more code, especially with coding agents, they need more regression coverage. Claude can already generate a decent Playwright file from a repo and prompt. That solves first-draft generation. It does not solve repeatability.

A generated test is still a static guess. The real problems start when it meets the live app: the browser is logged out, a modal appears, a feature flag changes the path, a selector is stale, or the app changed in a way that requires updating the test without changing what it is supposed to verify.

That is the gap between “Claude wrote a script” and “we have durable E2E coverage.”

Our system splits that loop in two. Claude handles local planning: it reads the request, inspects the repo, infers the flow, and drafts the initial step plan. Decipher handles runtime: agents in our infrastructure run the steps in a live browser, observe what happened after each step, classify failures, and use the product knowledge captured during planning to repair the failing segment.

Once the test is on Decipher, our agents continue maintaining it against the test’s original intent. As the UI or flow changes, they update the test mechanics without silently changing what the test is supposed to verify.

We chose Skills + CLI instead of MCP because this is not a single tool call. It is a stateful loop: gather context, compile steps, start a remote run, inspect runtime state, patch failures, and resume. The CLI handles auth and transport. Skills keep Claude on that path and preserve a clean boundary between local context and remote execution.

In practice, Claude builds an initial plan and sends it through the CLI to our backend. A remote worker runs it against the live app in a cloud browser. The remote agent turns Claude’s steps into real actions on the product, figuring out the right element to click and modifying steps as needed. After each step, or on failure, the Decipher agent sends structured state back to Claude: what step ran, what the agent did, what state the page is in, what kind of failure happened, and the artifacts needed to repair it. Claude can then chime in and make changes.

Feel free to give it a try. We'd greatly appreciate any feedback you might have.
by gtowey | 2026-03-04 16:34:13+00:00
I would say that it's very germane to my original statement. Understanding is absolutely fundamental to strategy and it is pretty much why I can say LLMs can't be strategic.

To really strategize you have to have mental model of well, everything and be able to sift through that model to know what elements are critical or not. And it includes absolutely everything -- human psychology to understand how people might feel about certain features or usage models, the future outlook for what popular framework to choose and will it as viable next year as it is today. The geographic and geopolitics of which cloud provider to use. The knowledge of human sentiment around ethical or moral concerns. The financial outlook for VC funding and interest rates. The list goes on and on. The scope of what information may be relevant is unlimited in time and space. It needs creativity, imagination, intuition, inventiveness, discernment.

LLMs are fundamentally incapable of this.
by blacksharkAI | 2026-03-04 16:34:21+00:00
Blackshark AI | Software Engineers & Platform Engineers | Full-time | Austria or Remote EU Hours | VISA sponsorship available

We build geospatial AI infrastructure. Our platform lets analysts train custom object and change detection models on satellite/aerial/drone imagery in minutes, then reconstructs 3D terrain from those detections. We just shipped a planetary-scale simulation platform with Lockheed Martin powered by Unreal Engine.

If you want to work on distributed systems that run in a data center one day and an edge laptop the next, we have interesting problems. Our training and inference infrastructure is processing trillions of pixels and we deliver real world impact for our customers across defense, intelligence, and local governments.

Tech Stack: Python, Fast API, PyTorch, Postgres, Redis, Vue.js

Infrastructure Stack: Kubernetes & Docker, Linux, AWS & Azure, Azure DevOps, Terraform, ELK, Prometheus & Grafana, ArgoCD & Helm

Roles:

Software Engineer - Frontend UI https://jobs.eu.lever.co/blackshark/5c596b85-5134-4601-be25-...

Software Engineer - Data Plane Team: https://jobs.eu.lever.co/blackshark/6110fedd-5cd8-40e5-ac11-...

Software Engineer - Machine Learning Team: https://jobs.eu.lever.co/blackshark/7c4b0833-790b-4490-b24a-...

Platform Engineer - Deployment Team: https://jobs.eu.lever.co/blackshark/56a85834-d986-4105-9cc8-...

or reach out to HM with questions at: 'eivanov@' + username[:-2] + '.' + username[-2:].lower()
by danaris | 2026-03-04 16:34:28+00:00
They don't have a "macOS Lite", and if these were running anything less than full macOS, you can be sure Apple would be positioning them as a new product (or part of the iPad line) rather than as a Mac.

And maybe, just maybe, that fact, once it becomes clear, will make at least a few of the people who assume that Apple desperately wants to lock down macOS realise that that's bullshit and always has been...
by yangkecoy | 2026-03-04 16:34:55+00:00
Author here. Happy to answer questions.

A few implementation notes people might be curious about:

• The environments simulate evolving ecosystems rather than fixed tasks.

• Genomes currently use integer-encoded traits with configurable mutation operators.

• I ran large GPU experiments while studying how encoding (binary vs Gray) affects evolutionary stability under mutation pressure.

• The system eventually became a sandbox for long-horizon adaptation experiments.

I’m particularly interested in feedback on mutation models and how people might plug in learning agents.
by cvhc | 2026-03-04 16:35:07+00:00
1. This California law doesn't require IDs. (Some states like TX do, but mainly for websites "harmful to minors").
2. If I have to think through your examples -- purchasing cars and arms requires strict ID checks that go further than age verification. If a kid drove or use weapons owned by their parents, I'm mostly confident parents are liable in most jurisdictions. But I think I can guess out your concern -- 24x7 online tracking can be much more intrusive and terrifying than a one-time background check -- which I actually agree.
3. In fact, you can think this law exactly require OSes (thinking of as iOS/Android/Windows/macOS) to "give the tools to parents" -- being able to indicate that the user is a minor at OS level and expose that information to apps.
Show HN: Epupp – Live, REPL-driven, browser tampering
by cospaia | 2026-03-04 16:35:26+00:00
Epupp has two modes of operation:

1. *Live REPL connection from your editor to the web page*, letting you inspect and modify the page on the fly, with or without the assistance of an AI agent.

2. *Userscripts*: Somewhat Tampermonkey style (I love Tampermonkey!).

The two form a powerful pair. The live REPL connection, while happily supporting one-off changes or data extractions, is also a very efficient and fun means to interactively develop userscripts. The buzzword here is Interactive Programming (aka REPL-driven development).

I started to build Epupp because I wanted the AI agent to help me solve a problem with printing a very tall receipt cleanly from Gmail. After that success, I realized it was generally very useful so I made an extension out of it. I then also noticed that I wanted to be able to save my live tampers as userscripts.

Epupp's scripting language is ClojureScript, the SCI kind. This is what makes the live tampering possible.

I have probably gotten a lot of things wrong with this first version. I am entering feedback-driven mode now. Though, unless something is terribly wrong with the API, I intend to keep it stable. In true Clojure tradition, I do not want to break my callers.

Epupp is free and open source, available at the Chrome and Firefox extension stores.

Try it out, please. I have created a template project which I hope can help with getting started + be your base for using Epupp.

* https://github.com/PEZ/my-epupp-hq

Security:

* Epupp enables a userscript to do just about anything on web page, including all the dangerous things. The gate is the user, scrutinizing userscripts and userscript authors.

* The REPL opens a websocket to Epupp's REPL. Again the user is responsible for what connects to that websocket.

* On a whitelist of domains, userscripts can install and modify userscripts. This enables a web userscript installer to be active on GitHub, GitLab and Codeberg. Userscripts can not, however, list or read userscripts from Epupp.

* The REPL can install, modify, list and read userscripts. But only if the user enables this in Epupp after establishing the REPL connection.

Demo videos:

* Copilot builds the Isolated Element Printer script, using interactive programming: https://youtu.be/CuEWN5yYVa8

* LinkedIn Squirrel, a userscript that keeps posts you engage with in immediate reach: https://youtu.be/yU6rsjoR7HQ

On the roadmap:

1. Fix issues when used with Firefox

2. Fix (many more) issues with Safari

3. Mobile browser support

WDYT, HN?
by stalfie | 2026-03-04 16:36:08+00:00
Harm reduction by just giving drugs to addicts in an organized fashion is honestly a strategy that might work fine on a societal level, and I'm not against it (although I am unsure about the details of implementations). However when your society does not practice it, and the ER/family med practioner becomes the one point of contact for potentially cheap drugs, you run into some practical problems over time. Essentially you can't have an open "drug seekers in line B" policy due to legal issues, so drug seekers will have to lie about being in pain and figure out a convincing lie.

Let us say they try to simulate an acute ruptured appendicitis. If they do this convincingly, they will get an acute CT with contrast. In my hospital system these machines and interpretation of resulting images is expensive and resource constrained, especially during evening and night time, meaning that the prioritisation of one patient will generally mean that another, let us say a patient in the process of having a very real stroke, might get delayed if traffic is high.

This is beyond the fact that roughly 30-120 minutes of the physicians time in the ER will be wasted in examining the patient, ordering blood work, the imagery, writing notes, and so on, which means that another patients time, who is often literally waiting in line for your time, is being wasted. Furthermore this kind of clientele have an unfortunate tendency to become unpleasant when you tell them that you can't find any reason for their pain or giving opioids, which is an extremely unpleasant and frankly often traumatic experience for green eyed doctors that enlisted in this career with the goal of aiding the sick. You can only get threatened, spat upon or assaulted so many times and maintain your professional enthusiasm. Many quit for this reason. And for the ones that don't, the experience of being forced to take on the role of distinguish between drug seekers and non drug seekers will generally turn you into a more unpleasant human being.

In summary, mostly due to unfortunate societal circumstances, you really, really, really do not want to encourage drug seekers to try their luck. It is an expensive waste of everyone's time, in circumstances where both money and time is tight.

Conversely, you really cannot predict in advance which ones of your opioid-naive patients will become addicts because the opioids that you gave them, which effectively means that you've fucked their life forever. Opioids are really, really dangerous. Sometimes people are obviously in pain and you open the tap quickly. But there's a name for the historical consequence of playing fast and loose with pain relief, it's called the opioid epidemic.
by f4c39012 | 2026-03-04 16:36:10+00:00
One great use of interfaces is for automated testing, the test class can implement the same interface specification as the code.

A long time ago I also used structuremap to automatically wire up default implementations of interfaces, which reduced the need to write boilerplate code enormously. It also helped separate concerns because separating out interfaces means I could concentrate on only the specification of the class.