MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tracker1 | 2026-03-03 17:33:25+00:00
The keyboard and touchpad experience are nearly identical between the two... not nearly as good as old IBM Thinkpads used to be, but that's a trade with IMO the much better touchpad experience on Mac.

That said, I just don't think I can keep buying Apple hardware, just not a fan of the company... I only begrudgingly use Android as there isn't a reasonable, more open option.

I'll probably stick with my M1 air for personal use a couple more years then pass it on. My daughter is still using my now 13yo rMBP with 16gb/512gb. I wish the ram and storage upgrades on mac weren't so overpriced.
by rohansood15 | 2026-03-03 17:33:38+00:00
For the last 2 years, startup wisdom has been that models will continue to get cheaper and better. Claude first, and now Gemini has shown that it's not the case.

We priced an enterprise contract using Flash 1.5 pricing last summer, and today that contract would be unit economic negative if we used Flash 3. Flash 2.5 and now Flash 3.1 Lite barely breaks even.

I predict open-source models and fine-tuning are going to make a real comeback this year for economic reasons.
by testbyhuman_tor | 2026-03-03 17:34:00+00:00
The black box problem is real, but the bigger gap is that most builders — whether they wrote the code or an AI did — never see how a real user actually interacts with the thing. Code quality matters for maintenance. But the first filter is whether someone who has never seen your product can accomplish what you think they can in the first 60 seconds. That feedback loop is missing in most vibe-coded projects, and honestly in a lot of traditionally coded ones too.
by LatencyKills | 2026-03-03 17:34:28+00:00
I’m still relatively new to HN, but I continue to find it fascinating when people share their perspectives on how things work internally. Before joining Apple, I was a senior engineer on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft, and it's amazing how often I bump into people who hold very strong yet incorrect assumptions about how systems are built and maintained.

> I suppose I must not have touched the parts of the platform that use them

It’s understandable not to have direct exposure to every component, given that a complete macOS build and its associated applications encompass tens of millions of lines of code. /s

That said, there’s an important distinction between making systems challenging for casual hackers to analyze and the much harder (if not impossible) goal of preventing skilled researchers from discovering how something works.

> Also, the reason early tools couldn't preserve selector information was selector uniqueing

That isn't even remotely how we were making things difficult back then.

I led the SGX team at Intel for a while, working on in-memory, homomorphic encryption. In that case, the encryption couldn’t be broken through software because the keys were physically fused into the CPU. Yet, a company in China ultimately managed to extract the keys by using lasers to remove layers of the CPU die until they could read the fuses directly.

I’ll wrap up by noting that Apple invests extraordinary effort into making the critical components exceptionally difficult to reverse-engineer. As with good obfuscation—much like good design or craftsmanship—the best work often goes unnoticed precisely because it’s done so well.

I'm done here - you go on believing whatever it is you believe...
by filoleg | 2026-03-03 17:34:51+00:00
The camera analogy breaks at one specific point: who determines the expressive elements of the final work.

With photography, the human determines framing, angle, timing, lens, exposure. The camera just records light from a scene the human selected and composed. Even a random photo reflects where the photographer stood and when they pressed the shutter. The device doesn’t invent the composition.

With AI imagen, the user provides high-level instructions, but the system determines the actual composition, lighting, geometry, textures, etc. The expressive details of the final image are generated by the model, not directly controlled by the user.

That’s why the US copyright laws currently treat them differently. It is less of a "tool vs. tool", and more of whether the human determined the expressive content (or if the system did). Prompting can be creative (in a legal sense), but giving instructions is not the same as controlling the expression.

If I tell a human painter “paint XYZ in an expressionist style,” I don’t become the author of the painting. The painter does, because they determined the expression. And since the painter (in the case of AI imagen) is not a human, then that work usually cannot be copyrighted.

There is an important caveat to all of this: it’s not binary or perfectly clear-cut. If someone iteratively refines prompts, controls seeds, manually inpaints, selects and arranges outputs, heavily edits the result, etc., then those human contributions can be protected. But purely AI-generated output, where the system determines the expressive elements, is not considered human-authored under the current US copyright laws.

Mind you, none of this is perfectly settled, as this is a very rapidly evolving/adapting area of law (as it pertains to AI usage). I am not claiming that this is the end-all of how it should be legislated or that there are no ways to improve it. But the current reasoning within the US copyright law used to address this type of a scenario (at the present moment) doesn't strike me as illogical or unreasonable.
by bikenaga | 2026-03-03 17:34:51+00:00
The inequality is C² + D² ≤ 1, where C is the correlation and D is the disturbance. See the article.

Cited article: "Covariant correlation-disturbance relation and its experimental realization with spin-1/2 particles" - https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/llgb-gq...

"Abstract. We formulate a precise trade-off relation between correlation and disturbance for sequential -outcome quantum measurements in Hilbert spaces of arbitrary dimension. This relation highlights key symmetry properties useful for robust estimation and characterization of the measurement parameters against unitary noise, or in scenarios where shared reference frames are unavailable. In addition, we report on the experimental implementation of the proposal for the qubit case, more precisely in a neutron optical experiment, which is particularly valuable for calibrating and optimizing measurement devices, as confirmed by the theoretical results. Finally, we exploit the optimal trade-off relation for direct estimation of the characteristic noise of single-photon detectors, dark counts, and the finite detection efficiency."
by testbyhuman_tor | 2026-03-03 17:35:24+00:00
Interesting discussion about tracking the AI session as part of the commit. But there is a missing piece in most of these workflows that bugs me: none of them include the step where a real person who was not involved in building it tries to use the result.

You can document the prompt chain, the plan, the design doc. But if nobody outside the team ever touches it before it ships, you are still flying blind on whether the thing actually works for a human who encounters it cold. The AI session log tells you what was intended. It does not tell you what was understood.
by kllrnohj | 2026-03-03 17:35:31+00:00
> you an also just buy a RPI for a fraction of the price of the GMKtec G10.

Sadly not really. The Pi 5 8gb canakit starter set, which feels like a more true price since it's including power supply, MicroSD card, and case, is now $210. The pi5 8gb by itself is $135.

A 16gb pi5 kit, to match just the RAM capacity to say nothing of the difference in storage {size, speed, quality} and networking, is then also an eye watering $300
by hedora | 2026-03-03 17:35:33+00:00
I agree; the web ecosystem is enshittified garbage.

However, I'm just suggesting a modest improvement to browser extension security (that doesn't completely break ad blockers like Chrome's approach).

In practice, I run an ad blocker, and just trust that it won't exfiltrate bank passwords and stuff. Imagine the blast radius for a successful and undetected UBlock Origin supply chain attack!

My "pick one" approach (ad blockers would pick the middle option) would mean that comparable supply chain attacks would also need to include a sandbox zero day in the web browser.
Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years before releasing v1
by florentmsl | 2026-03-03 17:36:10+00:00
I’ve been building for 5 years.

I rewrote it 4 times (Blazor Server -> Blazor WASM + Asp backend -> React + Node -> Ruby on Rails - Ruby and Rails are both awesome btw.) and kept telling myself I was “improving the architecture” when I was really avoiding release. I also spun up a few side projects in that period and shipped none of them.

This is the first one I finally pushed live.

It’s Upzone, an inventory app for ecommerce warehouse teams: receiving, bin locations, pick/pack/ship workflows, and Shopify/Amazon/... sync. Built on Rails 8, which has been genuinely great to work with. A QuickBooks integration is also coming

If you run ops or warehouse workflows, I’d love literally any kind of feedback:

https://upzonehq.com
by testbyhuman_tor | 2026-03-03 17:36:12+00:00
Nice project. The fact that you built it because your family could not use the Obsidian setup is interesting. Did you test the app with them before shipping it here? Curious if the people who are not you found the interface intuitive, or if there were spots where they got stuck. That gap between "makes sense to the builder" and "makes sense to a new user" is always wider than expected.
by dhosek | 2026-03-03 17:36:35+00:00
I’ve been reading a presidential bio every year (I’m currently up to Monroe and I hope that I’ll be dead or not reading before I’ll be reading the 44th bio¹) and it’s an interesting way to get focused senses of American history and trade between the former colonies was a big issue before the constitution was instituted.

⸻

1. Cleveland doesn’t get two bios.
by Shyaamal11 | 2026-03-03 17:36:43+00:00
Worth separating two things the thread keeps conflating: data residency and data sovereignty are not the same, and the CLOUD Act is the clearest proof.
Residency = where data physically sits. Sovereignty = who legally controls it.
You can store data on AWS Frankfurt and still have zero sovereignty, the controlling entity is US-domiciled and fully subject to the CLOUD Act. Geographic residency without legal sovereignty is essentially compliance theater.
Real sovereignty requires the controlling entity, jurisdiction, and infrastructure layer to sit outside US reach which typically means infrastructure you actually operate, not just "hosted in your region" SaaS.

(Disclosure: I work at IOMETE where we think about this a lot. I am happy to go deeper if useful.)
by tracker1 | 2026-03-03 17:36:52+00:00
The last generation of Intel Macbooks was so bad... the i9 I was assigned from my job at the time would constantly go in and out of thermal throttling, making the whole experience effectively useless... It was also so locked down, I couldn't apply any mods to be able to underclock/volt the thing to something reasonable.

I really do hope that Linux becomes an option in more workplaces without being too locked down for developers.
by solatic | 2026-03-03 17:37:03+00:00
> Is it this MBA idea that management itself is a profession

I don't think that you can take somebody with a finance background, take them straight out of their MBA, and drop them in an EM position. That's a bad fit. Good EMs need to come from software engineering backgrounds, mostly for the reasons you cite.

But management truly is a different profession with a different set of skills and a different set of challenges.

Even on the IC track, there's languages and frameworks that I touched early in my career (e.g. Java/Spring) and haven't touched in, I don't know, a decade, and I have not been keeping up with whatever is most recent best practice there. If I were to go into an IC role for one of those frameworks, I might as well be going into an IC role for a language I haven't learned before, ever. I expect someone who has been working with that language on a daily basis to really, really know it - having the standard library practically memorized, knowing common pitfalls, doing a lot of stuff from muscle memory, someone who you give them a PR that "looks OK" and they start reading and immediately can say "well that's just not even remotely idiomatic".

EMs are almost guaranteed to lose that touch because their day job is talking to people, not writing code. That's not to say that they couldn't go back to the IC track and start to sharpen those skills again, but EMs with FOMO who try to stay in the code are spending that time not talking to people. The lack of focus makes them bad EMs.
by thatmf | 2026-03-03 17:37:09+00:00
TL;DR- consumers pay for tariffs. Duh.

As someone adjacent to the wine biz, few things worth noting:

- Their data source is a major wine importer. The economic realities of the majors versus the smaller, boutique importers, or even the larger independent ones, are very different, because of their market position, reach, their clientele, the type (mass-market) product they carry, etc... in addition to the simple financials of having padding and ability to plan long-term. Anecdotally, most of the smaller-to-mid-size importers I know have actually cut their margins, and are hanging on by a thread. For anyone smaller than the two or three very biggest players, the tariffs have been a drag on business at both ends, and for some have been existential. It's driving consolidation as well, which is never good for consumers. Imagine doing a study on the software industry and only talking to Microsoft.

- In the US we have the three tier system (producer -> importer -> distributor -> retailer) and each of those take a cut, obviously, resulting in higher costs. So those tariffs compound at each layer. There are a few exceptions where you can be a "direct import" retailer (e.g. K&L in CA) but these are a small piece of the pie. Don't even get me started on the costs of shipping, the byzantine legal compliance, etc.

- As for the 14% thing; I'm skeptical of their insinuation of causality. Relevant to this study, 2018, 2019 were exceptionally hot growing seasons in most of europe, a trend which has unfortunately continued, which naturally lead to higher ABV, even as critical trends move in the opposite direction.
by cosmic_cheese | 2026-03-03 17:37:29+00:00
The increased adoption of webviews has resulted in a death by a thousand cuts effect on Windows 11 performance. The speed bump that comes from going from an up to date Windows 11 install to a up to date Windows 10 install on the same machine is stunning… W10 is much more snappy in every regard despite being nearly identical functionally speaking.

I won’t try to claim that Electron and friends have no place is software development but we absolutely should be pushing back harder against stuffing it everywhere it possibly can be.
Show HN: Free Math Sheets – Generate math worksheets for K-5 problems
by mchaver | 2026-03-03 17:37:40+00:00
This is an open source project I created to do more math practice with my kids. Right now it supports math from grades K through 5. Pick a grade, skill and more details, the number of problems you want and it will generate a PDF worksheet and answer sheet. No login/signup required. I will iron out issue and eventually add higher levels. If you have anything in particular you would like to see, let me know. You are also welcome to contribute to the project or fork it.

https://github.com/sophikos/free-math-sheets
Show HN: Design Jam, ASCII wireframes and annotations that export as AI prompts
by Adrig | 2026-03-03 17:38:11+00:00
Hi HN!

I'm a designer who works with Claude Code daily. The standard feedback loop is frustrating: I'd screenshot something, describe it in words, and the AI would misinterpret what I meant.

So I built a Chrome extension that lets you pin comments directly on live page elements, then export everything as a structured prompt. Click an element, describe what you want changed, hit export, paste into your AI agent. There's also an ASCII canvas mode for roughing out layouts and edit existing elements. No images, everything stays as text that fits in a clipboard. Local-only, no accounts, no cloud.

This is one of my first "dev" projects, would love to hear what you think!
by ben_w | 2026-03-03 17:38:28+00:00
Perhaps. Even that may not be important if the METR progress line continues much longer, because then all those billion dollars "worth" of software written over the past 3-ish years get re-invented for cents on the dollar.

Separately, I think code is more like an invention than a work of art, and should have been subject only to patent laws instead of (and not in addition to!) copyright laws. This doesn't really make much difference now, as AI doesn't (at least in the UK) have personhood for either copyright or patent law: https://www.briffa.com/blog/can-you-obtain-a-patent-for-inve...
by specialist | 2026-03-03 17:38:35+00:00
Correct.

The choice is between democracy and our current ever worsening sociopolitical hellscape.

If eliminating bots and sockpuppets is the price for restoring some semblance of democracy, then gosh darn.

And if social media, targeted ads, and algorithmic hate machines are collateral damage, than gee double gosh darn.

Those sacrifices are a price I'm willing to pay.
by cluckindan | 2026-03-03 17:38:49+00:00
Read the fine print. You’re usually not consenting to cookies, you’re consenting to having your data gathered, processed, enriched and sold by hundreds of companies around the world.

One click usually gives random foreign corpos the right to your data across a multitude of platforms, the right to identify you across data sets, and to permanently link your device identifiers to you, for ”fraud detection” on a site which sells nothing.

Clicking on accept or deny on those notices makes no real difference, since the ”partners” and ”vendors” usually enshrine their core data activities into the ”legitimate interest” category, which has no opt-out.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-03-03 17:38:51+00:00
This is definitely not true. It’s all dependent on the company size.

I work in cloud consulting (specialize in app dev).

I worked at AWS ProServe (full blue badge RSU earning employee) before working for a much smaller company. I’ve seen the leveling guidelines for both.

An L5 (mid level) at AWS had to be a subject matter expert in at least one area (development, DevOps, security, etc) and be able to lead a “workstream” of a larger project including dealing with a customer or a smaller project by themselves. That maps to a “Senior Architect” at my current company.

A senior (L6) at AWS should be able to handle larger projects with multiple workstreams and deal with more ambiguity. That maps to a staff at my current company (current position)

An L7 is usually over a practice and/or handling multiple large implementations and more involved with strategy. Imagine someone (who hypothetically - they don’t need outside consultants) was working with Netflix.

That maps to a “Senior Staff” at our company.

You might ask what about lower levels in consulting? I never work with them. The bilingual cloud architects/senior cloud architects work with them. We don’t hire anything lower than that in the US.
by bunderbunder | 2026-03-03 17:39:19+00:00
I'm not so sure.

In earlier text adventures (e.g., Infocom games), some portion of those constraints were due to the authors failing to anticipate legitimate ways that users would try to phrase things and account for them in the game. But that's not nearly such a problem in anything made since the late '90s, especially if you stick to xyzzy award winners.

The more essential reason for that constraint is that it's just good storytelling. The author of a work of IF has an idea they want to explore. That main idea could be narrative (Photopia or Anchorhead), or it could be a gameplay mechanic (Savoir-Faire or Counterfeit Monkey). But in any case, if your goal is to appreciate the creator's vision, those constraints are critical because they telegraph to you, the player, what you should and should not be exploring.

This isn't an idea that's specific to text adventures, either. The creators of the Outer Wilds deliberately made areas flat and boring when there wasn't anything there for the player to do to advance the story, specifically because they didn't want players wasting time on exploration that would ultimately prove to be pointless. This is also why open world games that do go for a more uniformly detailed world also need to hand-hold the player and tell them where they need to go every step of the way. Without that players would tend to get lost, lose their sense of progress, and ultimately end up bored.

I think that, because of this dynamic, using AI to flesh out the unimportant bits of the game would be a cardinal game design sin. Making bloat cheap and easy does not make it good. I just makes more of it.
by lexszero_ | 2026-03-03 17:39:19+00:00
Just curious, what come first and second in this use of the phrase applied to computer security? I came to know the expression from fire circus performance and adjacent circles, where first and second are safety of the audience and the venue, and third is your own. I use it often when I'm about to knowingly do something sketchy or potentially dangerous without applying safety practices required "by the book", acknowledging the present danger to myself and accepting the risk. I never saw it used in infosec context.
by pritesh1908 | 2026-03-03 17:39:32+00:00
Great writeup. The speaking vs listening framing is underrated. TTFT with Groq and colocation are both real wins that don't get talked about enough.

For anyone wanting this production ready out of the box, Dograh is an OSS project built on the same principles and goes much beyond ( https://github.com/dograh-hq/dograh ).

Groq, Flux(Deepgram), instant barge-in cancel, full streaming pipeline etc .but also telephony, echo handling, tool calls for external services, variable extraction, and domain dictionary baked in. All the parts needed in production are already solved.
by 5upplied_demand | 2026-03-03 17:39:41+00:00
> It could be that there simply weren’t enough hispanic and black families in the sample to draw an inference. The study looked only at affluent school districts in California. There’s not a lot of black and hispanic students in those school districts to begin with. And the white families are much more likely to be wealthier and have more freedom to move.

It could be that, but the study itself doesn't show that at all. It actually shows the opposite. Hispanics were, by far, the largest subset of students in the study. In the Central Cities area of the study, Asian and black student population was about even.
by eureka_boy | 2026-03-03 17:40:05+00:00
I wanted a way to access my mac terminal from my iPhone without have to setup a weird VPN or network rules. So I ended up a building a workaround: that is using webrtc instead of ssh setup, this way it is also faster to setup and also latency very low cause now they are connected directly instead of a VPN overhead.

When the mac app is running it makes an outbound connection to signaling server and registers itself under the account. Iphone connects to this same signaling server to request a connection to this mac. Once both the host and remote are verified it establishes a direct p2p webrtc connection.

Why not Tailscale + Termius?
To get Tailscale + Termius working you need to: install Tailscale on both devices, enable Remote Login on your Mac, generate SSH keys, configure authorized_keys, and pay for Termius Pro. That's 5 steps before you've written a single line of code and Termius Pro costs $10/month just to sync your credentials across devices.