MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by glitcher | 2026-03-04 15:38:51+00:00
I like the author's idea:

> So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should stipulate that the research it supports can’t be published in a for-profit journal. That’s it! If the public paid for it, it shouldn’t be paywalled.

The article then acknowledges this isn't a magic solution to all the problems discussed, but it's so simple and makes so much sense as a first step.

I'm no expert here and there are probably unintended consequences or other ways to game that system for profit, but even if so wouldn't that still be a better starting point?
by dylnbk | 2026-03-04 15:39:11+00:00
I've been spending the last couple weeks trying the latest audio and video generative tools, and at this point the only limitation really is how much time and money do you have..

I've been using generative AI tools for years now, but it's the first time I've felt a little bit sad about the future that I can see on the horizon.

Right now, you somewhat need a person to give it a level creative control, but in the not so near future I can envisage that most creative content online will likely be highly automated, with the big tech companies funnelling generative media 24/7 bespoke to each individual on the fly.

On the other hand, as someone who loves making music and videos but has a lot less time these days, it has been amazing and fulfilling to run my old music creations through AI and spin up countless different styles, genres, and have the ability to make custom videos within a few hours.
by tshaddox | 2026-03-04 15:39:32+00:00
Do you have an example of the tautological tests you're referring to? What comes to mind to me is genuinely logically tautological tests, like "assert(true || expectedResult == actualResult)" which is a mistake I don't even expect modern AI coding tools to make. But I suspect you're talking about a subtler type of test which at first glance appears useful but actually isn't.
by MickeyShmueli | 2026-03-04 15:39:35+00:00
the tautological test problem someone mentioned, i've found the easiest fix is to literally make the test fail first before letting the agent fix it

like don't ask it to "write tests for this function", instead give it a function that's deliberately broken in a specific way, make it write a test that catches that bug, verify the test actually fails, THEN fix the function

this forces the test to be meaningful because it has to detect a real failure mode. if the agent can't make the test fail by breaking the code, the test is useless

the other thing that helps is being really specific about edge cases upfront. instead of "write tests for this API endpoint", say "write tests that verify it returns 400 when the email field is missing, returns 409 when the email already exists, returns 422 when the email is malformed" etc

agents are weirdly good at implementing specific test scenarios but terrible at figuring out what scenarios actually matter. which honestly is the same problem junior devs have lol
Show HN: Engram update – 92% DMR, hosted API, lessons shipping agent memory
by tstockham | 2026-03-04 15:39:49+00:00
About two weeks ago, I posted Engram here, a memory layer for AI agents. The response was great and pushed me to keep building. Here's where things stand.

What changed since the last post:

DMR benchmark: 92.0% accuracy (460/500). Retrieval hit rate is 96.4%. This is competitive with systems backed by graph databases and Python ML stacks. Engram is TypeScript + SQLite.

LOCOMO benchmark (long-conversation memory): 80.0% across all 10 conversations, 1,540 questions. Full context scores 88.4% but costs 30x more tokens.

Bi-temporal memory model. Every memory has valid_from/valid_until timestamps. Point-in-time recall via asOf parameter. Contradiction detection automatically supersedes stale facts.

Hosted API launched on Fly.io with Stripe billing. Self-hosting remains free (bring your own Gemini key). Hosted tiers start at $29/mo.

OpenAI-compatible base URL. One env var to use Groq, Cerebras, Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible provider instead of Gemini.

70 tests passing. Published engram-sdk@0.5.5 on npm.

What I learned:
Benchmark scores are fragile. 13 commits to my core vault module dropped LOCOMO from 84.5% to 62%. I had to treat the eval suite like a regression test, run it after every meaningful change. If you're building a memory/RAG system and not doing this, you're flying blind.

The judge LLM matters more than you'd think. Switching from one model to another as the benchmark judge changed scores by 10+ points on the same data. Always disclose your judge model. We use Gemini 2.5 Flash.

Temporal context is everything. Memories without timestamps are almost useless for "when" questions. Prefixing memories with their conversation date and teaching the LLM to resolve relative dates ("yesterday," "last week") was the single biggest accuracy improvement.

The API is the product, not the SDK. 95% of users will hit a REST endpoint, not import a TypeScript module. I wish I'd built the hosted API sooner.

What's next: LangChain/CrewAI integrations, an Engram skill for OpenClaw agents, and getting the academic paper on arXiv.

Happy to answer questions about benchmarks, architecture, or the experience of building this as a PM who codes.
GitHub: https://github.com/tstockham96/engram
Site: https://engram.fyi
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/engram-sdk
Hosted API: https://engram-hosted.fly.dev
by narvidas | 2026-03-04 15:39:56+00:00
In full-time employment this is sad but true. There is a way out of this toxic loop however.

As a consultant/contractor I always evangelise simplification and modelling problems from first principles. I jump between companies every 6-12 months, cleaning up after years of complexity-driven development, or outright designing robust systems that anybody (not just the author) can maintain and extend.

This level of honesty helps you build a reputation. I am never short for work. I also bill more than I could ever as a full-time engineer based in Europe.
by cma256 | 2026-03-04 15:39:59+00:00
> There may be an argument for leaning less on code review. When code is expensive to produce and is likely to stay in production for many years it's obviously important to review it very carefully. If code is cheap and can be inexpensively replaced maybe we can lower our review standards?

Agree with everything else you said except this. In my opinion, this assumes code becomes more like a consumable as code-production costs reduce. But I don't think that's the case. Incorrect, but not visibly incorrect, code will sit in place for years.
by esafak | 2026-03-04 15:40:07+00:00
Code review should be mandatory and reviewers should ask big PRs to be broken up, and its submitters to be able to defend every line of code. When the computer is generating the code, the most important duty of the submitter is to vouch for it, and they should be called on to do so by way of questioning. To do otherwise is to push that responsibility onto others, which creates the bad incentive of making others do all your QA. And nobody is going to be rewarded for doing that.
by maccard | 2026-03-04 15:40:22+00:00
This is an absolutely solid buy I think. My wife's macbook is no longer receiving MacOS (and as a result Safari) updates, and all she needs it for is "big laptop tasks" and occasional video calls. This is the absolute perfect purchase for her.

A return to 8GB laptops would be a good thing overall, so if this becomes a "target" for electron based apps, it would be a total game changer. The iPhone 17 has 8GB RAM, and honestly for the workloads we're doing it should be enough. I think there was a big jump when we jumped to 1080 screens on laptops about a decade ago (seriously...) but most of the resource usgae growth there has been needless since.
by bluGill | 2026-03-04 15:40:25+00:00
It doesn't have to be a certified install company in many places, it just needs to be inspected which most states will do for homeowners. (if your area is different contact your representative)

UL or other certification is a very good idea. They can't automatically deny coverage for lack of certification, but it becomes a much harder fight for you to prove the non-certified equipment wasn't at fault.
by xivzgrev | 2026-03-04 15:40:25+00:00
Not an engineer but reminds me of a similar situation I've seen interviewing

Sometimes we'll ask market sizing questions. We will say it's a case question, it's to see their thought process, they're supposed to ask questions, state assumptions, etc.

Occasionally we'd get a candidate that just doesn't get it. They respond "oh I'd Google that". And I'll coach them back but they just can't get past that. It's about seeing how you approach problems when you can't just Google the answer, and we use general topics that are easily accessible to do so. But the downside is yes, you can google the answer.
by ehutch79 | 2026-03-04 15:40:43+00:00
Right? also, where's the thunderbolt ports? and it needs about another inch? maybe half inch on the screen. And really, 16gb is the new minimum. There's a whole bunch of acceleration and co processing features in the m series missing from the a series, so they really should put an m5 in there instead...

Seriously though. Every feature someone says is missing and should have been added would be another $100 on the cost. This is already likely a low margin product meant of someone who's only using a browser and maybe a few apps.
by mholt | 2026-03-04 15:40:49+00:00
But does it automatically provision the DNS records and rotate the keys?

I'm actually kind of furious at nginx's marketing materials around ECH. They compare with other servers but completely ignore Caddy, saying that they're the only practical path to deploying ECH right now. Total lies: https://x.com/mholt6/status/2029219467482603717
by idobaiba | 2026-03-04 15:41:35+00:00
I built Wezzly because I got tired of the “copy-paste dance” with AI.

Most of the time when I ask AI for help, the hardest part isn’t the question — it’s explaining the context. I have to copy logs from my terminal, take screenshots of errors, paste pieces of a webpage, or describe what I’m looking at.

So I started experimenting with a different interface: an AI companion that lives on the desktop and can see the same screen you’re looking at.

Wezzly runs as a lightweight native macOS app (Tauri + Rust). It periodically captures the screen and sends the visual context to the AI model you choose (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Ollama, etc.). The idea is that the AI understands what you're looking at without needing screenshots or long explanations.

A few workflows where it’s been useful for me so far:

• Debugging terminal errors without copying logs
• Watching tutorials or videos and asking questions while they play
• Getting help filling forms or navigating complex dashboards

Everything runs locally on the machine. Your API keys stay in your system keychain and screenshots aren’t stored.

I’m curious what people here think about this interface direction.

Is “continuous visual context” the missing piece for AI assistants, or does this cross a line where it becomes too intrusive?

Project: https://wezzly.ai
GitHub: https://github.com/idobaibai-wezzly/wezzly-companion-public
Demo: https://youtu.be/ya1Kz_iAraE
by blahgeek | 2026-03-04 15:41:57+00:00
I completely understand that as a cheap one, it has to be worse than macbook air in some aspect to make the product line work. However I'm genuinely curious why it's thicker and no lighter than the Macbook Air, while at the same time has shorter battery life, less ports, no keyboard light, and a smaller chip? Do they put dead weight inside it or something?
by jaydenmilne | 2026-03-04 15:42:06+00:00
People forget that macOS and even Windows (well, pre-11) excel at swapping. There are all sorts of hacks and tricks they do to make sure the system remains responsive when under severe memory pressure.

This compared to Linux, where desktop environments seem to get noticeably bogged down and stressed out when swapping (the cursor starts stuttering and the shell becomes unresponsive).

Although even KDE does OK on 4gb of RAM in 2026 as long as you only have one instance of Chromium loaded.
by bee_rider | 2026-03-04 15:42:11+00:00
Why can’t LLMs understand the big picture? I mean, a lot of companies have most of their information available in a digital form at this point, so it could be consumed by the LLM.

I think if anything, we have a better chance in the little picture: you can go to lunch with your engineering coworkers or talk to somebody on the factory floor and get insights that will never touch the computers.

Giant systems of constraints, optimizing many-dimensional user metrics: eventually we will hit the wall where it is easier to add RAM to machines than humans.
by kunai | 2026-03-04 15:42:27+00:00
It's a much better QOL thing I've found to just ssh into a remote Linux box from a Mac. The BSD stuff on macOS isn't bad at all, just an adjustment... and homebrew lets you get your environment however you'd like.

I am curious how long Apple is going to continue to support XQuartz though. There seems to be no equivalent wayland project.
by toomuchtodo | 2026-03-04 15:42:32+00:00
We’ll be fine with China developing the sciences and technology the world will rely on, they lead in the vast majority of frontier fields. I’m more likely to see quality of life improvements through China’s efforts versus that of the US. They are focused on outcomes and state capacity, not shareholder returns (as the US is).

If you want the world to be wealthy in consumer excess and quality of life, China is the path to success, not the US. Whether the US succeeds or not is irrelevant unless you are very wealthy as an owner of capital.

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-tec (August 2024)

> Now covering 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas, the Tech Tracker’s dataset has been expanded and updated from five years of data (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years of data (2003–2023).

> These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies.

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-tracker (March 2023)

> Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.

> China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defence, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key quantum technology areas. The Critical Technology Tracker shows that, for some technologies, all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the US). Notably, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks highly (and often first or second) across many of the 44 technologies included in the Critical Technology Tracker. We also see China’s efforts being bolstered through talent and knowledge import: one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country. China’s lead is the product of deliberate design and long-term policy planning, as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
by hereme888 | 2026-03-04 15:42:40+00:00
what are the chances! I honestly did not even see that when I created mine. So mine is different in that:
- Avoids windhawk-AV issues
- Simpler uninstall
- SEH protection
- LRU cache is bound with a 50 mb cap and TTL
- COM shell extension using a windows-supported method (Microsoft Detours)
by hn_acker | 2026-03-04 15:42:56+00:00
> So you see general entertainment TV shows as the same as literally conservative radio? If a conservative radio show gave equal time to Jasmine Crockett who would even listen? If Hannity gave equal time to Joe Biden, probably hours of equal time, who would even want that?

(As far as the FCC is allowed to consider within First Amendment boundaries,) What makes Stephen Colbert's show "general entertainment" under the assumption that Hannity's show is "conservative"? Put another way, what makes Hannity's show not "general entertainment" yet makes Colbert's show "general entertainment"?

(I'm not trying to distract from xracy's comment [1] about selective enforcement.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47097939
by kccqzy | 2026-03-04 15:43:19+00:00
> it uses 150% scaling (as opposed to the ideal 200%) which means you have subtle display artifacts

I agree with you, but I’m afraid Apple doesn’t agree with us. The recent MacBooks do not use 200% scaling out of the box anymore. It is a setting that only needs use. I have no reason to believe that out of the box the default settings on this MacBook Neo will use 200% scaling either.
by ndriscoll | 2026-03-04 15:43:19+00:00
Sure, and if we want to prioritize your ability to do so despite living in an authoritarian hellhole, those of us in countries that respect their citizens rights will have to put these verification systems in place. It just needs to be understood by technologists building this stuff that this is the tradeoff they're making.

And it's likely a temporary win there until the authoritarian regimes mandate local monitoring software and send you to the gulag if they detect opaque traffic.
by chasd00 | 2026-03-04 15:43:25+00:00
whether Israel cares or not the US people definitely care and half the nation literally wants Trump hanging from a tree. The US midterm elections in November are going to make things 1,000% harder for the Trump admin and widespread Iranian civilian deaths will up that by an order of magnitude.

Back to speaking tactically, JDAMs are cost effective enough that I bet they are the only gravity bomb used. I could see using unguided bombs for things like airbase runways but i bet they stick with JDAMs for logistical simplicity.
by malexw | 2026-03-04 15:43:37+00:00
I think Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" might give a bit of insight here. One of my take-aways after reading that book is that the specific implementation of a function is not very important if you have tests. He argues that it can sometimes be easier to completely re-write a function than to take the time to understand it - as long as you can validate that your re-write performs the same way. This mindset lines up pretty closely with how I've been using LLMs.

If that's true, then I would think the emphasis in code review should be more on test quality and verifying that the spec is captured accurately, and as you suggest, the actual implementation is less important.
by someplaceguy | 2026-03-04 15:43:51+00:00
> the DFA for an extended RE (including a lazy DFA implemented using derivatives, as here) is worst-case doubly exponential in the length of the expression

The authors seem to claim linear complexity:

> the result is RE#, the first general-purpose regex engine to support intersection and complement with linear-time guarantees, and also the overall fastest regex engine on a large set of benchmarks
by bjackman | 2026-03-04 15:44:14+00:00
I think that's also a good proposal, and I don't think it conflicts with the "prestigious departments stop publishing in $journal" idea at all. Probably we want both.

Only difference is that the author is writing for a wide audience and his best angle to change the world is probably to influence the thinking of future policymakers. While I am just an annoying "why don't you just" guy, my "audience" is just the friends I happen to have in prestigious research groups.

Adam M also probably has lots of friends in prestigious research groups (IIUC although he complains a lot about academia he was quite successful within it, at least on its own terms). And the fact that he instead chooses to advocate government policy changes instead of what I'm proposing, is probably a good indication that he knows something I don't about the motivatioms of influential academics.
by munchbunny | 2026-03-04 15:44:15+00:00
> If they're good at whatever it is they end up doing, that's good.

As a former PM (now an engineer), I think that's pretty much it. Teams and companies will vary a lot in terms of what they want the PM's to do, with some common patterns emerging, but as long as the PM's do the work well then the team is much better off. The key issue is how much you can trust the PM to hold up their end of the project.

A common theme I've noticed among good PM's: good judgement. When the team can trust the PM's judgement, the whole team flows better. When the team can't trust the PM's judgement, the PM is worth negative bandwidth.
by newzino | 2026-03-04 15:44:28+00:00
The detail that makes this more than a labeling error: the fictional nature appeared in the journal's author guidelines, not in the published articles. Researchers who cited these 61 papers had no way to distinguish them from genuine case reports. 218 citations later, the fiction is embedded in secondary analyses and literature reviews written by people who had no idea.

The "Baby Boy Blue" (2010) case is the clearest example of the harm. An infant allegedly exposed to opioids through breast milk. That case influenced clinical guidance on codeine safety in nursing for years. The CARE guidelines (Consensus-based Clinical Case Reporting Guidelines) exist specifically to create transparency in case reporting. They're voluntary, which is how a journal can run a 25-year undisclosed fiction program and technically say the authors knew.
by Aachen | 2026-03-04 15:44:30+00:00
Hi strcat, we had this conversation often enough that I'm starting to recognise the username. It's the same every time: Graphene argues it's dangerous, tech-savvy users want it but aren't necessarily interested in the upkeep (even if they're technically capable of making such a build), plus missing security patches (part of the point of this OS, otherwise you can use Lineage or whatever), and Graphene is under no obligation to provide anything to anyone. Same arguments today as they were from the start except now maybe the security patches' embargo time makes it even more hostile to do custom builds by power users
by Applejinx | 2026-03-04 15:44:45+00:00
I'm a Reaper user, and I'm Chris from Airwindows. If you run with my standalone Apple Silicon plugins on these there is essentially no limit to what you can get done in music making. The track counts are gonna be impossibly high: we're generations away from that being a bottleneck, or from struggling with modern graphics scenarios in the sense of 'artist work'.

Maybe if you mean running local diffusion models? Surely that's all being done with agents now, like off base Mac Minis which this competes directly with. Maybe web browsing is too much for it, but that is such an indictment…
by fzaninotto | 2026-03-04 15:44:50+00:00
Is "Agentic Engineering" is the new name for "Agent Experience"? If so, and even though I love Simon's contributions, there are many other guides to making codebases more welcoming to agents...

Shameless plug: I wrote one. https://marmelab.com/blog/2026/01/21/agent-experience.html