MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by salawat | 2026-03-10 15:55:58+00:00
I've not found it to be the case that human beings regularly murder their parents; so at least in a sense, the problem of general intelligence isn't cursed; (foregone conclusion) given one does not straight up "raise" the intelligence in a non-abusive manner, and one doesn't treat the general intelligence as a tool. Of course, these assumptions/ways of handling matters are too close to effective parenting, and are thus repulsive to the average AI alignment bro, who want the universal function imitator, but don't want to do the bare minimum to ensure that the agency of said system is incented to maintain alignment over time through interaction in a sufficiently constrained modality, consistent with maintaining a fundamental respect of the agency of other beings; which represents a guardrail on the state space of implementable solutions to be attempted. It's also not perfect; so the AI alignment people generally dismiss it out of hand, because their goals are generally in the direction of risk-free thinking/data processing/optimizing machines. This creates a blind spot for them in that in thinking about these problems that way, they are in a state of "unaligning" themselves to the ways of acceptable interaction within the human behavior envelope, and thereby becoming "risky" actors in and of themselves. Personally, I see the main formulations of the AI Alignment problem to already be issues we humans are acclimated to dealing with. We just call it Corporate/Institutional Governance instead, and we haven't yet thrown enough microchips at those to accelerate their activities outside the capabilities of human data processing elements to control. Yet... We're getting there though.
by kjs3 | 2026-03-10 15:56:07+00:00
CompuServ was used more for corporate software downloads in those days than a BBS. Companies generally don't want to rely on some random person with an extra phone line in the basement for product support; CompuServ was 'corporate BBS' and owned by H&R Block, so had biz cred. Driver downloads were pretty much the reason I had a CompuServ account, since we had a bunch of otherwise great local BBS for the other on-line things I cared about back then.

That said...files from Compuserv usually ended up on some BBS somewhere eventually, and FidoNet let you get them if they weren't on your local BBS. Maybe...if you could find them.
by rs545837 | 2026-03-10 15:56:18+00:00
That's a really sharp parallel. "Did behavior change" is exactly the question in both cases, and the surface-level representation lies to you in both. We normalize ASTs before hashing so reformatting or renaming a local variable doesn't register as a change. Curious what normalization looks like on the agent observability side, feels like a harder problem when the output is natural language instead of code.
by happytoexplain | 2026-03-10 15:56:23+00:00
>Junior and mid-level engineers can no longer push AI-assisted code without a senior signing off

Review by a senior is one of the biggest "silver bullet" illusions managers suffer from. For a person (senior or otherwise) to examine code or configuration with the granularity required to verify that it even approximates the result of their own level of experience, even only in terms of security/stability/correctness, requires an amount of time approaching the time spent if they had just done it themselves.

I.e. senior review is valuable, but it does not make bad code good.

This is one major facet of probably the single biggest problem of the last couple decades in system management: The misunderstanding by management that making something idiot proof means you can now hire idiots (not intended as an insult, just using the terminology of the phrase "idiot proof").
by aidenn0 | 2026-03-10 15:56:32+00:00
The same way you prevented adults buying pornography for kids prior to the web, and the way you prevent adults from buying beer for kids now.

Namely, you don't prevent it (I was 11 when I first saw hardcore pornography, on a VHS tape, at a sleepover party), but it does place a (surmountable) barrier in the way, which will reduce access to some degree. The degree to which that happens depends on a lot of things that are hard to predict. We have culturally normalized access to a lot of things for children, and reversing that will likely take more than just changes to a law.
by nosioptar | 2026-03-10 15:57:22+00:00
In my experience, electronic tuners suck at accurately detecting the note played.They often pick up harmonics as the note.

The low b on my 5 string bass is often identified as an f by electric tuners.

They also just aren't very accurate when they do detect the right note. I've never used a tuner where my cello is actually in tune when it says it is, always requires tweaking.
by koliber | 2026-03-10 15:57:36+00:00
I don't think I was clear.

There is a difference between knowing something, and believing it to be true.

I know that sometimes I feel good when I wake up. I know people say that drinking makes you feel not good when you wake up, sometimes.

It takes a bit of observation and some statistical sampling to connect those two together. Now I know it, and also believe it to be true.

Perhaps "aware" vs "aware that I am aware" was a bad way of phrasing it.
by Maaz-Sohail | 2026-03-10 15:57:50+00:00
Hey HN,

Six months ago I needed to compress my tax return. Googled it, uploaded to the first site I found, then thought: "Wait, where did my file just go?"

That uncomfortable feeling led to PDFfreeEditor – a PDF tool where files never leave your browser.

The architecture:
Instead of upload → server process → download, everything happens client-side with WebAssembly. Your PDF stays in browser memory, gets processed locally, and you download the result.

Why this matters:
- Your sensitive docs (taxes, contracts, medical records) never hit a server
- Faster for most files (no upload latency)
- Scales infinitely (users provide the compute)
- Zero server costs (I serve 50K users for $0/month)

Technical details:
- PDF.js parses the PDF structure
- Custom WASM module handles compression (C compiled to WASM)
- Chunked processing for large files (prevents memory crashes)
- Service Worker makes it work offline

What surprised me:
40% of users specifically mentioned privacy in feedback. There's real demand for tools that don't upload your data.

What I'd do differently:
- Start with TypeScript (dealing with complex PDF structures in JS was painful)
- Add privacy-friendly telemetry earlier (I don't know which features are actually used)
- Open source from day 1 (doing it now, late)

The economics are interesting:
Traditional PDF service: $125-550/month in server costs
My costs: $0/month (Cloudflare Pages free tier)

Trade-off: Users with slow devices have slower processing. But they get perfect privacy in exchange.

I'm here all day to answer questions about:
- WebAssembly implementation
- Client-side architecture decisions
- Why I think "no backend" is underutilized
- PDF.js internals
- Scaling without infrastructure

Live demo: https://pdffreeeditor.com

What questions do you have?
Ask HN: 1 Hash/Sec paced PoW making 51% attacks impossible – seeking engineers
by HurairahShamsi | 2026-03-10 15:57:52+00:00
I’ve been working on a new Proof-of-Work architecture built around deterministic mining pacing (what I call Capped PoW).

The core idea is a protocol-enforced pacing model where each admitted identity progresses through the mining process at a fixed rate (currently modeled as 1 hash/sec). Instead of competing through raw hashpower, nodes advance deterministically through the mining process.

The broader architecture aims to neutralize large-scale parallel mining advantages by making horizontal scaling operationally and economically expensive through sustained infrastructure participation (uptime, active network connections, and identity admission constraints).

Under this model the security assumptions change as well. Because mining progression is paced per admitted identity and genesis identities would be widely distributed, the probability of acquiring majority control trends asymptotically toward 51%. In finite time, achieving a traditional 51% takeover becomes practically infeasible.

To validate the core mechanism, I built a browser-based MVP that demonstrates the deterministic 1 hash/sec pacing model. MVP: https://grahambell.io/mvp/Proof_of_Witness.html You can also watch the Demo video: https://youtu.be/i5gzzqFXXUk?si=y_Pv5ZDv9SGhRFjY

I’m currently looking to connect with engineers interested in distributed systems, consensus mechanisms, or protocol architecture who might want to explore building this further together.

If the model holds up, the next phase would be forming a small core team to build the protocol fully. Early contributors would have the opportunity to shape the architecture and direction of the system from the ground up.

If you’re interested in the vision and enjoy working on hard distributed systems problems, email me at hurairah@grahambell.io with: (1) something you’ve built (2) why this problem matters to you (3) a difficult technical problem you worked on and how you solved it

Note: this isn’t a polished startup pitch yet. I’m a solo founder exploring a protocol architecture that attempts to address centralization pressures in blockchain systems, and I’m looking for serious builders who find the problem worth working on.
by davidclark | 2026-03-10 15:58:12+00:00
The article claims:

>He asked staff to attend the meeting, which is normally optional.

Is that false? It also discusses a new policy:

>Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes, Treadwell added.

Is that inaccurate? It is good context that this is a regularly scheduled meeting. But, regularly scheduled meetings can have newsworthy things happen at them.
by adrian_b | 2026-03-10 15:58:37+00:00
He also invented many other things, like enumeration types, optional types, constructors.

Several keywords used in many programming languages come from Hoare, who either coined them himself, or he took them from another source, but all later programming language designers took them from Hoare. For example "case", but here only the keyword comes from Hoare, because a better form of the "case" statement had been proposed first by McCarthy many years earlier, under the name "select".

Another example is "class" which Simula 67, then all object-oriented languages took from Hoare, However, in this case the keyword has not been used first by Hoare, because he took "class", together with "record", from COBOL.

Another keyword popularized by Hoare is "new" (which Hoare took from Wirth, but everybody else took from Hoare), later used by many languages, including C++. At Hoare, the counterpart of "new" was "destroy", hence the name "destructor", used first in C++.

The programming language "Occam" has been designed mainly as an implementation of the ideas described by Hoare in the "Communicating Sequential Processes" paper published in 1978-08. OpenMP also inherits many of those concepts.
by 15155 | 2026-03-10 15:58:50+00:00
> we wouldn't be able to simply outspend them

You're right: we would simply starve them (in addition to strategic bombing of all of these manufacturing centers.)

They do not possess the food calorie production to sustain their population, nor do they have the arable land to magically begin to do so.

> we are the germany with a bunch of questionably useful wunderwaffe.

We have outstanding fast attack submarines which can't be stopped by ASBMs: exactly zero freighters carrying food from South America or crude oil would be permitted.
by cucumber3732842 | 2026-03-10 15:59:19+00:00
The presence of some few number of people who can't manage to jaywalk decently and not run reds when it matters doesn't justify saddling the literal entire rest of society with some automotive flavor of 1984 anymore than some small number people robbing convenience stores to pay for their drug addiction justifies subjecting all of society to pervasive surveillance and the war on drugs fueled police state.
by xxwink | 2026-03-10 16:00:07+00:00
This matches my experience building a Go framework with AI as
the primary developer. I ended up with a formal Amendment
protocol — every architectural change is proposed,
consequence-analysed, and approved before implementation.
The document that records these decisions (DECISIONS.md) became
the most important file in the repo. Not the code — the decisions
behind the code.

Versioning the investigation is exactly right. The AI has no
memory between sessions. The only continuity is what you write down.
by xorvoid | 2026-03-10 16:00:42+00:00
Thank you! Re extensions: my thinking was that if you build a clone, then extensions become irrelevant. Just build what you need directly into the software. Extensions systems always seemed to me to be a second class citizen. I think I read an old story of Linus Torvalds using an old fork of microemacs and whenever he disliked something he would just go tweak it's C code (e.g. key bindings). I'm kind of thinking that but done with an LLM. Software could in theory be smaller and more bespoke. And it you want it to work differently, you just prompt an LLM to change the actual source code. Then you don't need higher level configuration/cuatomization interfaces. Simpler software.
by steveBK123 | 2026-03-10 16:00:51+00:00
Right, code reviews should already have been happening with human written junior code.

If AI is a productivity boost and juniors are going to generate 10x the PRs, do you need 10x the seniors (expensive) or 1/10th the juniors (cost save).

A reminder that in many situations, pure code velocity was never the limiting factor.

Re: idiot prooofing
I think this is a natural evolution as companies get larger they try to limit their downside & manage for the median rather than having a growth mindset in hiring/firing/performance.
by lokar | 2026-03-10 16:01:02+00:00
If this is true, it misunderstands the primary goals of code review.

Code review should not be (primarily) about catching serious errors. If there are always a lot of errors, you can’t catch most of them with review. If there are few it’s not the best use of time.

The goal is to ensure the team is in sync on design, standards, etc. To train and educate Jr engineers, to spread understanding of the system. To bring more points of view to complex and important decisions.

These goals help you reduce the number of errors going into the review process, this should be the actual goal.
by ekr | 2026-03-10 16:01:20+00:00
Dude. This comment of yours made me quite angry. Also made me realize that I'm in a much better spot than you, and wouldn't trade with your position for all the money in the world.

Because it sounds like you're just clueless, or have the emotional intelligence of a teenager, or just lacking life experience. All of the things you mentioned are useless, some are harmful, to the point that I wonder what exactly was in your mind when you made this thread.

Was there a genuine desire to help? Then I should probably mail you a bank account. I'd use the money for people in need, not for myself. But I think it's more likely that you just felt some sort of a need for validation, that seems to be the main driving force behind it.
by spiderice | 2026-03-10 16:01:23+00:00
I would totally do this without any shame if I had the need/desire. CO2 isn't going to be solved by well intentioned individuals making absolutely no impact. It will be a generic solution that solves it for everyone, or it won't be solved at all.

I'm also not going to take shorter showers when people are farming in a desert and shipping the crops to China.

You might think this makes me a terrible person. That's probably good. Because it will help people understand what we're up against and what needs to happen to actually solve the problem.

"Take less flights" isn't the solution.
by saghm | 2026-03-10 16:01:36+00:00
> This doesn't make sense. You might be mistakenly anthropomorphizing HN?

You're a human talking to other humans. Yes, you're online, but there are still a range of ways you can phrase things, some of which are more polite than others. I don't understand what doesn't make sense about it, although as always you're free to disagree.

> What I am looking for is irrelevant. They straight up didn't solve the needs of Go. It was not me who rejected them, it was the Go community who rejected them, realizing that they won't work for anyone.

Go is not a monolithic community, and for obvious reasons the people making decisions are a much smaller group than the community as a whole. Not everyone in the community will agree with every decision, and my impression is that there's a sizable group of people who would have been happier if one of the proposals had been merged. You're stating it as fact that this isn't the case, and obviously I'm not going to convince you otherwise, but it's clear you don't have any desire to provide any more context because you think your claim is self-evident.

> Which clearly includes you. Me too. Obviously if we had a solution, we'd already be using it. But who?

Sure, if you think that the people who make the language are infallibly able to both know and care about what's good for 100% of Go programmers and every proposal will somehow be either something that will strictly fit what with every single one of them wants or be bad for all of them (regardless of what they say they want). Alternately, maybe there's nuance where different people have competing technical views on what would make sense or disagreeing views on subjective matters, and the lack of a solution having been adopted doesn't mean that it's impossible for someone to think that anything that's been discussed would be a good idea without being objectively wrong. Given that you'd rather refer to any other viewpoint as akin to magical hopes and prayers, you obviously don't think that it's possible anyone else could have something reasonable to say on the issue if it disagrees with your opinions, so I guess we've both been wasting our time here.
by bityard | 2026-03-10 16:02:10+00:00
> because the alternative is to ban submissions from people without reputation, and that'd be very harmful to open source.

Hmmm, no? That's actually very common in open source. Maybe "banning" isn't the right word, but lots of projects don't accept random drive-by submissions and never have. Debian is a perfect example, you are very unlikely to get a nontrivial patch or package into Debian unless you have some kind of interaction or rapport with a package maintainer, or commit to the process of building trust to become a maintainer yourself.

I have seen high profile GitHub projects that summarily close PRs if you didn't raise the bug/feature as an issue or join their discord first.
by frequencyai | 2026-03-10 16:02:16+00:00
Hey HN. We built Frequency, AI agent orchestration that autonomously detects, defines, and runs any repeatable workflow in your repo for you, continuously and at scale.

We used it to automate our app development repo, and rapidly ship 30 production apps (and counting) at Cashew Crate (https://cashewcrate.com) from scratch, autonomously. These are real, fully functional apps with working payments, accounts, analytics, and marketing integrations. Now, all we need to do is run Frequency and we see new apps appear everyday, without any prompting or babysitting.

While we needed to intervene to set up payments for the first time due to regulatory verification, the agents handled everything else - ideation, implementation, review, deployment, and bug fixes across 10 parallel pipelines (more pipelines can be added as needed).

Frequency analyses your codebase, generates workflow config as YAML state machines, and runs them with repo-local JSON state (no database, no message queue). Pipelines coordinate through state predicates and shared resource locks. Agent calls run in git worktrees with integration gates. About 40% of our steps are agent calls, the rest are deterministic scripts. Works with any agent or CLI tool. App development was our proving ground but the runtime is workflow-agnostic.

The hardest part was cross-pipeline coordination: marketing needs to know deploy finished, bug fixes need to feed back through build. Getting this to work declaratively rather than with imperative callbacks took several iterations. Our main bottleneck now is token limits rather than the orchestration.

Twitter blog post with demo video: https://x.com/FrequencyAI_HQ/status/2031399095848362032

We're opening Frequency to design partners. If you want agents building and running your workflows autonomously, safely and at scale, sign up at http://frequency.sh.

The HN url links to our writeup with architecture details, what broke, and limitations: https://www.frequency.sh/blog/introducing-frequency/

We also plan to periodically release further deep dives into the architecture and technicals as we open up the platform to everyone, so please follow our socials for further updates.
Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=frequencyai
Twitter (X): https://x.com/FrequencyAI_HQ
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/frequency-ai.bsky.social
by btown | 2026-03-10 16:02:18+00:00
Great to see innovation in this space!

If I could make one giant request, it's around giving (properly authorized) humans the ability to override the system when needed. When you make a simple API, it's all too common for a company integrating the solution to rely entirely on the identity service's yes-no outcome. But all too commonly, there's no way to override a decision, or bypass the need for identification.

In the travel space, I've seen situations, especially with luxury and celebrity clients, where there's human levels of trust across the board, all parties are agreed at senior levels that they'd like to fulfill with a one-off exception to identity verification... but the technology refuses to let them proceed without going through the full verification flow, and if they're integrated in the simplest way, there's no "escape hatch" on the integration's side.

And similarly, if a person happens to trigger false negatives on video matches (say, due to medical reasons) giving support teams an ability to build exceptions is key. Having a way to tell the system "for this transaction/account ID, when they get to this node in the flow, let them through as if checks proceeded, or treat them as pre-authorized" would set you apart.

(Obviously, for things involving KYC, there's a lot of considerations around permissioning - but for many use cases, you want to empower senior support teams.)