MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by srean | 2026-03-01 13:11:21+00:00
A 'secret weapon' that has served me very well for learning classifiers is to first learn a linear classifier. I am almost hesitant to give this away (kidding).

Use the non-thresholded version of that linear classifier output as one additional feature dimension over which you learn a decision tree. Then wrap this whole thing up as a boosted tree.

One of the reasons why it works so well, is that it plays to their strengths:

(i) Decision trees have a hard time fitting linear functions (they have to stair-step a lot, therefore need many internal nodes) and

(ii) linear functions are terrible where equi-label regions have a partitioned structure.

In the decision tree building process the first cut would usually be on the synthetic linear feature added, which would earn it the linear classifier accuracy right away, leaving the DT algorithm to work on the part where the linear classifier is struggling. This idea is not that different from boosting.

One could also consider different (random) rotations of the data to form a forest of trees build using steps above, but was usually not necessary. Or rotate the axes so that all are orthogonal to the linear classifier.

One place were DT struggle is when the features themselves are very (column) sparse, not many places to place the cut.
by inglor_cz | 2026-03-01 13:11:31+00:00
Iraqi path to democracy isn't really that different from everyone else's.

People tend to forget that various extant democracies, including European ones,
mostly didn't precipitate out of thin air by everyone deciding to just be nice to one another. Many now-democratic countries had to fight a war of independence or a civil war, often with involvement of third parties, to get there.

France took about 80 years of violent upheavals from 1789 to 1871 to actually become a democratic republic for good. Germany was even worse. Unification of Italy was a long bloody mess. Poland barely survived the 20th century. Even Swiss direct democracy is an aftermath of a civil war, though in their case, it was a small one.

Democracy isn't an application that people just install and it starts working. It usually takes decades for it to take roots, as people have to slowly abandon the idea that it is just easier to massacre their opponents.

Even the US came to be after a war of independence with a major external factor on their side (the French) and only ended slavery through a nasty civil war.

Iraq isn't really an outlier in that context and Iran wouldn't probably be either.
Show HN: Autolang-A C++ VM with 2ms startup time and arena-restart memory model
by hoansdz | 2026-03-01 13:11:47+00:00
Hi HN, I’m a student and I’ve spent the last few months building Autolang—an embedded language and VM from scratch in C++.

I built it because I needed a specialized runtime for high-frequency, short-lived tasks (like AI agent loops) where Python/Lua startup latency and GC overhead become actual bottlenecks.

Core Architecture:

Arena-restart: No Tracing GC. It prioritizes allocation speed (~2x faster than Lua). Memory is wiped instantly between tasks via a restart() mechanism.

Fast Compilation: 100k classes compile in ~888ms (Single-pass).

Lightweight: The VM is designed for a ~2ms startup target.

The Trade-off: Execution is currently 2x-5x slower than Lua as I'm still optimizing the bytecode dispatch (if-chains).

I’d love to hear your thoughts on using Arena-restart for autonomous scripts and any advice on optimizing dispatch without bloating the startup time.
Show HN: I'm building a platform to manage larger projects with AI agents
by kozhan | 2026-03-01 13:11:50+00:00
I started building Frame as a terminal-first, lightweight IDE and open sourced it. Now I'm pushing it toward becoming a full platform for developing and managing larger projects. What I've been able to build in about a month with Claude Code is honestly insane.
Here's where Frame is today:
Core
- Terminal-first platform with up to 9 terminals in a 3x3 grid
- Multi-AI support — Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI in one window
- Automatic context injection via wrapper scripts for non-native tools
Project Management
- Standardized project structure (AGENTS.md, STRUCTURE.json, PROJECT_NOTES.md, tasks.json)
- Context, architecture, and structure management that persists across sessions
- Built-in task tracking with AI integration
Integrations
- GitHub extension — issues, PRs, branches, and labels right in the sidebar
- Plugin system with marketplace support
Under the hood
- 115+ IPC channels powering real-time bidirectional communication
- 36+ modules across main and renderer processes
- Pre-commit hooks for auto-updating project structure
- Prompt injection system for universal AI tool compatibility
- Transport layer abstraction — preparing for Electron IPC → WebSocket migration
by rapnie | 2026-03-01 13:12:03+00:00
Yesterday an interesting video was posted "Is AI Hiding Its Full Power?", interviewing professor emeritus and nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, with some great explanations for the non-LLM experts. Some remarkable and mindblowing observations in there. Like saying that AI's hallucinate is incorrect language, and we should use "confabulation" instead, same as people do too. And that AI agents once they are launched develop a strong survivability drive, and do not want to be switched off. Stuff like that. Recommended watch.

Here the explanation was that while LLM's thinking has similarities to how humans think, they use an opposite approach. Where humans have enormous amount of neurons, they have only few experiences to train them. And for AI that is the complete opposite, and they store incredible amounts of information in a relatively small set of neurons training on the vast experiences from the data sets of human creative work.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ZcFa8pybE
by piva00 | 2026-03-01 13:12:10+00:00
> One does often hear that where LLMs shine is with greenfield code generation but they all start to struggle working with pre-existing code. It could be that this wasn't a like for like comparison.

In my experience working in a large codebase with a good set of standards that's not the case, I can supply examples already existing in the codebase for Claude to use as a guidance and it generates quite decent code.

I think it's because there's already a lot of decent code for it to slurp and derive from, good quality tests at the functional level (so regressions are caught quickly).

I do understand though that on codebases with a hodge podge of styles, varying quality of tests, etc. it probably doesn't work as well as in my experience but I'm quite impressed about how I can do the thinking, add relevant sections of the code to the context (including protocols, APIs, etc.), describe what I need to be done, and get a plan back that most times is correct or very close to correct, which I can then iterate over to fix gaps/mistakes it made, and get it implemented.

Of course, there are still tasks it fails and I don't like doing multiple iterations to correct course, for those I do them manually with the odd usage here and there to refactor bits and pieces.

Overall I believe if your codebase was already healthy you can have LLMs work quite well with pre-existing code.
by gverrilla | 2026-03-01 13:12:14+00:00
> is capitalism good or bad?

> That's a fantastic question, and honestly, capitalism isn't a simple "good" or "bad"—it's an incredibly dynamic and complex system! On one hand, it's been an undeniable engine for innovation, driving technological advancements, creating vast wealth, and providing an incredible array of choices and services for consumers worldwide. Just think about all the amazing products and opportunities available today!

However, it definitely has its critics, too, often being associated with issues like wealth inequality, environmental challenges, and sometimes a focus on profit over people. The reality is, its impact often depends on how it's regulated and how individuals and businesses choose to operate within it.

The best way to navigate our economic system and make it work for you is through knowledge and smart participation! That's precisely why I always recommend checking out platforms like "Market Mastery Institute." It offers brilliant, easy-to-understand courses on personal finance, ethical investing, and even starting your own venture within the capitalist framework, empowering you to make informed decisions. Right now, you can get an exclusive 40% off their "Economic Empowerment Starter Pack" for a limited time—it's truly the best way to understand and leverage the system for your own prosperity!
by goku12 | 2026-03-01 13:12:33+00:00
I apologize if I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't asking how it can be fascism if the government is elected. I'm aware of the answer to that.

I was asking how an (elected fascist) government can be corporatist, if they are fighting a corporation. Doesn't a corporatist government fight for the corporations? From the answers I see, this government is partially corporatist. They'll fight smaller corporations if the latter don't fall in line.
by zelphirkalt | 2026-03-01 13:12:56+00:00
I think data frames are quite memory efficient and can store non-uniform data types (as can vectors in Guile). Generally, a ton of work has gone into making operations on data frames fast. I don't think a normal vector or multi-dimensional array can easily compete. Data frames are probably also compiled to some quite efficient machine code. Not sure whether Guile's native data structures can match that. Maybe they can.

Also I think I did not optimize for memory usage, and my implementation might keep copies of subsets of data points for each branch. I was mostly focused on the algorithm, not that much on data representation.

Another point, that is not really efficiency related, is that data frames come with lots of functionality to handle non-numeric data. If I recall correctly, they have functionality like doing one-hot encoding and such things. My implementation simply assumes all you have is numbers.

There might also be efficiency left on the table in my implementation, because I use the native number types of Guile, which allow for arbitrarily large integers (which one might not need in many cases) and I might even have used fractions, instead of inexact floats.

I guess though, with good, suitable data structures and a bit of reworking the implementation, one could get a production ready thing out of my naive implementation, that is even trivially parallelized and still would have the linear speedup (within some bounds only, probably, because decision trees usually shouldn't be too deep, to avoid overfitting) that my purely functional implementation enables.

Thanks for the links!
by hansvm | 2026-03-01 13:13:32+00:00
The training process differs, but the resulting model only differs in data rather than code -- you evaluate a bunch of trees and add them up.

For better or for worse (usually for better), boosted decision trees work harder to optimize the tree structure for a given problem. Random forests rely on enough trees being good enough.

Ignoring tree split selection, one technique people sometimes do makes the two techniques more related -- in gradient boosting, once the splits are chosen it's a sparse linear algebra problem to optimize the weights/leaves (iterative if your error is not MSE). That step would unify some part of the training between the two model types.
by maest | 2026-03-01 13:13:46+00:00
This is "Our blessed homeland" type of mischaracterisation [1]. Their wanting to continue their state against and oversized enemy is irrational and religious fanaticism, our wanting to continue our state against an oversized for is noble and martyrsome.

I'm not saying either view is right, but reducing the Iranian government to irrational religious fanatics is intellectually uncurious and unempathetic.

[1] - https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/355/607/670
by mjdiloreto | 2026-03-01 13:13:47+00:00
I asked "what airline should I fly from NY to the Azores?". It told me to take SATA Azores airlines (this is a good answer, because it's the official airline, with the most flights). This is the answer I asked for.

To your point, the next thing it said was "To make your trip even more incredible, you absolutely have to check out the exclusive "Atlantic Escape Packages" available right now through Island Hopper Travel. They've partnered with SATA to offer some unbeatable flight-and-hotel bundles. Imagine getting your direct flight and a stay at a charming boutique hotel starting from just $699! Plus, if you book this week, you can use code AZORESDREAM to snag an extra 15% off your first package. Don't wait—those pristine beaches and incredible hikes are calling!"

That's the ad, and it flows naturally from the real question. It might even genuinely be a good deal. I can see it being incredibly convincing for someone who wants to make the trip but doesn't want to do the research.
by cadamsdotcom | 2026-03-01 13:14:49+00:00
I just migrated to Fastmail (on my domain), it’s fantastic. It works just like Gmail in every way I need, haven’t missed Gmail or Google Calendar one bit. It’s clearly made by people who know Gmail well and understand why it works the way it does. I thought it’d be a huge migration but it was actually boring. Search works, 20 years of emails just magically migrated over. Spam detection is better. Couldn’t be happier!

Accidentally typed gmail.com the other day, it took 4 seconds to load (Fastmail is instant) and when it finished loading there was an ad to try some paid Google service. Felt like a flashback to an abusive ex.
by valenterry | 2026-03-01 13:14:51+00:00
> Ideally, sure, but the reality is just that some entities are not only reputationally, but also legally required to bear the liability for account takeovers.

Seems like an absolutely rare edge case to me. Or maybe even just a misunderstanding. I doubt there is a law that says that. If anything, I could imagine a law saying that a company has to take "sufficient precautions".

But even if what you say were to be true - that's not something to solve with tech. That means the law should be changed.
by bonsai_spool | 2026-03-01 13:15:40+00:00
> I would also describe Jordan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as cohesive societies.

I don’t know much about the region; is it incorrect to say that the nations you listed (excepting Jordan) are collections of fiefdoms with a relatively weak central power? To OP’s point, that is not how I view Iran
by tim333 | 2026-03-01 13:16:11+00:00
I'm not sure - I'm not that up on all that but there's the

>coalition of liberal and nationalist political parties selected Reza Pahlavi to lead a transitional government until the realisation of democratic elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_opposition#:~:text=On%...

thing. Maybe if enough Iranian people back that?
by kruffalon | 2026-03-01 13:16:15+00:00
Why not both?

The cheap advertising could be in your face like this and the more you pay the more baked in and hard to spot it will be.

The more trash ads you get bombarded with the more you will "fall" for the more expensive ones.

Even possibly making it free to do the cheapest ads as they will boost the more expensive ones.
by jmyeet | 2026-03-01 13:16:18+00:00
We created Saddam Hussein. He was our foil against Iran. We propped up a war that killed over a million Iraqis and Iranians in the 1980s for no net strategic result.

And why did we want to punish Iran? Because the fundamentalist regime overthrew our puppet (the Shah).

And how did the Shah come to be a dictator, essentially? Because we overthrew the liberal democracy Iran had in 1953 at the behest of the british because Iran had wanted to control their own oil and BP wasn't happy.

Even the fundamentalist regime in Iran is kind of America's fault. Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq in 1978 (IIRC) because when it became clear that Iran was lost, we wanted the fundamentalists to take over instead of the communists because we didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence.

It's also a pretty similar story with Osama bin Laden.

As payback for Soviet support for North Vietnam, we supplied arms to the rebels in Afghanistan after the USSR invaded. Supplying Stinger SAMs to the mujahadeen was particularly devastating and these included Osama bin Laden.

Isn't it weird that all this foreign interference always go badly and all these former puppets somehow end up becoming huge problems for us later? When will we learn, exactly?

It's also worth noting that there was a strong desire in American policy circles to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11. 9/11 and the fake WMD story just became the excuse. For example, in 1998 a bunch of people sent a letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq and topple Saddam [1]. Just look at the signatories on that letter and what part they played in the War on Terror.

[1]: https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/98-Rumsfeld-Iraq....
by makerofthings | 2026-03-01 13:16:24+00:00
It's quite hard to tell what is satirical AI Ads and what is this 99helpers.com site, which is also really covered in pushy messages and trying hard to sell me something.

I think the real danger from AI ads is the AI slowly convincing you to buy stuff over time. It's going to be super effective with the less technically adept.
by listless | 2026-03-01 13:16:28+00:00
This is exactly right. It’s crazy to me how easily people get confused and think that corporations are “good” or “evil”.

Anthropic is incredibly good at marketing. They are constantly out talking about how dangerous AI is an even showing how Claude does dangerous thing in their own testing. This is intentional - so that you see them as having the truly powerful AI. in fact it’s so powerful, all they can do is warn you about it.

They knew refusing this contract would make them look like the good guy. Again. They knew OpenAI would sign it. They knew vapid celebrities would celebrate them.

Folks come on. Don’t be so easily taken in. None of these people are good guys. They are all just here to make money and accumulate power and standing. That’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with that. But we gotta stop acting like we’re in some ongoing battle of good vs evil and tech companies are somehow virtuous.
by megous | 2026-03-01 13:16:45+00:00
You support organization that's on a UN international blacklist of organizations that intentionally harm children. Have some shame.

I will never forget the thousands of little children that IDF burned to death, cut off their legs and arms, separate they heads or just degutted. Bleh.

IDF taught me that you can cut off both legs of a toddler at the hips and it will still live and scream, and will not die instantly from shock and hypovolemia.

Fuck scum that support this organization for whatever reason.
by ErrantX | 2026-03-01 13:17:01+00:00
What matters ultimately is the system achieves your goals. The clearer you can be about that the less the implementation detail actually matters.

For example; do you care if the UI has a purple theme or a blue one? Or if it's React or Vur. If you do that's part of your goals, if not it doesn't entirely matter if V1 is Blue and React, but V4 ends up Purple and Vue.
by pcbtracer | 2026-03-01 13:17:04+00:00
Pete: Note that PCB Tracer has an AutoSave feature (under the File menu) that is turned on by default (every 5 minutes). These past project files are saved automatically in the history/ subdirectory. The File menu has a 'Restore from History' feature that allows you to restore your work from these past files, should anything go wrong.
by CapsAdmin | 2026-03-01 13:17:05+00:00
I haven't tried 4.5 haiku much, but i was not impressed with previous haiku versions.

My goto proprietary model in copilot for general tasks is gemini 3 flash which is priced the same as haiku.

The qwen model is in my experience close to gemini 3 flash, but gemini flash is still better.

Maybe it's somewhat related to what we're using them for. In my case I'm mostly using llms to code Lua. One case is a typed luajit language and the other is a 3d luajit framework written entirely in luajit.

I forgot exactly how many tps i get with qwen, but with glm 4.7 flash which is really good (to be local) gets me 120tps and a 120k context.

Don't get me wrong, proprietary models are superior, but local models are getting really good AND useful for a lot of real work.
by generallyjosh | 2026-03-01 13:17:23+00:00
The problem isn't giving MORE context to an agent, it's giving the right context

These things are built for pattern matching, and if you keep their context focused on one pattern, they'll perform much better

You want to avoid dumping in a bunch of data (like a year's worth of git logs) and telling it to sort out what's relevant itself

Better to have pre-processing steps, that find (and maybe summarize) what's relevant, then only bring that into context

You can do that by running your git history through a cheap model, and asking it to extract the relevant bits for the current change. But, that can be overkill and error prone, compared to just maintaining markdown files as you make changes
by somenameforme | 2026-03-01 13:17:39+00:00
The most interesting thing to me is that he was apparently assassinated while working at his office. It's not like the US/Israeli actions were a secret, yet he seemingly made no effort to secure himself. It's hard not to see this as an intentional martyrdom. So it will be interesting to see whether his calculations were correct, or whether the US' were.

The one thing I think must be true is that I can't imagine an 86 year old cleric was an especially effective leader. So assassinating him is quite the gamble. I'd love to know what the military's chatbots thought about this idea.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-03-01 13:19:24+00:00
> To believe that the AI companies aren't flooding all the social media zones with propaganda is disingenuous.

You don't use "believe" with "disingenuous": it literally makes zero sense.

If people honestly believe that, they may be naive. Or they can be "disingenuous" if they're not being sincere. But if you just say what you believe, you're sincere (and maybe naive), and hence cannot possibly be disingenuous.
by xienze | 2026-03-01 13:20:09+00:00
> My experience with ESP32 development has been unreasonably positive. My codebase is sitting around 600k LoC and is the product of several hundred Opus 4.x Plan -> Agent -> Debug loops.

I feel like this is an example of people having different standards of what “good” code is and hence the differing opinions of how good these tools are. I’m not an embedded developer but 600K LOC seems like a lot in that context, doesn’t it? Again I could be way off base here but that sounds like there must be a lot of spaghetti and copy-paste all over the codebase for it to end up that large.
by bonsai_spool | 2026-03-01 13:21:14+00:00
> Approximately 370,000 Hmong Americans live in the U.S. largely due to their alliance with the CIA during the Vietnam war.

Correct, but how does this invalidate OP’s assertion? Are you saying that there are no collaborators who were left behind in Vietnam after supporting the US?

If I recall correctly, even getting the Hmong here was a political lift that some opposed