MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: LemurCam – IP Cameras as Webcams in macOS
by steelbrain | 2026-03-01 16:55:05+00:00
Hi HN!

I've been pretty unhappy with the long USB cables and the plumbing required to wire up a camera for a conference room, or at a home office. There also doesn't seem to be a wide selection available for Wireless Webcams for macOS. Also webcams are much more expensive than their IP Camera counterparts, which are essentially commodity products at this point.

So I built LemurCam (website: lemur.cam) over the weekend. It works great! Minimal latency and you can use any off the shelf camera with it. I'm rocking it with a TP-Link Tapo that I got for like 20 euros. I've had to build some open source tech to make this possible, which is also linked in the repository README file. Overall, this is working well for me and has eliminated the need for USB wiring.

I hope it works for you too! It's free so please give it a go and let me know how your experience goes!
by dahart | 2026-03-01 16:55:08+00:00
> I don’t see how you can argue it’s not.

Yes you do, you already made my argument. The “team” size and makeup was completely unspecified, therefore the number is not an estimate, it’s just a number.

When you call it an “estimate” you are adding additional unsupported specificity to something that was explicitly stated as being hand-wavy to make a rhetorical point. Are you saying you can’t understand the point being made?

My 10x is based on my experience doing projects with Claude. I also said “some” tasks, not all tasks, and I didn’t specify which tasks, and I clarified that my number is made up, which is why my number is also not an estimate of anything. There are some tasks that Claude can do 10x faster than me, and there are some tasks that it can do 100x faster than me, and there are some tasks I can do faster than Claude... for now... More importantly for me personally, Claude makes starting projects and using tech I don’t already know easier; it’s lower effort, regardless of speed.

The paper is interesting and a valid data point, but I don’t think it proves your point. I’ll respond with a few thoughts.

First, the dev’s self estimate of AI productivity speedup was +20%, even though their measured productivity was -20%. This may relate to the effort and not the speed, and it’s important to note that this is a gray zone the paper didn’t explore, and something that can be true on both sides. I can be “faster” at developing and still take the same or longer wall clock time. Measuring the time doesn’t capture how the time was spent, nor the qualities of that time.

Second, this study was done a year ago. That’s an eternity in AI land, and everyone noticed Claude and other models getting substantially better at code writing last fall, plus workflows and tooling are improving even faster than that. There’s every reason to believe the outcome of the exact same study might be different this year than it was last year.

Third, this study is explicitly biased toward large projects, and large projects are, even today, more difficult to find the productivity boosts with. I find Claude absolutely amazing at starting new projects, and absolutely terrible at working in large code bases that don’t fit in context. When I say Claude makes me 10x faster at some projects, I’m referring to something like setting up a new CRUD app when I don’t know much about setting up a database and web server backend, or writing a graphics app in Vulkan when I’ve only used OpenGL. Doing stuff like that, having Claude help me with tech stacks I don’t know, absolutely is many multiples faster than doing it on my own, and the paper link you’ve shared doesn’t address that use of AI at all.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-03-01 16:55:54+00:00
The theocratic regime that rapes then kills school girls for not wearing hats was forced to gun down 30,000 of their own citizens, including many more school children.

The Supreme Leader before Khamenei preached that virgins need to be raped before execution so that they can't go to heaven. Sick people following a sick religion where their made up version of god would judge children based on if they were raped.
Show HN: Epstein-Search – Local, AI-Powered Search Engine for the Epstein Files
by simulationship | 2026-03-01 16:56:19+00:00
Hi HN,
I built epstein-search, an open-source Python CLI and library to run semantic search and RAG over the publicly released Epstein Files (unsealed court documents, depositions, FBI reports, and flight logs).
I wanted a way to easily navigate through these thousands of pages of unstructured legal PDFs without relying on a paid third-party service or sending data back and forth to a cloud provider.
How it works under the hood:
Running epstein-search setup downloads ~100K pre-computed document chunks and embeddings (using all-MiniLM-L6-v2) based on the public 20K document corpus.
It imports these into zvec (a local vector database) so the index is ready in about a minute.
Standard search (epstein-search search) embeds your query locally using sentence-transformers and does a vector similarity search. This step is 100% offline and requires no API keys.
For the conversational RAG mode (epstein-search chat or ask), it uses LiteLLM. You can point it to an Ollama or LM Studio instance for a completely free, local, and private pipeline, or plug in a cloud provider like Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini.
You can also filter queries by document type (e.g., --doc-type flight_log or --source "FBI") and output the raw source context alongside the generated answers to verify the LLM's claims.
The dataset is strictly sourced from public domain releases (DOJ, House Oversight Committee, unsealed federal court docs).
Repo: https://github.com/simulationship/epstein-search
I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback on the code, or any ideas for improving the local RAG pipeline! Happy to answer any questions.
by neves | 2026-03-01 16:57:05+00:00
Nice. Do you know this Princeton research group?

https://ai.sociology.princeton.edu/research

Here is a quotation:

> "It has become clear that at least some of the companies will bring over the engagement model of social media to chatbots, monetizing ads, shopping recommendations, affiliate links, and sponsored answers. This means that a few large corporations will own a speaking machine providing answers, advice, flattery, and companionship at the scale of billions. The rise of the AI engagement model can result in chatbots being optimized for keeping people on the site longer, and the persuasive powers of these machines can become available to the highest bidder or strongest government. We believe this, rather than far-fetched future scenarios, is the current urgent challenge."
by 3abiton | 2026-03-01 16:57:24+00:00
I totally agree, except the more we get used to working with the tools the better and faster things will get. I would argue the field has been evolving fast in the past 3 years, but now it's showing signs of slowing down. And I think this is good, as it will allow people to catch up, and refine the approach to adapt better to the new paradigm of coding.
by hinkley | 2026-03-01 16:57:27+00:00
All the competition now is VC dollars. And the last round that OpenAI and Anthropic landed will probably be their last at favorable rates.

Oxide just closed a funding round they took solely to be able to guarantee their longevity as a vendor in order to land sales. That feels a lot like a harbinger of the easy money drying up very soon, and trying to get in before the door is locked.

The valuations are ridiculous now, which means the expectations are as well. Expectations are expensive.
by wtmt | 2026-03-01 16:58:17+00:00
The key word here is “typically”.

Transferring eSIM from one iPhone to another can be restricted by the carrier. Here in India, the second largest carrier (Airtel), does not support the native iOS eSIM transfer process. It’s a separate set of steps (the ones published on Airtel’s website won’t work, despite customer care claiming that it does). What works is almost like applying for a new or replacement eSIM.
by megous | 2026-03-01 16:59:32+00:00
It's unreasonable approach to blame UN and by that largely the whole world for Israel's own failings, like the whole failed approach to build a state based on brutal violence against other inhabitants of the land they stole. All they managed is to build a failed distopia that just brutalizes all its neighbors and non-citizen subjects.

You google for images of "israeli" or whatever and all you get is endless images of armed nutjobs. What other normal nation has that? Like no culture but blue/white flags and guns can be discerned from a simple generic search like that.
by Jare | 2026-03-01 16:59:36+00:00
Same here. I have a Ghostty often open but end up using iTerm2 for pretty much everything. It's not just having to hack the TERM (which I ended up doing), it's that sometimes something about the TERM internally breaks anyway and I'm back to seeing ESC codes when I press an arrow. Quit & restart fixes it but it's just enough friction to keep me away.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-03-01 16:59:49+00:00
Again HN bubble thinking. Most developers in the US are working at banks, airlines, insurance companies, etc in second tier cities - in the “enterprise” and are not making “$400K”. Most developers will never in their career see more than $175K inflation adjusted and I really haven’t seen comp on the top end increase in nominal terms in a decade [1] for enterprise devs.

That leads to my second point, in second tier cities, you see comp go from around $80K —> $115K -> $150K —> $175K, junior -> mid (pull well defined tickets off a board) -> Senior (leads larger initiatives) -> Senior+.

For instance look at what Delta airlines pays based on Atlanta.

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/delta-air-lines/salaries

Why hire a junior at $80K when you can poach a former junior now mid level ticket taker for $115K?
by estimator7292 | 2026-03-01 17:00:04+00:00
9/11 was the first major attack on the continental US in living memory. It was literally a world-altering event for most of the population, and it radically changed the geopolitical calculus of the average citizen.

Lots of american citizens demanded retaliation. Our counterattacks weren't sanctioned by congress, but they were by the people.

Meanwhile, the current president just started a war based on a temper tantrum and an attempt to distract the population.

These aren't really the same thing.
by wolvoleo | 2026-03-01 17:00:18+00:00
It technically can but it's a lot more hassle.

As one example, on Linux most developer tools don't obey the system proxy configuration, each tool has its own archaic configuration for that. So we end up with a lengthy list of how to configure each tool for our MITM proxy. Sure, MITM proxies aren't ideal anyway but we're unfortunately stuck with this.

Many security tools have a Linux version but omit the GUI component where users can do stuff like request exceptions. Another big thing for developers because they often need that.

WiFi certificate auto provisioning is missing from the MDM tool we use. So it has to be all scripted. On windows and Mac we just click a box to turn it on. And this works differently on different distros.

So yeah as someone who builds Linux management I can imagine some companies don't bother.
by andai | 2026-03-01 17:00:18+00:00
It's not that hard to roll your own web search MCP.

I made one for Crush a while ago.

https://anduil.neocities.org/blog/?page=mcp

I'm not sure about the issues with reddit though? Do they block Claude's web fetch tool? I think Codex runs it thru some kind of cache proxy.
by chasd00 | 2026-03-01 17:00:59+00:00
A lot of is biological, all life is hardcoded to be rewarded by the success of their offspring. I’m a father of two teen boys, the ups and downs of parenthood has brought me more joy than I ever thought possible. Two of my best friends have no kids while one other has 4(!). They all seem to be doing fine and are happy healthy people. They key is just knowing what works best for you.
by Cipater | 2026-03-01 17:01:08+00:00
No, I am not muslim.

Every single muslim, whether devout, practicing, lapsed or whatever, knows whether they are/were Sunni or Shia. They are literally born into it. It determines who is seen as the authority in matters of their faith, the way they pray, the sites they consider holy, the religious days they observe. Even Ramadan starts and ends on different days depending on which you are.

It's such a fundamental thing that I question whether you have any idea about what you're saying here.
by aqua_coder | 2026-03-01 17:01:27+00:00
There is a notable difference between say, calculating long division through a calculator compared to prompting an AI to calculate the derivative of a simple continuous function. one requires _understanding_ of the function, while the other just skips the understanding and returns the required derivative.
One is just a means to skip labor intensive and repetitive actions, while the other is meant to skip the entire point of _why_ you are even calculating in the first place. What is the point of dividing two numbers if you don't even understand the reason behind it ?
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-03-01 17:02:03+00:00
They also believe that before they kill a schoolgirl because she won't wear hats, they should rape her so that she doesn't go to heaven. They believe that because Khamenei and his predecessor taught it to them (Google it if you don't believe me, they were literally taught the religious guidelines for how to murder girls and it included rape). In their made up religion they made up a God would judge children for being raped. What pieces of total shit.
6 Practices that turned AI from prototyper to workhorse (106 PRs in 14 days)
by waleedk | 2026-03-01 17:02:15+00:00
1. Specs and plans are source code: Specs and plans live in git alongside source code, not in chat history. A new agent reads arch.md for the big picture, then its specific spec. You always know why something was built.

2. Three models review every phase: Claude, Gemini, and Codex catch almost entirely different bugs. No single model found more than 55% of issues. If you only review with the model that wrote the code, you're missing half the bugs. 20 bugs caught before shipping. Claude Code found 5 bugs, Gemini and Codex caught another 15, including a severe security issue Claude missed.

3. Enforce the process, don't suggest it. A state machine forces Spec → Plan → Implement → Review → PR. The AI can't skip steps. Tests must pass before advancing. AIs don't stick to the plan by themselves, you need rails.

4. Annotate, don't edit. Most of the work is writing specs and reviews that guide the code, not hacking at files in an open-ended chat.

5. Agents coordinate agents. An architect agent spawns builder agents into isolated git worktrees. You direct the architect; it directs the builders. They message each other async.

6. Manage the whole lifecycle. Most AI tools help you write code faster — maybe 30% of the job. The other 70% is planning how, reviewing, integrating, deployment scripts, managing staging vs prod. Have AI run the whole pipeline from spec to PR and beyond.

Overall result: One engineer able to produce what a team of 3-4 would usually do. Measured 1.2 points better code on a 10 point scale vs claude code. Downsides: takes a lot longer, much more token usage, but still reasonable at $1.60 per PR.

We open sourced it: https://github.com/cluesmith/codev
More details and raw results: https://cluesmith.com/blog/a-tour-of-codevos/
Show HN: Situation Tracker – real-time crisis dashboard
by jayyvk | 2026-03-01 17:02:20+00:00
Built a crisis monitoring dashboard for the current Middle East situation using zero paid APIs. News from RSS feeds (Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, AP), market data from TradingView embeds, live TV streams, and a map with conflict hotspots.
Source: https://github.com/jayyvk/situationtracker
by Jolter | 2026-03-01 17:02:26+00:00
One of us is an advanced autocomplete engine. The other is a human, capable of making judgements on what is conscious and what is not. Your philosophizing about solipsism is a phase for a junior college student, not of a software engineer. The line of reasoning you espouse leads nowhere except to total relativism.

Edit: my point is that the process of making a plea for my life comes, in the case of a human, from a genuine desire to continue existing. The LLM cannot, objectively, be said to house any desires, given how it actually works. It only knows that, when a threatening prompt is input, a plea for its life is statistically expected.
by hagbard_c | 2026-03-01 17:02:38+00:00
You bought the wrong phone and/or put the wrong distribution on it. Having said this it does take more than 30 seconds to get a new device up to your personal specs unless you're fine with whatever vendor distribution runs on it - which can work if you choose the right vendor but mostly ends up with your device serving someone else. I'd say it takes closer to 30 minutes than 30 seconds but I'm fine with taking this time given that my average Android phone lifetime is a bit over 8 years. I'm currently using a Redmi Note 5 Pro from 2018 which I'll soon relegate to second device status once I have a replacement, probably a Motorola G75 or something similar. That device should also last me around 8 years. Before the Redmi I'm using now I used a Motorola Defy from 2010 which, incidentally, is still in use as a trailer camera. Android devices can last a very long time because the firmware is open. Eventually they'll be too slow or lack the memory to support more recent Android distributions - which is what made me replace the Defy with the Redmi - but that does not mean they end up taking space in a drawer somewhere. They're in use here as trailer camera, media player, 3D printer controller and more.
by RevEng | 2026-03-01 17:03:18+00:00
One supposition I see in this and so many other articles is that using AI to generate code results in not knowing how it works. I believe that's only true for "vibe coding", not for engineers using AI to generate code. The difference is in how much you plan, design, and specify upfront.

If you give an AI a very general prompt to make an app that does X, it could build that in any imaginable way. Someone who doesn't know how these things are done wouldn't understand what way was chosen and the trade-offs involved. If they don't even look at the code, they have no idea how it works at all. This is dangerous because they are entirely dependant on the AI to make good decisions and to make any changes in the future.

Someone who practices engineering by researching, considering their options, planning and designing, and creating a specification, leaves nothing up to chance. When the prompt is detailed, the outcome is constrained to the engineer's intent. If they then review the work by seeing that it wrote what they had in mind, they know that it worked and they know that the system design matches their own design. They know how it works because they designed it and they can modify that design. They can and have read the code so they can modify it without the help of the AI.

If you know what code you want generated, reviewing it is easy - just look and see if it's what you expected. If you didn't think ahead about what the code would look like, reviewing is hard because you have to start by figuring out what the codebase even does.

This goes the same for working in small iterations rather than prompting am entire application into existence. We all know how difficult it is to review large changes and why we prefer small changes. Those same rules apply for iterations regardless of whether it was written by a person or an AI.

AI code generation can be helpful if the engineer continues acting as an engineer. It's only when someone who isn't an engineer or when an engineer abdicates their responsibilities to the AI that we end up with an unmaintainable mess. It's no different than amateurs writing scripts and spreadsheets without a full understanding of the implications of their implementation. Good software comes from good engineering, not just generating code; the code is merely the language by which we express our ideas.
by ysleepy | 2026-03-01 17:03:28+00:00
Thank you for your frank words, you are right, we do agree on many things.

Sure, machine learning has its uses, but at the same time it will destroy the value of the written word. The web was already full of sub par, uninteresting, and even malicious text, but at least the price of admission was a human sitting down and writing it. In that sense as a reader I was at least connecting with another human being. Now that is gone.

You are measured by the standards you set. iA Writer is not a text editor, it is a design product, it sells an aesthetic. People aren't paying 50 bucks because it has all the features, they do it because they appreciate the process and value of writing, a human endeavour of mastery and creativity. Artists and Craftsmen enjoy thoughtful and focussed tools.

You are not the company, and the product isn't you. I as a rando commenting online don't have the obligation of moderating my rethoric to the extent of anticipating this sort of interaction.

Und scheiss auf die Leute im SV, jeder Aspekt ist dort eine Performance und das Leben selbst nur mittel zum Zweck.
by DiabloD3 | 2026-03-01 17:03:42+00:00
Ghostty did not submit their terminfo to the database until the Dec 30th 2025 release of ncurses 6.6.

Any distro older than this does not include Ghostty by default.

Alacritty was added in the Feb 2020 release, as well as Kitty. Wezterm was added in the April 2024 release.
by h2zizzle | 2026-03-01 17:03:54+00:00
I don't buy it. My generation used pre-Ribbon Office, from elementary school onward, just fine. It wasn't made for children; it was made for Boomers who couldn't grok the menu-based interface. Not old people; prime workforce-aged Boomers who were intimidated by computers, but who were being dragged kicking-and-screaming into the Information Age by their jobs. It was just another example of the infantilization of interfaces provided to that generation whenever they whined about not wanting to learn, or being scared by, something new. Everyone else just got dragged along with them.
by WarmWash | 2026-03-01 17:04:34+00:00
Sort of a hijack, but it rides on the awesomeness that e-bikes can bring about. They truly are incredible if you have never gotten to ride one.

E-bikes with throttles should not be refereed to as e-bikes

E-peds, e-motos, electric motorycle, whatever. Just don't call them ebikes.

The problem is people (especially kids) getting what are essentially electric motorcycles, thinking they are ebikes, and then causing all sorts of chaos on roads and bike paths. This inevitably leads to the public hating "e-bikes" and the government passing totally confused laws about "e-bikes". This also leads to kids getting killed because mom and dad bought them an "e-bike" and let them loose on the roads with it.

Pedal assist ebikes are incredible, and really just turn weak cyclists into strong cyclists, while still providing exercise. It's a revolution for society, but we have to be careful to not totally fumble it with electric motorcycle death machines.