MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by phil21 | 2026-03-06 19:16:05+00:00
> and if that's the case, what other explanation is there than "ghost jobs."

You didn't pass some arbitrary ruleset given to an AI or machine learning algorithm.

Companies can be very selective now, and usually implement this selectivity fairly stupidly. There also is the problem of being genuinely swamped with bullshit applicants for positions, so the false positive rate is likely quite high at the moment.

I've found it extremely difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff right now. Finding competent people is more difficult than ever, but the sheer number of applicants is at least an order of magnitude higher. Botting has made applying to jobs exceedingly low friction, so there is very little downside to someone entirely not qualified to apply to 600 jobs a day and hope they get lucky.

We have positions that have been open for months that go unfilled simply due to lack of time to sort through applicants, and the few we do have time to interview usually are obviously unqualified within the first 5 minutes of talking to them.
by palmotea | 2026-03-06 19:16:24+00:00
> Counterpoint: I've been desperately trying to code myself out of a job for almost 4 decades now. I inevitably ended up (and keep ending up) getting more responsibilities instead.

What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean you finished one project but your employer had another one for you, which you then were expected to work on instead of sitting idle? Or do you mean you coded yourself into a "promotion"?

My comment was just mocking the foolish selfless ethos of many software engineers, who don't look out for themselves and idealize giving to psychopathic organizations that will screw them the moment that's advantageous. Many software engineers have a pathological level of naivete and confusion about the role they really inhabit (e.g. righteously going on about buggy-whip makers).
by thewebguyd | 2026-03-06 19:16:44+00:00
That still only just makes it a force multiplier for engineers, like any other tech, not a replacement as it's being hyped and sold as.

Claude resorting to writing code for everything, because that's all the model can do without too many hallucinations and context poisoning, is just a higher speed REPL. Great, that's useful.

But that's not what is being hyped and sold. What's being hyped and sold is "You don't need an Ops guy anymore, just talk to the computer." Well, what happens when the AI decides the "fix" is to just open up 0.0.0.0/0 to the world to make the errors go away? The non technical minimum wage person now just talking to the computer has no idea they just pwned the company.

If AI's answer is "Just write a script to solve the prompt" then you still need technical people, and it's vasly over hyped.

I'll be interested when you actually can just dump logs in a chat and analyze it without the model having to resort to writing code to solve the problem. That will be revolutionary. Imagine all the time I'd save by not having to make business reports, I can just tell the business people to point AI at terabytes of CSV exports and just ask it questions. That is when it will stop just being labor compression for existing engineers, and start being a world changing paradigm shift.

For now, it's just yet another tool in my toolbelt.
by godelski | 2026-03-06 19:17:06+00:00
> But if you are genuinely confused by the attitudes of your peers, try asking not "what do I have that they lack" ("curiosity"?) but "what do they see that I don't" or "what do they care about that I don't"?

I'd argue these are good questions to ask in general, about many topics. That it's an essential skill of an engineer to ask these types of questions.

There's two critical mistake that people often make: 1) thinking there's only one solution to any given problem, and 2) that were there an absolute optima, that they've converged into the optimal region. If you carefully look at many of the problems people routinely argue about you'll find that they often are working under different sets of assumptions. It doesn't matter if it's AI vs non-AI coding (or what mix), Vim vs Emacs vs VSCode, Windows vs Mac vs Linux, or even various political issues (no examples because we all know what will happen if I do, which only illustrates my point). There are no objective answers to these questions, and global optima only have the potential to exist when highly constraining the questions. The assumptions are understood by those you closely with, but that breaks down quickly.

If your objective is to seek truth you have to understand the other side. You have to understand their assumptions and measures. And just like everyone else, these are often not explicitly stated. They're "so obvious" that people might not even know how to explicitly state them!

But if the goal is not to find truth but instead find community, then don't follow this advice. Don't question anything. Just follow and stay in a safe bubble.

We can all talk but it gets confusing. Some people argue to lay out their case and let others attack, seeking truth, updating their views as weaknesses are found. Others are arguing to social signal and strengthen their own beliefs, changing is not an option. And some people argue just because they're addicted to arguing, for the thrill of "winning". Unfortunately these can often look the same, at least from the onset.

Personally, I think this all highlights a challenge with LLMs. One that only exasperates the problem of giving everyone access to all human knowledge. It's difficult you distinguish fact from fiction. I think it's only harder when you have something smooth talking and loves to use jargon. People do their own research all the time and come to wildly wrong conclusions. Not because they didn't try, not because they didn't do hard work, and not because they're specifically dumb; but because it's actually difficult to find truth. It's why you have PhD level domain experts disagree on things in their shared domain. That's usually more nuanced, but that's also at a very high level of expertise.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-03-06 19:17:10+00:00
I generally tend to interview every year to see what's out there in the world (sometimes I find something worth switching for, other times not). I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month.

Personally I think it's a bit more nuanced than senior vs junior (though it is very hard for juniors right now). What I've seen a lot of hunger for is people with a track record of getting their hands dirty and getting things solved. I'm very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems.

From the early start of the last tech boom through the post-pandemic hiring craze I increasingly saw demand for people who where in the latter category and fit nicely in a box. The ability to "do what you must to get this shipped" was less in demand. People cared much more about leetcode performance than an impressive portfolio.

Now reminds me a lot of 2008 in terms of the job market and what companies are looking for. 2008-2012 a strong portfolio of projects was the signal most people looked for. Back then being an OSS dev was a big plus (I found it not infrequently to be a liability in the last decade, better to study leetcode than actually build something).

Honestly, a lot of senior devs lose this ability over time. They get comfortable with the idea that as a very senior hire you don't have to do all that annoying stuff anymore. But the teams I see hiring are really focused on staying lean and getting engineers how are comfortable wearing multiple hats and working hard to get things shipped.
by abelanger | 2026-03-06 19:17:21+00:00
Candidly we're still trying to figure that out: all of the plumbing is there in the open source, but the actual implementation of writes to S3 are only on the cloud version. This is partially because we're loath to introduce additional dependencies, and partially because this job requires a decent amount of CPU and memory and would have to run separate from the Hatchet engine, which adds complexity to self-hosted setups. That said, we're aware of multi-TB self-hosted instances, and this would be really useful for them - so it's important that we can get this into the open source.

The payloads are time-partitioned (in either case) so we do drop them after the user-defined retention period.
by waffleiron | 2026-03-06 19:17:33+00:00
China and geopolitical enemies of the US doing horrible things regularly gets hundreds of votes. It’s quite clear that this argument is mainly used to defend the US and it’s allies.

Just a single example of Russia, hundreds of votes and more than a thousand comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30458277

Edit; just search for Russia, China or Iran on https://hn.algolia.com/ and you’ll find plenty of non tech stories.
by petcat | 2026-03-06 19:17:37+00:00
Not to mention, why on earth would I ever operate a TOR relay or exit node on my home internet connection? Maybe if I could guarantee that it could only be used by journalists or political dissidents, but everything else? No.

I don't need the authorities at my door every few weeks wondering why some of the most deplorable internet traffic of all time is coming from my house.
Show HN: Tri·TFM Lens – 5-axis quality evaluation for ChatGPT/Gemini responses
by siris950 | 2026-03-06 19:17:38+00:00
I built a Chrome extension that evaluates AI chatbot responses across 5 dimensions: Emotion (tone fit), Fact (verifiability), Narrative (structure), Depth (explains WHY vs just WHAT), and Bias (directional framing).

One click next to any ChatGPT or Gemini response → 2 seconds → full quality profile with a Balance score (STABLE/DRIFTING/DOM).

Some results that surprised me:

- "How are you?" → DRIFTING. High emotion, zero facts, zero depth.
- "Why don't antibiotics work on viruses?" → STABLE, Fact=0.95, Depth=0.75
- Persuasive prompts → Bias=+0.72. The model doesn't pretend to be neutral.
- Philosophical answers → Fact=0.40 even with citations. Citing Kant doesn't make unfalsifiable claims verifiable.

The Fact axis uses a 3-step calibration: classify the question as falsifiable or not → apply a ceiling → score within it. This transfers across models at r=0.96.

Interesting negative finding: RLHF-trained models compensate for shallow prompts by adding unsolicited explanations. The Depth axis rubric works (5/5 on controlled responses) but in practice models over-explain everything.

Stack: Manifest V3, vanilla JS, Gemini Flash API as judge, Balance computed client-side. Uses your own API key, no data stored.

Research paper with full methodology and 100-prompt validation available on request.
by salleisha | 2026-03-06 19:17:50+00:00
Most seed-stage founders think "hiring" is the only way to scale.

In 2026, the goal isn't a high headcount. It’s high leverage.

What the "Lean" C-Corp stack actually looks like right now

For Product/Eng: Toptal for heavy lifting or Upwork for specific, scoped tasks (scrapers, APIs).

For Design: Contra is winning for high-end freelancers, or Dribbble if you want to scout portfolios directly.

For Sales: Outsource the LDR/SDR grind. You should only be showing up for the demos.

For Payroll/HR: Gusto, Deel, or Rippling.

For the "Back Office": Don’t waste Sunday night on Delaware filings. It’s a $500/hr distraction. We built TaxHero AI to handle the tax prep and compliance so you stay audit-proof without a "big firm" retainer.

The rule of thumb: If a task is repeatable and documented, it belongs to a contractor or a tool. If it requires "founder intuition," keep it on your desk.

Curious, what’s the one role you’ll never hire full-time again? And where are you guys actually finding reliable talent this year?
by squidleon | 2026-03-06 19:17:52+00:00
That’s awesome to hear!
Actually UOX3 is one of the inspirations behind Moongate. The way it approached the server architecture and scripting was really interesting and it influenced some of the ideas I’m exploring in the project.

Projects like UOX3 are a big part of the history of the Ultima Online emulator scene, so it’s great to hear from someone who helped maintain it.
by forrestthewoods | 2026-03-06 19:18:17+00:00
I guess it’s because I do C++ and robotics. But npm is just not part of my world. The only time I come across it is when someone gets real lazy and doesn’t ship a proper single exe distributable. Claude Code and Codex CLIs were both naughty on initial release. But are now a single file distributable the way the lord intended.
by skydhash | 2026-03-06 19:18:37+00:00
I’ve always like the essential/accidental complexity split. It can be hard to find, but for a problem solving perspective, it may defines what’s fun and what’s a chore.

I’ve been reading the OpenBSD lately and it’s quite nice how they’ve split the general OS concepts from the machine dependent needs. And the general way they’ve separated interfaces and implementation.

I believe that once you’ve solve the essential problem, the rest becomes way easier as you got a direction. But doing accidental problem solving without having done the essential one is pure misery.
by braincat31415 | 2026-03-06 19:18:37+00:00
It does not matter what favors which administration (btw like I said, food inflation stats look awful during Biden's admin, although covid is probably more to blame). The grass is always greener on the other side, and people that cannot afford rent are just not going to vote for more of the same. It is always a swinging pendulum.
The more I think about these things, the more I am convinced that Marx was right, and we only have a semblance of democracy. There is no fundamental difference between the parties.

Like I said, I am more worried about paying real estate taxes, keeping the house, getting my kids through the college, paying car insurance and being able to afford food, and not having to leave the city downtown before dark. Trans issues... not my concern at all. Immigrant rights - I frankly do not care. The plumber who was unclogging my kitchen pipe today is a Trump voter who is not a fan of this war, and he was mostly complaining about skyrocketting cost of doing business and cost of labor that started shooting up about 5 years ago, and THAT likely was the main reason for his vote. Many people keep hanging out on the forums where niche party darling issues get discussed nonstop, and that creates an impression that most of the population cares about them, but I don't believe that's the case at all.

Anyone who manages to decrease the cost of healthcare, food, gas, improves an economy, etc.etc. will get my vote. That was not Biden, and it is clear by now that will not be Vance. Anyone who talks about immigrant rights ahead of my own, defunding the police and so on will not get my vote.

Unfortunately I always seem to have a choice between a bad candidate and a worse candidate. This time I had to choose between a word salad producer who was a VP of a senile president, and a baffoon. The democratic candidate was as unlikeable as the republican. I stayed home. You guys can attack my position as much as you want, but I am not going to put my financial well-being and that of my kids behind the issues that do not matter much for me, and that is not going to change. I believe the same goes for most of american families.

I'll give you a small example. I live in heavily democratic district. A local government had a referendum a few years ago on permits to build low income housing units, subsidized by local taxes. Housing immigrant families was mentioned. The referendum was a complete fiasco. You would have barely found any Trump voters in the room. People's concern about taxation took precedence.

Last years took us from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump who will likely lose midterms because of many things including the Iran adventure. Neither party offered any tangible advantage.
by allenu | 2026-03-06 19:18:51+00:00
You're probably right about the terminology being around for a while, but I think most people just called them smileys (i.e. ;) would be called a "winking smiley"). I remember seeing the term used maybe in the early- or mid-90s either on a BBS or Usenet and thinking "Ah, that's what they're called" and as a nerd being annoyed that nobody used that term colloquially.
by EdNutting | 2026-03-06 19:18:59+00:00
Hot take indeed. Unfortunately it's too blunt an instrument. I can't control "you may search for XYZ about my codebase but not W because W is IP-sensitive". So, to retain Web Search / Web Fetch for when it's useful, all such tool uses must be reviewed to ensure nothing sensitive goes outside the trust boundary.

Yes, I'm aware this implies differing levels of trust for data passing through Claude versus through public search. It's okay for everyone to have different policies on this depending on specific context, use-case and trust policies.
by triceratops | 2026-03-06 19:19:03+00:00
> China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014

Not yet according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-....

> it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources

Developed countries should subsidize their use of cleaner energy sources. That balances things out, morally speaking.
by fokdelafons | 2026-03-06 19:19:21+00:00
Congress just introduced HR 7757 (KIDS Act). It is designed to kill anonymous web browsing for everyone.

Here is how the architecture of the Internet changes under this bill.

* The Verification Trap: clicking "I am 18" is now legally dead under Section 103. But the bill also says platforms cannot be forced to collect government IDs. This legally traps tech companies into forcing third-party biometric face scans or credit card checks just to let you browse mature content.

* Muting Gamers: section 303 targets multiplayer games. It forces developers to mute voice and text chat by default for all players until their age is verified by a third party. It also legally mandates playtime limit systems.

* The Algorithmic Net: section 201 applies these rules to any platform that uses user data to "make content recommendations." If your site has a "For You" feed or targeted algorithm, you are caught in the surveillance net.

* The Legal Kill Switch: they know this violates the First Amendment. Section 602 creates a strict 90-day expiration date to challenge the law's constitutionality. They are trying to time out organizations like the EFF.
by lich_king | 2026-03-06 19:19:42+00:00
This is the plot of the first derivative of employment. It shows a comparatively small but lasting dip after a massive, prolonged, and unwarranted boon between late 2020 and early 2024 that coincided with the dying breaths of ZIRP.

I have no idea about what's coming, but I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to people who are looking at the plots of a highly volatile and cyclic industry that goes through constant boom-and-bust cycles, and are trying to position this as proof that AI is or isn't having an impact.
by getnormality | 2026-03-06 19:19:59+00:00
> Otherwise it doesn't make sense to put CO2 into the air with one hand and take it out with another.

I agree that it doesn't make sense, but I also want to challenge the engineering assumption that an extremely relatively inefficient solution should be ruled out.

If direct air capture worked and simply required absurd amounts of carbon-free power, say from nuclear, it would mean that we no longer have to fight political battles against the entrenched incumbents. They could simply emit whatever our elected politicians let them get away with, and DAC would soak it up.

I completely acknowledge that it seems somehow egregious to do it this way. I am an efficiency-minded person and would hope that we could do it the efficient way. But given all the ugly constraints and lack of progress so far, should we really expect this to be solved the way an efficency-minded engineer might prefer?

If we get to that level of desperation though, I would hope that we could simply pay the emitters to install carbon capture.

What I don't think will work is a politics of rage, righteous or otherwise. I don't recall any incidents in history where a politics of rage led to cool-headed, efficient technocratic solutions. The perennial problem is that the same politics of rage is equally accessible to your opponents, and it spirals down from there towards disorder and violence.
by acdha | 2026-03-06 19:20:06+00:00
Let China continue to cancel fossil fuel plants as they roll out renewables and electrify at rapid scale? It’s not 1980, China is leading a lot of key technologies and they’re looking like they value long-term planning a lot more than we do.

To the extent that they need a nudge, a carbon tax would be very effective for correcting export market incentives, too.
by bigfishrunning | 2026-03-06 19:20:13+00:00
> It's only with the emergence of whiny, persnickety Unix devs who refused to leave the comforting embrace of their editor of choice that shops in the internet/dotcom/startup tradition embraced a "use whatever tools you want" philosophy. They had uncharacteristically enormous leverage over the tech stack being deployed in such businesses and could force employers to make that concession. And anyway, what some of them could do with vi blew the boss's mind.

They had enormous leverage because they were more productive then the drones who use whatever tools they are handed and lack the curiosity to use anything else. These breathless reports of increased productivity are constant, but why is there no evidence of that productivity increase otherwise? Why hasn't there been a surge of side-project video games on Steam? Why is github down so often despite Microsoft's commitment to AI?

The AI tools make it easier to do things that were already easy, but the minute your code gets interesting these tools are an absolute mess.
by nashashmi | 2026-03-06 19:20:39+00:00
For many years since 1997, I would brag and boast about Adobe PageMaker, and everyone would look at me funny and tell me "it doesn't exist". I would insist it did. I used it for web publishing. It was fast. No cruft. It had FTP client built in (which was a little new at the time). It had ability to change file paths in HTML if the file was renamed or saved as something else.
by recursive | 2026-03-06 19:20:41+00:00
The free chatbots I have access to make factually incorrect statements very often. Of the falsifiable statements I've seen come out of them in areas where I know enough, it seems like at least 1 in 10 is objectively wrong in some way. They'll walk it back if pressed. ("you're absolutely right")

I know human teachers aren't perfect, but they seem much better than these things.
by oblio | 2026-03-06 19:20:46+00:00
Look at all the comments under your original comment.

Their point is very valid. Geologic scales are extremely long and the planet does not care.

Humans, on the other hand would physically not be able to survive in most climate going back 100 million years or more. Too little or too much oxygen. Temperatures too high or too low, etc.

We cannot compare this event, which is much, much, much faster than any natural warming, to natural warming events. Those generally take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to shift as much as we're moving things in under 200 years.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago we were basically apes living in caves that could barely speak.
by WaxProlix | 2026-03-06 19:20:57+00:00
Chinese demand is increasing just like everyone else's, and they're both retiring older less efficient plants and using fossil fuels as both peaker and baseline generation. But coal utilization overall, despite massive growth in energy demand, is basically flat in China. There's plenty of reason to build out coal capacity to keep grids stabilized while you transition to solar and wind (China finished their 2030 1200GW solar capacity target 6 years early in 2024 and continue to grow that number at an incredible rate).

I agree that new coal sucks but it's a very easy talking point for westerners like us to latch onto when our own contributions to emissions remain way over 50% higher per capita - despite much of the manufacturing and such not happening in our countries.