MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by roughly | 2026-03-12 17:28:57+00:00
For Israel, sure - Iran's been considered the existential threat to them, so yeah, that's the IDF's primary focus. Israel's a peer-level state to Iran (with wide error bars around peer, but they're geographically colocated and neither is large or powerful enough to fully overwhelm the other) - without the US's involvement, this would be a very, very costly war for Israel (and likewise, Iran attacking Israel would be very, very costly for Iran without the US too).

For the US, yes, we've spent a lot of time and effort focused on Iran, but our goal historically has been containment - Iran can't win a war against the US, but they're also not an existential threat to the US, so for us, the question's always been a cost/benefit analysis. Iran knows this, so their act for the last 40 years has been to keep the math on the US attacking Iran unfavorable enough to keep it from happening. This is why they never actually built a bomb - Iran's strategic position was calculated around not pushing Israel into the red zone while still making things too expensive for the US to be willing to bear the cost of attacking Iran.

Unfortunately for all parties, there's three primary flaws in the US's strategic posture: the first is we're too fucking big to feel like we have to do our homework anymore. We can "win" any military conflict shy of full open war against China insofar as we'll be the last ones standing, which puts the rest of the world in the position of having to accommodate themselves to us, not the reverse. The second is that as a people, we've got the shortest memory of perhaps any major nation on earth - the Iranian revolution was in 1989 and the coup was 1953, and to Americans, that's not just distant history, it's practically archaeology. Why would we worry about the Iranians? It's been months since they did anything. The third is we've managed to elect the physical embodiment of that short-termism into office and given him and his friends unilateral permission to do whatever they want in the national scale, which means there's no strategic calculus happening at all - whatever plans, frameworks, or understandings we've built over the last 40 years are in the dustbin along with the rest of the woke DEI crap left over from, eg, the Bush administration.

So, yes, the US has been planning for this for 40 years, but we've got the notable flaw of not reading our plans or caring what happened 40 years ago - as the old joke goes, "a serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
by h4kr1 | 2026-03-12 17:29:14+00:00
I love when the Food Pyramid and MyPlate are brought up as arguments on why Americans are unhealthy these days.

National estimates suggest only 8%-14% of Americans ever followed MyPlate. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40752889/

Also, MyPlate only used "grains" as a category, with a note to make half from whole grains...not just processed carbs. Big difference. And, vegetables are the biggest category.

Adding on to that, if you workout in ANY capacity, you need simple carbs.
by txrx0000 | 2026-03-12 17:29:21+00:00
Nice project. P2P is not the way to go for DMs though. Both users and servers have to stay anonymous if we want to defeat surveillance and censorship long-term.

Ideally, nobody except a single server node of your choice (which is probably the one you self-host) is able to match your Nostr identity to your real IP address. Instead, IP-like-identifiers (like in Yggdrasil Network) should replace IP addresses when interfacing with other nodes. Server hosts would not share their traditional IP when inviting new people to connect to it, only their IP-like-identifier. The invited person can pick/host their own trusted server node as well, and that trusted server would relay that user's connection to your server, which they don't trust. Everyone has a trusted server that represents them.

The trusted server and the untrusted server should not have eachother's IPs during this relay process, either. Instead, the data should be bounced through some other server first, who may bounce it again, and again. The actual underlying path the data travels between the two servers which represent the two users should involve many onion-routed bounces that is not fully known to any server or user. The only situation where a device needs to know another device's IP is when two server nodes establish a reciprocal routing agreement and exchange IPs over an encrypted tunnel ("if I bounce X amount of traffic for you, you will bounce X amount of traffic for me in the future", it's a bandwidth transaction). Such negotiations should be made by querying random addresses or established manually (early on, when the network is small and sparse). This is where offline meshes can help. An ESP32 mesh doesn't have nearly enough capacity to handle all the messages and multimedia flying around, but they can be an alternative pathway to negotiate routing agreements. When the network is dense enough, it will be difficult to pin down your IP, even for state-level actors. And they certainly won't be able to surveil many people at once because even honeypotting one would be incredibly expensive.

Also consider encapsulating all of the Internet-routed traffic in HTTPS using only port 443 (like this: https://www.softether.org/1-features/1._Ultimate_Powerful_VP...). It needs to blend in with traditional web traffic so that no infra operator can identify/block/throttle it.

Also make sure to stay anonymous while developing this so you can't be sued or prosecuted.
by captn3m0 | 2026-03-12 17:29:32+00:00
This problem+solution, like many others in the agentic-space, have nothing agent-specific. Giving a "box" API keys was always considered a risk, and auth-proxying has existed as a solution forever. See tokenizer[0] by the fly.io team, which makes it a stateless service for eg - no database or dashboard. Or the buzzfeed SSO proxy, which lets you do the same via an OAuth2-dance at the frontend, and a upstream config at the backend which injects secrets: https://github.com/buzzfeed/sso/blob/549155a64d6c5f8916ed909....

[0]: https://github.com/superfly/tokenizer
by Olshansky | 2026-03-12 17:30:07+00:00
tl;dr "scrt [set|get|list|....]" is also a great option

---

If this is of interest, I also recommend looking into: https://github.com/loderunner/scrt.

To me, it's a compliment to 1password.

I use it to save every new secret/api key I get via the CLI.

It's intentionally very feature limited.

Haven't tried it with agents, but wouldn't be surprised if the CLI (as is) would be enough.
by rchaud | 2026-03-12 17:30:18+00:00
Who gets to define what "neutral" is? According to the US, the International Criminal Court is not fit for this purpose. It certainly can't be a nation-state that's in a military alliance with the US.

Human Rights Watch, MSF, UNICEF? Woke grievance factories, the lot of them /s . World Health Organization? US just left it. It's slim pickings out there.
by vablings | 2026-03-12 17:30:21+00:00
They were told that the election was stolen and the system was rigged. Under the pretense that you were told no more fair and free elections would you not go do exactly what the j6ers did, I think you would be foolish to say no.

The only core issue is that everything that was said that day was a whole a total lie and the responsibility hangs with the liars
by scottious | 2026-03-12 17:30:33+00:00
but then again, vehicle miles travelled per-capita has been mostly increasing in the US since as far back as 1975. There could be a lot of confounding factors. Like astronomical housing prices in urban areas forcing people live very far away and incur more VMT at a faster rate than WFH decreases VMT. I'm no expert here, I'm just spitballing.
by kjs3 | 2026-03-12 17:31:16+00:00
Up til 20 years ago there were a surprising number of ATMs still running OS/2; NCR and Diebold supported old machines for a long time. Especially small market/small regional banks wanted to get the absolute most out of their capex investment. Over the years, I've worked with a couple of those dead-enders on different GRC projects, mostly because I'd actually seen OS/2 before. AFAIK, those vendors stopped supporting OS/2 in the 2000s; I'd be very, very surprised if there were any left now.

I you're interested in how a very "not Unix" operating system is architected, I really recommend Deitels' "Design of OS/2". Very interesting.
by RobertoG | 2026-03-12 17:32:05+00:00
That's funny.

I find surprising that the polemic I heard more talking, seems to be in the open source to close source direction.

It seems to me, that the more relevant part of this new development, for the software industry, it's a teenager working in the weekend with a LLM and making a functional clone of Autocad, for instance.
by JeremyNT | 2026-03-12 17:32:06+00:00
It seems like a huge self own but he benefits from an extremely loyal fan base and a militaristic culture that loves rallying around the flag.

Does he even care if his actions hurt the country or global stability at all, so long as his supporters remain unwavering? It seems like he doesn't, so here we are.

There is no plausible stimulus that he might actually care to respond to.
by jhatemyjob | 2026-03-12 17:32:23+00:00
I unironically want this service to exist. The GNU GPL "is a tumor on the programming community, in that not only is it completely braindead, but the people who use it go on to infect other people who can't think for themselves."

Historically, it was a good license, and was able to keep Microsoft and Apple in check, in certain respects. But it's too played out now. In the past, a lot of its value came from it being not fully understood. Now it's a known quantity. You will never have a situation where NeXT is forced to open source their Objective-C frontend, for example
by dredmorbius | 2026-03-12 17:32:51+00:00
HN, its moderation guidelines, and its moderator practices, are highly sensitive to anything verging on personal attack simply because site behaviour is so sensitive to such writing.

If that means blunting objections as "that's incorrect" rather than "you're wrong", so be it. Two decades' experience, which is a tremendous run in online forum space, is quite difficult to argue with.

(Not that I don't occasionally argue with mods over guidelines, intent, and/or effects, not necessarily on this specific rule.)
by peterfirefly | 2026-03-12 17:33:06+00:00
They are counted by hand in Denmark. We used to post the results on physical paper at the voting site afterwards + have them published for the entire country (including a list of the votes at each voting site) in the national papers.

If the local results anywhere were different from those published in the papers, people would notice. If they were different in different papers, or in different parts of the country, people would notice.

We have, unfortunately, switched to a list on a website instead of in the papers :(
by kdazzle | 2026-03-12 17:33:46+00:00
I'm kind of in this space - 3d knitting is pretty interesting, but knitting a sweater like that takes a long time (I forget how long, but I think it's 1-2 hours), so it's not really a solution for working at any sort of scale. Unless you build up inventory or have a ton of machines. But the machines are super expensive compared to regular knitting machines.

I also think that wholegarment knits look kind of cheap and that sewing actually adds structural integrity and durability to a garment.

But anything knitting or clothes related is really fun and challenging and good for them for making a business out of it.
by jonathanlydall | 2026-03-12 17:33:52+00:00
I have ancestral Italian Citizenship but have never lived in Italy.

I am occasionally called upon by the local consulate to perform my civic duty and vote.

Just this week I sent them back my ballot, now marked, for this referendum in a sealed envelope.

This referendum required me to dig more deeply than usual into Italian politics before I could decide which way I wanted to vote.
by gwern | 2026-03-12 17:33:59+00:00
The solution here seems to be to impose some constraint or requirement which means that literal copying is impossible (remember, copyright governs copies, it doesn't govern ideas or algorithms - that would be 'patents', which essentially no open source software has) or where any 'copying' from vaguely remembered pretraining code is on such an abstract indirect level that it is 'transformative' and thus safe.

For example, the Anthropic Rust C compiler could hardly have copied GCC or any of the many C compilers it surely trained on, because then it wouldn't have spat out reasonably idiomatic and natural looking Rust in a differently organized codebase.

Good news for Rust and Lean, I guess, as it seems like everyone these days is looking for an excuse to rewrite everything into those for either speed or safety or both.
by datacynic | 2026-03-12 17:33:59+00:00
I like this Tufte quote from https://www.edwardtufte.com/notebook/book-design-advice-and-...:

It is also notable that the Feynman lectures (3 volumes) write about all of physics in 1800 pages, using only 2 levels of hierarchical headings: chapters and A-level heads in the text. It also uses the methodology of sentences which then cumulate sequentially into paragraphs, rather than the grunts of bullet points. Undergraduate Caltech physics is very complicated material, but it didn’t require an elaborate hierarchy to organize.

I think about it a lot when reading markdown feature-driven writing or catching myself doing it.
by ProllyInfamous | 2026-03-12 17:34:03+00:00
I have a printout of #1105 in my glovebox, specifically because my license place is similarly-ridiculous (and "unscannable" but a legally-issued specialty plate). On the reverse is a copy of my state's law on "proper display of registration identifier," but not to discuss with a cop (for him to find in event of being an asshole, searching my vehicle).

My vehicle blends in and is otherwise-legal — non-compliance encourages me to obey most traffic laws — but I do carry the plate in my passenger seat to display in event of pull-over (my plate is some iteration of "no plate," and I do respect individual officers' safeties [1]).

[1] They have every right to know, when performing a lawful investigation. My plan would be to hold it up while initially stopped (to show intent of identification, my plate is complicated in many ways and must be searched for in a very odd way).
by mikestew | 2026-03-12 17:34:12+00:00
Well I could say that it isn't enough for vscode alone. And I'd be right. It all depends on how and what you use vscode for.

Fair enough; though experience says 8Gb will run VScode, it would very much depend on the use case, I agree. OTOH, I would argue that anyone working VScode that hard probably isn’t buying 8Gb machines, but OP did say they’re running it so it’s up for discussion.
by dang | 2026-03-12 17:35:02+00:00
The difference between "a rule has been cut from the list" and "a rule is not on the list" only lasts a day or two. After that, no one will remember.

(I wouldn't say "lifted", though, since that implies quite a bit more.)

(Btw, I'm going to put some of that language back into the guidelines since so many people protested its removal - so this point is about to get even more theoretical!)
by Bender | 2026-03-12 17:35:42+00:00
Back then plenty of people pointed out that if you light one end of those tunnels on fire, there's no need for any additional ammunition to reach the deepest point

I pointed that out here in another thread but was crapped on for pointing that out and for even suggesting there were 500m deep bunkers. I was also accused of posting links to videos that had to be made by video production software despite being 10 year old CNN videos. I can't tell who is trolling, gas-lighting and astroturfing who any more. HN is infected with manipulation groups, probably expected during a conflict with Iran.

Those lines are at the lowest point in their tunnels so someone or something has to make it into that lower level. If they can it should make for quite a show.
by metacells | 2026-03-12 17:35:53+00:00
Spreadsheets may already be the most widely used programming interface in the world.

For decades people have built complex workflows in Excel and Google Sheets using a simple idea: cells referencing other cells.

One calculation produces a result → another cell builds on it → another transforms it again.
A chain of computation emerges across a sheet - sometimes across many sheets.

If you've ever built a financial model, you probably remember the moment when changing a few assumptions triggered a recalculation across the entire workbook - dozens of sheets updating automatically.

MetaCells explores what happens when the same pattern is extended with AI.

Instead of only formulas, some cells can call AI functions and external tools.

A cell can:

call an LLM

analyze files or images dropped into the sheet

receive or send data via connectors (email, messengers, APIs)

process attachments or documents

generate or explain formulas

return structured outputs that other cells can use

The spreadsheet still behaves like a spreadsheet: cells referencing other cells.

But now some cells perform AI processing, and their outputs become inputs for other cells.
Chains of AI computation can flow across the sheet and across sheets.

In a way it feels similar to a financial model - but instead of numbers propagating through formulas, AI-generated results propagate through the workbook.

External inputs can enter through connectors (emails, messengers, APIs), pass through AI-processing cells, and produce structured outputs or outgoing messages.

Compared to agent frameworks like OpenCLAW, the spreadsheet model provides a more visual representation of what is happening. The processing chain is visible directly in the sheet, which can reduce the mental overhead of building and debugging agent workflows.

Example workflows:

A founder drops customer emails into the sheet → AI cells extract problems customers mention → other cells group them into themes → another sheet generates possible product ideas.

Or competitor analysis → AI cells read websites or PDFs → extract features and pricing → another sheet builds comparison tables → another generates positioning ideas.

Just like traditional spreadsheets, these chains can eventually be collapsed into reusable formulas.

MetaCells is open source and can be cloned and run locally.

GitHub:
(link)

Curious what people here think

Could spreadsheets actually be a practical interface for building AI agent workflows?
What kinds of workflows would you build first?
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2026-03-12 17:36:03+00:00
> On the broader point, I hear you, but I think there's a middle ground. Not all content is public knowledge. Some of it is premium, proprietary, or behind a paywall. The people publishing it should get to decide whether it becomes free training data.

I don't follow. Are you suggesting that someone is scraping private sites that they have to log in on in order to train AI on it?
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-03-12 17:36:08+00:00
No Steve Jobs said exactly what he said. The technology wasn’t to the point where they could offer products that aren’t junk. An unsubsidized $120 Android phone is “junk”. A $99 iPod Shuffle or a $300 low end iPad isn’t.

The Netbooks available in 2010 were junk even by that days standards.

The MacBook Neo which is fast enough, a better display than low end PCs and a good trackpad is not junk. It can do what most low end consumers care about well.

At least in the US, even during the SJ era you could get a “free” iPhone with a contract that anyone could afford - it was the last years phone
by x0x0 | 2026-03-12 17:36:25+00:00
I found it not just to lead to embellishment, but (1) the problems it did flag mostly would be caught by minimal testing; whereas (2) it regularly missed deeper problems. For an example of the latter: using TanStack (React Query) api caching, you have different data shapes for infinite scroll vs non infinite scroll. There were circumstances were an app confused them. Typescript had nothing to say. Nominal typing easily handles these cases and, ime, caught more actual problems.
by blutoot | 2026-03-12 17:36:27+00:00
I'm a little confused. An agent's value-add is to automate what a human actor (in this case, an SRE) does and thus reduces the time taken to recovery, etc. A human SRE never manually detects an error - we already have well-established anomaly detection implementations and wiring them to some ticket generation tool is also an established pattern. My confusion is, what value the "agent" is bringing here. Nothing wrong in competing with the Datadogs of the world.
by onetimeusename | 2026-03-12 17:36:38+00:00
I go back and forth on this. I relate it to software. I don't think AI can meaningfully write software autonomously. There are people who oversee it and prompt it and even then it might write things badly. So there needs to be a person in the loop. But that person should probably have very deep knowledge of the software especially for say low level coding. But then that person probably developed the knowledge by coding things by hand for a long time. Coding things by hand is part of getting the knowledge. But people especially students rely heavily on AI to write code so I assume their knowledge growth is stunted. I don't know mathematical proofs will help here. The specs have to come from somewhere.

I can see AI making things more productive but it requires humans to be very expert and do more work. That might mean fewer developers but they are all more skilled. It will take a while for people to level up so to speak. It's hard to predict but I think there could be a rough transition period because people haven't caught on that they can't rely on AI so either they will have to get a new career or ironically study harder.
by boondongle | 2026-03-12 17:36:42+00:00
It's directed at the person I replied to. It's not directed at the top level OP or Malus which is hilarious, monetized satire.

Focusing overly on corporate structures or specific skills tends to miss the point of how value is assigned in a capitalistic structure when knowledge is cheap. Knowledge has been the capital used by the labor force for hundreds of years. The reason some jobs are resistant is 100% the result of legislation at that point, not anything unique about the job.

"The Trades" seems to be the sales pitch used on the public. In the end they're just labor at that point since I can pump a 20 year old with a master electricians knowledge, keep one master on staff and fire every other person who hits that level when their earnings demand it in the same way we're firing many mid/upper level people in their 30's and 40's now instead of 50's and 60's which is the scenario in Tech today.

Software/IT is just the quickest to be absorbed. Many other industries are just in the slow boil, not seeing it yet.
by perrii | 2026-03-12 17:37:03+00:00
Hey everyone,

Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with building small SaaS products. One of the projects I built is called Ordia.

The idea behind it is simple: a lightweight order tracking dashboard designed for Instagram or WhatsApp sellers who currently manage orders in DMs or spreadsheets.

Originally I planned to run it as a small SaaS for online sellers, but instead I decided to turn it into a developer template.

So now I'm selling the full source code as a starter for anyone who wants to launch a similar SaaS.

Tech stack:

• Next.js (JavaScript)
• MongoDB
• LemonSqueezy payments

Current features:

• Order tracking dashboard
• Payment status tracking
• Delivery status tracking
• Customer info (name + phone)
• Manual order entry
• Simple clean dashboard UI

The idea is that developers can use it to:

• Launch their own micro-SaaS
• Build a client project
• Modify it into a niche order management tool

This was built as a real working product, not just a UI template.

If anyone here is interested in checking it out, I just listed it on Gumroad.

Happy to answer any questions about the project or the codebase.