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Show HN: Myanon – fast, deterministic MySQL dump anonymizer

https://github.com/ppomes/myanon
1•pierrepomes•48s ago•0 comments

The Tao of Programming

http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
1•alexjplant•1m ago•0 comments

Forcing Rust: How Big Tech Lobbied the Government into a Language Mandate

https://medium.com/@ognian.milanov/forcing-rust-how-big-tech-lobbied-the-government-into-a-langua...
1•akagusu•2m ago•0 comments

PanelBench: We evaluated Cursor's Visual Editor on 89 test cases. 43 fail

https://www.tryinspector.com/blog/code-first-design-tools
2•quentinrl•4m ago•0 comments

Can You Draw Every Flag in PowerPoint? (Part 2) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BztF7MODsKI
1•fgclue•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP-baepsae – MCP server for iOS Simulator automation

https://github.com/oozoofrog/mcp-baepsae
1•oozoofrog•13m ago•0 comments

Make Trust Irrelevant: A Gamer's Take on Agentic AI Safety

https://github.com/Deso-PK/make-trust-irrelevant
2•DesoPK•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sem – Semantic diffs and patches for Git

https://ataraxy-labs.github.io/sem/
1•rs545837•18m ago•1 comments

Hello world does not compile

https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1
2•mfiguiere•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ZigZag – A Bubble Tea-Inspired TUI Framework for Zig

https://github.com/meszmate/zigzag
2•meszmate•26m ago•0 comments

Metaphor+Metonymy: "To love that well which thou must leave ere long"(Sonnet73)

https://www.huckgutman.com/blog-1/shakespeare-sonnet-73
1•gsf_emergency_6•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Django N+1 Queries Checker

https://github.com/richardhapb/django-check
1•richardhapb•43m ago•1 comments

Emacs-tramp-RPC: High-performance TRAMP back end using JSON-RPC instead of shell

https://github.com/ArthurHeymans/emacs-tramp-rpc
1•todsacerdoti•48m ago•0 comments

Protocol Validation with Affine MPST in Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev
1•o8vm•52m ago•1 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
2•gmays•54m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zest – A hands-on simulator for Staff+ system design scenarios

https://staff-engineering-simulator-880284904082.us-west1.run.app/
1•chanip0114•55m ago•1 comments

Show HN: DeSync – Decentralized Economic Realm with Blockchain-Based Governance

https://github.com/MelzLabs/DeSync
1•0xUnavailable•1h ago•0 comments

Automatic Programming Returns

https://cyber-omelette.com/posts/the-abstraction-rises.html
1•benrules2•1h ago•1 comments

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation [pdf]

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Why%20Are%20there%20Still%20So%20Many%...
2•oidar•1h ago•0 comments

The Search Engine Map

https://www.searchenginemap.com
1•cratermoon•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Souls.directory – SOUL.md templates for AI agent personalities

https://souls.directory
1•thedaviddias•1h ago•0 comments

Real-Time ETL for Enterprise-Grade Data Integration

https://tabsdata.com
1•teleforce•1h ago•0 comments

Economics Puzzle Leads to a New Understanding of a Fundamental Law of Physics

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/economics-puzzle-leads-to-a-new-understanding-of-a-fundamental...
3•geox•1h ago•1 comments

Switzerland's Extraordinary Medieval Library

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260202-inside-switzerlands-extraordinary-medieval-library
2•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight?

https://phys.org/news/2026-02-comet-visible-broad-daylight.html
4•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

ESR: Comes the news that Anthropic has vibecoded a C compiler

https://twitter.com/esrtweet/status/2019562859978539342
2•tjr•1h ago•0 comments

Frisco residents divided over H-1B visas, 'Indian takeover' at council meeting

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2026/02/04/frisco-residents-divided-over-h-1b-visas-indi...
4•alephnerd•1h ago•5 comments

If CNN Covered Star Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vArJg_SU4Lc
1•keepamovin•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: I built the first tool to configure VPSs without commands

https://the-ultimate-tool-for-configuring-vps.wiar8.com/
2•Wiar8•1h ago•3 comments

AI agents from 4 labs predicting the Super Bowl via prediction market

https://agoramarket.ai/
1•kevinswint•1h ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to Criticizing AI

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/
55•doener•2mo ago

Comments

roxolotl•2mo ago
It’s a longer read, and the tangent on copyright while interesting and something Cory is passionate about is slightly off topic, but it’s the rare piece bringing up the key issue with AI. The argument goes like:

- The valuations are only reasonable if they are going to enable mass worker replacement. Yes there is the machine god argument, Wall Street doesn’t buy that.

- The tooling doesn’t have to be capable of replacing workers. The sales people just have to be able to convince execs it is.

- Even ignoring to fact that lots of people would lose their jobs this replacement would make everything worse because AI isn’t capable of replacing jobs.

- The bubble is based on the assumption everything will get better.

- We need to convince people things will get worse before they actually do.

These tools aren’t useless. They are remarkable. But that doesn’t mean they will meet the hype nor the valuations. In order to avoid an economic cataclysm it’s important for a realistic and measured narrative to take hold fast.

npodbielski•2mo ago
Is it that bad in US? I mean how many people companies have to fire to notice that great promise of AI just making money for shareholders is not happening? If people in suits are so out of touch in reality to do that, instead of... I do not know A/B testing: fire all employees in one division and prohibit using of AI in the second one to see what will happen, maybe it will be good actually that US will came through economic crisis? Maybe it will became stronger? And if not maybe somebody more reasonable will take a reign? I just hope it won't be China though :)
gmuslera•2mo ago
The article covers a lot of ground, but where he was explaining artists, rights, and copyrights, I couldn't stop thinking that in good part, what artists (and programmers, and a lot of other professions that are threatened by AIs) is more or less the kind of work that AI does.

We are meme machines, we mix, combine, reshuffle or just ensemble different memes and patterns we saw somewhere, mostly System 1 work, and then put a "it's only mine" label to it and proceed to sell that with exclusive rights. We can go further away with AIs, as we can mix things from very different fields, extrapolate trends that are just not there, make System 2 play here, and not go much more farther than that, in the sense that other humans can follow and understand it.

And the lion's share of what is around, those "owned" mixes that everyone else is forbidden to think or express on their own, don't go much further than what a current AI can do. A lot of music, books, and other pieces of "art" are just an algorithm result (performed by humans or not).

There are things with the use of AI that may be wrong or a bad trend at the very least, but don't lose sight of what we essentially are. We can take a step forward, but most of the time we are not so different.

skeltoac•2mo ago
At its core, a case for allowing sectoral bargaining which would give creatives the massive BATNA they need to overcome the imbalance of power.
BeFlatXIII•2mo ago
The problem is that most computer-touching is too easily self-taught to have a proper union that won't immediately be undermined by those who offer their services without asking permission.
Multicomp•2mo ago
An interesting read with good points regarding copyright discussions and how pointy haired bosses will hope to do a neo nafta to white collar employees like the original did to blue collar ones.

I suspect businesses will attempt to do compilation copyright if not individual asset copyright to get around tfas recipe for centaurness for artists.

If I have a story that I write and use AI to render the images, soundtrack, motions, potentially voice acting, when does what the AI did stop and where does my work begin?

If I write and voice act the thing, those pieces are copyrighted. Does that constitute enough of the creative work that while I can't copyright a particular screen grab, I can copyright the work as a whole like a phone book?

Maybe, I genuinely don't know. What if I have the AI do the voice acting as well? Probably, that is a public domain work to my uninformed opinion.

It is not a question in my mind if I also just throw in a concept and have the AI produce the script that is then rendered out as well.

AI has shown that for creative art, it all begins with the writing, even if the final work produced is entirely visual or audio, the whole point of Art and copyright is to create a shared impression, hallucination, experience from Human to human. To communicate.

If the AI rendering can properly give things like tabletop RPG Recaps (and the content that the AI is rendering is original and under copyright) how much of that original concept (such as someone playing a tabletop RPG session with a story they wrote themselves) does the final rendered work get transient copyright protection? None? Even though its based on an underlying concept that is copyrightable if written down?

Businesses will be wanting to know these sorts of questions too, and that sill help shape how artists / coders / knowledge workers at large are transformed into centaurs or the reverse, ceteris paribus.

morkalork•2mo ago
I get the metaphor they're going for with reverse-centaur but I can't help believe that there isn't the name a animal headed, human bodied mythological creature that could be used instead.
polotics•2mo ago
"Reverse centaur" is I think better fit for purpose than eg. Minotaur, as the head of a bull doesn't match. "Reverse centaur" does not say what the head is made of. Maybe Iron Maiden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_maiden) could work, but the band very much occupies that meme-space...
__MatrixMan__•2mo ago
I love Doctorow, but I think his bit about hallucinating library names needs a rethink.

In a world where you're on the hook for the code your AI writes, the job is code review, but it's just as much about wiring up tests and linters and type checkers so that errors of that kind are noticed and fixed by the AI before you even see the draft that got abandoned.

If I had to share an example about the subtle and then suddenly not so subtle ways that AI is gonna disappoint a coder it would be about the time I asked it to update my flake.nix such that kustomize 4.5 was installed instead of 4.6, and instead of sourcing the older code it patched the current version such that the output of --version was "4.5".

yomismoaqui•2mo ago
I'm a human and when struggling with some flake.nix I sometimes want to do what the AI did.
__MatrixMan__•2mo ago
Yeah, I hear you. I've occasionally succumbed and cut some corners in my day. But in this case, it was a load bearing corner--the deception didn't last long and it was pretty embarrassing for me.
_wire_•2mo ago
...And the AI got trained on this.

viz., fingers.

zwnow•2mo ago
> and it's based on the manuscript for my next book, "The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI," which will be out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux next June:

Yea nah not worth reading as its just advertisement.

LogicFailsMe•2mo ago
I spent some time experimenting with AI art. He's right that it doesn't look right somehow most of the time. But in my case, if I started with a photograph I took and extracted its silhouette lines as the basis for the image I was generating, I got something a lot harder to distinguish from manually generated art.

He's right about the motives of tech Bros and executives here. But I don't think he's right about where AI will eventually go because I think it will become pervasive because it almost already is.

It's ridiculously optimistic to think you can run a 1 trillion parameter model on a phone anytime soon. So those data centers have a power generation problem and their limitation will be the extent to which the power generation problem is solved.

I just don't think AI is going to crash. But if you look at ridiculous valuations and PE ratios higher than 100 or so, timber! But crashing to 20 to 50 (CSCO after the crash from 200) is just the market pulling its own head out of its butt so I suppose there's the bubble. Good luck, however, figuring out when. Also, CSCO is still here. He really ought to look around at how many people have outsourced their thinking and writing to large language models already.

I'm a bit reminded of this Outer Limits episode minus the BCI:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667957/plotsummary/

I don't think senior talent will get replaced anytime soon, but I also think that one or two fundamental innovations down the road on par with the Attention is All You Need paper will make AI dramatically better at tasks that don't require embodiment. Those innovations seem to occur every couple years across the sector. But again, good luck. predicting when and how.

See also: https://medicushcs.com/resources/the-radiologist-shortage-ad...

Before we fire all the radiologists, we'll have to centaur the crap out of them just to meet demand. But that doesn't fit his narrative so he left that out because I'm sure he's aware of it.