Gemini 2.5 Flash
807 by meetpateltech | 417 comments on Hacker News.
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New best story on Hacker News: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations
Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations
801 by scaredpelican | 278 comments on Hacker News.
Earlier today Cursor, the magical AI-powered IDE started kicking users off when they logged in from multiple machines. Like,you’d be working on your desktop, switch to your laptop, and all of a sudden you're forcibly logged out. No warning, no notification, just gone. Naturally, people thought this was a new policy. So they asked support. And here’s where it gets batshit: Cursor has a support email, so users emailed them to find out. The support peson told everyone this was “expected behavior” under their new login policy. One problem. There was no support team, it was an AI designed to 'mimic human responses' That answer, totally made up by the bot, spread like wildfire. Users assumed it was real (because why wouldn’t they? It's their own support system lol), and within hours the community was in revolt. Dozens of users publicly canceled their subscriptions, myself included. Multi-device workflows are table stakes for devs, and if you're going to pull something that disruptive, you'd at least expect a changelog entry or smth. Nope. And just as people started comparing notes and figuring out that the story didn’t quite add up… the main Reddit thread got locked. Then deleted. Like, no public resolution, no real response, just silence. To be clear: this wasn’t an actual policy change, just a backend session bug, and a hallucinated excuse from a support bot that somehow did more damage than the bug itself. But at that point, it didn’t matter. People were already gone. Honestly one of the most surreal product screwups I’ve seen in a while. Not because they made a mistake, but because the AI support system invented a lie, and nobody caught it until the userbase imploded.
801 by scaredpelican | 278 comments on Hacker News.
Earlier today Cursor, the magical AI-powered IDE started kicking users off when they logged in from multiple machines. Like,you’d be working on your desktop, switch to your laptop, and all of a sudden you're forcibly logged out. No warning, no notification, just gone. Naturally, people thought this was a new policy. So they asked support. And here’s where it gets batshit: Cursor has a support email, so users emailed them to find out. The support peson told everyone this was “expected behavior” under their new login policy. One problem. There was no support team, it was an AI designed to 'mimic human responses' That answer, totally made up by the bot, spread like wildfire. Users assumed it was real (because why wouldn’t they? It's their own support system lol), and within hours the community was in revolt. Dozens of users publicly canceled their subscriptions, myself included. Multi-device workflows are table stakes for devs, and if you're going to pull something that disruptive, you'd at least expect a changelog entry or smth. Nope. And just as people started comparing notes and figuring out that the story didn’t quite add up… the main Reddit thread got locked. Then deleted. Like, no public resolution, no real response, just silence. To be clear: this wasn’t an actual policy change, just a backend session bug, and a hallucinated excuse from a support bot that somehow did more damage than the bug itself. But at that point, it didn’t matter. People were already gone. Honestly one of the most surreal product screwups I’ve seen in a while. Not because they made a mistake, but because the AI support system invented a lie, and nobody caught it until the userbase imploded.
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
1054 by dang | 334 comments on Hacker News.
Hi all, Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do. I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with going forward :) I've known Tom since he was sctb's and my batchmate back in YC W09. Many of you know him as the kind and thoughtful community member tomhoward ( https://ift.tt/B9IEHKN ). He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on ( https://ift.tt/hVw7fkB ), the same way I switched to dang when I went through this rite of passage years ago. Below is a bit from Tom about himself. Please join me in welcoming him to this new status which he was crazy enough to say yes to! --- YC and HN have been a huge part of my life for nearly two decades. I read pg's essay How to Start a Startup in 2005 after my friend (and later, co-founder) Fenn found it on Slashdot, and it opened our eyes as to how to go about building products and companies. I first signed up in late 2007, and since then HN has been the place I come to find interesting news and discussions. Hacker News gave me a window into the big wide world of technology and startups, that had previously seemed so remote and opaque from where I lived (and still live) in Australia. We were lucky enough to be accepted into the W09 batch of YC, and since then HN has been a place where we could share announcements about the startup, but also where I could share the challenges and struggles I experienced in the startup journey and other aspects of life, particularly to do with health and wellbeing. From the discussions that have happened about these topics I've ended up making enduring friendships with people all over the world, and have been able to learn many things that have improved my life in profound ways. I love HN's ethos - of being a place people come to engage their curiosity. That's what it's always been for me and what I hope I can help it to be for everyone! --Tom
1054 by dang | 334 comments on Hacker News.
Hi all, Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do. I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with going forward :) I've known Tom since he was sctb's and my batchmate back in YC W09. Many of you know him as the kind and thoughtful community member tomhoward ( https://ift.tt/B9IEHKN ). He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on ( https://ift.tt/hVw7fkB ), the same way I switched to dang when I went through this rite of passage years ago. Below is a bit from Tom about himself. Please join me in welcoming him to this new status which he was crazy enough to say yes to! --- YC and HN have been a huge part of my life for nearly two decades. I read pg's essay How to Start a Startup in 2005 after my friend (and later, co-founder) Fenn found it on Slashdot, and it opened our eyes as to how to go about building products and companies. I first signed up in late 2007, and since then HN has been the place I come to find interesting news and discussions. Hacker News gave me a window into the big wide world of technology and startups, that had previously seemed so remote and opaque from where I lived (and still live) in Australia. We were lucky enough to be accepted into the W09 batch of YC, and since then HN has been a place where we could share announcements about the startup, but also where I could share the challenges and struggles I experienced in the startup journey and other aspects of life, particularly to do with health and wellbeing. From the discussions that have happened about these topics I've ended up making enduring friendships with people all over the world, and have been able to learn many things that have improved my life in profound ways. I love HN's ethos - of being a place people come to engage their curiosity. That's what it's always been for me and what I hope I can help it to be for everyone! --Tom
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Factorio Learning Environment – Agents Build Factories
Show HN: Factorio Learning Environment – Agents Build Factories
707 by noddybear | 204 comments on Hacker News.
I'm Jack, and I'm excited to share a project that has channeled my Factorio addiction recently: the Factorio Learning Environment (FLE). FLE is an open-source framework for developing and evaluating LLM agents in Factorio. It provides a controlled environment where AI models can attempt complex automation, resource management, and optimisation tasks in a grounded world with meaningful constraints. A critical advantage of Factorio as a benchmark is its unbounded nature. Unlike many evals that are quickly saturated by newer models, Factorio's geometric complexity scaling means it won't be "solved" in the next 6 months (or possibly even years). This allows us to meaningfully compare models by the order-of-magnitude of resources they can produce - creating a benchmark with longevity. The project began 18 months ago after years of playing Factorio, recognising its potential as an AI research testbed. A few months ago, our team (myself, Akbir, and Mart) came together to create a benchmark that tests agent capabilities in spatial reasoning and long-term planning. Two technical innovations drove this project forward: First, we discovered that piping Lua into the Factorio console over TCP enables running (almost) arbitrary code without directly modding the game. Second, we developed a first-class Python API that wraps these Lua programs to provide a clean, type-hinted interface for AI agents to interact with Factorio through familiar programming paradigms. Agents interact with FLE through a REPL pattern: 1. They observe the world (seeing the output of their last action) 2. Generate Python code to perform their next action 3. Receive detailed feedback (including exceptions and stdout) We provide two main evaluation settings: - Lab-play: 24 structured tasks with fixed resources - Open-play: An unbounded task of building the largest possible factory on a procedurally generated map We found that while LLMs show promising short-horizon skills, they struggle with spatial reasoning in constrained environments. They can discover basic automation strategies (like electric-powered drilling) but fail to achieve more complex automation (like electronic circuit manufacturing). Claude Sonnet 3.5 is currently the best model (by a significant margin). The code is available at https://ift.tt/ZR2piuf . You'll need: - Factorio (version 1.1.110) - Docker - Python 3.10+ The README contains detailed installation instructions and examples of how to run evaluations with different LLM agents. We would love to hear your thoughts and see what others can do with this framework!
707 by noddybear | 204 comments on Hacker News.
I'm Jack, and I'm excited to share a project that has channeled my Factorio addiction recently: the Factorio Learning Environment (FLE). FLE is an open-source framework for developing and evaluating LLM agents in Factorio. It provides a controlled environment where AI models can attempt complex automation, resource management, and optimisation tasks in a grounded world with meaningful constraints. A critical advantage of Factorio as a benchmark is its unbounded nature. Unlike many evals that are quickly saturated by newer models, Factorio's geometric complexity scaling means it won't be "solved" in the next 6 months (or possibly even years). This allows us to meaningfully compare models by the order-of-magnitude of resources they can produce - creating a benchmark with longevity. The project began 18 months ago after years of playing Factorio, recognising its potential as an AI research testbed. A few months ago, our team (myself, Akbir, and Mart) came together to create a benchmark that tests agent capabilities in spatial reasoning and long-term planning. Two technical innovations drove this project forward: First, we discovered that piping Lua into the Factorio console over TCP enables running (almost) arbitrary code without directly modding the game. Second, we developed a first-class Python API that wraps these Lua programs to provide a clean, type-hinted interface for AI agents to interact with Factorio through familiar programming paradigms. Agents interact with FLE through a REPL pattern: 1. They observe the world (seeing the output of their last action) 2. Generate Python code to perform their next action 3. Receive detailed feedback (including exceptions and stdout) We provide two main evaluation settings: - Lab-play: 24 structured tasks with fixed resources - Open-play: An unbounded task of building the largest possible factory on a procedurally generated map We found that while LLMs show promising short-horizon skills, they struggle with spatial reasoning in constrained environments. They can discover basic automation strategies (like electric-powered drilling) but fail to achieve more complex automation (like electronic circuit manufacturing). Claude Sonnet 3.5 is currently the best model (by a significant margin). The code is available at https://ift.tt/ZR2piuf . You'll need: - Factorio (version 1.1.110) - Docker - Python 3.10+ The README contains detailed installation instructions and examples of how to run evaluations with different LLM agents. We would love to hear your thoughts and see what others can do with this framework!
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Bayleaf – Building a low-profile wireless split keyboard
Show HN: Bayleaf – Building a low-profile wireless split keyboard
725 by sgraz | 245 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I built a wireless, split, ultra-low profile keyboard from scratch called Bayleaf. As a beginner I learned all things electronics, PCB-building, designing for manufacturing, and many other hardware-related skills to put this together. This case study dives into the build process and of course the final result, hope you enjoy!
725 by sgraz | 245 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I built a wireless, split, ultra-low profile keyboard from scratch called Bayleaf. As a beginner I learned all things electronics, PCB-building, designing for manufacturing, and many other hardware-related skills to put this together. This case study dives into the build process and of course the final result, hope you enjoy!
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
1103 by newobj | 255 comments on Hacker News.
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold ~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro, but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA? (my game is Ballionaire: https://ift.tt/gbS3krM... )
1103 by newobj | 255 comments on Hacker News.
I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold ~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro, but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA? (my game is Ballionaire: https://ift.tt/gbS3krM... )
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass
Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass
882 by risquer | 226 comments on Hacker News.
i wanted to change the habit of reaching for my phone in the morning and doomscrolling away an hour so i built an app to help me. now i have to literally touch grass before accessing my most distracting apps the app is built in swiftui, uses the screen time apis provided by apple and google vision to recognise grass or not i'd love to get your thoughts on the concept.
882 by risquer | 226 comments on Hacker News.
i wanted to change the habit of reaching for my phone in the morning and doomscrolling away an hour so i built an app to help me. now i have to literally touch grass before accessing my most distracting apps the app is built in swiftui, uses the screen time apis provided by apple and google vision to recognise grass or not i'd love to get your thoughts on the concept.
New best story on Hacker News: Google open-sources the Pebble OS
Google open-sources the Pebble OS
882 by hexxeh | 129 comments on Hacker News.
https://ift.tt/c6dh1iz
882 by hexxeh | 129 comments on Hacker News.
https://ift.tt/c6dh1iz
New best story on Hacker News: We're bringing Pebble back
We're bringing Pebble back
950 by erohead | 247 comments on Hacker News.
Thank you, Google. You didn't have to, but you did. We (the Pebble team and community) are extraordinarily grateful. I wrote a blog post about our plans to bring Pebble back, sustainably. https://ift.tt/o9bUjZI We got our original start on HN ( https://ift.tt/vfq0Azu ), it's a pleasure to be back.
950 by erohead | 247 comments on Hacker News.
Thank you, Google. You didn't have to, but you did. We (the Pebble team and community) are extraordinarily grateful. I wrote a blog post about our plans to bring Pebble back, sustainably. https://ift.tt/o9bUjZI We got our original start on HN ( https://ift.tt/vfq0Azu ), it's a pleasure to be back.
New best story on Hacker News: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
1114 by paraschopra | 164 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN, I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009: https://ift.tt/yIvS3lD Today, I sold the company to a private equity firm for $200mn. It's covered on TechCrunch: https://ift.tt/QmJ5fgS... I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11 helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company. Thank you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for hacker news. Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this beautiful corner of the internet!
1114 by paraschopra | 164 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN, I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009: https://ift.tt/yIvS3lD Today, I sold the company to a private equity firm for $200mn. It's covered on TechCrunch: https://ift.tt/QmJ5fgS... I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11 helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company. Thank you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for hacker news. Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this beautiful corner of the internet!
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch
Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch
1033 by Hello9999901 | 139 comments on Hacker News.
Hello! I'm Byran. I spent the past ~6 months engineering a laptop from scratch. It's fully open-source on GH at: https://ift.tt/9nubqGd
1033 by Hello9999901 | 139 comments on Hacker News.
Hello! I'm Byran. I spent the past ~6 months engineering a laptop from scratch. It's fully open-source on GH at: https://ift.tt/9nubqGd
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Tetris in a PDF
Show HN: Tetris in a PDF
976 by ThomasRinsma | 177 comments on Hacker News.
I realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris. It was a bit tricky to find a union of features that work in both engines, but in the end it turns out that showing/hiding annotation "fields" works well to make monochrome pixels, and keyboard input can be achieved by typing in a text input box. All in all it's quite janky but a nice reminder of how general purpose PDF scripting can be. The linked PDF is all ASCII so you can just open it in a text editor, or have a look at the source code here: https://ift.tt/wxqidar
976 by ThomasRinsma | 177 comments on Hacker News.
I realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris. It was a bit tricky to find a union of features that work in both engines, but in the end it turns out that showing/hiding annotation "fields" works well to make monochrome pixels, and keyboard input can be achieved by typing in a text input box. All in all it's quite janky but a nice reminder of how general purpose PDF scripting can be. The linked PDF is all ASCII so you can just open it in a text editor, or have a look at the source code here: https://ift.tt/wxqidar
New best story on Hacker News: Happy New Year 2025
Happy New Year 2025
695 by martynvandijke | 167 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, this site always drags me back to visit it everyday. So for that Happy New year !
695 by martynvandijke | 167 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, this site always drags me back to visit it everyday. So for that Happy New year !
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