Hacker News
Microsoft shutters AI lab in Shanghai, signalling a broader pullback from China
Started an Audience Research Community for SaaS Builders on Twitter (X)
Article URL: https://x.com/i/communities/1906362116225069553
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537601
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
France fines Apple €150M for "excessive" pop-ups that let users reject tracking
End of Life for Akamai Identity Cloud
Article URL: https://techdocs.akamai.com/identity-cloud/docs/product-status
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537551
Points: 3
# Comments: 0
Baseball Reaches Its Breaking Point
Article URL: https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/baseball-reaches-its-breaking-point
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537547
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
Why should I care? or why punks are correct and old wise philosophers are wrong
Article URL: https://abuseofnotation.github.io/moral-law/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537535
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Check Point confirms breach, says it was 'old' data, crook made 'false' claims
Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/31/check_point_confirms_breach/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537520
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Launch HN: Augento (YC W25) – Fine-tune your agents with reinforcement learning
Hi HN, we’re the cofounders of Augento (https://augento.ai/). We’re building Deepseek R1-like fine-tuning as a service. You connect your agent, tell us when it’s right or wrong, and we deliver an LLM optimized for that agent. There’s a demo video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5RQaTdRrKE, and our docs are at https://docs.augento.ai/. It’s open for anyone to use at https://augento.ai.
Agents fail all the time, especially when you try to use them for something actually useful. Current solution approaches suck: prompting has intrinsic limits and supervised fine-tuning requires big explicit datasets that are hard to collect.
Two months ago, the DeepSeek R1 paper outlined a way to post-train LLMs with (almost) pure reinforcement learning. We took up their research and built a fine-tuning platform around that.
You let us intercept your agent's data flow, and we deliver you a fine-tuned open-source model, that is trained on the agent's specific task. Instead of providing big datasets of explicit fine-tuning samples, you provide a reward function, judging the model's outputs.
Here are examples of what this can be used for:
Coding Agent: We fine-tuned a coding agent that was constantly making syntax errors and failed to handle semantic edge cases properly. By providing a reward function that evaluated code against the compiler, the agent learned not to produce these errors. The fine-tuned model reduced critical bugs by 40% with just 20 training samples.
MCP Tool Specialization: Imagine you have a custom set of internal tools using the MCP protocol, but your agent keeps selecting the wrong tool or passing incompatible parameters. You could fine-tune with a reward function that scores tool selection and parameter matching.
Browser Agent Navigation: If you're building a browser agent that struggles with complex web UIs or specific sites, you could fine-tune it to better understand UI elements and navigation patterns. With a reward function that scores successful task completion (like "find the best price for this product" or "complete this multi-step form"), you could train an agent that better identifies clickable elements, understands form validation errors, and navigates through complex SPAs without getting stuck.
VLA Robot Control: If you're using vision-language models to control robotic arms or other hardware, you could fine-tune for your specific actuator setup. With a reward function based on high-level task completion, you could train a Vision-Langauge-Action (VLA) model that translates natural language commands like "move the red block behind the blue cylinder" into actuator controls for your specific hardware.
As you see from these examples, the current paradigm is best suited for "verifiable domains”, where it is possible to give an explicit function judging the model’s outputs. However, up next, we will also support an "alignment mode", where you don't have to provide a reward function but provide high-level feedback on past failure runs of your agent. Just tag where things went wrong, and we'll handle the rest. This makes it even easier to improve your agents without needing to write formal reward functions.
Our platform is not itself open source, but it fine-tunes open-source language models. I.e. it is an alternative to the reinforcement fine-tuning API from OpenAI, but with Qwen, LLama, Deepseek, etc., and more customizability on the reward model. We charge users for the training and for their inference/interaction with the model later on ($0 monthly flat fee + training cost + inference cost).
The platform is self-serving and open to use at https://augento.ai/dashboard. We’ll give you $20 in training credits, which should be enough for connecting your agent and delivering some observable improvement on your use case.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback!
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537505
Points: 11
# Comments: 0
China's Manus Turns Its AI Agent into a $39 Subscription
Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-31/china-s-manus-turns-its-ai-agent-into-a-39-subscription
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537502
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
Cuneiforms: New digital tool for translating ancient texts
Article URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250326123733.htm
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537079
Points: 1
# Comments: 1
'Boreout' Is the New 'Burnout' for Remote Workers
Article URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/13/adam-grant-what-is-boreout.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537066
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Use GNU Emacs the Plain Text Computing Environment [Book, 2024]
Article URL: https://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/emacs/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537063
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
The Average College Student Is Illiterate
Article URL: https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-average-college-student-is-illiterate
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537054
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Warren's Abstract Machine: A Tutorial Reconstruction (1999)
Article URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20110403055600/http://wambook.sourceforge.net/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537046
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
Geometric Deep Learning: The Erlangen Programme of ML (2021) [video]
Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Pw4MOzMuo
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43537037
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
DeepSeek surpasses ChatGPT in new monthly visits
Show HN: AI-powered project planning in seconds(Taskra)
I built Taskra, an AI-powered project management tool that helps teams and individuals generate detailed project timelines, milestones, and risk assessments in seconds.
I made this because I often found project planning tedious and wanted an AI assistant to handle it. Would love your feedback!
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43536991
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Reasons we don't write code like we used to (2020)
Article URL: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2266292/5-reasons-we-dont-write-code-like-we-used-to.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43536988
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
The Search for MH370 is Back ON What's changed? [video]
Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIuXEU4H-XE
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43536987
Points: 2
# Comments: 0
Show HN: Rust Lib for Native OCR on macOS, Windows, Linux
Article URL: https://github.com/mediar-ai/uniOCR
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43536962
Points: 2
# Comments: 0