MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jspinak | 2025-11-09 19:51:49+00:00
Hi HN, author here.

I started building Brobot in 2018 to automate gameplay - I wanted to understand why my automation kept breaking. The more I dug in, the more I realized this was a fundamental problem in GUI automation itself.

Two problems kept surfacing:

1. Script fragility - automation breaks constantly from minor GUI changes

2. Inability to test - no way to verify automation works before deploying

Research in GUI testing shows that the vast majority of test failures come from UI changes, not actual bugs. Yet you can't write integration tests for traditional GUI automation. You just run it and hope.

The root cause: traditional automation uses sequential scripts (do A, then B, then C). Making this robust requires exponential code growth - a 30-state automation has 6.36 trillion possible paths. You can't test all paths, can't guarantee it works.

Model-based GUI automation solves both problems by borrowing from robotics navigation. Instead of writing step-by-step scripts, you create a navigable map of the GUI. The framework handles pathfinding, state management, and error recovery automatically.

Key results:

• Reduces complexity from exponential to polynomial (mathematically proven)

• Makes GUI automation testable for the first time (integration tests, path verification)

• Enables reliable visual APIs for RL agents

• Supports robust dataset generation for model training

• Works for games, business apps, web interfaces - any GUI

Over 7 years, I developed and formalized this approach through both mathematical theory and real-world validation. Springer SoSyM published it in late October.

Open-source implementation: https://github.com/qontinui

• qontinui (Python) - Core automation library (pip install qontinui)

• multistate (Python) - State machine (pip install multistate)

• qontinui-runner (Rust/TypeScript) - Desktop execution engine

• qontinui-api (Python/FastAPI) - REST API bridge (pip install qontinui-api)

Interactive docs & playground: https://qontinui.github.io/multistate/

Original Java version (Brobot, 2018-2025): https://github.com/jspinak/brobot

I'm also building a visual builder (qontinui-web, Feb 2026 launch) for no-code automation - point-and-click designer that creates JSON configs the runner executes locally. Available now in early access (breaking changes possible before launch, but migration tools provided for format changes).

The research provides the mathematical foundation, the Python stack lets you use it today (code-based or visual). Wanted to contribute something useful to the AI/RL community.

Demos:

• Mobile game image collection/labeling: https://jspinak.github.io/brobot/docs/tutorials/tutorial-bas...

• More examples: https://jspinak.github.io/brobot/

Paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10270-025-01319-9

Story behind the name: https://jspinak.github.io/brobot/docs/theoretical-foundation...
by callahad | 2025-11-09 19:52:07+00:00
The Verified Email Protocol got renamed to BrowserID, and Persona was its reference implementation.

This looks broadly similar to that, but with some newer primitives (SD-JWT) and a focus on autocomplete as an entrypoint to the flow. If I recall correctly, the entire JOSE suite (JWT, JWK, JWE, etc.) was still under active iteration while we were building Persona.

And hey, I applaud the effort. Persona got a lot of things right, and I still think we as an industry can do better than Passkeys.

For historic interest, the Persona After Action Report has a few key insights from when we spun down the project: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/Persona_AAR
by selfhoster11 | 2025-11-09 19:52:25+00:00
> It feels like wrestling with 1998 in trying to use VLC these days. It's got a real WinAmp feel to it.

What do you mean by that? To me, it's like any other application - you double-click the file (or run `vlc file.mp4`), and it plays. That the UI is not oversimplified is a cultural thing, VLC decided to cater to those that prefer to have the extra controls.
by anon214535 | 2025-11-09 19:52:26+00:00
I don't understand how anyone can think Grok is the lesser of many evils. It seems to me that Grok is currently playing in its own league of evil.

Most models belong to capitalist companies that are fairly apolitical and all they care about is money. Their evil comes from not caring about consequences as long as it grows their value. Their censorship come from the desire to avoid PR disasters.

On the other hand, Grok belongs to a billionaire involved in destroying America's democracy, and it's being openly manipulated according to Musk's ideology. I can't think of a model I would trust less.
by caminante | 2025-11-09 19:52:49+00:00
LOL!

Why did you conveniently skip over the first and primary exclusion for "cooperative problems" and "unfitness", which linked to the Danish Ministry of Employment's site?

> What protections did these people have that did not apply because they complained to their boss?

Is English not your native language? This question makes no sense. If the protection doesn't apply, then they never had it.

As for providing additional context,

1. "duty of loyalty" is something you probably weren't aware of. It sets a bright line, and would surprise people with your over-general view.

2. Dismissing social media posts [0] about claims of dismissal for complaining at the office that would satisfy your request... is bad faith.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/vpsbp0/just_got...
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-11-09 19:53:10+00:00
I really don't see the value of getting a child started with Linux unless you are trying to push them into direction of being a developer, but even there I'm not sure how much sense that makes here in 2025 (from multiple perspectives).

If you want an alternative to Windows, then a Chromebook might be a good choice since this is what they will probably be using in K-12 education, and there are plenty of free online tools for learning to program, doing 3-D modelling, etc if they are really into it.
by Smileyferret | 2025-11-09 19:53:16+00:00
This is an abstract that hasn’t been peer-reviewed… based on prescription data for an over-the-counter medication. This will be horribly inaccurate because it will miss all the folks who just buy the medication on their own and never have it documented.

These TriNetX studies are usually garbage because they’re entirely dependent on how accurate/up-to-date the medical record is.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-11-09 19:53:20+00:00
> hiring towards this one country goes beyond that it is 'cheap'.

No it doesn't, not materially anyway. Stats can be misleading if you don't pay attention. A lot of the big corps started hiring H1-B in large numbers long ago but since H1-Bs can't easily switch jobs and tend to suck up to higher-ups, soon their mid-management was occupied by H1-Bs.

Anybody who has tried to find a job in such an environment knows the drill - Indian managers hire only Indians and prefer H1-Bs to keep them docile. Salary isn't a consideration there, but it all starts with "cheap" and is sustained by ethnic loyalty and fear of the outsider.

In smaller companies where hiring is more natural, H1-Bs are still payed less and their inability to switch jobs makes them cheaper still.
by ghaff | 2025-11-09 19:53:25+00:00
The people I worked with were pretty distributed before COVID--partially because functions (and geo regions) were distributed anyway--and partly for other reasons. When COVID hit there was basically very little effort to co-locate most teams. Some companies did try to pull people back but in a lot of cases, it was a matter of RTO but that was a good way to do a mass layoff. Many companies didn't want to do that.

I did (and sometimes still do) attend professional events but the level of interpersonal-contact pre-COVID was gone long before I semi-retired.
by cyrusradfar | 2025-11-09 19:53:27+00:00
I appreciate the work. It's really beautiful and checks so many of my "oddly satisfying" boxes as a builder. It seems it hit those for you too, obviously.

Separately, the timing of seeing this is uncanny. I've been using marble runs to explain probability to my kids and was filming a marble run conversion lesson. Seeing this at the top of HN felt like someone was reading my minds.
by randycupertino | 2025-11-09 19:53:44+00:00
Just the last 4-6 weeks I've started noticing a marked uptick in desperation in reposted linkedin "looking for work" posts. One was "I'll take ANY job to feed my kids" and another was talking about how they've been out of work 10 months and were about to lose their house. Another was saying they were about to get evicted and moving back in with their parents in the midwest. Things feel ominous out there.

If it helps anyone who is looking- when I was laid off 4 years ago, I took a seasonal Oct-Jan delivery job with UPS just to get out of the house, get some income and keep busy. They call them PWDs and it's $46 an hour, you use your own car and do package delivery. Your car and clothes get DISGUSTING - turns out packages are completely filthy- definitely put a tarp down - and you will be dog tired at the end of the day, I was doing 200-285 packages per shift- but it was good income and kept me busy. Also they offered to convert me to full-time warehouse after the holiday season but by then I had placed back into an industry job.

I think they call them SSDs now but same thing: https://www.jobs-ups.com/us/en/seasonal-support-driver
by betaby | 2025-11-09 19:53:57+00:00
As of October 2025, in the previous 30 Years, the Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap Index (VCN.TO) ETF obtained a 8.72% compound annual return.

~2x better than the official inflation over the same 30 years. I don't see the factor of five or order of magnitude. Also those gains are taxable.
by throw-52 | 2025-11-09 19:54:50+00:00
I think it's both more simple and more complex than AI or out-sourcing, though these are symptoms. Leadership everywhere is just kind of moving further away from reality, and don't care about progress, results, or fundamentals as they focus more on optics and spin, and controlling narratives or choices. Circular financing, ad fraud, trendy scam products or whole sectors.. does anyone want to do anything real when it's easier to make huge profits being fake? Enshittification is another sign of the times, but that's just about products and platforms, we need a better term. That leadership really wants a scammy rotten economy/product/company which ignores quality isn't that surprising, but the extent to which investors and even workers are often onboard too is surprising. Vandalism economy? Expertise simply isn't valued for the same reason that enlightenment values and rationalism generally are on the decline, in SWE sure, but also just in general.
by imagetic | 2025-11-09 19:55:03+00:00
I have TP-Link Deco's for our WiFi, sitting behind a Firewalla Gold. This has been by far the nicest, simplest at home setup I've ever deployed. Do I love that I chose TP-Link? No. But price to purpose it was the best product available to me at the time.

If TP-Link gets banned, my concern is what that means for the massive market share in the US. Warranty? Software updates? Or maybe that action is what turns them into an agent of the state. Or do you horde all the hardware until its valuable like DJI parts are today?
by IlikeKitties | 2025-11-09 19:55:11+00:00
You sir are misjudging me and the effort I put into not only protecting myself but also other from this overreach and intrusion into the life and privacy of myself and others.

But the comment above me argued "Companies should put their customer's well being before profits" which as a general statement may VERY well fall under my argument.

The reality is that i believe shareholder value optimization and unregulated capitalism is the problem.
by scoofy | 2025-11-09 19:55:30+00:00
>Governing Laws on Officer Identification

>The requirement for police officers to provide their name and badge number varies across the United States. While no federal law mandates disclosure, many states and municipalities have their own statutes aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability. These laws often require officers to identify themselves during specific interactions, such as traffic stops or arrests, to ensure citizens can hold law enforcement accountable.

https://legalclarity.org/does-a-police-officer-have-to-give-...

ICE where uniforms that say "ICE" in big letters. That's identification. Undercover police officers might identify themselves during an arrest, but only as "police." Undercover police officers aren't going to give you their name and badge number if you ask them.

>Situations Where Disclosure May Be Withheld

>While officers are generally expected to provide their name and badge number, there are situations where disclosure may justifiably be withheld. During undercover operations, revealing an officer’s identity could compromise safety and the operation’s integrity.

>In protests or crowd control situations, officers may face security concerns, such as risks of doxxing or harassment. To address this, some departments allow officers to withhold identification while still requiring visible markers, like badge numbers, to maintain accountability without endangering safety.

This stuff is trivially googlable.
by verbase25 | 2025-11-09 19:55:45+00:00
My co-founder and I built an MVP for a SaaS tool centered on Git-like version control for database schemas. The project is now dead (small funding for startups fell through), so this is purely a request for technical feedback, not an ad. We recorded a video of the MVP (german audio removed and some bad censoring :P. The link is above. OneDrive might stream this in low-res. Be sure to select 1080p in the player settings!

Core Concept:

True Git-based branching/versioning for DB schemas.

Automated sync and migration between dev/staging/prod.

A central tool combining schema versioning, data sync, and an SQL editor.

Would a tool like this have been useful to you, or is the existing ecosystem (Liquibase, Redgate, PlanetScale, etc.) sufficient for your workflow?
by mixmastamyk | 2025-11-09 19:55:47+00:00
There’s nothing “modern” needed from a word processor for 99% of people. You type into the white rectangle, save, and/or print. Three toolbar buttons are needed for that.

An actual useful feature is coediting a document, but has downsides, and can be done without the advertising company involved.

One should learn how to do it with autonomy early, so not dependent their entire lives.
by simonw | 2025-11-09 19:55:49+00:00
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I've been using Git for about 20 years, but I've never considered myself a Git expert because I have to look up how to do things like a git bisect or a history rewrite beyond just the first "git commit --amend"

But now... I use a ton of advanced Git features several times a week, because just knowing that it's possible to do something is enough for me to tell Codex or Claude Code to do that thing.

So maybe Git mastery now is more about concepts? You need to understand the DAG and roughly what's in the .git folder and origins and branches and tags and commits and so forth, but you don't need to remember the syntax.
by throw0101a | 2025-11-09 19:57:22+00:00
> Warren Buffett's annual letters

Buffett says to buy index funds.

> Actually, anything by Ben Graham or Joel Greenblatt is worth reading if one is interested in the investing world.

Ben Graham in the last interview before he passed ("A Conversation with Benjamin Graham", Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. 32, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1976), pp. 20-23):

>> In selecting the common stock portfolio, do you advise careful study of and selectivity among different issues?

> In general, no. I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when our textbook "Graham and Dodd" was first published; but the situation has changed a great deal since then. In the old days any well-trained security analyst could do a good professional job of selecting undervalued issues through detailed studies; but in the light of the enormous amount of research now being carried on, I doubt whether in most cases such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost. To that very limited extent I'm on the side of the "efficient market" school of thought now generally accepted by the professors.

* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2469/faj.v32.n5.20

* https://www.jstor.org/stable/4477960

* https://www.bylo.org/bgraham76.html

Graham was also of the opinion that analysis is of questionable use even in 1976 (nevermind now, ~40 years later).
by aborsy | 2025-11-09 19:57:42+00:00
A question.

How do you know what permissions are required by an application, to write a bubblewrap script?

In AppArmor, you exercise the application and aa-logprof suggests permissions requested by application. If you know AppArmor, usually you can refine those suggestions and write a profile. It may not be ideal, as aa-logprof’s permissions are multiple choice suggestions, require user knowledge and may be too broad or specific, but it could work. You will see that there are many and all kinds of permissions, and there is no way that you will be able to guess them without aa-logprof.

What is the equivalent of aa-logprof in bubblewrap and how do you find the required permissions?
by hirako2000 | 2025-11-09 19:57:59+00:00
You are using a workaround for your privacy, and to prevent spam (not solid at either).

The protocol proposes to alleviate a UX burden. The back and forth.

it would need Google (and other email provider supporting the + trick) to allow you to certify your ownership of a wild card set of email addresses, i.e anything matching what's before the + and the protocol would work just the same. Absolutely reducing some friction without adding you the extra burden your trick currently involves.
by caseysoftware | 2025-11-09 19:58:04+00:00
Annie Duke has a great book "Thinking in Bets" where she talks about being a professional poker player.

One of the things she hammers on is that just knowing how much/often you win isn't the important part because you can win despite making dumb choices and lose despite making great choices.

The key thing is being able to make the best decision based on the limited information you have, take the consequences (good or bad), and then reset and do it again. This is relevant in poker, investment, or even our careers and a great ideal to reach for.

I included a small blurb on my 2021 reading list: https://caseysoftware.com/blog/my-reading-list-2021
by kulahan | 2025-11-09 19:58:04+00:00
But he wasn’t a bad human being. He did things so great they completely outweigh anything you’ve ever done. At the very least, he’s a much better human than you.

If we accepted peoples’ completely biased views of what makes a human “good”, that’s how I’d respond. But we don’t, which is why that would be a ridiculous response - just as ridiculous as pretending that being a meanie-head makes you a “bad person”.
by phil21 | 2025-11-09 19:58:09+00:00
There was and is a collective push to show remote work is just as effective as in-office. To the point of absurdity, where there were never any benefits to office work.

It was absolutely a self-own. People not understanding why they were being paid the salaries they were and how replaceable they might be.

It was more or less an entire workforce demanding that their job positions be opened up to global competition thinking there would be no negative long term outcomes from it. They effectively helped offshore their own jobs.

This is just starting - inertia is a thing, and it takes years to stand up competent local engineering teams in various countries. The past few years has simply been laying down the base infrastructure for what is starting to visibly happen today.
by jasonwatkinspdx | 2025-11-09 19:58:35+00:00
Yes, the advice is entirely wrong. ICE have been kidnapping and detaining people who had proof of citizenship on their body at the time.

Anyone likely to be targeted by these thugs needs to be talking to local activist groups that know exactly what's happening first hand.

Offering armchair views that are clearly from a position of ignorance is yes, provable negative value.

Please just don't.

Edit: talked with a friend who's doing some activist work on this in his area. The advice is actually to avoid carrying your passport or similar, as if they detain you they'll just throw it away along with the rest of your belongings, and you'll have to go through the weeks long process of getting a new one.

And that's the happy case if they throw you in the van and let you out hours or a couple days later.
by YZF | 2025-11-09 19:59:21+00:00
If you're in Canada you almost certainly want to diversify from Canadian indices. US markets have tended to outperform.

Indices can return >20% one year and -10% other years. I think OP is talking recently, not over 30 years. Over the long term indices like the S&P 500 tend to have a real return of 6-7% ...
by portaouflop | 2025-11-09 19:59:51+00:00
I agree on circumcision but you made it out that all kinds of mutilation are perfectly acceptable. But that one should definitely be banned, idk why (no -Jewish) Americans are so obsessed with it.

> There are plenty of unknowable things about life.

I agree but I know that I’m going to die someday.

As for where genetic engineering can lead I recommend the book “All Tomorrows”.

In any case i broadly agree with you - however there should still be guardrails and until we can safely and reliably manipulate the genetics of “less complex” animals we shouldn’t experiment with humans.

However you can probably do it if you really want! There are lots of countries that have less guardrails in place - but I would assume you don’t want to take the risk when it’s comes to your own life/offspring or am I wrong?

Take some trajectory-changing bets yourself and then I’ll believe that what you are saying is not just posturing
by perihelions | 2025-11-09 20:00:46+00:00
The major context of this law is regulations like Executive Order 14110, of 2023 (since rescinded),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14110

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067314 ("Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (whitehouse.gov)"—337 comments)
by ghaff | 2025-11-09 20:01:18+00:00
By no means universal. I was increasingly remote even before COVID because I did a lot of business and other travel--even if I was never officially fully remote until very late in the game. Never moved from the house I owned through a number of jobs with better and worse commutes. But, then, didn't live in California though did live in what is generally considered a tech center.
by whoknowsidont | 2025-11-09 20:01:20+00:00
I think you're contradicting yourself or getting some wires crossed.

>You're right, talented workers get talented pay, but talented pay in Romania is a lot less than talented pay in San Francisco.

But this is due to again, vastly different standards of living in different economies. Geo-based pay ranges have always been a thing, but I think it's a bit reasonable to draw the line here.

So it's not:

>it absolutely is a part of it ... lol.

Because you're not hiring people from elsewhere because of "well I don't need people HERE anymore." The calculus is the same it ever was, even before COVID.

Companies were already out-sourcing before great video conferencing software or an understanding of how to work with remote teams.

It's an exploitation of different economies, at the expense of the American working class.

It's the same thing, just under a shiny new label designed to absolve the managerial class from said exploitation.