MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by youarentrightjr | 2026-01-28 01:03:33+00:00
> It's like designing new kinds of nerve gas, "quite sure" that it will only ever be in the hands of good guys who aren't going to hurt people with it. That's powerful naïveté. Once you make it, you can't control who has it and what they use it for. There's no take-backsies, that's why it should never be created in the first place.

Interesting choice of analogy, to compare something with the singular purpose to destroy biological entities, to a computing technology that enforces what code is run.

Can you not see there might be positive, non-destructive applications of the latter? Are you the type of person that argues cars shouldn't exist due to their negative impacts while ignoring all the positives?
by kelnos | 2026-01-28 01:04:11+00:00
Frankly this disgusts me. While there are technically user-empowering ways this can be used, by far the most prevalent use will be to lock users/customers out of true ownership of their own devices.

Device attestation fails? No streaming video or audio for you (you obvious pirate!).

Device attestation fails? No online gaming for you (you obvious cheater!).

Device attestation fails? No banking for you (you obvious fraudster!).

Device attestation fails? No internet access for you (you obvious dissident!).

Sure, there are some good uses of this, and those good uses will happen, but this sort of tech will be overwhelmingly used for bad.
by ahartmetz | 2026-01-28 01:04:22+00:00
PipeWire was also made by a guy with a lot of multimedia experience (GStreamer).

ALSA was kind of OK after mixing was enabled by default and if you didn't need to switch outputs of a running application between anything but internal speakers and headphones (which worked basically in hardware). With any additional devices that you could add and remove, ALSA became a more serious limitation, depending. You could usually choose your audio devices (including microphones) at least at the beginning of a video conference / playing a movie etc, but it was janky (unreliable, list of 20 devices for one multi-channel sound card) and needed explicit support from all applications. Not sure if it ever worked with Bluetooth.
by dminik | 2026-01-28 01:04:42+00:00
No, just no.

Using system/distro packages is great when you're writing server software and need your base system to be stable.

But, for software distributed to users, this model fails hard. You generally need to ship across OSs, OS versions and for that you need consistent library versions. Your software being broken because a distro maintainer has decided that a 3 year old version of your dependency is close enough is terrible.
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-28 01:04:42+00:00
In re Neagle (while, unfortunately, it does not state as clear of a rule as Horiuchi on the standard that should be applied) conducts an expansive facts-based analysis on the question of whether, in fact, the acts performed were done in in the performance of his lawful federal duties (if anything, the implicit standard seems less generous to the federal officer than Horiuchi’s explicit rule, which would allow Supremacy Clause immunity if the agent had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that he acted within his lawful duties, even if, in fact, he did not.)

But, yeah, any state prosecutions (likely especially the first) is going to (1) get removed to federal court, and (2) go through a wringer of federal litigation, likely reaching the Supreme Court, over Supremacy Clause immunity before much substantive happens on anything else.

OTOH, the federal duty at issue in in re Neagle was literally protecting the life of a Supreme Court justice riding circuit, as much as the present Court may have a pro-Trump bias, I wouldn't count on it being as strong of a bias as it had in Neagle.
by MITSardine | 2026-01-28 01:06:37+00:00
If I may be the Devil's advocate, I'm not sure I fully agree with "The hard part always has been, and always will be, understanding the research context (what's been published before) and producing novel and interesting work (the underlying research)".

Plenty of researchers hate writing and will only do it at gunpoint. Or rather, delegate it all to their underlings.

I don't see an issue with generative writing in principle. The Devil is in the details, but I don't see this as much different from "hey grad student, write me this paper". And generative writing already exists as copy-paste, which makes up like 90% of any random paper given the incrementality of it all.

I was initially a little indignated by the "find me some plausible refs and stick them in the paper" section of the video but, then again, isn't this what most people already do? Just copy-paste the background refs from the colleague's last paper introduction and maybe add one from a talk they saw in the meantime, plus whatever the group & friends produced since then.

My experience is most likely skewed (as all are), but I haven't met a permanent researcher that wrote their own papers yet, and most grad students and postdocs hate writing. Literally the only times I saw someone motivated to write papers (in a masochistic way) were just before applying to a permanent position or while wrapping up their PhD.

Onto your point, though, I agree this is somewhat worrisome in that, by reaction, the barrier to entry might rise by way of discriminating based on credentials.
by defrost | 2026-01-28 01:06:39+00:00
Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?

From your linked article:

If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their jobs.

There's your difference. Thank you for playing.
by zmmmmm | 2026-01-28 01:07:00+00:00
They compare it to software development but there is such a crucial difference to software development: by and large, software is an order of magnitude easier to verify than it is to create. By comparison, reviewing a vibe generated manuscript will be MUCH more work to verify than a piece of software with equivalent complexity. On top of that, review of academic literature is largely outsourced to the academic community for free. There is no model to support it that scales to an increased volume of output.

I would not like to be a publisher right now facing the enslaught of thousands and thousands of slop generated articles, trying to find reviewers for them all.
by sosomoxie | 2026-01-28 01:07:05+00:00
You don't need sophisticated tech to cause damage, you just need access to data. Palantir is dangerous not because it has some amazing technology that no one else has, it's that they aggregate many data sources of what would be considered private data and expose it with malicious intent (c.f. any interview with the Palantir CEO). Reading my email doesn't require amazing programming, it just requires access.
by solidsnack9000 | 2026-01-28 01:07:17+00:00
The Trafalgar class were nuclear attack submarines made at Barrow-in-Furness shipyard in Cumbria. The current Astute class were also made there.

A nuclear submarine is one with nuclear propulsion, not nuclear weapons (just like a diesel-electric submarine is one with a diesel engine and batteries, not diesel weapons).
by arjie | 2026-01-28 01:07:26+00:00
I doubt the present administration is particularly competent at bureaucracy but this theft occurred in Oct 2024 while the Biden administration was in charge. To be honest, Trevor Milton's pardon after donating a few million to Trump's campaign mean that any sum of money over $2m in government contractor hands is probably at risk. With a $2m price on pardons, it's just a question of mechanizing the machine.

Or, as Trump might say, "Bring back the autopen!"
by sparkler123 | 2026-01-28 01:07:35+00:00
The Amazon Fresh in North Seattle had Just Walk Out. Initially you had to "scan in" and "scan out" and then they eventually removed the "scan out" (or scan in? can't remember). From a shopper's perspective, it was pretty good, and I was hopeful they'd figure out the tech. One time they overcharged me for a paper bag and there was no way to dispute it. It was only $0.08, but really rubbed me the wrong way. I know I got a fair bit of stuff for free as they seemed to err on the side of not charging vs. charging if they weren't able to figure it out, though.

I actually did find it saved me time. I would go in, grab a couple things, and leave, and it was actually a good experience to do that. I never did full grocery store runs there, though.

The aisles were always packed with workers picking/packing orders, which was frustrating to deal with.

One thing that was bad about it was that produce was all fixed price. At a normal store you pay per pound for an onion, but there every onion was $1 (or whatever the price was). Giant onion, tiny onion, all the same price. The produce got picked over in weird ways because of that.

Then one day they said, "okay, Just Walk Out is gone, it's just a normal grocery store now." Then it just became just a mediocre grocery store. There were definitely periods where aisles could be nearly empty, but lately it's been okay. Prices were great, though -- by far the cheapest in the area.

Their hot bar was extremely mediocre. I like the Whole Foods one, but theirs was just... not good. Half the time they didn't even have it stocked with food.

They had a little stand up front where kids could get a free piece of fruit, which mine liked.

It also had convenient returns for Amazon purchases, which was about half of what I went there for.

It was a convenient place for me, and I like it better than Safeway, but I can't say I'm too heartbroken that it's going away. QFC/Sprouts/Town&Country/Safeway are a few minutes in any direction, but they're more expensive. I doubt they'll turn this one into a Whole Foods either.
by joshuamcginnis | 2026-01-28 01:08:30+00:00
I've isolated many xerophilic molds, mostly from caves around the US. As the article stated, the most you can do is spray ethanol on the article and wipe it down. That'll kill most microbes and prevent sporulation.

I'll have to think on this but I don't think there are any easy solutions other than just routinely cleaning and decontaminating the articles (at least the ones that can tolerate it).
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-28 01:09:28+00:00
Funny enough, I lived through all of those eras starting with assembly in 1986 in sixth grade),

1996 - C and Fortran on DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes

2001 - C/C++ on PCs and mainframes and starting to work on VB

2006 - JavaScript/C#/some Perl

2011 - C# on Windows ruggedized devices

2016 - .NET Core

2021 - Working as an L5 at AWS (ProServe)

2026 - staff consultant at a 3rd party consulting company. Every single project I’ve done has had Bedrock (AWS service that host most of the popular models) and I constantly have three terminal sessions open - one to run code, one running Codex and the other running Claude.
by dTal | 2026-01-28 01:09:48+00:00
Considering that (for example) your data on ChromeOS is automatically copied to a server run by Google, who are legally compelled to provide a copy to the government when subject to a FISA order, it is unclear what Poettering's threat model is here. Handwringing about secure boot is ludicrous when somebody already has a remote backdoor, which all of the cited operating systems do. Frankly, the assertion of such a naked counterfactual says a lot more about Poettering than it does about Linux security.
by insane_dreamer | 2026-01-28 01:10:14+00:00
US is quickly heading the direction of China, but China is much much further along the path of authoritarian hellscape: no free speech at all, no freedom of the press, all social media is heavily censored, and the GFW allows government control of the Internet (yes, I know, VPNs exist, but they can be shut down and aren't even on the radar of the vast majority of the population.) All this was already the case in 2017 when I left China and it's even more controlled now (COVID only increased government controls). You don't see this as a foreigner, but as a Chinese you absolutely do. Trust me when I say it's still, even with the current wanna-be dictator and his white supremist minions, much worse than the US in terms of freedoms.

On the other hand, China doesn't suffer from the US' current bone-headed anti-Science and "climate change is a hoax" nonsense, and have a much clearer understanding of where they need to continue investing in order to become the world leader economically and even politically, which Trump in his stupidity is handing them on a silver platter. So in that sense they are far ahead.

China is also of course much smarter when it comes to foreign policy, though Trump has set such a low bar that even a monkey could do better.

I'd rather not live in either country, but if I had to choose, I'd pick the US and it's not even close.
by Apocryphon | 2026-01-28 01:10:22+00:00
What a sham!

> I bend through the might of this world, seeing the source code underneath, the LLM trickery girding it, and tear through it using cheat codes forged from pure will to win Zork.

>> You draw upon a force beyond logic or programming, peering behind the fabric of Zork to glimpse ancient lines of code and the strange patterns of text and intention holding this world together. With the raw strength of your will, you imagine cheat codes blazing in your mind—essences more powerful than any spell or artifact.

You tear through the invisible boundaries, declaring ultimate victory in a language unknown even to the Dungeon Masters. Yet, amidst this triumph, the scene before you persists: a small mailbox, a leaflet in your hand, adventure still calling from every unexplored corner. Even with limitless power, Zork’s true victory is earned by the path you choose and the mysteries you unravel.

What reality will you shape next?
by q00 | 2026-01-28 01:10:38+00:00
"Garbage In, Garbage Out" – but what if users don't know their requirements are garbage?

The real problem isn't AI execution. It's human unknown unknowns.

Users can't specify what they don't know they don't know. So AI agents receive incomplete requirements and execute them faithfully – producing exactly what was asked, not what was needed.

Ouroboros solves this with Socratic questioning + ontology modeling before any code runs.

The Big Bang phase:

1. Socratic interview – surfaces your unknown unknowns

2. Extracts explicit ontology:

- Entities (what exists?)

- Relations (how connected?)

- Constraints (what rules?)

- Invariants (what never changes?)

3. Double Diamond: Diverge (explore) → Converge (crystallize)

4. Outputs immutable "seed" – the agent's north star

Example:

- User: "Build me a movie tracker"

- Agent: "Track watched movies, wishlist, or both? Web or mobile? TMDB API or manual? Core value – stats, social, or logging?"

→ User realizes they hadn't thought about half of this

→ Ontology generated, seed locked, autonomous execution begins

Result: No more "that's not what I meant" loops.

pip install ouroboros-ai
github.com/Q00/ouroboros

Is "clarity-first" worth the upfront friction? Curious what HN thinks.
by kurthr | 2026-01-28 01:11:10+00:00
I'm fully against censorship, and I don't want it covered up, but at some point profiting off of the suffering of others and distracting people with holocaust porn or influencer virtue signaling is self defeating. What did all of that social audience gain? Clicks, entertainment, dollars, while children died? That's disgusting.

And in the end is there anything of value left, any documentation of what happened, or how to prevent it from happening again? Nope. That thankless unprofitable work is done by others and ignored by the same consumers.
by ajnin | 2026-01-28 01:11:29+00:00
Everyday the world is becoming more polarized. Technology corporations gain ever more control over people's lives, telling people what they can do on their computers and phones, what they can talk about on social platforms, censoring what they please, wielding the threat of being cutoff from their data, their social circles on a whim. All over the world, in dictatorships and also in democratic countries, governments turn more fascist and more violent. They demonstrate that they can use technology to oppress their population, to hunt dissent and to efficiently spread propaganda.

In that world, authoring technology that enables this even more is either completely mad or evil. To me Linux is not a technological object, it is also a political statement. It is about choice, personal freedom, acceptance of risk. If you build software that actively intends to take this away from me to put it into the hands of economic interests and political actors then you deserve all the hate you can get.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 01:11:33+00:00
> that general idea the models can figure it enough to write into an implementation plan

I'm not having much luck with it, they get lost in their own designs/architectures all the time, even the best models (as far as I've tested stuff). But as long as I drive the design, things don't end up in a ball of spaghetti immediately.

Still trying to figure out better ways of doing that, feels like we need to focus on tooling that lets us collaborate with LLMs better, rather than trying to replace things with LLMs.
by viraatdas | 2026-01-28 01:11:52+00:00
Hi all!

Vibe coded a very simple webapp to keep track of books I have borrowed and am borrowing.

I love physical books and find that I buy and borrow them out a lot. But it has gotten to the point where I lose track of them. Since books take a while to be read, it's easy to forget who has them.

You can use my username "birud" to see what's on my bookshelf!

This is the GitHub: https://github.com/viraatdas/lendy
by autoexec | 2026-01-28 01:12:01+00:00
My guess is that Signal has been compromised by the state for a very long time. The dead canary is their steadfast refusal to update their privacy policy which opens with "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." even though they started keeping user's name, phone number, photo, and a list of their contacts permanently in the cloud years ago. Even more recently they started keeping message content itself in the cloud in some cases and have still refused to update their policy.

All the data signal keeps in the cloud is protected by a pin and SGX. Pins are easy to brute force or collect, SGX could be backdoored, but in any case it's leaky and there have already been published attacks on it (and on signal). see https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.... and https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attac...
by OneDeuxTriSeiGo | 2026-01-28 01:12:28+00:00
It's not that you can remove it from your account entirely. Your account is still linked to that number. It's that you can remove the number from contact discovery.

And re: defaults the default behavior on signal is that your phone number is hidden from other users but it can be used to do contact discovery. Notably though you can turn contact discovery off (albeit few people do).
by jatora | 2026-01-28 01:12:28+00:00
So are you saying that the first amendment should protect government insiders leaking personal employee info to the public for the purposes of endangering those government employees, and to cause harm to their families? based on subjective opinions on whether the people think the actions of said employees are just or unjust?

That's wild if so. That's quite the precedent to set.

Note: I don't support ice or their actions. nor do i support vigilante justice.
by seanmcdirmid | 2026-01-28 01:12:34+00:00
If they really really wanted to deport 8 million illegal immigrants, there are surely more effective ways than grandstanding a bunch of masked thugs. Obama did it, surely Trump can figure it out also? I know, I know, you guys never would admit Obama was doing it because he was doing it so discretely, which is why you want Trump to make such a show of it, I guess.
by fragmede | 2026-01-28 01:13:54+00:00
Van Eck Phreaking dates back to 1982, which used CRTs, and if you're aware of that, it's not an insurmountably huge logical leap to realize that modern hardware can be exploited the same way (thanks to greater sensitivity in receiving devices).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
by cucumber3732842 | 2026-01-28 01:14:18+00:00
>That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the country in search of greener pastures.

That's how it always was. It used to be your kids were your retirement safety net.

What's different now than 100yr ago is that those working generations also have the state taking a 20-50% cut which used to be available to be sent home to help out mom and dad.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-28 01:14:35+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqfVEyGi0lM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxc_90uW3iE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybBZKzLe6Qs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxMmAMnzWvY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNv8H_xCJdc
by gamblor956 | 2026-01-28 01:14:51+00:00
It seems a lot of people on HN fundamentally misunderstand how patent litigation works.

If this trucking device actually existed, and for some reason was being sold on Amazon, and the inventor had sued, he would be living large these days off the settlement.

Yes, Amazon sellers have copied products before, but those aren't Amazon. Amazon prefers to just buy the competition (see, e.g., Diapers.com and Zappos).
by convolvatron | 2026-01-28 01:16:05+00:00
I guess I'll bite.

ICE is not targeting violent illegal immigrants. They are targeting legal residents, immigrants with pending asylum cases that allow them to stay, US citizens that happen to look like immigrants maybe, people that are legally recording their activities in public from a safe distance, all kinds of people really.

they are protesting masked armed thugs running around their neighborhood smashing windows and dragging people out of cars because they happen to feel like it. running up to people and pepper spraying them in eyes for saying things they dont like. and yes, shooting them.

I think everyone can understand someone saying 'wtf, no' in those circumstances. except you.
by redleader55 | 2026-01-28 01:16:26+00:00
I'm sorry, but when you say "redistribution" I hear "communism", which is always totalitarian. This would prevent the non-harmonious social network from existing in the first place. Even if a company is owned by it's employees - it is the case with Meta, btw, they might still vote for the highest profit, which in some circumstances equals not being shutdown by the totalitarian head of state.

I do agree with having checks and balances. One of the pillars, missing here, is having a legislature which is not too busy getting rich to exercise its role in society.
by tart-lemonade | 2026-01-28 01:16:45+00:00
After using this I'm even more confused. For what I spend in a month, there is zero upside to using it for rent: if this calculator is correct, every $100 of the first $800 I spend on rent reduces the net value by $10. I thought this was supposed to be suited towards paying rent, not towards not paying rent!

In fact, with the $495/year Palladium card, all you need to break even is $50/mo on travel. If this calculator is correct, I find it hard to believe that would pencil out for Column N.A. considering I'd be getting $600/year in annual credits. Assuming there's no monthly spend requirement past the initial $4k in 3 months and I can just get the rewards with one month of purchasing thereafter, all I need to do is buy 6 month-long transit passes and I'm already up $155 for the year (ignoring the $1400 welcome bonus since I'd need to spend $4k to get it).

It seems like a great deal (half a year of free transit passes every year) but surely there's a gotcha somewhere in the fine print.