MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TheDong | 2026-01-20 07:15:25+00:00
By "degrade the experience" I mean:

1. Unable to remove members, or change member's phone-numbers without recreating the entire chat and losing continuity / bothering everyone with noise about these changes.

2. Green bubbles, so if your teenage child talks in the group chat at school and one of their classmates sees the green bubble, they'll be bullied for the rest of the time in school.

3. Unable to send high quality photos or videos

4. Just plain failure to deliver messages with shocking frequency for a supposedly modern messaging system.

5. RCS still isn't supported by carriers in a bunch of countries, so when one member of the group chat travels, roams to a foreign network that doesn't support RCS, and chats the group chat can split into one for MMS and one for RCS, and then it's a total crapshoot based on network conditions as to which one the messages go to in the future, with messages having now an even higher chance of vanishing into the void.

Basically, it's a subpar experience. Every other group messaging app (signal, whatsapp, etc) works fine on iOS and android, Apple really should be publishing iMessage for Android to solve this. But, due to reason 2 where green bubbles result in becoming a social outcast and being bullied, they of course won't.

Like, signal, a company running on donations iirc, is able to build a messaging app for windows/linux/iOS/android, and yet Apple isn't capable of that? Come on.
by Alupis | 2026-01-20 07:17:16+00:00
I've found that "back and forth" is part of the learning aspect LLM's provide. Even when the LLM provides code snippets, I type them out myself, which I've found forces me to think and understand them - often finding flaws and poor assumptions along the way.

Letting an LLM drive in an agentic flow removes you from the equation. Maybe that's what some want - but I've personally found I end up with something that doesn't feel like I wrote it.

Now... get off my lawn!
by supermatt | 2026-01-20 07:17:23+00:00
How do you test for ad effectiveness vs annoyance? Especially so for a captive audience where they can’t leave and go elsewhere?

It seems like every market leader that gets ads eventually “optimises” towards making them look like not ads. Obviously they will be more effective if people don’t realise what they are, so how do they account for annoyance (and the other negatives a user experiences) while doing these a/b tests?
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 07:19:27+00:00
So is this what the South teaches in school? Very interesting. Well, I'll try to respond in kind:

>I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.

Yes, it's been more than 100 years. We know the history better than ever. The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them. He simply picked a side and wanted everyone to go along with it. He picked the North because Texas seceded from the union (again, over slavery) and Lincoln would not allow that to happpen. So that played his hand in choosing to eventually ban slavery.

Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?

>The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.

Do you not know what's happened the past year alone? We can argue over history, but this is happening before our eyes.
by Khaine | 2026-01-20 07:20:16+00:00
I think this misses something fundamental. Most of the colonies Britain created until the race for Africa were to support the Navy. During the 16th century they were efforts to create colonies to support trade (i.e. North America, India). Britain then needed a strong navy to support its merchant vessels who sold English goods all over the world, and bought goods from all over the world to Britain. Which is why colonies like the cape were created. It is this growth in merchants that brought riches. Those riches would not have lasted without a Navy to protect the merchants from piracy or privateers.

Colonies were not originally intended to be profitable, they were way points for ships to stock up on goods, water, men, etc. Leaders in those colonies on their own initiatives then looked to expand the colonies to make themselves a big name.
by ericmacx | 2026-01-20 07:21:17+00:00
Author here.
The core discovery:
137.5 / 360 = φ⁻² = 0.382
Where 137.5 is the golden angle and φ is the golden ratio.
This means 360 = 137.5 × φ². The "arbitrary" 360° isn't arbitrary — it's derived from 137.
The formula:
α⁻¹ = 360/φ² − 2/φ³ = 137.0356
Measured value: 137.0360
Accuracy: 99.9997%
Why the "2"?
It maps onto QED vacuum polarization — virtual particles appear as particle-antiparticle pairs. Self-reference requires splitting into observer and observed. That's 2.
The structure:
The formula is the start of a series:
α⁻¹ = 360/φ² − 2/φ³ − ?/φ⁴ − ...
Each term = another level of self-reference. This mirrors QED's loop expansion.
What I'm claiming:
Not numerology. The "2" maps to real physics (vacuum polarization). The series structure maps to QED's perturbation series. The accuracy is within experimental precision.
What I'm asking:
Check the math. Tell me where I'm wrong. Or tell me why this works.
Paper: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18305251
by agent86 | 2026-01-20 07:21:29+00:00
In the LoRA/radio device sense, Meshtastic[1] is probably the easiest to get started with. It's the biggest player in the space, has devices that come pre-installed and configured, the most likely chance of making contact with someone else, etc. MeshCore[2] is the other major player. It's newer and tends to have been adopted by communities that have run into issues with large Meshtastic networks.

If you meant PC-based mesh networking, I'll leave someone more knowledgeable to speak about that :).

[1] - https://meshtastic.org/

[2] - https://meshcore.co.uk/
by onion2k | 2026-01-20 07:21:36+00:00
How does that compare to those of us with 15-50 years of software engineering experience working on giant codebases that have years of domain rules, customers and use cases etc.

At most of the companies I've worked at the development team is more like a cluster of individuals who all happen to be contributing to a shared codebase than anything resembling an actual team who collaborate on a shared goal. AI-assisted engineering would have helped massively because the AI would be looking outside of the myopic view any developer who is only focused on their tiny domain in the bigger whole cared about.

Admittedly though, on a genuinely good team it'll be less useful for a long time.
by pmontra | 2026-01-20 07:22:10+00:00
I'm not sure that it's novel but I'm skeptical about the noise to signal ratio for anything that is not an example.

I think that a real world file of source code will be either completely polluted by tests (they are way longer than the actual code they test) or become

fn process_order {
...
}
shadow process_order {
assert test_process_order
}

and the test code will be written in another file, and every function in the test code will have its own shadow function asserting true, to please the compiler.
by mrkeen | 2026-01-20 07:22:15+00:00
> The US doesn't need oil

> Since the US military strikes on Venezuela and seizure of its president Nicolás Maduro this month, Trump has said he plans to tap into the country's huge oil reserves.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4qdnj5vl9o] 4 day ago
by Joel_Mckay | 2026-01-20 07:22:52+00:00
LLM/"reasoning" models will not manifest "AGI" anytime soon, as it would take 75% of our galaxy energy output to bring the error rate to average human levels.

However, several Neuromorphic computing projects look a lot more viable, and may bring the energy consumption needs down by several orders of magnitude. =3

"Ghost in the Shell" was a far better story.
by somenameforme | 2026-01-20 07:23:09+00:00
1979 is when the Fed began collecting median wage data. Here [1] is inflation data since 1947. You can see that 1979 was well into the funny money inflation era. The reason this is relevant is that it's impractical to literally lower wages - that's going to turn your labor force hostile like nothing else. But with inflation this is suddenly very easy to do - just give people a 2% 'raise' and they're content enough. Some might even be happy, even though that's generally a direct pay cut, thanks to inflation.

Real wages started becoming grossly detached from other metrics in society once inflation started going wild, and I don't think it's just a coincidence. In any case this is why it's very reasonable to think that real wages were even higher prior to 1979.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
by fhd2 | 2026-01-20 07:23:12+00:00
The problem is, feedback cycles for projects are long. Like 1-10 years depending on the nature and environment. As the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Maybe the deed is done here, and I'd agree it's not particularly fun, but you could still think about what you can bring to the table in situations like this. Can you work on shortening these pesky feedback cycles? Can you help the team (if they even accept it) with _some_ degree of engineering? It might not be the last time this happens.

I think right now we're seeing some weird stuff going on, but I think it hasn't even properly started yet. Remember when pretty much every company went "agile"? In most cases I've seen they didn't, just wasting time chasing miracles with principles and methodologies few people understand deeply enough to apply. Yet this went on for, what, 10 years?
by defrost | 2026-01-20 07:23:23+00:00
Who will bell the cat?

Does the US system even have the means to bell the cat?

International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic the childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in fact, end eight wars, that Greenland has been Danish for centuries, that many “written documents” establish Danish sovereignty there, that Trump has done nothing for NATO, and that European NATO members increased defense spending out of concern over Russia’s increasing threat.

This note, she writes, “should be the last straw.” It proves that “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.” Applebaum implored Republicans in Congress “to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests.” “They owe it to the American people,” she writes, “and to the world.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s doctor Jonathan Reiner agreed: “This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.”

~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-19-2026

Pop-pop's having one his turns and it's time for a wellness check and assessment.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 07:26:01+00:00
>The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug.

we got bigger and thus we got permutational orders of issues arising as a result. We had to redo the articles of confederation within 20 years of their drafting and that was with 13 states.

Bug or feature, I see it as an inevitability as we grew to 50 states and multiple territories that the federal government would need a stronger hand today than in 1787. Of course, that hand shouldn't be bypassing every section of the constitution to serve the federal government itself. These are the exact fears that caused Shay and Whiskey way back in the day coming to fruition.
by elcapitan | 2026-01-20 07:27:16+00:00
I mostly stay away from algorithmic timelines and deactivate retweets etc on X and Bluesky. For the rest I use them for some snarky comments with a select group of people.

I've tried completely quitting, but I'm not very social irl and would get lonely eventually, so this controlled dose of interaction is what works for me.
by nemo1618 | 2026-01-20 07:27:27+00:00
Blackpill is that, for this reason, the mainstream languages we have today will be the final (human-designed) languages to be relevant on a global scale.

Eventually AIs will create their own languages. And humans will, of course, continue designing hobbyist languages for fun. But in terms of influence, there will not be another human language that takes the programming world by storm. There simply is not enough time left.
by ggm | 2026-01-20 07:29:07+00:00
And it just sits in a dusty glass fronted cabinet in a corridor. Minding it's own business as students go past to get to the great quad or down to the river behind. 35 years ago I used to wander by, going to and from work. It was one of the first webcams online in Australia too.

The old UQ electrical engineering building has a relic of another longterm experiment on its roof: a lighting observation booth, up on stilts above the building, with 360° views and a directional RF antenna for plotting strikes. Graham Rees, sometime deputy director of the computer center had been a student up there and said it was pretty bloody hairy when things went off. He also went to DEC Maynard and helped build the Dec-10 system which he brought back as the new campus multi-access system.
by antonvs | 2026-01-20 07:29:32+00:00
You have it backwards. Mathematical theorems have objectively higher information content, because they rule out the impossible and model possibilities in all possible worlds that satisfy their preconditions. Scientific knowledge can never do more than inductive projections from observations in the single world we have physical access to.

The only thing that saves science from being nothing more than “huh, will you look at that,” is when it can make use of a mathematical model to provide insight into relationships between phenomena.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 07:31:52+00:00
well, I'm never a fan of "this is hard so lets break/bend the rules" as a justification.

The constitution still can be amended. But congress has been in gridlock for 30 years so we can't even get over the first hurdle. Lets work on fixing that gridlock and then we can review if 38 states signing on is too big a burden. It was already a Herculean task convincing 10/13 states to accept the Bill of Rights.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-20 07:32:34+00:00
It still says AD in big blue letters on the new version. Not really a big deal from my point of view.

Still there does seem to be a pattern of ignoring their hardcore fanbase: using Gemini, making ads less obvious, making free apps part of paid bundles. I suspect Apple are getting a lot of pressure from shareholders, given their recent growth has been far lower than e.g. Google.

This is not a trend I like and I'm definitely looking for a Linux boat to jump on, to future proof app distribution, but there just doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate right now.
by jabl | 2026-01-20 07:33:08+00:00
> There were many older models of BMW that had an electric water pump. If that sounds silly, well, it is. And it failed frequently and was again, very difficult to replace.

On the face of it, it's not actually a bad idea. The electric pump can run at an optimal speed regardless of engine rpm. This means the pump can be downsized, because otherwise if it's driven directly from the engine it'd have to be sized for the worst case scenario of low rpm and high load.

Same reason why many vehicles nowadays have electric radiator fans rather than driven directly from the crankshaft like in the "good ol' days". (Of course with transverse mounted engines a crankshaft driven fan doesn't really work either, so that's another big reason to go for an electric fan.)

Now, of course this concept can be badly implemented, just like any other part of the design.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-20 07:33:45+00:00
>TSMC didn't become the world's supreme chipmaker by a laissez-faire aproach from Taiwan.

>Same applies to Samsung. And oh-so-many Japanese tech ventures.

You're missing a lot of context with these analogies. TSMC and Samsung started off in the 1950-1980s as cheap manufacturers of low margin commodities the west was actively trying to get rid of in the name of protecting the environment and increasing shareholder value while giving western consumers who had options of better paid jobs access to cheaper stuff. It was a win-win-win situation, kind-of.

But fast forward to today, now that TSMC and Samsung have become masters of cutting edge high margin manufacturing, and the west finds itself exposed to lack of said cutting edge manufacturing at home, they're starting to twist their arms to get the know-how and infrastructure that they missed out on back on-shore. Had the west know the table would turn like this they probably would have acted differently.

Same with cars. German OEMs like Mercedes that were the pinnacle of auto tech, were more than happy to outsource electronics and ECU development and manufacturing to the lowest bidder in the name of shareholder value, but over time they lost vertical integration and access to critical high end technologies that made them valuable over the competition. Now China used that outsourced electronics industry to develop its own electronic auto tech and its vertical integration supply chain to beat the Germans.

The highest margin item in an ICE car was always the engine at which the Germans were the best at, and China could not catch up. Fast forward to today, in an EV, the highest margin items are the battery, self driving software stack and supporting AI silicon, almost none of which come from Europe, meaning German OEMs are losing out on innovations and profits big time, becoming only system integrators of US and Chinese sourced parts. They are super fucked.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 07:33:46+00:00
Yeah, I think the people need a way to eject people without waiting for 2-6 years (or never for the supreme court). it needs to be a high bar, but if we use the same 75% state ratification to start up an impeachment process, it might keep some pressure under people who otherwise feel like they can run rampant.
by wernsey | 2026-01-20 07:33:50+00:00
The blog just leads to https://research.swtch.com/qr/draw/, which is the demo page of the blogs [1] and [2] written by Russ Cox many years ago about putting pictures in QR codes by manipulating the error correction codes in them

[1]: https://research.swtch.com/qart
[2] https://research.swtch.com/field
by arw0n | 2026-01-20 07:35:54+00:00
Since everyone here seems to love to argue in (naive) realist terms, here's some food for thought:

Outside of values, China and Europe have very few conflicting geopolitical goals. Core interests don't clash outside of Europe's conflict with Russia, and some rather minor disagreements in Africa. A Eurasian block with a weak Russia and a stable but balkanized Middle East would be very beneficial to both China and the EU. Even India could be largely integrated into that.

Even if the cost of NATO was higher than its immediate benefit, there is a very real risk of not only losing allies, but making new adversaries.
by rswail | 2026-01-20 07:36:38+00:00
The US/EU/JP manufacturers are half-pregnant, they have engine and other mechanical production plants that will become stranded assets as BEVs don't need engines, gearboxes or the other hydraulic/cooling etc infrastructure that an ICE vehicle needs.

Electric motors are essentially maintenance free over the life of a BEV, same for the batteries. The maintenance is for brake pads/rotors, but regen braking also avoids that.

There is the passenger heat pumps for heat/cooling, and the lighting, but LED lighting also requires minimal maintenance.

That cuts out a large chunk of the automotive industry in general.

US/EU/JP manufacturers are having to handle a major market disruption, independent of whether or not CN is leaping over them.
by agapon | 2026-01-20 07:37:43+00:00
Generally, it's possible to have data which is not corrupted but which is logically inconsistent (incorrect).

Imagine that a directory ZAP has an entry that points to a bogus object ID.
That would be an example.
The ZAP block is intact but its content is inconsistent.

Such things can only happen through a logical bug in ZFS itself, not through some external force.
But bugs do happen.

If your search through OpenZFS bugs you will find multiple instances.
Things like leaking objects or space, etc.
That's why zdb now has support for some consistency checking (bit not for repairs).
by x0x0 | 2026-01-20 07:40:02+00:00
> they’re completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.

Nah, they're full of ideas. Mostly around sucking out every dollar from anyone foolish enough to build on their OS.

They've seen which way the wind is blowing and their extortionate payment processing fees are going to get limited by most governments. The plan flatly is to extort companies for money in the app store to make up for it.

eg allowing companies to advertise against other companies' names: just like google, they plan to extort companies on navigation (ie direct product/company name) queries.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 07:41:38+00:00
Even as of today, California gives aid to many states who fundamentally disagree with California's culture. Make social welfare state level and some states will simply starve.

It's like insurance: we all need to pool together and help everyone. And for it to work, we can't complain that some people get more help than others. It's a safety net, not floor. If everyone hit the net, the entire thing collapses quickly.

2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily. Imagine the logistical disaster of having a California worker work for a New York company. Which social security does this workers wages get deposited to? What if the worker moves to Arizona? What if the New York company opens a branch in Florida and that worker's department operates out of there?

It's a mess across state lines, and traditionally we have state disputes handled at the federal level.
by Lio | 2026-01-20 07:42:59+00:00
Since you asked:

* I’m old. I learned Vim many years before VSCode existed and I have good muscle memory for using it.

* Vim defines many editing commands are available in other places such as shells, db clients, REPLs so I can bring my way of working with me across OSs.

* Learn Vim once and you know it for all time as other editors come and go.

* Vim/NeoVim has even more plugins than VSCode both its own and via LSP, etc.

* Vim is true FOSS. No one can take it away from you, control how you use it or insist they are given ownership of your work including training rights.

* I’ve worked with many VSCode users since it launched. The way I see them using it seems slow to do simple tasks and unappealing.

* Vim is getting easier to use because LLMs are making it easier to learn some of the obscure features.

I don’t mind what editor anyone else wants to use so long as I can use NeoVim. I’ve worked some jobs where the boss insisted everyone has to use what they use and I’ve never stayed long when that happens.
by blep-arsh | 2026-01-20 07:43:29+00:00
I've had some experience with both Meshtastic and Reticulum, and Meshtastic software was mostly unusable for me even with 3-node networks. E.g. a node sends a message and gets a successful delivery notification from the receiver but the receiver fails to display the message to the user. Reticulum was mostly working fine. Haven't tried MeshCore yet.