MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by MarsIronPI | 2026-01-21 14:54:49+00:00
> A more practical issue is the author has zero interest in being sued if my LoRA connected emergency stop button for my CNC milling machine crashes and the machine then hurts someone (possibly myself).

Don't most actual free software licenses include a warranty disclaimer? So said military would have no grounds to sue, since there's no warranty or guarantee of function provided.

Thing is, I want to like Reticulum. It's a great protocol, way better than Meshtastic. It has a great vision. IMO it's not abandonware (yet) but even if it was, I'd probably be willing to maintain it for myself. I just wish it was FOSS.
by relaxing | 2026-01-21 14:54:51+00:00
You think Frank Lloyd Wright designed big picture windows and open floor plans because he was afraid of humanity? He was afraid so he tried to induce fear? Through asymmetry? What then of William Blake’s “fearful symmetry”?

Amazing that FLW is still traumatizing conservatives 100 years later. Ayn Rand was a fan, didn’t you know?

Picasso was trying to convey the feeling of being bombed from the sky in a civil war, so at least your reading there is accurate.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-21 14:54:57+00:00
> Is it normal to be fingerprinted for a job?

Depends on context. In finance or anything concerning children, yes. You’re given autonomy in situations where others are vulnerable. On a construction site or on a factory floor, where you’re constantly supervised, no.

> Uber drivers in particular seem a vulnerable group

So are their passengers.
by QuadmasterXLII | 2026-01-21 14:54:58+00:00
Unsupervised, in a language where arrays and functions could be called with the same syntax, one would be tempted to do

def slice(array, start, end):
def new_array(index):
return array(index - start)
return new_array

I think what this really clarifies is that it's quite important that arrays expose their lengths, which there isn't one clear way to do if arrays and functions are interchanged freely.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-21 14:55:02+00:00
Have you tried a handheld corded unit? I find most of the perceived effort with the larger unit is due to a combination of the bulk, the weight, and having to maneuver it around anything delicate without inadvertently bumping into it. Meanwhile the corded handheld never dies on me and I think isn't as bad for my hearing. All the cordless units I've tried seem to have an extremely high pitch whine to them.
by rayiner | 2026-01-21 14:55:05+00:00
> Uber drivers in particular seem a vulnerable group, which makes forcing this a bit 'icky'.

You seem to be redefining the word “vulnerable” to mean the opposite. Uber drivers disproportionately are men without full time jobs. That pool of people almost certainly has a higher likelihood of criminal behavior than the population as a whole. Assuming finger printing actually works (which I’m not sure), they’re exactly the people who should have more scrutiny. It seems “icky” to you because we have socialized people to reflexively suppress their natural defense mechanisms.
by huntergemmer | 2026-01-21 14:55:14+00:00
Creator here. I built ChartGPU because I kept hitting the same wall: charting libraries that claim to be "fast" but choke past 100K data points.

The core insight: Canvas2D is fundamentally CPU-bound. Even WebGL chart libraries still do most computation on the CPU. So I moved everything to the GPU via WebGPU:

- LTTB downsampling runs as a compute shader
- Hit-testing for tooltips/hover is GPU-accelerated
- Rendering uses instanced draws (one draw call per series)

The result: 1M points at 60fps with smooth zoom/pan.

Live demo: https://chartgpu.github.io/ChartGPU/examples/million-points/

Currently supports line, area, bar, scatter, pie, and candlestick charts. MIT licensed, available on npm: `npm install chartgpu`

Happy to answer questions about WebGPU internals or architecture decisions.
by YokoZar | 2026-01-21 14:55:26+00:00
> From the article: “Uber has said it is one of the safest ways to get around, with the vast majority of its trips in the United States — 99.9 percent — occurring without an incident of any kind”

Another way of phrasing this is that if you take Uber to and from work, you'll likely have an incident within 2 years.
by Daedren | 2026-01-21 14:55:26+00:00
It's less about productivity and output (those are still desired in many art fields) but more about creativity and personality, more humane traits.

Not to say that coding doesn't have those two, but I'd argue developers have been caring less and less for it over the years. Their relationship with code has changed.

You can look at a comic and immediately identify the illustrator if you're well versed in the artists. Now would that still happen in 20 years if Gen AI became standard today? Will we keep getting new artists and new art styles? Or will their relationship with art become more like newer coders have with code?

I don't think it's an easy question to answer and no one likely has an answer.
Show HN: Everpath – Goal planning via natural language roadmaps
by sweave | 2026-01-21 14:55:29+00:00
Hi HN,

Most productivity tools assume you already know what to do. I kept getting stuck before that point.

Everpath is an experiment in planning goals as paths and roadmaps instead of task lists. You start with a goal written in natural language, and it generates a roadmap you can iterate on:

- reshape it by talking to it (“make this slower”, “focus on fundamentals”)

- view it as a board when executing

- view it as a calendar when committing time

- use a discussion mode that pushes back on unrealistic plans

This is not meant to replace discipline or effort. It’s meant to make starting less mentally expensive.

Curious what resonates and what doesn’t.
by DangitBobby | 2026-01-21 14:55:36+00:00
The thing about extremes is you can make anything so by choosing a reference point. My reference is from the centerpoint of most prosperous and educated countries, because those are most likely to be ones with good ideas to be emulated. All decision we make are based on value judgements. Obviously there's no way to know what the most sensible thing is but in absence of perfect heuristics, "what other successful countries think" seems like a good one.
Tell HN: The FAA is pushing to decimate small flight schools
by salusinarduis | 2026-01-21 14:55:45+00:00
TL;DR: The proposed FAA changes require examiners to have at least five hours of flight time in the exact model of airplane you are using before they can test you. Because there are hundreds of slightly different model variations (like a Cessna 172P vs. a 172R), most examiners won't have the specific hours needed for every plane. This effectively disqualifies the majority of local examiners, creating massive backlogs and making it nearly impossible to find someone legally allowed to give you a checkride.

The FAA has released proposed changes to FAA Order 8000.95D Chg 1 that directly affect how designated pilot examiners (DPEs) operate and how flight schools schedule and conduct practical tests. The deadline to submit comments is fast approaching-11:59 PM Friday night, January 23rd. Please review and provide feedback on these proposed changes before they become final policy.

Comments are quick and easy if you follow the instructions and links the end of this message.

Summary of Key Proposed Changes FAA Order 8000.9D Chg 1
Restrictions on DPEs Conducting Flight Instructor Examinations: The changes would limit the ability of DPEs to administer flight instructor practical tests. This restriction could significantly reduce the flexibility and availability of examiners, particularly impacting high-volume flight schools. Found in Volume 3, Chapter 5, Section 2, paragraph H, items (3) & (15).

New PIC Time Requirements: Examiners would be required to have at least
five hours of pilot-in-command (PIC) time in each make and model before conducting a check ride in single engine aircraft. This requirement may limit the pool of available examiners and could lead to scheduling delays. Found in Volume 3, Chapter 1, Section 2, Table 3-3.

Fee Collection Provision: The proposed changes would prohibit DPEs from collecting any fees until after the applicant's eligibility is determined during the pre-test briefing. This could create administrative burdens for both examiners and flight schools, potentially complicating the scheduling and payment process.
Found in Volume 3, Chapter 5, Section 2, Paragraph C, Items (7) & (8).

Review the full text of the proposed changes to FAA Order 8000.95D Chg 1 here:
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/orders
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-21 14:55:48+00:00
I didn't mind for the comp and the problems to be solved, and was already processed for an SF86 (to obtain a security clearance) for working at the US Digital Service previously. The hurdles you're willing to jump are a function of what you're optimizing for (comp, opportunity, lifestyle, etc). DHS already has my prints and facial biometrics for Global Entry and for a contracting gig I did, idgaf (but ymmv and I respect that).
by jjice | 2026-01-21 14:55:52+00:00
> Are they really late? Has everyone started using agents and paying $200 subscriptions?

No, most programmers I know outside of my own work (friends, family, and old college pals) don't use AI at all. They just don't care.

I personally use Cursor at work and enjoy it quite a bit, but I think the author is maybe at the tail end of _their circle's_ adoption, but not the industry's.
by iamleppert | 2026-01-21 14:56:08+00:00
There is another solution I use all the time: move deleted records to their own table. You probably don't need to do this for all tables. It allows you to not pepper your codebase with where clauses or statuses, everything works as intended, and you can easily restore records deleted by mistake, which is the original intent anyways. You can easily set this up by using a trigger at the database level in almost every database, that just works.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-21 14:56:14+00:00
> the Estonian company they run now has to file tax returns and pay taxes not only to Estonia but also Spain.

Yes, this again makes sense to me. You have a company in Estonia, so that pays taxes in Estonia. You work for this company from Spain, so you pay taxes in Spain. Doesn't it work the same elsewhere? What other ways could it work, assuming we want taxes somewhere?

> But then if what Estonia considers acceptable standards for tax reporting differs from what Spain considers acceptable

Yes, that also makes sense, different countries have different systems? Again, if you open a company in Estonia, the ground assumption has to be that you're up for understanding Estonian tax laws. If you're living in Spain while working for that company, the ground assumption is that you're up for understanding both Spanish and Estonian tax laws, because they should of course get their taxes.

As long as I don't get taxed on the same money in both countries (which there are a lot of bi-lateral agreements solving that), I don't see the issue here.
by loudmax | 2026-01-21 14:56:17+00:00
AI might be accelerating the trend, but there's been a populist revolt against institutions for over a decade. It's been happening long before ChatGPT, and this isn't just in Europe and the US. The erosion of trust in governments and institutions has been documented globally.

The obvious culprits being smartphones and social networking, though it's really hard to prove causality.
Amazon shopping automation without vision: verification gate+local model (3B)
by tonyww | 2026-01-21 14:56:32+00:00
A common approach to automating Amazon shopping or similar complex websites is to reach for large cloud models (often vision-capable). I wanted to test a contradiction: can a ~3B parameter local LLM model complete the flow using only structural page data (DOM) plus deterministic assertions?

This post summarizes four runs of the same task (search → first product → add to cart → checkout on Amazon). The key comparison is Demo 0 (cloud baseline) vs Demo 3 (local autonomy); Demos 1–2 are intermediate controls.

More technical detail (architecture, code excerpts, additional log snippets):

https://www.sentienceapi.com/blog/verification-layer-amazon-case-study

Demo 0 vs Demo 3:

Demo 0 (cloud, GLM‑4.6 + structured snapshots)
success: 1/1 run
tokens: 19,956 (~43% reduction vs ~35k estimate)
time: ~60,000ms
cost: cloud API (varies)
vision: not required

Demo 3 (local, DeepSeek R1 planner + Qwen ~3B executor)
success: 7/7 steps (re-run)
tokens: 11,114
time: 405,740ms
cost: $0.00 incremental (local inference)
vision: not required

Latency note: the local stack is slower end-to-end here largely because inference runs on local hardware (Mac Studio with M4); the cloud baseline benefits from hosted inference, but has per-token API cost.

Architecture

This worked because we changed the control plane and added a verification loop.

1) Constrain what the model sees (DOM pruning).
We don’t feed the entire DOM or screenshots. We collect raw elements, then run a WASM pass to produce a compact “semantic snapshot” (roles/text/geometry) and prune the rest (often on the order of ~95% of nodes).

2) Split reasoning from acting (planner vs executor).

Planner (reasoning): DeepSeek R1 (local) generates step intent + what must be true afterward.
Executor (action): Qwen ~3B (local) selects concrete DOM actions like CLICK(id) / TYPE(text).
3) Gate every step with Jest‑style verification.
After each action, we assert state changes (URL changed, element exists/doesn’t exist, modal/drawer appeared). If a required assertion fails, the step fails with artifacts and bounded retries.

Minimal shape:

ok = await runtime.check(
exists("role=textbox"),
label="search_box_visible",
required=True,
).eventually(timeout_s=10.0, poll_s=0.25, max_snapshot_attempts=3)

What changed between “agents that look smart” and agents that work
Two examples from the logs:

Deterministic override to enforce “first result” intent: “Executor decision … [override] first_product_link -> CLICK(1022)”

Drawer handling that verifies and forces the correct branch: “result: PASS | add_to_cart_verified_after_drawer”

The important point is that these are not post‑hoc analytics. They are inline gates: the system either proves it made progress or it stops and recovers.

Takeaway
If you’re trying to make browser agents reliable, the highest‑leverage move isn’t a bigger model. It’s constraining the state space and making success/failure explicit with per-step assertions.

Reliability in agents comes from verification (assertions on structured snapshots), not just scaling model size.
by dathinab | 2026-01-21 14:57:01+00:00
> violation of the free movement of banking services

Isn't the same as freely moving the jurisdiction under which a company exist.

It also mostly applies to cash/legal tender but most wealthy peoples wealth is
only in small amounts in cash.

Technically relevant laws are also often not classified as "capital flight" laws per-se, but are very close to it.

E.g. in Germany there is a "Wegzugsteuer" (~moving away from Germany Tax), which only applies to "hidden/unrealized reserves". When you leave Germany (~for good, kinda, it's complicated) the tax treats them as if you sold them, i.e. you have to any tax you would have to pay if you had sold them. "Hidden reserves" include stuff like you owning more then 1% of a company, certain investment founds, crypto currency, etc.. So while it's not a capital flight law as it doesn't affect cash (weather digital or physical) it is very similar to it.

(clarifications: yes in EU crypto currency is not a legal tender, i.e. it's treated more like gold. You still can use them to buy things as you can buy things based on an exchange of goods if all involved parties agree to it. Similar for a lot of the things covered by the law it's possible to sell them for very low taxes under the right circumstances, so if you don't move very spontaneously you have a lot of ways to largely reduce this tax.)
by ClarityJones | 2026-01-21 14:57:03+00:00
I would disagree about capitalism being on the rise. Marx and his views grew after the 1850s and communist / socialist revolutions spread throughout Europe. There may have been more discussion of "capitalism" and an increase in industrialization, but "capital" had existed and operated for centuries before that. What changed was who owned the capital and how it was managed, specifically there has been a vast increase in central / government control.

I think this centralization of authority over capital is what has allowed for the power of lobbying, etc. A billionaire could previously only control his farms, tenant farmers, etc. Now their reach is international, and they can influence the taxing / spending the occurs across the entire economy.

Similarly, local communities were probably equally (likely far more) mislead by propaganda / lies. However, that influence tended to be more local and aligned with their own interests. The town paper may be full of lies, but the company that owned the town and the workers that lived there both wanted the town to succeed.
by scotty79 | 2026-01-21 14:57:26+00:00
Polish regulations are somehow magical. They delivered consistent high growth over the last 3 decades, even through multiple EU recessions. Poland turned out to be green island of the economic landscape more than once.

They seem to be quite resilient to because no government managed to damage their efficiency over that time period.

They were delivering solid results before we joined the EU and even better afterwards.
by 542458 | 2026-01-21 14:57:39+00:00
Today there's a (mostly) clear line between "AI" and "not AI" art in terms of process, but I believe as time goes on we'll see more and more blurring of that. I'm thinking the equivalent of the spell-check tool for art, something that takes explicit human input and tidies the details in an interactive, human-in-the-loop sort of way.
by jjice | 2026-01-21 14:58:00+00:00
> Why isn't there a major lack of institutional trust of dentists?

FWIW, I know a lot of people who refuse to go to the dentist unless it's an issue because they're one of the medical professions that seem to do the most upselling.

I go every six months for a cleaning and trust my dentist, but I can definitely see how these huge chain dentists become untrustworthy.
by keepamovin | 2026-01-21 14:58:05+00:00
No that is not what it means. I did not mean experience; I did not mean that I cannot explain how I do it; I meant what I said: intuition. I can explain how I do it; I can even explain how it works (as far as I think), but I don't know how it works, and I don't care. I just care that I can do it, and that it works.
by nerdjon | 2026-01-21 14:58:23+00:00
> It's quite indiscriminate in Software, for sure, I feel like people don't care whether you used an AI to write your code as long as it works.

I don't think that is really the case.

We are seeing pushback on games developed using AI. Communities like /r/selfhosted is very much pushing back against AI slop code.

While right now it seems like for the most part the concern is from more technical people, we are seeing issues of vibe coded applications shipping bugs because the quality is poor (just look at the bugs shipped in Claude Code).

I think we will be getting to a point of people questioning the quality of the application they are using and whether or not a human was actually involved if bugs start shipping more often.
by ndr | 2026-01-21 14:58:58+00:00
Datomic can use various storage services. Yes, pg is one option, but you can have DynamoDB, Cassandra, SQLServer and probably more.

> Also, it doesn't support non-immutable use cases AFAIK

What do you mean? It's append only but you can have CRUD operations on it. You get a view and of the db at any point in time if you so wish, but can support any CRUD use case. What is your concern there?

It will work well if you're read-heavy and the write throughput is not insanely high.

I wouldn't say it's internally more complex than your pg with whatever code you need to make it work for these scenarios like soft-delete.

From the DX perspective is incredibly simple to work on (see Simple Made Easy from Rich Hickey).
YC Spring – Full-Stack AI Consulting Company
by latmba06 | 2026-01-21 14:59:19+00:00
Hi Jared,
I’m applying to the YC Spring batch with Miky, a full-stack, AI-native consulting company. Your post on full-stack AI companies describes almost exactly what I’m building.
Miky is not software sold to consultants — it is a consulting business itself, staffed with AI agents and built to compete directly with traditional firms. Miky connects directly to enterprise data sources (ERP systems, Databricks, and internal financial and operational datasets) to build a continuously updated context graph of the business. On top of that, Miky generates prioritized recommendations, performance metrics, and concrete implementation plans — translating raw data into specific actions, targets, and value-creation initiatives for management teams. The system sets goals, tracks execution, and updates recommendations in real time as results and conditions change, focusing on areas such as procurement optimization, margin expansion, and top-line growth.
I recently developed and piloted Miky internally while working with senior leadership at Kearney to explore whether this model could live inside a traditional consulting firm. The conclusion was that while Kearney believes this AI-native model can be highly successful and reach a large number of clients, it is very difficult for an AI-native consulting business and the traditional consulting model to coexist under the same roof. As a result, the firm chose not to pursue it internally. This creates a strong opportunity to launch Miky externally, and since the concept and IP are mine, I’m now building it independently.
By background, I previously built and scaled a large consumer internet platform from zero to global scale as a founder/operator, and over the past decade I’ve worked as a senior strategy consultant advising CEOs, boards, and PE funds. Miky sits directly at the intersection of software, data, and services.
I’ve already advanced conversations with potential clients including AB InBev, Belcorp, Mars, KKR, and others around the implementation of Miky in real operating environments, which has helped shape both the product and the initial use cases.
I’m applying as a solo founder. While I don’t currently have a CTO co-founder, I have a clear technical roadmap and am actively building and recruiting. I believe this is a founder-market-fit problem where speed, insight, and domain expertise matter more than initial team size.
Thanks for reading — I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss further.
Best, Juan
by munk-a | 2026-01-21 14:59:27+00:00
And it's not like there aren't a plethora of relatively accessible technical solutions to fix this problem like looking for inconsistency in nearby devices that accompany the driver and the usage behavior metrics in use within the advertising industry to de-anonymize users. Figuring out who someone is when they don't want you to know it's them is a scarily well solved problem at this point... figuring out if someone isn't the same person you thought they were yesterday is comparatively trivial.
by Alex-Programs | 2026-01-21 14:59:36+00:00
Is there a reason we would need to coordinate on what to exchange rather than, say, beginning with encyclopedias and textbooks then moving to a constant stream of notable papers, news, discoveries, etc? What kind of bandwidth can you hit with a cooperating neighbour where improvements become civilisationally important? How many bytes (megabytes? Terabytes?) of meaningful new data does humanity produce per second? I suspect it's reasonably low.