MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-14 18:26:48+00:00
> HTML (and XMLish syntax in general) is LISP syntax (not semantics) in disguise

No, its not. If it was, the attribute vs. child element distinction would not exist. HTML (and HTML-inspired XML) syntax is not a trivial alternative to S-expression syntax, it is more complex with additional distinctions.

A simplified subset of (HT|X)ML that uses only elements and no attributes is pretty much directyl equivalent to S-expressions, sure.
by homebrewer | 2026-01-14 18:26:51+00:00
Shockingly to some, the level of network development, especially wireless network, is not the same everywhere. Even population density varies greatly. I just checked our operators, the cheapest mobile plan comes at 1 GiB of data per month. Prices climb really fast after that, making 10-15 GiB (or more) too expensive for many, though you can get 5 GiB/mo subsidized for cheap if you have some sort of disability.
by idontwantthis | 2026-01-14 18:27:07+00:00
I don’t get plug in hybrids. All other engine types save you more money compared to the next less efficient alternative the more you use them, but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them. Add in the approximately 25% price hike over the hybrid version when there is one and it makes no sense to me.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2026-01-14 18:27:09+00:00
There is no moral requirement for me to impoverish myself in response to an idiot cutting government/public spending on critical assistance to those in need.

There might be other moral imperatives which indicate that I ought to cash out the 401(k) and give it to people who need support, but this guy and his fucked up "DOGE" bullshit ain't it.
by coffeefirst | 2026-01-14 18:27:11+00:00
Yeah this is what 2008 was like. It is not your fault.

Here's what you do:

1. Quit doomscrolling. Quit all social media. It's like anti-therapy where it just makes everything worse. Timebox your job-hunting every day, there's diminishing marginal returns on time spent here.

2. Your instincts are good! Volunteering and side projects are great. I did a ton of side projects and freelance work. This means you'll be able to account for your time unemployed and gives you something cool to show in interviews. I had a nice little portfolio to run with.

3. Go outside. Read a book in a park. Clear your head. Shit like "the longer I go without work, the worse it gets in the eyes of employers" isn't useful. You will solve that by having a good story to tell via #2, and everyone knows this is a terrible market.

4. Apply to weird stuff involving technology but not "in tech." IT for schools, web stuff for nonprofits, museums, tiny businesses that can't afford market rate. A lot of these are really fun.

I can tell you from 2008-2011, this era passed. Even my most desperate, lost-seeming friends, some of which had prestigious degrees etc etc, found something to do. Many of them wound up quite well off in the end. The hard part isn't even interviewing, its keeping yourself sane in the meantime.
by OneMorePerson | 2026-01-14 18:27:33+00:00
This is very imprecise data that I have, but my understanding is that pre-covid Tokyo was around 8M yen median household income, and a median home was around 60M yen, so roughly 7-8x the median HHI. Now it's around 80M for a new home and wages are the same.

Seattle even right now is ~110k ish HHI, median home price is ~$800k, so that's 7-8x, before COVID I think it was around ~650k, so around 6x. Also Seattle is known for being pretty expensive, a lot of cities like Houston have an even better multiplier.

It just doesn't seem that different to me. Feels like a lot of people are unhappy with property prices and think it's uniquely a US problem, whereas the system in the US actually works decently well compared to a lot of places. (It would take many essays for me to list all the flaws, I'm not saying it's perfect I'm just looking at it relatively speaking).
Show HN: A kids' math app without dark patterns
by matheusml | 2026-01-14 18:27:34+00:00
I wanted to find an iPad game where my 5yo could learn math, which sounded simple.

Turns out most kids' educational apps are... shady. Notifications, streak mechanics, ads for games definitely not meant for children, coin systems and flashy rewards designed to maximize engagement rather than learning.

So I decided to vibe code something for her.

The result is Lumi. It's a simple math app with:
- No ads, no accounts, no tracking
- No notifications
- No coins, streaks, or variable reward nonsense
- Daily limits (because kids should go play outside)
- Works offline, stores everything locally
- Supports English, Portuguese, German, French (more to come)

My daughter has been using it for a while now and actually enjoys it. The problems adapt to her level, and when she hits the daily limit, it just tells her to go do something else.

It's completely free and open source. I built it for her, but figured other parents might find it useful too.

https://playlumi.app/
https://github.com/matheusml/lumi

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack (SvelteKit, TypeScript), decisions, or anything else
by shortstuffsushi | 2026-01-14 18:27:36+00:00
> There are no more basic utilitarian pickups any longer, at least in the US.

What makes you say this? The F-150 series has a pretty serviceable option in their XL trim. 8ft bed, 4x4, "dumb" interior (maybe not, looking at their site looks like the most recent is iPad screen, sigh) - but what else would you look for to call it utilitarian?

You're right that each feature is further limiting, but I would argue premium and utilitarian are reaching for opposite goals.
by indymike | 2026-01-14 18:27:42+00:00
> fact that you put too much food in your mouth (and probably the wrong kind of food)

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five years ago. I radically changed my diet to a hard keto diet with a cap of 50g of net carbohydrate per day (carbs - fiber = net carbs). My caloric intake quadrupled due to fats being high calorie. My weight dropped by 48 pounds. In every measurement, I'm healthier despite being older. My diet is also expensive and difficult:

Most foods in the us are high in carbohydrate. Cereals, added sugars, fake sugar free (sugar alcohol instead of sugar), and foods that have lots of integrated carbs... sandwiches, tortillas, etc. There's a huge preference for bad foods baked into the culture. It's hard to eat well. So culture is as much of a problem as any other factor.
by binarylogic | 2026-01-14 18:28:07+00:00
My apologies, I fixed the link. So much for restructuring the docs the night before posting this.

You can read more here: https://docs.usetero.com/data-quality/overview

To loosely describe our approach: it's intentionally transparent. We start with obvious categories (health checks, debug logs, redundant attributes) that you can inspect and verify. No black box.

But underneath, Tero builds a semantic understanding of your data. Each category represents a progression in reasoning, from "this is obviously waste" to "this doesn't help anyone debug anything." You start simple, verify everything, and go deeper at your own pace.
by heliumtera | 2026-01-14 18:28:11+00:00
If one decides to boot an arbitrary system, pointing at whatever would be the latest version of exec.asm, it doesn't even matter what the project is today and whatever the setup script is doing.
If one chooses to use this, one decides to handover the virtual machine ownership. Your system is whatever OP decides, now or in the future.

Edit: made a clear mistake here. One would clearly not be booting on lates version of exec.asm.
It would be libBareMetal.asm instead.

Sorry for confusion guys, totally safe and effective

if [ -x "$(command -v curl)" ]; then
curl -s -o libBareMetal.asm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m...
else
wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m...
fi
by ThrowawayR2 | 2026-01-14 18:28:29+00:00
The hikikomori[1] or NEETs ought to be a hotbed of creative works if your hypothesis is true. And they aren't, plain and simple.

There is effectively zero evidence suggesting a population on UBI will result in some sort of outpouring of creativity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori and it's not a phenomenon limited to Japan.
by linuxftw | 2026-01-14 18:28:50+00:00
Yeah, those are some of the programs I was referring to. The 'loophole' aspect that was mentioned on the podcast is that when the FHA does the 'loss mitigation' (aka, refi's the loan), there is not any kind of qualification as to whether the buyer will ever be able to make a payment on the new loan. It's just approved anyway, and the cycle can happen unlimited times.

I think they're looking at adding a means test, but I'm unsure.
by brabel | 2026-01-14 18:29:26+00:00
Most of the author's frustration was due to lack of good feedback from Swift.

Like, how can it run a command that has an `async` main despite the fact that you didn't extend the async version of command?? That should've been an error (e.g. "bro, you cannot have an async main in this class, you need the Async version of this class which is called AsyncWhatever").

Not awaiting on an async function should be at least a warning. Another frustrating lack of feedback: it just lets you run it and nothing happens.

The version thing: it should show all possible variants in the enum, even the ones you should not be able to use, and then when you try using it, show an error saying "you need to change the version of this file to at least blah to use this". Why can't the Swift LSP do that? Apple has a trillion dollars, they can afford polishing their stuff.

The author is used to Rust, which would've made it very clear what was wrong in all cases.

Swift, being as modern as Rust, should be doing better than that. Languages that fail to give you proper error messages and warnings are just not worth it: just one of these "wtf is going on?" moments can cost you hours. Just use a better language if you can.
by bigbluesax | 2026-01-14 18:29:30+00:00
Is the concept of someone who usually doesn't eat potatoes getting a bag and spending the next week making some potato dishes really that inconceivable? I don't doubt that this will lead to some waste - I've thrown out more half empty potato bags than I would like to admit - but that's a very negative outlook.

Also how do you choose between negative second order effects? Salting roads creates negative effects for groundwater and plants which are really hard to mitigate. On the other hand the second order effect of not people slipping could at least be dealt with on an individual level by putting spikes on your shoes.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2026-01-14 18:29:30+00:00
My concern is that man, not the many people who work in the corporations who make the computing devices that I use. It's not exactly that those corporations have an unblemished record, but compared to what that guy did during his brief utterly ruinous stint with DOGE and in his election support of that other guy, there isn't a computing device company that doesn't look like St Francis of Assissi.
by publicdebates | 2026-01-14 18:29:31+00:00
Not sure how homoiconicity is related to this at all. Macros don't seem involved.

But I do think s-expressions are an improvement over HTML in certain scenarios.

That said (talking to OP now), why is the control handler outside the button?

In actual HTML, we have [button onclick="codeToBeEvaled()"]

In this thing, you have [button][onclick [sub-expressions]]

With s-expressions, at least you have some semblance of function calls,
which would make control flow operators seem slightly more natural,
but this hybrid of semantic and syntactic choice just seems bizarrely limited.
by danans | 2026-01-14 18:29:31+00:00
> It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued.
> As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.

The F150 Lighting (and the Cybertruck) are failing precisely because it was impractical. It was expensive, has limited range when doing actual "pickup truck" work, like hauling tons of construction materials. It was built for the very niche market of buyers at the intersection of luxury pickups and EVs.

People who buy huge luxury pickups tend not to want EVs, and people who buy EVs tend not to want huge luxury pickup trucks.

A practical work truck needs to be smaller, less luxurious, and less expensive, electric or not. If Ford follows through and releases a plugin-hybrid Maverick with 150ish miles of EV range plus the onboard generator, that would be ideal.

A pure EV drivetrain on the other hand is incredibly practical for daily commuter and even long distance travel - assuming you have home charging - but not for hauling tons of stuff long distances.
by Workaccount2 | 2026-01-14 18:29:43+00:00
I disagree along with you. EVs would work for 80% of the population, there is a long tail of people who an EV will never (well foreseeable future) work for.

Thankfully, the mass of humanity that should be transitioning lives in populated areas and never tows anything for more than 75 miles. There is no need to get bogged down in back and forths with the small subset of people who an EV will not work for.
by bpt3 | 2026-01-14 18:29:54+00:00
> People want reasonable services from their government

Yes, though the definition of "reasonable" is a real sticking point

> and tighter regulation of markets

This is less clear to me, but I would agree people want less fraud and deception in markets

> with elimination of profit-taking middlemen

I don't think many people think about this at all, and it's another very nebulous term

> They want democratic socialism.

No, democratic socialists want democratic socialism. Most Americans do not.

> Meanwhile, the right wing has been telling them that public libraries and public schools and everything good except profit -- is communism.

I disagree with basically everything the current incarnation of the Republican party is doing or stands for, and silly statements like this aren't helpful.
by css_apologist | 2026-01-14 18:30:22+00:00
first let me say i applaud you for experimenting and doing something unconventional

- thoughts as i was reading this -

ok, so we're programming via an AST vs syntax

I think this is interesting, however there's notable downsides - verbosity, dom bloat & debugging

A potential upside to this is very odd but interesting meta programming capabilities, since the code should be able to inspect & modify itself fairly easily by inspecting the dom

I am inclined to distrust the claim that this reduces complexity as most of the actions are mutation heavy directly to the dom, and the stack based programming is something i struggle to practical examples where it is a significant improvement to mainstream strategies
by bluGill | 2026-01-14 18:30:23+00:00
They are interested in other markets where they don't have a monopoly though. Most of the time my cell phone has fast 5g internet, and my cell phone company is trying to sell me on their 5g internet (I have fibre so I don't see the point). For many potential starlink customers there is competition. If you on the ocean they are the only option. If you travel on land they can be the only option in places but you can probably live with no service in those few places.
by anfractuosity | 2026-01-14 18:30:25+00:00
Great idea!

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal-finance/finance-expe... shows how little pubs make per pint, very sad.

If anyone's curious about cask beer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ud_eTwY4nc&list=PLyDTS7ZG3z... is a very interesting youtube video series by The Craft Beer Channel.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-14 18:30:27+00:00
Now take that, and add someone in our Polish supermarket chain (Biedronka) having the dumb "insight" to disable "scan multiple" option. Until ~month ago, whenever buying something in larger quantity, I could just press "Scan multiple", tap in the amount, scan the barcode once, and move all the items of the same type to the "already scanned" zone. Now, I have to do it one by one, each time waiting for the scales to settle. Infuriating when you're buying some spice bag or candy and have to scan 12 of them one by one.
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-14 18:30:43+00:00
> That only works if the message of the third party is more appealing to those voters.

It actually works just as well if the third party fails to attract the voters with its message but provides a reason not to vote for the targeted major party candidate that would not work as well if the messenger was the major party using the third party as a stalking horse. Because discouraging voters that would otherwise vote for the other party has the exact same effect on the outcome as moving them to a minor party.
by binarylogic | 2026-01-14 18:30:58+00:00
The question is answered in the post: ~40% on average, sometimes higher. That's a real number from real customer data.

But I'm an engineer at heart. I wanted this post to shed light on a real problem I've seen over a decade in this space that is causing a lot of pain; not write a product walkthrough. But the solution is very much real. There's deep, hard engineering going on: building semantic understanding of telemetry, classifying waste into verifiable categories, processing it at the edge. It's not simple, and I hope that comes through in the docs.

The docs get concrete if you want to peruse: https://docs.usetero.com/introduction/how-tero-works
by dpark | 2026-01-14 18:31:18+00:00
Even proven code is a liability. The point of it being a liability is that it costs time and effort to maintain and update.

The same with the bridge. Even the best built and most useful bridge requires maintenance. Assuming changing traffic patterns, it might equally require upgrades and changes.

The problem with this whole “code is a liability” thing is that it’s vacuous. Your house is a liability. The bridge that gets you to work as a liability. Everything that requires any sort of maintenance or effort or upkeep or other future cost is ina sense a liability. This isn’t some deep insight though. This is like saying your bones could break so they are liability. OK, but their value drastically outweighs any liability they impose.
by tracker1 | 2026-01-14 18:31:33+00:00
For 2025, Ford sold about 2.2 million vehicles, Tesla was like 1.6m. Given, more variety for Ford... But there's also margins and supply chains to consider.

The Cybertruck is kind of ugly and very expensive... not to mention that no EV truck really does towing well. The fact that the Lightning sold more than the Cybertruck doesn't make it a success.

The Cybertruck, imo, is not too different than a limited run sports car from a major car company... it's just a step above a concept car. The Lightning from Ford was an attempt to see if a market was really ready to shift to EV, it largely isn't. Even though I think it's probably a great option for a lot of work truck use, that doesn't include long distances or heavy towing, but then it likely prices itself out of that market segment too.
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-14 18:31:36+00:00
>A pickup truck should just be max utility,

The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.

The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.
by levysoft | 2026-01-14 18:31:46+00:00
Interesting, but the opening line threw me off:

> Sure, I still make fun of the PHP I remember from the days of PHP 4.1, but even then I didn’t hate it. (ref. And “PHP: Training Wheels Without a Bike” is still in the Top 10 of my favorite memes.)

I still use it to build my latest projects, and for me it’s like breathing. Simple and functional. It’s not perfect, but no language is.
by SilasX | 2026-01-14 18:31:52+00:00
I wrote an April Fool's parody in 2021 that Google is going to get rid of authentication because they're following you around enough to know who you are anyway (modeling it after their No Captcha announcement[1]):

http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2021/04/leaked-google-init...

Edit:

>I think the truth is, they just want your face.

I just realized the parody also predicted that part (emphasis added):

>>In cases where our tracking cookies and other behavioral metrics can't confidently predict who someone is, we will prompt the user for additional information, increasing the number of security checkpoints to confirm who the user really is. For example, you might need to turn on your webcam or upload your operating system's recent logs to give a fuller picture.

[1] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introd...
by JumpinJack_Cash | 2026-01-14 18:32:12+00:00
We all know (even though we haven't internalized) that airplanes are so much safer compared to other means of transportation, I'd guess that planes are safer than any other space a human can occupy including an hospital.

The goal of a human should be not to die, not avoiding death from aviation, the fixation to hammer on this industry happens because people are intuitively scared of it and the physics is not sufficient to have them stay calm because they ignore the concept of lift , propulsion etc. etc.

And also because of bad memories from the past which have nothing to do with planes, more like with the lack of a couple of Law Enforcement agents on board.
by lo_zamoyski | 2026-01-14 18:32:20+00:00
It's interesting you got downvoted, perhaps for the sentence

> The whole difference between being a native an an alien is the rights you get.

A knee jerk and uncharitable reading might make this look bad, but it does require an uncharitable reading. It is clear what you mean.

However, the claim

> It's not a human right to be able to freely go into any country you please.

is not false. The idea that open borders are a good thing is a very odd idea. It seems to grow out of a hyperindividualistic and global capitalist/consumerist culture and mindset that doesn't recognize the reality of societies and cultures. Either that, or it is a rationalization of one's own very domestic and particular choices, for example. In any case, uncontrolled migration is well-understood (and rather obviously!) as something damaging to any society and any culture. In hyperindividualistic countries, this is perhaps less appreciated, because there isn't really an ethnos or cohesive culture or society. In the US, for example, corporate consumerism dominates what passes as "culture" (certainly pop culture), and the culture's liberal individualism is hostile to the formation and persistence of a robust common good as well as a recognition of what constitutes an authentic common good. It is reduced mostly to economic factors, hence globalist capitalism. So, in the extreme, if there are no societies, only atoms and the void, then who cares how to atoms go?

The other problem is that public discourse operates almost entirely within the confines of the false dichotomy of jingoist nationalism on the one hand and hyperindividualist globalism on the other (with the respective variants, like the socialist). There is little recognition of so-called postliberal positions, at least some of which draw on the robust traditional understanding of the common good and the human person, one that both jingoist nationalism and hyperindividualist globalism contradict. When postliberalism is mentioned, it is often smeared with false characterization or falsely lumped in with nihilistic positions like the Yarvin variety...which is not traditional!

Given the ongoing collapse of the liberal order - a process that will take time - these postliberal positions will need to be examined carefully if we are to avoid the hideous options dominating the public square today.