MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vessenes | 2026-01-09 13:52:17+00:00
This is nicely written, and the style is fresh after a year of reading LLM writing whenever I click.

Interesting to me is the audience - this article is appropriate for a middle schooler on up to read, and assumes no technical knowledge at all, or very little. Documentation targets and the social culture around them have varied since I started reading documents like these, but this sets an especially low bar for reader knowledge.

I like it. On the one hand, I could have gotten much more technical detail out of a version that used industry-specific words and was half the length, but on the other, I got what i needed, and learned much about the author to boot.
by jennyholzer4 | 2026-01-09 13:52:41+00:00
IMO algorithmically generated "social" media feeds combined with the lack of adequate mass-media alternatives have supercharged cult recruitment in the last approximately 10 years.

Stupid people in my life have been continually and recklessly joining harebrained cults for the last 5 years.

Really I think it's probably much, much easier to start a cult these days than it has ever been. Good news for tech company founders I guess, bad news for American culture, American society, and the American people.
by Eisenstein | 2026-01-09 13:52:45+00:00
No, that's your experience. The narrative is that everything went to shit because the left is trying to create a society where the values you hold are despised and where the good people are blamed for everything while lazy people and criminals get to do whatever they want because of a misplaced sense of justice.

What is actually happening is more mundane.

It's political systems breaking because closed primaries and Gerrymandering mean that a significant population in a lot of places effectively get no political voice because the elections are held in the primaries, and the people can't vote in the opposing party's primary. Ossification results, or the candidate who appeals to the party's more ardent voters get elected, and we essentially lose the center as a political position.

We also have a homeless situation that isn't being addressed, because no one wants to do anything effective. So what happens is that the only thing that can be done is to arrest them, and house them in jail temporarily. This is expensive and doesn't actually fix anything.

So you have a bunch of frustrated citizens who feel like they have no control over their local policy and are sick of the petty crime, along with police who are handling it by not enforcing quality of life crimes in the hope people will blame the elected officials they don't like.

Your frustration is real, but the causes you are attributing for them are wrong.
by xpe | 2026-01-09 13:52:53+00:00
> Neither LLM can reason about anything.

> Reasoning is an human trait.

The above trope(s)* needs to be put to bed. Along with it, we should actively seek to reduce various cognitive missteps that lead to them. So I want to make some general comments that often lead to the above kind of thinking. This is not directed at any person in particular.

It is more important than ever for people to grow their understanding and appreciation of the following:

1. Recognition that one probably can't offer a definition of {reasoning, intelligence, &c} that is widely agreed up.

2. Recognition that implicitly hiding a definition in your claims -- or worse, forcing a definition on people -- doesn't do much good.

3. Awareness that one's language may be often interpreted in various ways by reasonable people.

4. Dictionaries are catalogs of usage, not commandments of correctness.

3. Awareness of confusing terminology in AI/LLM in particular. For example, reasonable people can recognize that "reasoning" in this context is a fraught term.

5. Recognition that humanity is only getting started when it comes to making sense of how "intelligence" decomposes, how our brains work, the many nuanced differences between machine intelligence and human intelligence.

6. Recognize one's participation in a social context. Strive to not provide fuel for the fires of misunderstanding. If you use a fraught term, be extra careful to say what you mean.

7. Hopefully obvious: sweeping generalizations and blanket black-or-white statements are unlikely to be true unless you are talking about formal systems like logic and mathematics. Just don't do it. Don't let your thinking fall into that trap. And don't spew it -- that insults the intelligence of one's audience.

8. Generally speaking, people would be wise† to think about upping their epistemic game. If one says things that are obviously inaccurate, you are wasting your intelligence refined over millions of years by evolution and culture. To do so is self-destructive, for it makes oneself less valuable relative to LLMs who (although they blunder) are often more reliable than people who speak carelessly.

* The tropes I'm arguing against include: (a) human intelligence is the "truest" form of intelligence; (b) machines can't reason (without very clearly stating what you mean by reasoning); (c) [such and such] can only be done by a human (without clearly stating that you mean at the present time with present technology)

† Because it benefits the person directly and it helps culture, civilization, progress, &c
by Draiken | 2026-01-09 13:52:54+00:00
And you learned nothing and have no clue if what it spit out is good or not.

How can you even assume what it did is "better" if you have no knowledge of kubernetes in the first place? It's mere hope.

Sure it gets you somewhere but you learned nothing in the way and now depend on the LLM to maintain it forever given you don't want to learn the skill.

I use LLMs to help verify my work and it can sometimes spot something I missed (more often it doesn't but it's at least something). I also automate some boring stuff like creating more variations of some tests, but even then I almost always have to read its output line by line to make sure the tests aren't completely bogus. Thinking about it now it's likely better if I just ask for what scenarios could be missing, because when they write it, they screw it up in subtle ways.

It does save me some time in certain tasks like writing some Ansible, but I have to know/understand Ansible to be confident in any of it.

These "speedups" are mostly short term gains in sacrifice for long term gains. Maybe you don't care about the long term and that's fine. But if you do, you'll regret it sooner or later.

My theory is that AI is so popular because mediocrity is good enough to make money. You see the kind of crap that's built these days (even before LLMs) and it's mostly shit anyways, so whether it's shit built by people or machines, who cares, right?

Unfortunately I do, and I rather we improve the world we live in instead of making it worse for a quick buck.

IDK how or why learning and growing became so unpopular.
by wolrah | 2026-01-09 13:53:22+00:00
It is definitely getting stretchy at this point, but there is the point to be made that a lot of roads are built in a way which not only enables but encourages driving much faster than may be desired in the area where they're located. This, among other things, makes these roads more interesting as getaway routes for bank robbers.

If these roads had been designed differently, to naturally enforce the desired speeds, it would be a safer road in general and as a side effect be a less desirable getaway route.

Again I agree we're really stretching here, but there is a real common problem where badly designed roads don't just enable but encourage illegal and potentially unsafe driving. Wide, straight, flat roads are fast roads, no matter what the posted speed limit is. If you want low traffic speeds you need roads to be designed to be hostile to high speeds.
by ktg0215 | 2026-01-09 13:53:59+00:00
Hey HN! I'm an indie developer from Japan.

I built PromptStash because I was tired of retyping the same prompts across different AI tools. It's a simple Chrome extension that lets you save prompts and insert them with one click into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI interfaces.

Key features:
- Works on any AI chat interface (not just the big three)
- Organize with folders and tags
- Quick search and insert
- All data stored locally (no account needed)

It's a paid extension ($5 one-time) – I'm trying to build sustainable indie software instead of ad-supported free tools.

Would love feedback on the UX and any features you'd find useful. Thanks!
by mattyboomboom | 2026-01-09 13:54:31+00:00
When a company replaces a $100,000 employee with $10,000 of compute and electricity, the tax base evaporates while government obligations remain.

Then what?

Countries face a choice between raising taxes on remaining workers, innovating on how money is raised, or accepting they can’t fund existing services.

Disruption in the order encourages competition between countries for who will will enable innovation, and stimulate growth, and who manages decline

Plus about another 1500 words of chat about this theme
by iljah | 2026-01-09 13:55:52+00:00
According to Finnish version (https://yle.fi/a/74-20203091) ATH was hit several times with largest average over 15 minutes of 15.6 GW starting at 5 pm on thursday. Dividing that by population from Wikipedia gives approximately 2.7 kW / person.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20203419 gives a breakdown of ATH production over same period (14.3 GW): 5.8 wind, 4.2 nuclear, 2.3 heat+electricity, 1.8 hydro, 0.3 other.
by rvz | 2026-01-09 13:56:02+00:00
> however social media as a whole is doing detrimental harm to children and adults alike so I would not shed a tear as long as we also ban meta/tiktok/YouTube shorts.

You would then have to ban the VPNs as usage will just accelerate if that happens.

The result would be no better than what happened to TikTok when that went offline in the US.
by jkoester | 2026-01-09 13:57:52+00:00
I’m a Research Software Architect at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. We are currently entering the second year of a 25-year project (2025–2050) focused on building a iconographical thesaurus for ancient Greek coinage.

The core problem: Legacy data models often flatten scholarly doubt into false certainties to satisfy database constraints. I wrote this post to explain our architectural shift toward reifying the act of interpretation itself using property graphs.

We are using a read-only projection of a relational SSoT and materialized path properties to keep query performance high on standard hardware.

The blueprint for the graph framework (IDEA) is open-sourced here: https://github.com/imagines-nummorum/idea-graph-framework

I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on scalability and the handling of edge cases in this context — especially given the long-term requirements of the project.
by pif | 2026-01-09 13:58:54+00:00
> The Lettre Verte example actually reinforces the point: service got slower, then slower again, not because physics demanded it but because maintaining the previous standard became inconvenient.

Well, it did indeed become inconvenient... for the customers!

Rule no. 0 of economics states that a decreasing demand yields decreasing prices, but rule no. 1 concerns fixed costs: when demand is too low, each customer has to bear a larger share of them.
by LinXitoW | 2026-01-09 13:58:58+00:00
Productivity gains in programming have always been incredibly hard to prove, esp. on an individual level. We've had these discussions a million times long before AI. Every time a manager tries to reward some kind of metric for "good" code, it turns out that it doesn't work that way. Every time Rust is mentioned, every C fan finds a million reasons why the improvement doesn't actually have anything to do with using Rust.

AI/LLM discussions are the exact same. How would a person ever measure their own performance? The moment you implement the same feature twice, you're already reusing learnings from the first run.

So, the only thing left is anecdotal evidence. It makes sense that on both sides people might be a little peeved or incredulous about the others claims. It doesn't help that both sides (though mostly AI fans) have very rabid supporters that will just make up shit (like AGI, or the water usage).

Imho, the biggest part missing from these anecdotes is exactly what you're using, what you're doing, and what baseline you're comparing it to. For example, using Claude Code in a typical, modern, decently well architected Spring app to add a bunch of straight forward CRUD operations for a new entity works absolutely flawlessly, compared to a junior or even medior(medium?) dev.

Copy pasting code into an online chat for a novel problem, in an untyped, rare language, with only basic instructions and no way for the chat to run it, will basically never work.
by Majromax | 2026-01-09 13:59:00+00:00
> If you don't use or understand how LLMs fit in your workflows, you are not the target customer.

I feel like this is a major area of divergence. The "vibes" are bifurcating between "coding agents are great!" and "coding agents are all hype!", with increasing levels of in-group communication.

How should I, an agent-curious user, begin to unravel this mess if $200 is significantly more than pocket change? The pro-agent camp remarks that these frontier models are qualitatively better and using older/cheaper approaches would give a misleading impression, so "buy the discount agent" doesn't even seem like a reasonable starting point.
by etempleton | 2026-01-09 13:59:10+00:00
By measure of density, but by performance to watt 18a is likely superior to n3. So I don’t think it is fair to say they are cleanly 2 generations ahead, more like 1 or 1.5 ahead now. Yes, n2 / n3 are overall more mature and well rounded processes at this point in time. But this is a big step for Intel and if they can prove 18a they could start bleeding. Bit of market share from TSMC.
by radarsat1 | 2026-01-09 13:59:16+00:00
Something I wonder is, what happened to asm.js? It got killed by WASM. In a way this is good, WASM is a "better" solution, being a formal bytecode machine description, but on the other hand, asm.js would not have the same limitations e.g. with respect to DOM interaction, or debates on how to integrate garbage collection, since you stay squarely in the JS VM you get these things for free.

Basically in some ways it was a superior idea: benefit from the optimizations we are already doing for JS, but define a subset that is a good compilation target and for which we know the JS VM already performs pretty optimally. So apart from defining the subset there is no extra work to do. On the other hand I'm sure there are JS limitations that you inherit. And probably your "binaries" are a bit larger than WASM. (But, I would guess, highly compressible.)

I guess the good news is that you can still use this approach. Just that no one does, because WASM stole the thunder. Again, not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but interesting to think about... for instance, whether we could have gotten to the current state much faster by just fully adopting asm.js instead of diverting resources into a new runtime.
by alphazard | 2026-01-09 13:59:30+00:00
Likely unconstitutional as it violates the 1st amendment, which has done a very good job of protecting the right to author and distribute software over the years.
Clearly an unintended positive consequence, since no one who worked or voted on the Bill of Rights had a computer.

If the courts upheld the part in question, it would create a clear path to go after software authors for any crime committed by a user.
Cryptocurrencies would become impossible to develop in the US.
Holding authors responsible for the actions of their users basically means everyone has to stop distributing software under their real names.
There would be a serious chilling effect, as most open source projects shutdown or went underground.
by troad | 2026-01-09 13:59:36+00:00
I'm surprised this needs saying, but substituting JS with, uh... JS... rather fails to achieve the goal of replacing JS?

Adding JS-level browser interop to Wasm that obviated the need for JS would, obviously, achieve that goal.

Honestly, I'm kind of at a loss trying to interpret your reply in any logically coherent manner.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-09 13:59:42+00:00
My view is that there is commodity software and niche/specialized software. You find commercial solutions for both. But OSS is great for commodity software.

Everything becomes a commodity eventually. There's a lot of niche software that then goes mainstream, gets imitated by others, and becomes important to a wide range of sectors. A lot of that software usually ends up with very decent OSS alternatives. If it's worth having in OSS software form, usually somebody ends up working on it.

A lot of OSS projects are already leaning heavily on contributions from individuals and companies inside the EU. That's a good thing for the EU and something to stimulate and build on.

What the EU should do is keep an eye out for commodity software where it relies on non eu commercial software. Identify key areas where that is risky, e.g. communication software, IOT, or finance. And then stimulate members to switch to OSS alternatives if they exist and invest in the creation/support of such alternatives if they are important. OSS software doesn't just create itself, it needs backing from companies which could use the support in the form of grants.

That could include support for non EU OSS projects. There's nothing wrong with OSS from abroad. As long as this software is properly governed and vital to the EU, the EU should ensure those projects are healthy and future proofed. It should ensure local software companies get the support they need to do the right things here. This should ensure projects that are important don't run out of funding. And the EU can stimulate OSS development into strategic new areas with incentives. And make sure that EU companies that back this are successful internationally. This turns the tables on other countries maybe depending more on EU sourced software. The EU doesn't have to follow; it can lead.
by patentatt | 2026-01-09 13:59:48+00:00
I’d argue that most if not all of the math that I learned in school could be distilled down to analyzing problems in the correct coordinate system or domain! The actual manipulation isn’t that esoteric once you get in the right paradigm. And those professors never explained things at that kind of higher theoretical level, all I remember was the nitty gritty of implementation. What a shame. I’m sure there’s higher levels of mathematics that go beyond my simplistic understanding, but I’d argue it’s enough to get one through the full sequence of undergraduate level (electrical) engineering, physics, and calculus.
by micheloosterhof | 2026-01-09 14:00:17+00:00
All they did was republish their old developer API, here you can find an old copy, version 1.1.0: https://www.power-home.com/uploads/smarty/2017-02-13_123201_...

Now there used to be a way to play music (notifications, if I remember correctly) directly to the speaker, but that required an App_Key. Bose stopped handing out App_key's quite a while ago when they shutdown down their developer forums, see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/bose/comments/102ptjg/is_there_any_...
by MichaelRo | 2026-01-09 14:00:25+00:00
>> “The only, absolute and best friend a man has, in this selfish world, the only one that will not betray or deny him, is his dog.”

Well, this is far from absolute, isn't it? :) There's a fair number of vicious attacks of a dog on his owner. Oftentimes pitbulls (are they even dogs or rather "creatures"?!), but other breeds do it too. So ... nothing is absolute :P
by neon_me | 2026-01-09 14:01:01+00:00
I empathize deeply as I was a few times in a similarly complicated situation. I know, posts like this arent about seeking "feedback" but simply releasing pressure, and thats 100% valid.

That said, one thing I learned from my own experience was to stop pointing fingers (build up badblood and seeking conflicts) and instead focus on the hard lessons about my own mistakes(learning!). I wish you the best in your next chapter. The path to becoming a good manager/colleague is never ending and demanding and its evident you want to be one ... Goodluck!
Show HN: Surprise Guardian – privacy for couples on shared laptops
by NabilChiheb | 2026-01-09 14:01:54+00:00
I built a small Chrome extension after realizing how often surprises get ruined by autocomplete and browsing history on shared devices.

Surprise Guardian auto-cleans specific browsing traces so things like gift research, trip planning, or random curiosity don’t suddenly show up when your partner borrows your laptop.

No tracking. No accounts. Everything runs locally. It’s intentionally simple.

This started as a personal problem. Curious if others run into the same thing, or if this feels too niche. Feedback welcome.
by sofixa | 2026-01-09 14:03:26+00:00
> I think Bavaria developed their own Linux distro instead of using an established one

Yes, with all their configs, packages and certifications that were needed. Not really a problem.

> It failed horrendously

Because Microsoft came in, promised to relocate their HQ to Munich, and surprise, it was decided to come back to Windows. This was after reports found that although it took longer than expected, adoption was widespread (only a small minority of desktops remained on Windows for the few Windows specific apps they had), things were working well, user happyness was good, stability was good, and tons of taxpayer money had been saved.
by krisoft | 2026-01-09 14:03:39+00:00
> Why is this a desirable goal?

It doesn't have to be a desirable goal to everyone.

> The only driver that I can really comprehend is the desire for freedom and autonomy in less populated spaces.

You got one of the big ones. But not the only one. Other is survival. Here on Earth we are all one bad infection outbreak away from ending human society as we know it. We have all of our eggs in one basket. Even if we would have a stable foothold on the moon and mars we would still be vulnerable to gamma-ray bursts and crazy despots with nuclear armed missiles.

> We'll recreate the same problems we have here everywhere we go.

We do. There are still benefits to the people who are "taming the frontier". And that is enough for it to happen. We also see that even though human condition follows us different places have a different feel to them. Some places we got some things better while others worse.

> Compared to anywhere else we know about, Earth is an extremely unique utopia.

To a certain extent. We can adapt the environments to us. And we can adapt ourselves to new environments.

When I move to the arctic I leave my parasol at home and buy a coat. When I move to a gas giant I need to rethink more of my biology. Imagine if some of us can become a buoyant sail with manipulating appendages who feels as much home in the red dot of jupiter as a homid feels home on a dewy meadow. If we could I would for sure give it a go for a few hundred years, then come back and write a book about how it was.

The fact that this is not easy is part of the lure of it.
by willmarch | 2026-01-09 14:03:42+00:00
There actually are explicit cases: Leviticus 20:14 and Leviticus 21:9 prescribe burning as a punishment in certain scenarios (ancient Israelite legal code).

Leviticus 20:14 (KJV)

“And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.”

Leviticus 21:9 (KJV)

“And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.”