MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jonahx | 2026-01-04 22:23:52+00:00
I am not not saying this to be mean, because these feel like good faith questions. But they also sound like questions rooted in a purely logical view of the world, divorced of experience.

That is, I don't believe it is possible that you've had real world experience with alcoholics, because if you had, it would be obvious why it doesn't work the way you are asking about. Some addictions are just too powerful. It is not a matter of having failed to treat the root cause. It's a matter of acknowledging that, for some people, the only solution to alcohol is not to consume any. It doesn't mean they don't also try to treat and understand deeper emotional reasons for their drinking.
Show HN: Phone number validation API focused on fake signups
by dm_infr | 2026-01-04 22:24:10+00:00
Hi HN,

I built a phone number validation API after dealing with fake signups, burner numbers, and VoIP abuse in my own projects.

What it does:
– Strict parsing & normalization to E.164
– Country detection by prefix
– Number type detection (mobile / fixed / VoIP / toll-free)
– Assigned vs possible prefix checks (NANP and some EU ranges)
– Simple heuristics for obvious fake patterns
– A single risk score (0–100) instead of binary valid/invalid

What it intentionally does NOT do:
– No SMS sending
– No reachability or carrier guarantees
– No ML black box

The goal is to answer a practical question:
“Is this number likely to belong to a real person?”

Happy to hear feedback.
by satvikpendem | 2026-01-04 22:24:37+00:00
I absolutely use it for this because lots of videos drone on and pad their length for the ad revenue, so I ask the AI to summarize and then I can click through exactly what I want to see. I found myself actually watching more videos now, not less, because I know I don't have to listen to them for 10 minutes and waste my time when they don't get to the point.
by cortesoft | 2026-01-04 22:24:40+00:00
Is this really true? There are millions of parents who are unreachable while working. A surgeon isn’t going to be able to leave in the middle of surgery to pick up their kid from child care.

My kid got sick at daycare one time when I was over an hour away. They just had to stay there while I worked my way back.

It happens, and it is handled normally.
by lazarus01 | 2026-01-04 22:24:58+00:00
Yes, the current technology cannot replace an engineer.

The easiest way to understand why is by understanding natural language. A natural language like english is very messy and and doesn't follow formal rules. It's also not specific enough to provide instructions to a computer, that's why code was created.

The AI is incredibly dumb when it comes to complex tasks with long range contexts. It needs an engineer that understands how to write and execute code to give it precise instructions or it is useless.

Natural Language Processing is so complex, it started around the end of world war two and we are just now seeing innovation in AI where we can mimmick humans, where the AI can do certain things faster than humans. But thinking is not one of them.
by criddell | 2026-01-04 22:25:20+00:00
It’s foolish to ignore the social component of addiction.

Some of the medicines and treatments showing the most promise are still too expensive for many. AA programs are accessible and can be helpful. You think they treat alcoholism (or alcohol abuse disorder) as a sin? In the meetings there isn’t a whole lot of judging going on. It’s mostly mutual support and compassion.
by phil21 | 2026-01-04 22:25:21+00:00
You can be as positive as you want to be, and should absolutely take action and do things to better socialize.

But to pretend it’s remotely the same as it was 40 years ago is utterly ridiculous. Now when you do such things like a running club you are joining a group of very self-selecting people who for the most part have a certain personality type.

You simply do not get the diversity in group experiences as there used to be. It was either go through social discomfort or sit alone bored with zero social interaction. Now the friction to get that social dopamine hit is extremely low bar, and going beyond it the bar has been raised considerably.

Not to mention doing stuff like running club or rock climbing just feeds into the hyper-scheduled world the west has become. Spontaneous social interaction is important too, and those third places are increasingly scarce and involve far more friction. Which again self-selects for certain personality types and lifestyles.

For some people these changes are positive - much easier to find niche activities to do with others. For other people they are extremely negative.
by robocat | 2026-01-04 22:25:39+00:00
A bit worrying that she measured change by using an "online personality test to assess where I currently scored on the Big Five".

I do believe that we can change our internal responses by slowly teaching ourselves to respond differently.

However I also believe that thinking about thinking is a dangerous activity. The risks are training yourself to be neurotic, and a habit of overthinking.

We can use our rational minds to change our irrational responses.

However how many people are skilled at teaching themselves? We could look at how good they are at teaching others (especially emotional kids).
by jphorism | 2026-01-04 22:26:12+00:00
Cool to see that it pays off to have split things up by season!

having worked on the AI Playlist feature at Spotify (which is agentic) -- one thing you can try to prompt is "give me songs that sound <vibe> from my <liked songs | playlist called "X">.

An extension of this is "give me a sequence of N tracks from each of <list of playlist names for each past year> that all evoke <vibe / memory / activity>". Could be a fun prompt to play with
by labrador | 2026-01-04 22:27:06+00:00
It's true that the 12 steps emerged from Christian thought. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were influenced by the Oxford Group. But similar frameworks exist in other traditions: Buddhism's Eightfold Path, for instance, offers a comparable structure for addressing suffering through right understanding, intention, and action.

It's not accurate to say AA treats alcoholism as a sin. The Big Book describes it as "cunning, baffling, and powerful." Something beyond ordinary willpower, which is precisely why Step 1 acknowledges powerlessness. The theological framing isn't about moral failing but about the need for what Carl Jung described a "vital spiritual experience." A psychic reorganization that ordinary self-will couldn't produce.

https://aaforagnostics.com/blog/carl-jung-letter-to-bill-wil...
Show HN: Delta – LLM tool for targeted code edits
by truefire | 2026-01-04 22:27:12+00:00
I built this tool because I found existing "agentic" tools too opaque. Most of the time I know what I want to change and I just want the AI to do it.

The core thesis is that agentic discovery is a waste of a model's "intelligence budget." By letting the engineer pick what and where, the AI can focus on just writing the code correctly. This mostly involves:
- Robust parsing to ensure the LLM's intended changes actually get applied
- UX/workflow convenience so you're wasting minimal time interfacing with the tool
- automatic validation, retries, backup, etc. to avoid wasting time bookkeeping

Happy to answer any questions. I tried to add some onboarding before I pushed but it's very much built for my own workflow.
by rasmus-kirk | 2026-01-04 22:27:40+00:00
I feel like this is where LLM's/agents could actually help a lot. I don't like all the hype, and think that long-term projects would be better off without heavily written LLM code in any form, but stitching together stuff for a client seems like the perfect use-case, as long as they understand it's not the final product.
by lovich | 2026-01-04 22:27:45+00:00
Almost every job in the US is primarily about pleasing leadership at the end of the day.

If companies didn’t want that sort of incentive structure to play out then they would insulate employees from the whims of their bosses with things like contracts or golden parachutes that come out of their leaderships budget.

They pretty much don’t though, so you need to please your leadership first to get through the threat of at will employment, before considering anything else.

If you’re lucky what pleases your leadership is productive and if your super lucky what pleases them even pleases you.

Gotta suck it up and eat shit or quit if it doesn’t though
by fencepost | 2026-01-04 22:28:26+00:00
If this is something you want to do you might consider a bike. A 6 mile round trip on for for coffee seems a bit much, but 3 miles each way on a bike shouldn't be bad unless you're in a city (in which case there should be things closer). You could also do this same thing with a thermos of coffee/tea and a local park.
by minimaxir | 2026-01-04 22:28:27+00:00
That's not a smoking gun. I've definitely seen pre-2023 open source code mentioning steps in their comments. Even though that file also has a lot of tautological comments which are more indicative of LLM coding, it's not a smoking gun either: the frequency of comments is an editorial decision which has pros and cons.

It's the equivalent of calling something an AI generated images just because the fingers are weird, and requires a judgment more concrete than "I have eyes."

> you ever seen a human write dependencies like this for a small toy tui?

Yes? That's just TOML syntax. I'm not sure which dependency in that list is excessive, especially for something that has to handle HTTP requests. If you mean adding a comment header for each section, then that's a better argument, but see argument above.
by latchkey | 2026-01-04 22:28:46+00:00
Neocloud has come to refer to a new class of GPU-focused cloud providers. Sure, most of our customers use us for AI purposes, but it is really open to anything GPU related.

We buy, deploy and manage our own hardware. On top of that, we've built our own automation for provisioning. For example, K8S assumes that an OS is installed, we're operating at a layer below that which enables to machine to boot and be configured on-demand. This also includes DCIM and networking automation.

We colocate in a datacenter (Switch).
by elliotbnvl | 2026-01-04 22:29:06+00:00
I use it very simply. I pay for the monthly subscription that gives you 2k credits a month. I record a few song ideas every day, usually 2-3min recordings, using my phone and Apple Voice Memos. I export them as mp3 files and upload those to the Suno app with a very short prompt (my album is made of songs generated via the very simple but slightly weird “house string quartet” prompt that I discovered by accident).

I generate a bunch, pick the ones that sound good, extend them if necessary, and save. Eventually once I have 30ish I can just pick the top winners and assemble an album. It’s drop dead simple.

The only reason I published them is because my family started to get worried that the songs would get “lost,” and at the request of friends also. Not doing it for profit or anything.

The recording is the real prompt: the longer of a recording you create, the more Suno adheres to the structure and tone/rhythm/voicings you choose.

I use the v5 model. Way better than the v4/4.5 models.
by mexicocitinluez | 2026-01-04 22:29:15+00:00
/ My reading of On the Road is Jack Kerouac’s ultimate realization that their restless wandering is really a narcissistic chase—sex, jazz, drugs—to fill an inner void.

I don’t think the novel supports “narcissism” as a central answer that explains everything. The book is much more about restless hunger for experience and living in the moment. And jazz in particular isn’t framed as a symptom of emptiness; it functions as an aesthetic ideal that they’re trying to model their lives on.

Also, there is no ultimate realization in the book. There's ambivalence and fascination with Dean and the road, as well as increasing awareness of the costs and disappointments that life can bring, but it's not an ultimate indictment on it.

> Or look to the spiritual children of the Beatniks, the Western backpackers…

I'm not really interested in how it was interpreted later by various groups of people.

> privileged, naive and ultimately exploitative and conformist…

Conformity is neither something they desire not something they end up doing. In fact, their defining trait is the refusal of conventional stability.
by kelnos | 2026-01-04 22:29:38+00:00
I'm not sure there's a material difference, though.

> You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills.

What's the difference, though? Having well-developed social skills is an aspect of extraversion.

> You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning.

Isn't this the same thing as being less neurotic? If the overall effect is lower stress when confronted with the same situations and stimuli, then hasn't your personality changed?

> You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate.

Being considerate is just an aspect of agreeableness. If you become more considerate, then you do become more agreeable.

> You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc...

I would argue that the act of making those schedules and checklists in order to ensure you get your tasks done is, in and of itself, an act of being conscientious, so teaching yourself to do those things does indeed make you a more conscientious person.

> You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints.

What is the goal of educating yourself on opposing viewpoints if not to understand different people better? You may still disagree with those viewpoints just as strongly, but the simple fact of a newfound willingness to educate yourself is an increase in openness.

To me, you are focusing on the mechanism here, and not on the outcome. After reading this article I found and took a big-five test[0] and found that some questions did try to assess how you feel about aspects of yourself, but many (most?) are about outcomes in your life. That is, "do you feel like it's easy to complete tasks?" is a different question from "do you tend to complete tasks?" The first one is about how it feels: even if you do tend to complete your tasks, you may feel like it's only because you've created your task-completion framework, but it takes concerted, difficult effort to stick with the framework. The second is about the outcome: you do complete your tasks, and the mechanism behind it isn't relevant. I think both things (the feelings and the outcome) are important to assessing the personality traits, to be sure, but changing the outcome (even if the feelings have not changed at all) is a material change. And I'd suspect that, if you do succeed in changing the outcome, the feelings will change over time, at least to some extent.

[0] https://bigfive-test.com/ (doesn't require some bullshit registration to see your results)
by geerlingguy | 2026-01-04 22:29:41+00:00
Definitely not disagreeable, more just "there are two right answers" ;)

For me, an unstated reason for SSG is being able to scale to millions of requests per hour without scaling up my server to match.

Serving static HTML is insanely easy, even on a cheap $5-10/month VPS. Serving anything dynamic at all is an order of magnitude harder.

Though... I've been using Cloudflare since 2022, after I started getting regular targeted DDoSes (was fun initially, seeing someone target different parts of Drupal, until I just locked down everything except for the final comment pages). The site will randomly get 1-2 million requests in a few minutes, and now Cloudflare eats those quickly, instead of my VPS getting locked up.

Ideally, I'll be able to host without Cloudflare in front at some point, but every month, because of one or two attacks, the site's using 25-35 TB of bandwidth (at least according to CF).
by lukeyoo | 2026-01-04 22:29:45+00:00
Location: Remote / Santa Barbara (CA)
Remote: YES
Willing to relocate: Possible
Technologies: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, SQL, Node/Express, REST/GraphQL APIs, C/C++, Rust, MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQLite, AWS/Azure/GCP, Cloudflare, Docker, CI/CD, Git, Bash/Shell, Linux/FreeBSD, HTML/CSS, MaterialUI/Tailwind, Python, Django, and more.
Résumé/CV:
Email: w.lukeyoo@gmail.com

I develop, manage the community, and maintain the live, real-time distributed system, including its backend architecture and all related endpoints.
by croemer | 2026-01-04 22:30:41+00:00
Disagree, it can be learning as long as you build out your mental model while reading. Having educational reading material for the exact thing you're working on is amazing at least for those with interest-driven brains.

Science YouTube is no comparison at all: while one can choose what to watcha, it's a limited menu that's produced for a mass audience.

I agree though that reading LLM-produced blog posts (which many of the recent top submissions here seem to be) is boring.
by mmooss | 2026-01-04 22:31:09+00:00
The judge is supposed to be independent of influence, and fair to both sides. A decision for one side is rarely that 'one party gets everything they want'; it just leans in their direction, especially on the fundamental issues. The ruling also may yield an outcome more aligned with one party, but for different reasons.

> the winning attorney may have a good idea of where the judge stands, what the ruling would be and is also incentivized to stay on their good side.

You haven't seen many litigators at work. Their job is to "zealously" represent their client, getting as much as possible. The speculation about the rest is just hope, not due process.
by geerlingguy | 2026-01-04 22:31:43+00:00
> That difference is irrelevant day to day, but it matters during DDoS attacks, which I have experienced a few times.

This, definitely.

I think until you experience your first few DDoSes, you don't think about the kind of gains you get from going completely static (or heavily caching, sometimes at the expense of site functionality).
by sigmoid10 | 2026-01-04 22:31:55+00:00
>It doesn’t completely negate your point

I don't see anything in your comment that would even argue with my point, much less negate it. That history lesson on Europe itself is pretty pointless, because if you go back a bit further you'd find much of Ukraine having been ruled by the Habsburgs - i.e. Austria. It doesn't get more European than that. And that short period of time where the Russians/Soviets ruled basically serves as Putin's propaganda reason for this war. That certainly doesn't belong here either.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-04 22:32:05+00:00
Unfortunately, it's futile to try to convince the median HN poster that labor organization could help them. They've drunk the entire pitcher of corporate anti-union koolaid.

People could be directly in the middle of losing their own job or taking on the responsibilities of 5 other laid-off coworkers, and they would still ask "what could a labor union possibly do for me??"
by Talanes | 2026-01-04 22:32:50+00:00
>Totally disregarding health warnings, and being insubordinately against precautions rather than becoming more neurotic.

It's not such a clean map between neuroticism and reaction there. My father was very against the precautions in a clearly neurotic manner. To the point where he was just sitting at home ranting about how he couldn't go anywhere or do anything without the vaccine, months after anywhere except a few voluntarily strict venues had stopped checking.
by avadodin | 2026-01-04 22:32:52+00:00
I don't see anything wrong with my tone. I could have been snarky about it.

I provided the C solutions as well but an interpreter written in C could at least allocate objects and threads within the interpreter context and not leak memory allowing you to restart it along any services within which is apparently better than whatever framework people sharing this sentiment are using.

I'm genuinely curious. What kind of mission-critical embedded real-time design dynamically(!) allocates objects and threads and then loses track of them?

PS: On topic, I really like the decisions made in C3
by nicbou | 2026-01-04 22:33:13+00:00
Usually you go to a cafe in the morning, and to a pub in the evening. I could wax poetic about the joy of having a beer in the late afternoon, before the place fills up.

I was born and raised in Canada. I manage to keep up my routine just fine when I visit. Sure, the cafes are in the middle of a parking lot by a box store, but in a pinch they'll do.

This is hardly a "top tier city" thing. I went on many road trips and pretty much always managed to start my day with a slow coffee, even in the smallest towns.
by kibbi | 2026-01-04 22:33:16+00:00
Interesting approach! I've thought about a similar method after reading about the PLATO platform.

When playing astro‑maze, the delay is noticeable, and in a 2D action game such delays are especially apparent. Games that don’t rely on tight real‑time input might perform better. (I'm connecting from Europe, though.)

If you add support for drawing from images (such as spritesheets or tilesheets) in the future, and the client stores those images and sounds locally, the entire screen could be drawn from these assets, so no pixel data would need to be transferred, only commands like "draw tile 56 at position (x, y)."

(By the way, opening abstra.io in a German-language browser leads to https://www.abstra.io/deundefined which shows a 404 error.)
by iroddis | 2026-01-04 22:33:19+00:00
This was a great read, and perfectly conveyed the combination of passion and anger of every WH player I’ve ever met has had.

Given the time, it’s hard not to view this same argument through the lens of AI. People who love crafting their creative works will still do it, even when AI can do it. They will still inspire others because they demonstrate what humans can do, and what we can aspire to.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-04 22:33:35+00:00
“Due to the Legislative Assembly being a biennial legislature, with the House and Senate sitting for only 80 days in odd-numbered years, a Legislative Council oversees legislative affairs in the interim periods, doing longer-term studies of issues, and drafting legislation for consideration of both houses during the next session” [1].

Did this come out of the LegCo?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota_Legislative_Assem...
by rasmus-kirk | 2026-01-04 22:33:58+00:00
Microsoft invested heavily in cloud, when LLM's came it was an obvious way to increase profits if they made everyone use their cloud for "AI". I don't think they realize just how much of the current LLM hype is just that, hype. I think they will be severely burned.

Yes, LLM's are useful and valuable, but no, they won't be replacing major sections of the workforce any time soon. I don't need an LLM in every facet of my operating system, just like I didn't need Cortana integrated everywhere in Windows 8. And LLM's are obviously not worth the billions upon billions that are being invested currently.
by chiefalchemist | 2026-01-04 22:34:09+00:00
I recently exited an LTR with someone who was in The Program and 6 - 9 yrs sober. The daily meetings routine was certainly help but, to your point, it never addressed the root problem. Tho to be fair, I’m not sure AA was designed for that as the spectrum of underlying problems is many.

In short, my key takeaway (as an outsider) is that with AA it’s helpful to get people sober and there’s value and comfort in that. Unfortunately that comfort has diminishing return. People (e.g., my ex) put in the time (in a comfortable sorta way), but then don’t put in the work (read: progress to address the root problem).

Finally, as an unrelated / random side note, my theory is that if you evaluated late in life alcoholics (read: 30 yo and up) most would test positive for NPD. In the hands of someone suffering from NPD, alcoholism is one hell of a weapon (e.g., manipulation, avoid accountability, etc). Also, within the context of The Program you will never be encouraged to seek help for your NPD.