MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by input_sh | 2026-01-24 20:08:06+00:00
Correct! This is just Meta doing malicious compliance by being "compatible" with companies with no actual product, three-months old waitlist, no actual users within the EU, and nobody to push back on WhatsApp's definition of interoperability. Then when some real product tries to actually become interoperable down-the-line, Meta's gonna be like "well these two did it just fine according to this backwards implementation, why can't you?"

They're both b2b products that are gonna try to find their first users by pitching the idea that you can use their products to spam WhatsApp users.

Haiket doesn't even try to hide its connection to Meta. All you have to do is to go to their website, click on press, and see in the only press release they've ever posted that its CEO holds patents in use by Meta. Here, let me save you a click: https://haiket.com/press/release-nov11.html

> Alex holds over 10 patents in voice and communication technologies, assigned to and used by Google and Facebook.
by manuelabeledo | 2026-01-24 20:08:13+00:00
Card networks and banks are definitely oligopolies. 90% of the card market is in the hands of two companies, MasterCard and Visa, and three banks effectively own the consumer banking market, Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays.

Again, it’s odd to me that this organization is going after Apple when they themselves are saying that these supposed hidden fees are being passed from banks to consumers. Shouldn’t they go after these banks, then? Why aren’t they suing Visa and MasterCard, when their business model is supposedly the same?
by B1FIDO | 2026-01-24 20:08:13+00:00
Abortion was legal, but wasn't it sort of extraordinarily dangerous? I mean, particularly a surgical abortion would have been, at that time.

For millennia there had been instructions and recipes for making abortifacient concoctions, to good or bad effect. Many of them are highly toxic to the mother herself. So many abortion-minded women faced the proposition of harming themselves to get at their unborn children.

And that is the premise of "legalizing" it: that it can be made "safe" and so they wouldn't need to use a coat-hanger in a back-alley "anymore" (although practically nobody did such things.)
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2026-01-24 20:08:18+00:00
>It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).

It's delayed because the employee fears further retribution still. You need some distance between yourself and the bloodthirsty dog before you can even hope to reduce your productivity, or you'll be mauled quite enthusiastically. By delaying it for days or weeks, by being out of sight when it happens, there is plausible deniability that can let them survive the attacks.

Managers do this to themselves, they punish people who would give them the quick feedback loop.
by TZubiri | 2026-01-24 20:08:20+00:00
I have 0 confidence that I could understand the Tao even if I read the best most classical translations available.

Take the bible, which is translated from languages that are closer to mine, and which refers to a culture which is closer to mine, with family and scholars whose interpretation I can understand directly. Still I don't have much confidence that I understand the bulk of it, it takes years of reading and lived experiences to understand both the modern and past contexts in which it was written.

By the same token, I'm certain actual chinese people read the Tao and are like "Lmao what does this mean", and for the most part these books are meant to be mysterious, iirc there's actual sections of the Tao that translate to "You can't understand the Tao".

I don't mean to be overly religious here, it's just that the Tao happens to be religious, but consider Beowulf, which is written in an old form of the English language, surely you would be able to understand it? Not a chance, try it. But ok, surely the translators are able to understand it and provide you a translation without losing much meaning. No, not only can they not provide a translation that you can understand without losing context and signal, but they can't understand a lot of what they are reading anyways. Consider that for just the first word of the whole epic, they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means, nobody can even settle on what the first word means! Imagine the rest of the text.

So to think that one has a chance to understand the Tao, or even that it is worth it at all to understand something from a culture so different. Not for me.

Unless you are Asian, by all means go for it, but if you are not, I would invite you to question whether you first have any chance at understanding at all, or whether you will interpret "being like a Straw Dog" from whatever translation you chose through your own lens, like a Rorschach.
by drcongo | 2026-01-24 20:08:38+00:00
I couldn't work out what the hell the app is from the website, as the home page tells you it's a "New Home for Work Chat" and mentions "Still using personal chat apps for work conversations?" - so I'm guessing it's supposed to have some business focus, but the app name makes it sound like something you'd install for your kids. I can't imagine ever saying to someone "we need to discuss contract details, let's talk on BirdyChat".
by zenmac | 2026-01-24 20:08:41+00:00
While I agree with you, and there should more diverse members than just the people from Element.

What I do like about them is the zero server trust stand they are taking on their clients which makes migration a pain in the butt, but that is what one would expect from a true e2ee chat app.

And now they have two stable servers in rust. The French and German government including military are using the protocol to make their own apps. Maybe it should be something the EU should put some more resource into it?
by jll29 | 2026-01-24 20:09:05+00:00
> What often baffles me with engineers and especially engineering managers is that they don't derive the estimates from metrics of prior projects, especially for long running teams (as opposed to project teams).

The PMI project management methodology even pre-scribes this (after the project is over, to reflect, and then to gather collected learnings and objective stats so as to help better estimation of future projects), but the problem is many engineers see project management a administrative burden rather than as a tool, and they have a tinkerer's mind-set rather than a scientist's mind-set.

Good project management practice is also not to use
point estimates but intervals: something is going to take "betweek [i;j] person days". PERT-estimates are even three-point estimates of work (best case, expected case, worst case), so you model the uncertainty explicitly rather than by some alchemist formula ("double and add 20%").

Incidentally, I found out empirically that the best technical people tend to be the worst at estimating their own time needed to complete a task. That's because the best are often also a bit over-confident, perhaps. Letting each team member estimate a task and adding a 20% correction for unforseen issues has worked well to make my projects be delivered on time.

Tip: Push back if management tells you how long you have; either explain to them what you can give to them in the time they dictate or reject their task order and say you will come back when you have calculated how long the project takes, which can only be rationally determined once the scope is clear(er).

Check out/google: PMI PMP methodology and also PMBOK (project management body of knowledge) > "Organizational Process Assets" (OPAs) > "Lessons Learned Repository"
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-24 20:09:16+00:00
Sure, whatever it takes. You somehow think it’s incredulous when Pornhub was deplatformed from credit card rails easily, and is still age gated in 23 states through statute. This is far worse, and laws can be made to do whatever the target outcome is.

I get it, your mental model differs, and that’s fine. The tools exist and can be used. They could start by blacklisting the BIN of any federal government payment card, and tighten further iteratively based on continuous monitoring and ground truth acquisition. If aggressors have to start carrying large quantities of cash around to operate, sounds like that’s going to be an operational risk.

Federal supremacy is based on respect of their authority and providing them material support in state through economic exchange. Revoke both and they are powerless on the ground, and are at the mercy of the locals.

https://smartpay.gsa.gov/smarttax/recognizing-your-account/
by prewett | 2026-01-24 20:09:32+00:00
I didn't encounter the Dao de Jing until later in life, but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me. I first saw it as "the way that can be described is not the Way", but also "the way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way". That is, the eternal (spiritual) Way cannot be concretized, just as a name is not the real thing. Or, given that this is HN, "the software development methodology that can be executed like a program is not software development methodology". ("The Agile that can be PM'd is not Agile.")

However, I think it might require some life maturity to recognize that. Certainly a recovery from Englightenment rationalism. My person experience is that an understanding that "the name that can be named/identified is not the eternal Name" and "the way that can be walked is not the eternal Way" took me until around my 40s to appreciate.

Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically). The book "Taoism: the Parting of the Ways" [1], by (former) Harvard Professor Holmes Welch, interprets the text as being a guide to a mystical way of living, similar to St. John of the Cross (minus the Christian part), which is fascinating. Then he describes how the two main factions took the text literally, and how that evolved.

[1] I have a summary at http://geoffprewett.com/BookReviews/TaoismThePartingOfTheWay...
by hinkley | 2026-01-24 20:09:57+00:00
Ethernet is usually two pair, but cat5 has four. When I moved into a new apartment building I found all the phones were cat5 wiring so I was able to redo three of the outlets to do phone and an ethernet jack, then put a switch in the coat closet, which is where the wiring guys put the junction box.

I can’t recall if I put them back when I moved out. I must have, but I’ve no recollection of doing so. I think I left the junction box in the closet though.
by altern8 | 2026-01-24 20:10:21+00:00
I don't think Whatsapp sounds dumb. It's "what's up", and it came out when mobile apps were getting popular with everyone. I immediately got it when I heard it the first time, and it sounded good to me.

"BirdyChat" just sounds childish.

Maybe I'm in the minority, who knows, but project names are important. I've seen so many posts of people dismissing projects just because of the name...
by user5994461 | 2026-01-24 20:11:35+00:00
> the cables don't have a little chip or anything saying "I'm not suitable for high speed" the card will figure out whether this looks plausible and just do it.

You're actually wrong on all of that ^^

The cables actually have a rating to say what they are suitable to. See the markings on the cable: category Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6 + frequency range 100/250 Mhz + insulation UTP/FTP/STP/mix.

Ethernet cards don't negotiate, they typically only check whether the pairs can transmit any signal. You could end up in a situation where they go for gigabit and it doesn't work well.

Fortunately, the main issue for signal transmission is loss over distance. Ethernet is designed to work over 100m every time in a noisy industrial environment. You've got a pretty good chance for it to work on a short run, even with poor cables.

The alternatives being discussed ADSL/VDSL/G.hn actually detect the capability of the medium and adjust the transmission rates and frequency to give the maximum possible speed. IMO they are much more advanced technologically and much more interesting. (Ethernet is doing exactly 250 Mbps on one pair, G.hn can do up to 1700 Mbps on the same pair, automatically adjusted, the article is getting 1300 Mbps which is insane!)
by bmitc | 2026-01-24 20:13:15+00:00
It's an intentionally naive position to say that places don't leech off of others. Even large places like Fidelity and Schwab that respect customers aren't just keeping people's money in vaults. They literally take your checking, savings, retirement accounts, etc. and make money off of them while they "sit".

Firms specialize in intercepting trades and then placing trades faster than 99.9% of others.

These institutions hide behind "we provide liquidity" like it's a selfless act of kindness, whereas that's just a mere side effect, and just one of many.

The entire modern financial system is layers and layers of unneeded complexity that almost solely rose out of people trying to leech money from the system. These financial institutions have built the entire system around them so that now they can say "look at how essential we are!".
by morphle | 2026-01-24 20:14:00+00:00
Warning! Badly broken user interface, I wouldn't trust these programmers to get the end-to-end encryption right.

On the second screen of the app there is already an infuriating bug: they ask to give your work email because than you go hire in priority on their invite-only waiting list. So you type in your email again and again and again, alternating between all your emails, but you keep returning to the form asking for your work email. You check those emails to see if they send you something to activate your account but nothing. Exasperated you try the only other button, sign up with private email instead. Guess that works, because you leave the infinite loop. But than zilch, nada, nothing.

Don't these script-kiddies use their own app?
by hypeatei | 2026-01-24 20:14:04+00:00
> By definition we know that dems and their publications are only going to show one angle

Umm, are you just being purposefully blind? Every angle is being pushed across social media and everyone has seen them. They're all bad. There isn't some large conspiracy to make these agents look bad, what they did is bad and disgusting. I've edited my comment with another angle to make you feel better.

> But somehow resisting arrest while having a gun on you isn't threatening?

Reaching for a gun is threatening, brandishing a gun is threatening, resisting while possessing a gun is not, no. Regardless, the video shows he was disarmed so why did they mag dump him?

> Or did the ICE agents disarm him without having seen the gun first?

What? That sentence doesn't make sense. I believe they saw it holstered on his waistband after they had tackled him and the one agent came in and took it.

The fact that you're even trying to find a shred of justification after what everyone just watched is also disgusting.
by zen4ttitude | 2026-01-24 20:14:34+00:00
It started as a tongue in cheek project. Now I think there is a definite case to be made for local AI as a movement. It's all about privacy sure. It's also about OpenSource roots. I think it might have to do with convenience in a controlling the entire pipeline kinda way. Finally, there is something inefficient about having these behemoth data centers to build an API... What do you think about keep it local if you can? The environment cost of AI?
by linsomniac | 2026-01-24 20:14:50+00:00
I have Claude Code author changes, and then I use this "codex-review" skill I wrote that does a review of the last commit. You might try asking Codex (or whatever) to review the change to give you some pointers to focus on with your review, and also in your review you can see if Codex was on track or if it missed anything, maybe feed that back into your codex review prompt.
by postflopclarity | 2026-01-24 20:15:06+00:00
there are a lot of quants who aren't at T1 firms or in the hottest seats. plenty make less than this. obviously if you are top of class and getting headhunted by XTX, your offers will be much bigger than $500k ... but it's kind of obnoxious to claim that QRs making less than this aren't even players
by godelski | 2026-01-24 20:15:08+00:00
Are you asking how you hang out with friends?

I mean this in all seriousness... you talk to them. Don't wait for them to ask you, you ask them.

Or are you asking how you make friends?

That one's harder but I'll point out something important. You notice how you made friends in school? The reality of it is that you just spent time around the same people constantly. That's the biggest driver. Bigger than any shared belief, politics, or whatever. Join a club. Go to the gym. Spend time outside your home in public in the same location at approximately the same times. You'll meet people who also spend time outside their homes in the same locations at the same times. Repeat this until you gave gained friends.
by bombdailer | 2026-01-24 20:15:09+00:00
Every artist of worth has sought two things: to bring something of beauty into the world, and to be regarded in their worth in proportion to the greatness of their art. You suggest we take from them the beauty they have brought forth, and leave them with nothing in return but scorn. What then has the artist to gain from their endeavors, when not only are they the be ridden of the significance of their authorship, but that then their works are to be put to use to feed the all consuming machine which benefits not the artist but those running the machine?

Art is not just about the thing produced, stripped of its context and significance, and forced to be interpreted by ignorant minds who, in their ignorance, consider themselves capable of deriving meaning of value out of words and pictures they can scarcely comprehend from their own limited perspective.

The significance of all art is derived from its historical context, the authors implicit intentions and mode of creation, and the unique experience generated from an individual consuming the art. If you suggest only the consumers experience matters, then you are free to forgo the greater appreciation of art in favor of the lessened experience of it if you wish. For greater awareness and understanding of the details of the parts allow us to better understand the significance of the whole. Only art that is of little value is lessened by our deepened understanding of it.
Ask HN: Have we confused Efficiency with "100% Utilization"?
by nickevante | 2026-01-24 20:15:31+00:00
I recently had a conversation with an engineer who optimized assembly lines at Black & Decker in 1981 using an Apple II.

He described how they measured atomic hand movements (reach, grasp, orient) in decimal seconds to balance the line. But he made a distinction that stuck with me:

Back then, the goal was Flow (smoothness), which inherently required some slack in the system. Today, he argued, the goal of modern management is Utilization (removing every micro-second of downtime).

His quote: "We deleted the 'waiting,' but we forgot that the waiting was the only time the human got to breathe."

I feel like I see this exact pattern in Software Engineering now. We treat Developer Idle Time as a defect to be eliminated by JIRA tickets, rather than the necessary slack required for thinking.

Ask HN: For those who have been in the industry for 20+ years, do you agree?
by kxbnb | 2026-01-24 20:16:18+00:00
The pain of failures that are "hard to reason about once things went async" is real. Centralizing the retry/failover logic makes sense.

One pattern I've found useful: having a read-only view of what's actually hitting the wire before any retry logic kicks in. When you can see the raw request/response as it happens, you can tell whether the issue is your payload, the provider throttling, or something in between.

We built toran.sh for this - it's a transparent proxy that shows exactly what goes out and comes back in real-time. Different layer than what you're doing (you handle the orchestration, we just show the traffic), but they complement each other.

Curious how you handle visibility into what's actually being sent during partial stream failures?
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF | 2026-01-24 20:16:28+00:00
Oof lol.

Sometimes I yearn for the Haskell or Idris style of programming where a dependency can do nothing harmful or stupid without me passing in permission.

Then I think about having to pass in thread handles and file handles to logging libraries. I don't know. It would be a cool option. There is probably a hack for `tracing` that would let me manage the logging thread myself.

Software is so complex these days. The funny solution of doing static-allocated C with no threads and no logging isn't gonna work for me. You aren't going to have WebRTC in from-scratch C.
by eightturn | 2026-01-24 20:16:57+00:00
my first exposure to the Tao Te Ching was listening to the audiobook 'the tao of pooh', which I was listening to on an airplane and found myself doubled-over gobsmacked with the simple complexity it was exposing to me, and how I had already absent mindedly followed a few of their principles, and nowadays it's all I see, is don't think, just do; go back to the beginning; become an uncarved block. it's all so great.
by aduwah | 2026-01-24 20:17:06+00:00
I was a big fan of pidgin, but this premise makes me feel iffy.

Why would I ever want my work to intrude on my personal messaging? My private time is my own.
Slack/Teams is perfect because I can mute it on a schedule when I stop for the day.

Anything that is urgent can be managed via Pagerduty or similar on a controlled fashion
by kelnos | 2026-01-24 20:17:47+00:00
> I must protest that this kind of announcement belies the stupidity of proprietary chat protocols. [...] In the early 90s I had multiple IM accounts (starting with ICQ!) and unifying them, especially under a Linux client, was a dream come true.

ICQ was also a proprietary chat protocol. The Pidgin (then "Gaim") developers had to reverse-engineer it. Fortunately the folks at ICQ were less hostile toward third-party clients than AOL was toward Gaim's reverse-engineer of AIM's protocol, as you note. (Not to mention sending legal threats to the Gaim/Pidgin team to get them to change the name of the app.)

IRC was indeed king, when the internet was populated mostly by technically-savvy folks who could deal with its rough edges. (For example, you probably forget how annoying it was to get file transfer working over IRC; sometimes it was just impossible to do, depending on clients and NAT conditions and so forth. Things like ChanServ and NickServ were creative, but inelegant, hacks, functions that the protocol should handle directly.) And consider that IRC has more or less not changed at all in decades. I am a technically-savvy user, and I gave up on IRC, switching to Matrix for those types of chats, which has its own rough edges, but at least has modern features to sorta kinda make up for it. (Otherwise I generally use Signal, or, if I can't get people to switch, Whatsapp.) I want to be able to do simple formatting, react to messages, edit messages, etc. And most people in the world seem to want those things too. IRC has stagnated and doesn't meet most people's needs.

But I absolutely agree in that I want open protocols too. It's just hard to fight against big corporations with endless development, design, and marketing budgets. And those big corporations are not incentivized to build or support open protocols; in fact they are incentivized to do the opposite. As much as the EU does get some things wrong, I think we need strong governments to force companies to open up their protocols and systems for interoperability, and to stamp down hard on them when they comply maliciously, as Apple and Meta does. The EU is pretty much the only entity that comes close to doing that. I really wish the US was more forward-thinking, but our government is full of oligarchs and oligarch-wannabes these days, thanks to the lack of any meaningful campaign finance limits. At least California (where I live) has some GDPR-inspired privacy legislation, but I think something like the EU's DMA is still too "out there" for us here, unfortunately.