MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by px1999 | 2026-01-24 22:55:21+00:00
Imo there's a huge blind spot forming between 6 and 8 when talking to people and in reading posts by various agent evangelists - few people seem to be focussing on building "high quality" changes vs maximising throughput of low quality work items.

My (boring b2b/b2e) org has scripts that wrap a small handful of agent calls to handle/automate our workflow. These have been incredibly valuable.

We still 'yolo' into PRs, use agents to improve code quality, do initial checks via gating. We're trying to get docs working through the same approach. We see huge value in automating and lightweight orchestration of agents, but other parts of the whole system are the bottleneck, so theres no real point in running more than a couple of agents concurrently - claude could already build a low quality version our entire backlog in a week.

Is anyone exploring the (imo more practically useful today) space of using agents to put together better changes vs "more commits"?
by B1FIDO | 2026-01-24 22:55:30+00:00
It's cute to see commenters answering the question when the article is also doing that work.

Anyway, honest question: who the hell is "domainregistry.com"? They claim they've been "accredited since 1996". I've never, ever heard of them, and I used to work for InterNIC.

Their so-called founder, "Larry Erlich", is not notable either. Neither of these have Wikipedia entries. Does anyone know who they are, or where they came from?
by jiggawatts | 2026-01-24 22:58:07+00:00
My acid test for provisioning system is asking: Can it rename deployed resources?

Practically none can, even in market segments where this is highly relevant. For example: user identity and access management products. Women get married and change their name all the time!

The next level up is the ability to rename a container such as an organisational unit or a security group.

Then, products that can rearrange a hierarchy to accommodate a merger, split, or a new layer of management. This obviously needs to preserve the data. “Immutable infrastructure” where everything is recreated from scratch and the original is dropped is cheating.

I’ve only ever seen one such provisioning tool, the rest don’t even begin to approach this level of capability.
by hdgvhicv | 2026-01-24 22:58:11+00:00
A civilised country can not be destroyed by one king, nor saved by a new leader.

America has checks and balances, and they have failed. There’s no “wait 3 years”, that’s over, as America will always be one election away from anarchy or worse.

The only way out is the Republican Party impeaching him and spending the next 10 years undoing the damage at the top and next 40 year rebuilding civil society.
by brettgriffin | 2026-01-24 22:58:32+00:00
If there was serious interest, they would taken a next step by now. They won't give you a hard no unless you're an absolute joke.

They will wait and see if there's any deal heat.

Are you talking to other funds? You need to talk to as many funds as possible in a 2-3 week period to create leverage. Do not talk to a single or small number of funds in a process[0]. Best case they will snake the round at a discount, worst case you'll give up a ton of leverage and kill the process.

[0] unless you have close relationships with a stable of funds. you do not.
by jasonwatkinspdx | 2026-01-24 22:58:48+00:00
So this is the blog of Stevan Apter. As you might guess from having a 3 letter vanity domain, he and this website have been around a long long time. It's mostly code golf style stuff posted to the J Software and Concatenative Languages lists. So yeah it'll be terse and obscure outside that community.

The domain name stands for No Stinkin' Loops, a reference to how APL style languages lift iteration to combinator expressions.
by thomassmith65 | 2026-01-24 22:59:04+00:00
My personal view, since 2016, is that the American system is fundamentally broken if it permits someone of Trump's character to assume the Presidency.

Trump is exactly the kind of megalomaniac the founders worried about. Either the school system needs an overhaul so that the public is capable of recognizing joke presidential candidates, or
the Electoral College needs an overhaul so it steps in and saves the voters from themselves.

I would have refrained from posting something this partisan if I thought more than a dozen people on HN still supported this disastrous administration, but if I'm wrong then I really do apologize.
by teraflop | 2026-01-24 22:59:25+00:00
> You can easily scale different parts of your application independently.

Just to add that I think some people assume this is something they need, even when there's no basis for it.

Do you actually need 1 instance that handles Foo-type requests, and 99 instances that handle Bar-type requests, or would you be fine with 100 instances that are capable of handling either Foo or Bar as necessary?

The distinction only really matters if there is some significant fixed overhead associated with being available to serve Foo requests, such that running an extra 99 of those processes has a cost, regardless of how much traffic they serve. For instance, if every Foo server needs GBs of static data to be held in RAM, or needs to be part of a Paxos group, or something like that.

But if your services are stateless, then you probably don't benefit at all from scaling them independently.
by Neywiny | 2026-01-24 22:59:29+00:00
I work near space but not in space. I'm not sure I understand your process here. I see 2 possibilities: 1. You bought something the manufacturer spec lied about. While true we often validate specs, our terrestrial stuff is a lot cheaper so we can afford the spares. That said, if we buy something that doesn't meet the spec, you best believe we're taking the actions necessary. 2. This was built or designed inhouse, and the requirements didn't flow down correctly. That's also not great.

To be honest, postmortems (especially from startups) toe a fine line of scaring off investors, and this write-up seems a bit too glaze-y. I'm very happy for you that so much worked so effortlessly post launch, but that's more a success story than a postmortem. I'd like to see more of the root cause analysis for the issue, both technically and programmatically.
by fzeroracer | 2026-01-24 22:59:44+00:00
I was just going to leave it there since both of our comments were flagged for obvious reasons, but since it seems you're getting vouched I'll just say it up front: I don't give a shit how upset you are. Grow some thicker skin. If you're going to be upset that people push back against you spraying rancid takes all over the place then what are you even doing?

My patience level is now in the negatives with these kinds of posts, especially the ones that are more upset about people being mean to them than the execution of citizens using their constitutional rights.
by pradn | 2026-01-24 23:00:35+00:00
> When I was taken to the Tate Modern as a child I’d point at Mark Rothko pieces and say to my mother “I could do that”, and she would say “yes, but you didn’t.”

Actually, no you couldn't. The subtlety of the choice of colors, their shading, and their soft shaping, and the program of their creation over many years - you couldn't do that. They're lovely and sublime, and wonderful and an abyss. If you want to throw all that away and reduce it two boxes of paint, go ahead - but you'll be wasting a lifetime's engagement, of the joy of seeing with your intellect wide open.
by AtlasBarfed | 2026-01-24 23:00:58+00:00
Xml fundamentally does not communicate when information under a tag is a list or a map structure, a data structure indication that is critical for deserialization of information into a format usable by programs.

In addition, it has tons and tons and tons of cruft, specification bloat, dogma.

The best parts of XML were probably XPath, and some aspects of document validation.. and that's it
by stordoff | 2026-01-24 23:01:14+00:00
I've got a i5-7500T box running as a Proxmox Backup Server, and it idles at 6-7W. It runs at near idle most of the time (it's just running PBS and a few network services), so I'm not expecting it to cause much difference to my power bills. Even under full load, it only draws ~30W, so it's not _that_ much power.
Components I created – for database users
by jonathanscion | 2026-01-24 23:01:20+00:00
Hi All,
I’d like to post here two new free utilities I created. (No gimmicks, no catches)
A tool for context free database scripting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1czsLD-yVE
A web page for tabular data comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpLmwmvQOw

I’d love to hear your feedback. Just pls be gentle, its my first time doing this.
Thank You
Jonathan
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-24 23:02:41+00:00
>The regional limit makes it pretty much useless.

Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the rest of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps ingrained in pop culture, and have them switch to their own EU made apps, this way we can all communicate together. :hugs: Until then, let's keep chatting on $US_APP so we can debate on how we're gonna achieve that switch.
by hdgvhicv | 2026-01-24 23:03:28+00:00
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury
by Snoots | 2026-01-24 23:03:43+00:00
You're being flagged for good reason, you're not a victim here.

You refuse to watch the videos, but you're still defending the regime. Why?

I question the moral integrity of anyone who would defend this administration without all the available info.

I'm glad you're being flagged, because I've been disappointed with how folks here have been surprisingly flaccid when it comes to condemning this regime. The day that I come here and find posts like yours in the majority will be the last day I visit.
by edaemon | 2026-01-24 23:04:15+00:00
In this video you can see the agent in the gray coat and baseball cap remove the gun from Pretti's waistband: https://files.catbox.moe/sp296e.mp4

Here is a stabilized version: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qlyj9h/i_did_...

After that agent takes the gun, the agent standing immediately to the left draws and fires into Pretti's back.
by doubled112 | 2026-01-24 23:04:20+00:00
I have an N95 mini PC (32GB DDR4, 250GB SSD, 1TB NVMe), a 4 disk USB enclosure, an access point, and a 16 port switch plugged into a UPS.

The UPS says 35W for all of it, but I’ve always been too lazy to unplug devices to see how it breaks down. I’m also not sure how accurate the measurements are, especially under a load that low.

I’d be willing to believe the mini PC draws less than the other components at this point.
by zvr | 2026-01-24 23:04:27+00:00
Correct, but the "if Amy works for Global Corp and has the authority to sign legal documents on their behalf" does a lot of work here.

At $WORK, a multi-billion company with tens of thousands of developers, we train people to never "click to accept", explaining it like "look, you wouldn't think of sitting down and signing a contract binding the whole MegaCorp; what make you think you can 'accept' something binding the company?"

I admit we're not always successful (people still rarely click), but at least we're trying.
by encom | 2026-01-24 23:05:28+00:00
Worth noting: A Pi 1 will decode 1080p h264 video flawlessly. I used one as a media center for a long time, running OpenELEC (now LibreELEC). Moving around the UI was a bit sluggish, but video playback was smooth.

YouTube is an absolute clown show. It's so bad that I'm certain Google devs are actively making it terrible on purpose. I use Newpipe on an older (but not that old) tablet. Whenever Google breaks Newpipe and I have to use a browser, it takes like 30 seconds just to load the page.

Decoding video is trivial when you have hardware decoders.
by elsjaako | 2026-01-24 23:05:52+00:00
I see your point a bit better. I definitely agree that insurance can be terrible. I will say that with US health insurance you've pretty much picked the worst possible insurance to compare it to.

Farmers typically have more knowledge and more budget for good advisors than consumer health insurance buyers. There are all kinds of business insurance, and I think these are not usually considered as horrible as health insurance. Also, with good insurance you've got a partner who is very invested in understanding the risks you're taking and letting you know (in the form of how much you have to pay).

Some subsidies are probably a good idea, especially where you want to encourage behaviors that would not naturally be encouraged by the market (e.g. getting farmers to not grow crops that you don't want them to grow, or do things that are good for the environment but not legally required).

Sometimes it's probably neutral, where the food is cheaper in the supermarket but taxes are higher and in the end it's just the consumer paying anyway. My guess is that this usually isn't the most efficient way to get money from consumers to farmers.

And sometimes subsidies are actively harmful, like when they encourage growing crops beyond what the market requires.
Ask HN: Why can't I apply custom fonts to HN?
by -__- | 2026-01-24 23:06:43+00:00
I'm building a mobile browser (webkit base) with accessibility features, including an option to override page fonts with OpenDyslexic. I have tried every permutation of:

const style = document.createElement('style');
style.textContent = `
@font-face {
font-family: 'OpenDyslexic';
src: url('data:font/opentype;base64,...') format('opentype');
}
* { font-family: 'OpenDyslexic', sans-serif !important; }
`;
document.head.appendChild(style);

it works everywhere. every link I click from this page, every website from the 90s I can find. everywhere except here!

On HN, the font-family CSS applies (I can see it in the inspector, elements show font-family: OpenDyslexic !important), but the actual rendered font falls back to sans-serif. The @font-face is in the DOM. The base64 is valid, the code works on other sites.

Tried: blob URLs instead of data URLs, MutationObserver to reapply, targeting specific elements (font, td, table), setTimeout delays. so much more. Nothing works on HN specifically.

Is there something about HN's markup or headers that would cause @font-face to fail silently? Has anyone dealt with this issue or know why it could be happening? content security policy & cors don’t seem at fault bc the base64 is in the dom. What might I be missing?
by lxgr | 2026-01-24 23:06:54+00:00
What a strange way to think about a telecommunications service. By the same logic, shouldn’t there be a privacy policy for regular old phone lines? Who knows which third parties are between you and the person on the other end!

And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp…

Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you have no privacy agreement with.
by jbullock35 | 2026-01-24 23:07:18+00:00
Thanks. The link is to a Bellingcat analysis. They did great work on the Renee Good shooting, but in this case, they're describing stills from videos, and I can't see what they're seeing in the photos. The photos are just too fuzzy---at least for me, and I suspect for most other viewers.

I don't mean to diminish the importance of the shooting, which is horrific no matter what one makes of the photos.
by ddtaylor | 2026-01-24 23:07:35+00:00
Microsoft killed local accounts in Windows 11 and made this the default path by users: Your private encryption keys are sent to Microsoft in a way that requires no other keys. This is a failure and doesn't happen on systems like LUKS. I understand Microsoft wants to be able to look nice and unlock disks when people forget their passwords, but doing so allows anyone to exploit this. Windows systems and data are more vulnerable because of this tradeoff they made.
by hei-lima | 2026-01-24 23:07:46+00:00
In countries where SMS isn't as widespread as it is in the US, the use of WhatsApp is much more common.

I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever had to use it to communicate with someone on another continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your community or friend group.

The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to stop using an app they've been using for, what, 10-12 years? It’s not that big of a deal; everyone uses Instagram or Facebook (maybe)... WhatsApp is definitely going to make the process difficult, too.
by IncreasePosts | 2026-01-24 23:08:15+00:00
It's not even talking about public health, it's talking about specific individuals health and the benefits of many vaccines for a specific individuals health.

And your mom is pretty ignorant(oops, I said it again) if she thinks "her economy" isn't wrapped up in her neighbors economy, her towns economy, her states economy, her country's, economy, and the global economy.
by subscribed | 2026-01-24 23:08:30+00:00
I'm running my own mail server for longer than I'd like to admit, but not for my critical/key email addresses. Looking at the spam filtering I get in Gmail and knowing my endless fights with spamassassin and DSBLs I know I could never achieve that.

The only upside of having an actual mail server is the ability to say "this is incorrect, no one ever tried to send an email to this address/from this IP" or custom 55x messages.
by susam | 2026-01-24 23:09:18+00:00
If you are rendering your blog or website with a static site generator, you could also consider importing comments as content files into your website source and then rendering them as part of the build. The full workflow would look like this:

1. Accept comments via email or by any other means. A simple hack that requires no server-side scripting: if you run your own web server, you can submit comments as GET query parameters logged in access.log, then extract them using grep, sed, etc. Personally, I use a server-side program to accept POST requests and write comments to a text file on the web server.

2. Review submitted comments. Delete spam.

3. Add comments to your website source repository as .md, .html or whatever format you use, similar to how you add blog posts as content files to your source.

4. Render comments alongside the rest of your site using your static site generator. Depending on the nature of your static site generator, this may require using or creating a template or layout that iterates over the comments and renders them.

It is a fairly hands-on workflow, so it may not suit everybody, but this is how I do it for my personal website. I see two main benefits of this approach. Since the review is manual in step 2, no spam can ever make it to my website. Step 3 ensures comments live entirely under my control, so I never need to worry about migrating them between platforms in the future.
by crote | 2026-01-24 23:09:49+00:00
Isn't it obvious? You were taught a lie.

All the blathering about "freedom", "democracy", and "constitutional rights" is just propaganda you've been spoon-fed since you were a child. The USA has spent the last 80 years riding the wave of contributing to the victory in WWII and therefore being the "Good Guys", and most of the Western world happily played along as their political goals aligned with it.

Meanwhile the USA hasn't addressed its deeply-rooted internal issues which have been festering for well over a century, and the results are now obvious to everyone. It only took Trump a year to make the US an international laughing stock, start a bunch of wars, get rid of the free press, and begin rounding up people he doesn't like.

If the USA you were taught to believe in truly existed, the current situation would not have been possible.
by scarecrowbob | 2026-01-24 23:10:29+00:00
You might consider (though perhaps not agree) that no where in my post did I insinuate that "flagging" was the same as taking a position on the subject:

my statement was about why I do, indeed, find utility these conversations you don't find useful.

That a) says nothing about my take on your understanding/ position on the issues around protest or politics and b) is a request to understand my position and not, like, a statement about the morality of your position.

And further, to me "being okay with the summary execution of people for protesting" seems like a pretty specific sentiment, and one which I have heard echoed here quite a bit. I find it super useful to see demonstrated so frequently that a person with excellent technical chops in a domain may often have massive deficiencies in their reasoning, if for no other reason that it helps me understand the weakness of my own cognition.

So, perhaps consider that it's you, in projecting a statement I didn't make in a very short and fairly clear post who is "giving a perfect example" of the level of nuance-free assumptions that do (as you correctly point out) often run rampant- and not just on this site, but in discourse in general.

To push my point a bit further, I am not here to make moral judgements or change peoples' mind on these political topics; rather, over the decade during which I've been interacting on this site, it has= has been super informative to trace the nascent fascism that breed in many of the confluences of technology and capitalism.

That may, to you, sound like hyperbolic rhetoric that is dismissive of other folks' opinions; from my position you're not understanding that this examination of (what is to me) highly disagreeable and almost sociopathic political discourse -is- the process of finding nuanced and useful understandings of our political situation.
by aschla | 2026-01-24 23:10:41+00:00
It likely is acceptable for business-focused code. Compared to a lot of code written by humans, even if the AI code is less than optimal, it's probably better quality than what many humans will write. I think we can all share some horror stories of what we've seen pushed to production.

Executives/product managers/sales often only really care about getting the product working well enough to sell it.