MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Grimblewald | 2026-01-20 03:08:52+00:00
no OP, but as someone who comes from a family where German cars were king for several reasons, who have all become disillusioned and now buy Asian cars, where the reason is simple. American style corporate greed infested German auto-manufactures and it shows at every level.

It is most obvious with things like subscription services for basic function, like acceleration or the seat heaters you already paid for, but it has been present in a more insidious way for far longer, like intentionally breaking good design so that small cheap and easy to mass manufacture parts break at predictable schedules. These are then quoted to you at $900+ for a part that will cost you 60 through china, for what is a plastic mould, some magnets and a wire. The cheap replacements work just fine and last just as long.

So, over time, we've become so fed-up with it, and it is a problem present from bmw, vw, audi and beyond, that we just started going with Toyota/Hyundai or Chinese EV's etc, and no one has a gripe since. Repairs when required are cheap and easy, often easily done at home, cars drive almost if not just as well, mileage is comparable, joy of driving is comparable, overall there is simply no value left in German cars beyond the status symbol, something we care little for.
by brianpan | 2026-01-20 03:09:13+00:00
If we're comparing notes, I traded in my Model 3 for a BMW i4 and I couldn't be happier. It's a nicer car and more fun to drive!

JD Power and Consumer Reports both rate BMW above average.

BTW, my impression of BMW maintenance from prior decades is expensive and not great reliability. I care about it less now with EVs because there is so much less regular maintenance. No oil changes, no brake pad changes, etc.
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-01-20 03:09:26+00:00
That isnt how international relations works. Lesson based on contemporary IR Systems Realism:

>Great powers are forced to manage the international system, or become a client of a great power. There are benefits to being a great power.

>When 1 great power builds weapons, everyone else is forced to too. This is called the Arms Race.

>Colonialism is one example of the Arms Race. If you didn't join the party, you were going to lose.

>Great powers put international politics above domestic politics. Its why we see the US do things like spend heavily on the military and get involved in unpopular wars.
by bradlys | 2026-01-20 03:09:42+00:00
Yeah, such a weird comment. A 911 Turbo S is over $300k now. This car used to be low 200s for a well optioned one.

They're taking some kind of Nvidia strategy where they just charge more money for the new generation rather than making the new generation just objectively better than the previous for the same cost. The new GTS basically is a replacement for the old 911 Turbo - and at the same cost...

I was considering putting in an order for the new generation until the prices were announced. $300k is purely in exotic territory and if I am going down the exotic path, I'll gladly get something far more ridiculous. (Which is now the plan - just waiting for a carb legal one to appear on the market)
by gnabgib | 2026-01-20 03:09:43+00:00
Title: The ‘Green Revolution’ transformed global agriculture. Now it’s adapting to climate change

The sentence you've misquoted:

> Through its breeding program, it has developed about two-thirds of the wheat varieties and a third of the maize varieties grown worldwide.

... developing varieties and wheat production are two very-different things. In Maize specifically the world has eliminated a lot of varieties in favour of low-fiber, high-sugar varieties.
by oenton | 2026-01-20 03:13:36+00:00
Yes and despite how demoralizing it can feel, I encourage everyone to do the same: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

In the past we have hit critical mass, where so many people were calling in to Congress to complain (when Trump initially started with his arbitrary tariffs) that the Congressional phone system began to fail under load, and that made headlines that managed to break through the 24/7 firehose of bullshit.
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2026-01-20 03:13:46+00:00
> one argument against RAII+friends is that it encourages thinking about single objects, as opposed to bulk processing.

RAII is just a way to guarantee correctness by tying a resource's lifetime to that of an object, with resource release guaranteed to happen. It is literally just saying that you will manage your resource (a completely abstract concept - doesn't have to be memory) by initializing it in an objects constructor and release it in the destructor.

Use of RAII as a technique is completely orthogonal to what your program is doing. Maybe you have a use for it in a few places, maybe you don't. It's got nothing to do with whether you are doing "bulk procesing" or not, and everything to do with whether you have resources whose usage you want to align to the lifetime of an object (e.g this function will use this file/mutex/buffer, then must release it before it exits).
by dmix | 2026-01-20 03:13:57+00:00
The main issue will always be price. Whether that's purchase price, resale, or maintenance. Even the budget brand cars from South Korea and Ford can figure out the basics of interior/exterior design where customers are happy. That mostly just leaves the price and it's only gone up.

Car prices have increased well above the rate of inflation over the last decade and even used cars are more expensive then ever. Average new car price is $50k, mostly because EVs are so expensive https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69047202/average-new-car-...
by mmooss | 2026-01-20 03:14:30+00:00
> Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy to encourage onshoring business, for reasons including military, national security, and political influence on foreign powers.

Do you take their arguments at face value? The arguments don't even work because the US clearly had better security, was in a better situation militarily (due to relationships, including with allies), and more influence without the tariffs. If you don't trade with them, they won't be interested in what you have to say.

It does fit an attempt centralize vast power in the current White House, which now controls trade, has shares in several large companies, great influence over many other companies, influence in large media organizations, and claims virtually uninhibited power in many domains.
Show HN: Foom.ist: When silicon surpasses human brainpower
by steffs | 2026-01-20 03:14:32+00:00
I built https://foom.ist, a real-time interactive visualization of when cumulative global chip FLOPS (since 1970) surpasses the cumulative "brain compute" of humans born since 1970.

You can tweak assumptions (brain FLOPS estimate, birth rate trend, Moore's law growth rate), zoom and pan the chart, and see the crossover date update live.

If you have better sources (birth rates, brain FLOPS estimates, chip production, compute), the site has a suggestion form that opens a GitHub issue. Code and issues: https://github.com/StefanSamne/foomist

Not selling anything. I mainly want feedback on the model and better data.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-20 03:14:33+00:00
tangent but: I can't believe "bothsidesism" is an actual dictionary word. It had to have been a recent addition.

I had some hopes that Trump's deterioration, court case results, and general insurrection of the country would do something to impact his standing. Especially if "sleepy Joe" was the standard Biden was being held to. But I learned from 2016 and knew not to dismiss the possibility.

The real downside here isn't just the fact that trump's voted didn't decrease. It's that Harris' did. A lot of people staying home arguably cost the election almost as much as those who voted.
by dijit | 2026-01-20 03:14:58+00:00
We’re agreeing. Excel produced massive value because it accepted catastrophic failures. That’s my point.

The problem isn’t Excel. It’s trying to get Excel’s accessibility in infrastructure whilst demanding engineering reliability. You cannot have both. Kubernetes won’t accept Excel-style disasters, so it still needs specialists; now specialists who must learn the abstraction and the fundamentals.

You’re right: work not done by specialists often wouldn’t happen at all. That’s the choice. Accept Excel-esque failures for democratisation, or accept expertise is required.

My point is that currently available tools promise both, deliver neither.
by Liftyee | 2026-01-20 03:16:39+00:00
Meh, often the LiPo protection logic is hardware based to prevent just this sort of mistake/sabotage. Some protection chips are software-configurable or reprogrammable, but the parameters are again limited (by design). Perhaps you could cause long-term damage by programming it to manage the battery poorly, like repeatedly charging/discharging it deeply.

I think "every device" is just fearmongering. No software Apple/Huawei push could immediately make a phone or laptop combust. Electric cars, 3D printers, etc... I'm not so sure.
by sitharus | 2026-01-20 03:16:51+00:00
Don't most people already have a plug in their garage? All mine certainly have. There's no need to get full EVSE for most people, a 2.4kW outlet as found almost everywhere outside North America will easily handle daily driving needs for anyone who's not in a travelling job.

Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems.

Utilities have plenty of ways to solve that. We already have electric water heaters on demand controlled circuits and electricity billing that incentivises off-peak use.

And as for range? 400km is plenty for all but one trip a year, if that's an issue for your use perhaps EVs are not for you.
by maxdo | 2026-01-20 03:17:13+00:00
Their biggest brand, BYD, is also relatively the "oldest."

It's the governemt priorities, local gov in China is building EV companies, AI companies. EU governemnt, US local gov is building shelters, or people who kick out people from a shelter on a voters mood swing.

A friend from the EU visited recently. He said, "At least the Netherlands is doing much better than 10 years ago...we have lights, roads."
That one sentence captures the entire mindset gap.

The bitter irony: Philips literally built ASML and TSMC, then sold both. Now those companies dominate global semiconductor supply chains while Philips sells... healthcare equipment at a loss.

And ASML is about to lose it's dominance too.

But yeah...lights on the streets. Built with Chinese LEDs. Powered by Chinese solar panels. Bought using budget deficits. In debt.

And the deficit keeps growing. Some EU countries faster, some slower. But the trend is unmistakable.
by stackskipton | 2026-01-20 03:17:18+00:00
I agree that partisan federal judges have caused this but my point is, Congress makes it worse.

Unitary is just wrong and Congress could continue to push back against it.

Major Question keeps coming up Congress does not step in after passing of EPA. Major EPA cases are like "Well, does this mean what we think it means because some comma somewhere" and Congress could step in and say "No, we really meant this."

Qualified Immunity is again something else Congress could step in on and say "Nope, we are eliminating qualified immunity or tailoring it back."

2nd Amendment is third rail I don't wish to touch.
by taurath | 2026-01-20 03:17:44+00:00
I dropped Google news and Reddit in the last few weeks. I have watched several people have nervous breakdowns, coworkers report having to step back from everything, one even said he’d developed a twitch. However informed we desire to be, that desire seems to be usurped by this constant spin-up mechanism of current media.

HN is probably gonna have to go soon too for me, I have enough ways to keep informed, and it’s hard to feel informed while pretending many events that are deeply effecting everyone I know’s lives don’t exist. I don’t particularly want HN to become about US politics, but I also don’t like that ycombinator is run by, for and with people who I don’t share values with.

It seems like the majority opinion is it’s okay to commit moral suicide to make money nowadays - I never previously felt like the word “depravity” could accurately describe the day to day culture of startups and technology. There are many exceptions (enough to not leave the industry entirely) and perhaps it’s the rule that most people are appalled at Thiel, Musk and Altman, but idk. To me the only correct move against a vampire is to not let them into your house.
by jrowen | 2026-01-20 03:17:52+00:00
Not sure why this was killed. I think the point about mindfulness and intention is valid under the modern lens of "mindfulness" (as opposed to the older and more general concept of "be mindful of..."), which is closer to meditation and being present.

I also agree that there is a value to anonymous platforms that is underrepresented in today's landscape. Anonymous like 4chan or Secret, not even pseudonymous (as it turns out, I had an idea for such an experimental discussion platform...). I don't think they need to supplant identity-based platforms per sé but fill another niche.
by defrost | 2026-01-20 03:17:58+00:00
"Consistency" whatever that might be.

Dave Allen's great joke about the relics concerns a doubter pressing on why there were two skulls of different sizes attributed to Saint Placeholder.

The answer was straightforward enough;

this one is his skull taken from his concecrated tomb in the Abbey of Overthere,

and this was his skull from when he was a child.
by janoelze | 2026-01-20 03:18:26+00:00
Any views on the nature of "maintainability" shifting now? If a fleet of agents demonstrated the ability to bootstrap a project like that, would that be enough indication to you that orchestration would be able to carry the code base forward? I've seen fully llm'd codebases hit a certain critical weight where agents struggled to maintain coherent feature development, keeping patterns aligned, as well as spiralling into quick fixes.
by Grimblewald | 2026-01-20 03:18:33+00:00
Well, the definition is simply "the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions"

However, I'd like to narrow this to "The systematic investigation into, and manipulation of, a system in order to map variables that can be exploited for material gain"

The reason this is important is because it's important someone can tinker with their website and test out new aesthetics etc.

As for an example of something you'd be hard pressed to get approval for: Body Image & Social Defeat (The Instagram Study). This would be extremely unlikely to pass. Given the research goal would translate to "we wish to see 'how much bullying makes them stay in the cage longer'" then it would be rejected as gratuitous cruelty.
by adrianwaj | 2026-01-20 03:18:50+00:00
Perhaps a bet should convert into play money if the stakes get too high and the temptation for "induced manipulation" is deemed too strong. The issue is how high is too high?

Imagine a jury or judge start betting on their own cases?
$500 might not sway them, but $200,000 bets coming in from villain/victims' relatives might and they thereafter decide to enter the market and also influence (or force) a legal outcome. So it can be used as a stealth form of bribery if external parties seek to make it profitable for insiders to effectuate an outcome. So at what point should the bet switch over to play money?

And what happens if all that play money can one day be redeemed into a new coin?

So with the rise of prediction markets one can predict a subsequent rise in surveillance. Can you even flag a bet on PolyMarket?

"Khamenei out as Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31?"
https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-...

There's almost $7m in volume there. But what if multiple Israel-aligned groups coughed up say $250m and bet "no" then that's like a bounty, right, for someone in Iran to effectuate a yes on the ground? Khamenei himself could step down too and use the proceeds to ensure his protection. PolyMarket or PolyPay?
by olyjohn | 2026-01-20 03:18:55+00:00
Maybe just anecdotal evidence, but i'm noticing a lot of Kias with no brake lights. I'm suspecting bad body control modules are going to become more of a thing as these cars age.

I noticed when GMT800 trucks were blowing DRLs constantly and lo and behold there's a TSB for that. So I don't think I'm imagining things.
by wjfuu32984 | 2026-01-20 03:19:14+00:00
This is what the GP is talking about. The supreme court of the united states ruled in favor of GP's position.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf

Are you sure you've thought about this more than GP and are you absolutely certain you're smarter than everyone involved in this supreme court decision? If not, I would think of adding some nuance to my ideas if I were you.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-01-20 03:19:36+00:00
Lol.

This parallels how, if your fellow countryman Schmidhuber was right about how he'd invented Transformers (although in the exact opposite way, whether that work ought to have gotten any attention, at all, from Americans :)

The world would not be in this (emotive, viz economic) pickle right about now --or indeed quite soon, in technological "reality"
by erelong | 2026-01-20 03:20:16+00:00
Broad brush comment but studies like this kind of seem useless for a couple reasons here

One position I don't see defended as much anymore is an elitist position, i.e. even if social media & games (sm&g) are harmful to a majority of teens, there still might be a minority of teens that thrive with the sm&g and their thriving might be argued to be "worth" the suffering of many (think: geniuses who can make the world much much better)

Another direction to go in is, independent of studies, what kind of world do we want for ourselves and our kids? Do we want them to be able to play some games and access some social media? I could see them for example playing online chess and following chess masters on social media, so these could indeed be a part of something of an ideal vision for our kids. So I guess there isn't often much discussion of trying to pursue the ideals of childhood or adulthood and about crafting that vision of what activities that involves and then connecting our lives to a kind of plan for following such a blueprint. (This requires no social study to establish as far as I can see)
Show HN: Circe – Deterministic, offline-verifiable receipts for AI agent actions
by W_rey45 | 2026-01-20 03:20:48+00:00
I’ve been working on a small primitive for agentic systems: a cryptographically signed receipt that records what an AI agent decided, what it did, and what changed — as a single canonical JSON artifact.

The problem:
Agent systems today rely on logs, dashboards, or proprietary consoles for truth. Those are easy to forge, truncate, or lose. If an agent takes a high-stakes action (e.g. a firewall change, a deployment, a purchase), there’s no portable artifact you can independently verify later.

The idea:
Treat agent execution like a signed transaction, not a log stream. Each run emits a receipt that can be verified offline, without trusting the issuer’s infrastructure.

How it works (minimal core):

Deterministic signing: Ed25519 signatures over a canonical JSON byte string

Canonicalization: RFC 8785-style JSON canonicalization (stable key ordering, UTF-8 encoding, no insignificant whitespace)

Tamper evidence: Any mutation of the signed payload flips the SHA-256 hash and invalidates the signature

Offline verification: A standalone verifier script; no network calls, no dependencies on the issuer

Try it locally (no network):

python verify_receipt.py hn_receipt.json
python verify_receipt.py hn_receipt_tampered.json

The first passes; the second fails after a single-field mutation.

This is intentionally not a logging system, observability platform, or policy engine. It’s a small integrity / provenance primitive intended to compose with higher-level agent frameworks.

I’d appreciate feedback on:

Threat-model gaps (e.g. confused-deputy or context-hijacking risks)

Schema ergonomics for high-frequency or long-running agent pipelines

Canonicalization edge cases worth enforcing earlier
by laurencerowe | 2026-01-20 03:20:58+00:00
As I understand it breather switches are used rarely in high speed rail systems. The ride on Spanish high speed trains is very smooth. At 300km/h (5km per minute) you’d notice going over a breather switch. It’d be like taking Amtrak’s Acela.

The gap looks about 50cm which is maybe 1.5km of contraction from installation tension.
by W_rey45 | 2026-01-20 03:21:23+00:00
Threat model / scope:
This design assumes the signer’s private key is trusted at issuance time; it does not attempt to prove semantic correctness of the agent’s reasoning or inputs. The signature covers only the canonicalized signed_block; any mutation invalidates verification. Receipts are portable and verifiable offline but do not prevent a malicious issuer from signing false data (integrity primitive, not a truth oracle). Replay is detectable (e.g. via hash chaining or external indexing) but not prevented by the receipt alone. Confidentiality is out of scope; receipts are integrity-only artifacts. The goal is to make post-hoc tampering and log forgery detectable, not to replace policy enforcement or access control.
by unethical_ban | 2026-01-20 03:21:35+00:00
>There were no conflicting orders

Factually incorrect. Now then,

It got a lot of attention because it is death, because it was avoidable, because it was the responsibility of ICE to make it avoidable, and because popular tension breaks at unpredictable moments. Hers happened to be on video from a thousand different angles.

Your rhetoric waffles between support of the actions of the authorities, and you seem to drift between satire and reality. "I'm no lover of cops" while you victim blame a woman for getting killed.

>I think it's pretty clear that anyone who is out protesting and resisting the incompetent, hateful, and violent thugs of a fascist regime should absolutely, 100% expect to be killed

Given the amount of energy you are expending to defending the actions of officers in this instance, I assume you are a supporter of this administration and their actions.
by keernan | 2026-01-20 03:22:16+00:00
Many of the comments lay the blame for the threat to democracy at the feet of SCOTUS and Congress for failing to act in a time of crisis to strangle the constitutional excesses of the Trump administration.

I see it much differently. I see a Constitution exposed. It's purported 'checks and balances' stripped naked. For the reality is this: the Constitution provides neither SCOTUS or Congress the ability to enforce their constitutional authorities. The Executive has sole control over the police power and military power.

And when a President is surrounded by heads of the FBI DOJ and Military who swear loyalty to the man, not the office, there is literally nothing SCOTUS or Congress can do.

SCOTUS has, thus far into the current Trump term, been very careful to rule in a manner that avoids inviting Trump to tell SCOTUS: "you've had your say, not enforce it." SCOTUS would much rather grant Trump powers that some future SCOTUS can take back. But the Executive exposing SCOTUS as barren is something that can never be undone.

The same for Congress. Congress can impeach Trump yet again. And in some imaginary world the Senate could actually find him guilty. But where is the army or police who shoot it out with Trump's FBI and military so they can walk Trump out of the West Wing in handcuffs?

The very terms of our Constitution are such that only a coup d'etat can remove a President who, surrounded by loyalists in the FBI and military, refuses to step down voluntarily.

That is my conclusion about why the Constitution is broken: it has been exposed for what it is. All we can do is wait and see how SCOTUS and Congress respond when Trump finally tells them: "Let's see you make me"

Edit: correct "...that invites Trump..." with "...that avoids inviting Trump"