MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by techblueberry | 2026-01-10 13:57:12+00:00
“ 1. Software is now throwaway — expect < 1 year shelf life”

I’m trying to understand this one and it doesn’t really make sense to me. Or maybe —-

What is software? How do you delete software and start over. I think we’re differing on our definitions of what software is.

If you have a clear spec, then maybe we have like, immutable software, like —- you don’t upgrade dependencies, because you can recreate software from spec. But then to me, software is the spec not the code. Like, do you just etch a sketch your product every year going back to customers to figure out how to rebuild from scratch? I don’t think that’s what’s being suggested.

I suspect what’s being suggested, is that if you are able to codify all the business logic, edge cases, and optimizations, then you can generate software from that. But to me that’s what software is, not the code.

But if you don’t have a clear spec? Isn’t one of the reasons you don’t rewrite legacy mainframe software because the spec is unclear? You don’t want software that recreates that old software, you want software that makes new assumptions.

Also - I guess - it seems like we’re assuming that Claude writes perfectly optimized code, is that right?

But then, why 1 year shelf-life? Why are you keeping software around for a year? Why not regenerate for every deploy? One year seems like this weird middle ground.

Take I dunno, the OpenSSL library, are you having researchers re-imagining the encryption algorithms every year?
by conartist6 | 2026-01-10 13:57:38+00:00
I think I do need to replace it to gain a competitive advantage against an incumbent the size of Microsoft. But to replace it at all I would have to build something that is, at least in a few ways, much, much better, otherwise people wouldn't have any reason to give me a moment's consideration. This market has to be won over from the bottom up.

But yes, even though git is as FOSS as FOSS can be, to me it's still a crucial element of Microsoft's power. It has not escaped my notice that Github managed to turn a popular piece of OSS into a successful, profitable company. Apparently many young coders are surprised to learn that Git and GitHub are not the same thing...
by jackfranklyn | 2026-01-10 13:57:49+00:00
The point about grid size assumptions is interesting. I studied physics and one of the first things you learn is that your choice of coordinate system can make a problem trivially easy or impossibly hard. Same underlying reality, wildly different solution paths.

Reminded me of a pattern I keep seeing in business software - teams spend months optimizing the wrong abstraction. They'll build an incredibly efficient data pipeline that turns out to process information nobody actually needs, or an algorithm that minimizes compute time when the real bottleneck is waiting for a human approval that takes 3 days.

The simulated annealing approach wasn't wrong per se - it's just that "minimise distance walked" was never actually the objective function that mattered to the humans doing the walking.
by mrec | 2026-01-10 13:58:05+00:00
> The speech of the manipulator is not the same as the speech of the expert

I don't think that's contentious. The point of free speech is not that all speech is equally valuable or positive. It's that I don't trust you to decide which speech shouldn't be allowed, because that power will 100% be abused, until it's just as pernicious as the "manipulators" it's claiming to defend against.
by jacquesm | 2026-01-10 13:59:30+00:00
Modularity would be great too. Standardized connectors and outer dimensions for engines even between brands. Medium, large, small. You don't need 100 different types. Meanwhile, all this has been overtaken by the need to get away from fossil fuels as soon as we practically can. Oil should not be valued based on the cost of pumping it out of the ground but based on the cost of creating a liter of it from raw materials (CO2, lots of energy).
by gus_massa | 2026-01-10 13:59:34+00:00
Yep, that increase the total in 3*3-4=5 bits, and you can repeat it 4 times, so the maximum is at least 162+4*5=182.

I'm trying to prove that is the worst case, but there are just too many cases. I guess I'll try to use a program o brute force it or just forget about it.
by jonsoft | 2026-01-10 14:00:00+00:00
Great point.

So for each 4 pawn cluster, 1 pawn takes another pawn, and the net result is +1 bit once the captor promotes. The remaining 2 pawns in the cluster each need 2 extra bits when promoted => 2 x 2 = 4 bits. So 5 bits per 4-pawn cluster, of which there are 4.

So maximum representation would be 162 + (5 * 4) = 182 bits?
by stego-tech | 2026-01-10 14:00:38+00:00
Frustratingly, while I sympathize with their very real plight, I also have to agree with OP’s ultimate decision.

OSS was exploited by hyperscalers to build trillion-dollar industries atop of, but without ever suitably compensating, the creators of much of those tools for their work or sharing in the profit. Before AI, the community was already at a breaking point between private enterprise spouting “supply chain” bullshit at them to demand fixes and attention, or steamrolled small devs to prop up a big corp’s trademark or product, all the while never actually paying enough for the proper development and support of those products - look at NPM (leftpad and kik) as prime examples. Now you have these same big tech ghouls scraping small sites into oblivion with hostile bots, making token predictors that are deliberately engineered to never, ever direct someone to a primary source or site except as an absolute last resort (to keep folks “in app” for engagement metrics), and openly pitching AI coding agents as replacements for human coders forever.

In that context, it’s no fucking wonder that the OSS community is becoming increasingly hostile to the very norms that have left most of them broke and increasingly destitute. Hell, for up-and-coming devs emerging from bootcamps, the mantra of “contribute to OSS” makes zero sense in a Capitalist marketplace that’s pivoting hard towards AI-as-human-replacement; as the OP points out, why bother training your own replacement?

OSS won’t die, but this is a particularly painful chapter that emphasizes it cannot support itself through the (non-existent) generosity of Capital. Alternate funding schemes and organization models are needed to prepare and support it for the future, be they government grants, Academia sponsors, or outright Gov-funded Private or Public Corporations (e.g., BBC, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (RIP), etc). Updates to OSS licensing schemes barring use-cases or with more substantial teeth for commercial use are also needed, toeing the line between empowering users of general computing and extracting reasonable payments from businesses or enterprises.
by spwa4 | 2026-01-10 14:00:41+00:00
This article is comparing a C15 new in 1984 vs a secondhand one today. Really, the C15 represents a time when taxes were ~20% lower and there was a workable steel industry in Europe (which destroyed certain environments, especially around the Ruhrgebiet, whether the exact location was in France, Belgium or Germany). Oh and one major problem the C15 does have is that despite those stats, it is considered to NOT meet emission standards (due to age), and so you cannot enter many cities in one. You can enter with a Berlingo.

There is still a "C15" by the way. It's even less ugly. It's called the Berlingo [1]. Cheapest version is 24000euro + tax, or 35000 + tax for the hybrid version. Let's say in practice it'll run you 30000 euro.

In other words, after tax and counting inflation, let's summarize that since 1984, European cars have about doubled in price. Wages in the EU have gone up about 2x, after inflation.

You have to work 30000/2600 (avg wage per month, euros, in France) = just shy of an entire year of work if you invested 100% of your wage into the car. So let's say 2 years of work.

(due to the EU strongly opposing equal wages across the EU, there is a very large difference between average wage in France and, say, Greece. VERY large, more than 100%)

In 1977, you would have 4900FF average wage in France (in French Francs), and the C15 cost 62000FF. So, just about 12 months at 100% average wage, or let's say 2 years or work, saving up.

So, it even costs about the same.

And, sadly, one is forced to admit that when it comes to European cars, this is a pretty damn good result for that company. Most EU brands have done far worse.

[1] https://www.citroen.fr/vehicules/utility/Berlingo-Van.html
by Ekaros | 2026-01-10 14:00:59+00:00
Also I find it interesting describing it carefully written. To me that most likely would indicate something that has been reviewed, rewritten and reconsidered multiple times. Thus bringing down the total number of lines. As there would be significant time spend on same lines.

Or would anyone disagree that carefully written code takes more time and in the end probably results lot less lines produced in total?
by mellosouls | 2026-01-10 14:01:00+00:00
Open source is charity, it's unreasonable, even entitled, to demand someone work on it full time without pay

Of course, but equally it's also unreasonable and entitled to assume that if you work on it full time (or any time at all) that that work deserves or will receive a fair (or any) financial return. That's not what open source is about, and the featured post seems to miss that.
by conartist6 | 2026-01-10 14:01:03+00:00
Line and column.

There's 50 years of tech debt in lines and columns which can be traced back through git to patch and then to TTY and to actual typewriters on which you had to feed the paper a line and return the carriage. Line and column are how you break down code when code is written on a simulation of a stack of punchcards
by azan_ | 2026-01-10 14:02:55+00:00
> Dystopian and frankly, gross. Its amazing to me that so many people are willing to give up control over their lives and in this case, their bodies, for the smallest inkling of ease.

I've read people with chronic conditions reporting that chatgpt actually helped them land correct diagnosis that doctors did not consider so people are not just using that for "inkling of ease".
by bwb | 2026-01-10 14:03:10+00:00
ChatGPT has made a material difference in my ability to understand health problems, test results, and to communicate with doctors effectively. My wife and I were talking last night about how helpful it was in 2025. I hope that it continues to be good at this.

I want regulators to keep an eye on this and make smart laws. I don't want it to go away, as its value is massive in my life.

(One example, if you are curious: I've been doing rehab for a back injury for about 10 years. I worked with a certified trainer/rehab professional for many years and built a program to keep me as pain-free as possible. I rebuilt the entire thing with ChatGPT/Gemini about 6 weeks ago, and I've had less pain than at any other point in my life. I spent at least 12 hours working with AI to test and research every exercise, and I've got some knowledge to help guide me, but I was amazed by how far it has come in 12 months. I ran the results by a trainer to double-check it was well thought out.)
by perihelions | 2026-01-10 14:04:12+00:00
The Soviet Union had a population larger than the United States' at the time of its collapse. North of 100 million people were liberated virtually overnight from direct Russian rule, from USSR states (over 50 million in Ukraine alone); and another 100+ million from Russian-backed communist governments in Warsaw Pact states (40 million in Poland alone).

British India (three modern states) had a population of 400 million at the time of its independence from Britain. That was famously a coordinated, nation-wide movement.

Indonesia was around 200 million people at the end of the Suharto dictatorship and its transition towards democracy.
by Earw0rm | 2026-01-10 14:04:15+00:00
I must have missed a memo, because every situation in which I've ever wanted to "impress a chick" has taken place indoors, or at least far from roads.

And yet lots of guys seem to spend an extra $30k or more on their vehicle for no additional utility beyond that. Literally who is impressed?

Then again, these are probably dudes who get their dating advice from the Tate brothers. /shrug
by ghusbands | 2026-01-10 14:04:43+00:00
I had the same experience (Z Fold 4, screen protector at hinge broke at the five month mark - I replaced it with a third-party one to avoid a long repair period and another such breakage - the screen itself is now faulty at just beyond the two year mark).

If anyone were to buy a modern Samsung folding phone, I'd suggest you make sure you get the two-year coverage for the screen and assume it will break soon after that, so treat it like you're going to buy one every 2-3 years. But remember that warranty repairs sometimes involve sending the phone away for weeks, and Android's phone transfer story is still incomplete. That's merely my experience, of course.
by jacquesm | 2026-01-10 14:05:17+00:00
Well, it never breaks as in: it will always get you to where you need to go because the engine just keeps running. Broken driveshaft? Stick a vice grip on it and keep rolling... And they're easy to repair because there isn't a lot in them to begin with, so you have a lot of room to work. Running gear wears and needs fixing but the core is nigh on indestructible. Same with the VW diesels from that era, the 1.9 mechanical.
by qcnguy | 2026-01-10 14:05:27+00:00
Interesting how now the list has expanded to include Chinese "bots" and "actors". Calling anyone who disagrees with your political beliefs a foreigner is an old and extremely paranoid, nasty rhetorical trick. Very similar to the people who call everything they dislike racism.

The polls don't lie and they show that there are hundreds of millions of people all over the west who just flatly disagree with your whole ideology. The unity you imagine would exist if not for shadow accounts doesn't exist, and it's delusional to believe it does.

No no. Just accept that you're a totalitarian dictator at heart, embrace the warmth of just being evil publicly, without pretense or obfuscation. "Silence the opposition!" you cry.
by delichon | 2026-01-10 14:05:32+00:00
Can you fit an 8'x4' sheet of plywood in it? My pickup truck wants to know. But it doesn't have to worry, because my other main use for it is as a large gas powered wheel barrow for carrying yard waste, and the little enclosed C15 can't compete.

In fact it looks like the love child my Ford F350 and a Citroen C2. But it can't be because I had the Ford fixed.
by technothrasher | 2026-01-10 14:05:47+00:00
> If the failure is a physical sensor reading out of range?

Then you buy a new sensor and put it in, just like you would any other failed part.

> You would need a proprietary manufacturer tool to force a relearn or adaptation.

You can do almost anything you need to do with a non-proprietary Autel tool.

I mean, I get it, the manufacturers are absolutely doing their best these days to lock up repair and maintenance. But so many folks seem to throw their hands up and over-exaggerate the inability to fix modern cars. I've always worked on my own cars, from a 1960 Triumph TR3 to a 2025 Audi A3, and everything in between. Maybe once every four or five years have I hit something where I needed to take the car to the dealer, and that was true in the 1980s as well as today. Repair information for newer cars can be somewhat difficult to obtain (looking squarely at you, BMW) but with a bit of sailing the high seas, you can get all the shop manuals.
by Sxubas | 2026-01-10 14:05:59+00:00
I think this explains something of our human nature that we would not even know we have: It is coded within us to help people in need as we can very well be there at any future moment.

Just think about it, we are a social species and without this type of behaviors it makes no sense for individuals to stay together. It is a strategy of our genes to keep successfully replicating.

But even so, I agree with the author there is something really spiritual about this: deeply contradictory but firmly rooted in our nature.
by spwa4 | 2026-01-10 14:06:12+00:00
This article even discounts that at minimum wage jobs, you're paid for your time, not the job you do. So this is doing the reverse of what's reasonable. You're better off sweeping the floor slower, because if you finish faster, there is no way any manager will let you go home, job well done. You'll get more work.

Put on headphones with music or a podcast or even youtube, and take 1-2 or even 4 hours more than you would normally do. Have an accident every few days.

Oh, and here's another problem with the best solution. Managers are idiots. They actually have zero clue what's a good time/performance for floor sweeping since they'd never stoop to the level of doing it themselves, even once. If you're going close to best possible, any slight disturbance will make a large difference in your performance, since that's what the manager actually measures. If you're doing a piss-poor job but by changing your speed a bit when something inevitably goes wrong, and you do about the same quality in about the same time every time, your manager will be more happy. Hell, it'll make it easier for him to organize the store so it may actually be better economically too.

The better you optimize this, the worse you're off. Hell, given that many consider you're better off on unemployment you should do worse than the worst the manager accepts (since you get unemployment if the manager fires you but not if you quit). Then you get a bit less money, but you have no costs (you have to pay for food, and public transport, every day, but only if working. Unemployed you can stay at home and cook)

So ... does this optimization tool have a way to accomplish the actual best outcome?
Show HN: Porting xv6 to HiFive Unmatched board
by eyengin | 2026-01-10 14:07:02+00:00
Hi HN,

I ported the teaching OS xv6-riscv to HiFive Unmatched and got it running on real hardware, including passing usertests.

I've been self-studying OS internals using the MIT 6.1810 materials. After finishing most of the labs, I was eager to see what it's like to run the OS on bare metal, rather than QEMU.

The Unmatched may not have the latest RISC-V features, but it's well-documented, and the Rev B release has made it more affordable, which makes it a good learning platform.

The porting process involved several interesting challenges:

- Hardware Quirks: Handling things like enabling A/D bits in PTEs (the hardware doesn't set them automatically, causing page faults), proper handling of interrupts, and instruction cache synchronization.

- Boot Flow: xv6 expects M-mode on startup, but standard RISC-V boot flows (typically via OpenSBI) jump to S-mode. To bridge this gap, I created a minimal U-Boot FIT image that contains only the xv6 kernel. This way, U-Boot SPL handles the complex CPU/DDR initialization, then hands control to xv6 in M-mode (skipping OpenSBI).

- Drivers: Ported an SPI SD card driver, replacing the virtio disk driver.

I wrote up implementation notes here: https://github.com/eyengin/xv6-riscv-unmatched/blob/unmatche...

Hopefully, this is useful for others who are learning OS internals and want to try running their code on real RISC-V hardware.
by topocite | 2026-01-10 14:07:45+00:00
I don't work in software but left my old job in 2021. Was unemployed for 2 years by choice. Finally decided to get a job in 2023. I applied to two jobs, got both of them right away and picked the one that sounded better.
Fast forward to summer 2025. Tired of this job and wanted to do something else. Applied to 50 jobs in 2025 and nothing but crickets. Not even a single response let alone an interview.
I am pretty sure my time doing knowledge work is coming to an end. Remote? No way I ever get a remote job again after this. I am just so average.
I am mostly trying to get in really good shape for when I have to do some kind of work that involves not sitting at a desk all day.
by Earw0rm | 2026-01-10 14:07:45+00:00
Truly rural Brits - Northumbria, the Devon uplands, Yorkshire Moors, the remoter parts of Scotland & Wales, sure.

Thing with England is that, being a small, flat and largely well-connected country, there's lots of places that identify strongly as rural but are, economically and culturally, more like outer-suburbia in a US context. That's where you'll find the Defender and F-150 crowd.
by simonsarris | 2026-01-10 14:08:16+00:00
Via Garry Tan:

> Larry and Sergey can’t stay in California since the wealth tax as written would confiscate 50% of their Alphabet shares.

> Each own ~3% of Alphabet's stock, worth about $120 billion each at today's ~$4 trillion market cap.

> But because their shares have 10x voting power, the SEIU-UHW California billionaire tax would treat them as owning 30% of Alphabet (3% × 10 = 30%). That means each founder's taxable wealth would be $1.2 trillion.

> A 5% wealth tax on $1.2 trillion = $60 billion tax bill, each.

https://x.com/garrytan/status/2009776299666223265
by mhb | 2026-01-10 14:08:49+00:00
Macron, Starmer and Merz speak (jointly):

"We are deeply concerned about reports of violence by Iranian security forces, and strongly condemn the killing of protestors. The Iranian authorities have the responsibility to protect their own population and must allow for the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly without fear of reprisal. We urge the Iranian authorities to exercise restraint, to refrain from violence, and to uphold the fundamental rights of Iran’s citizens."

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/leaders-declaration-of-fr...
by spwa4 | 2026-01-10 14:08:51+00:00
For an employee the cost function is maximum wage for minimum work. Since at minimum wage, you're paid for your time, this means sweeping as badly and slowly as the minimum the manager accepts.

Hell, given that there is a social safety net, and you'll have costs to do the job (food, public transport, ...) you're probably even better off doing worse than that, and getting fired when the manager is "tired of your shit" or whatever.

Then you'll get unemployment, which is slightly less, but you can invest the time in cooking at home, and you'll eat better and have more money left over.
by surgical_fire | 2026-01-10 14:09:15+00:00
> That isn't what sourcing a claim means

Absolutely is. Those are examples of serious, deadly, infectious plagues that were either eradicated or seriously contained by vaccines.

> but I don't care about smallpox, polio, measles or mumps and I'm not talking about them.

I know you don't care about evidence. You care about vibes. Vaccines are icky, governments are authoritarian, you want to live in your fairy-tale self-serving world and society be damned.

I was replying to you not under any fantasy that I would convince you otherwise. I understood pretty well from the outset what sort of rhetoric you were on about.

I replied so it was made clear for others what exactly is being discussed here.

> But if it is necessary to put up with measles

It is. I am extremely grateful that the advances in medicine in the past couple of centuries allowed me to live without having to worry about serious plagues such as measles.

Either way, you didn't disappoint me. Have a great weekend.
by hereonout2 | 2026-01-10 14:10:32+00:00
That's actually about the same price as the pi 500+ without the screen. Except that one has 500gb Vs 256gb SSD, but doesn't have the snazzy led keyboard.

Processor comparison too

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-raspberry_pi_5_b_b...
by joshcsimmons | 2026-01-10 14:10:33+00:00
This is directionally correct but methodologically flawed.

The US requires 5-10 more vaccines for children by 5 years old than Japan does. Japan also has a much more spaced out schedule over those 5 years.

Given that the American health machine is largely driven by pharmaceutical companies, it seems likely that there is some fat that can be trimmed. Did they trim it here? Who knows.