MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by firasd | 2026-01-05 12:41:34+00:00
Well I do have a chat log somewhere where I say potential energy seems like a fake concept and GPT and/or Gemini got around to explaining that it can actually be expressed in equations reliably.. does that count?

"called you out for lacking substance, credibility, authority, research, due dilligence or similar" seems like level of emotional angst that LLMs don't usually tend to show

Actually amusingly enough the Gemini/Verhoeven example in my doc is an example where the AIs seem to have a memorably strong opinion
by flumpcakes | 2026-01-05 12:41:47+00:00
It seems like Apple's hardware design is universally loved with much acclaim, why is their software getting progressively worse?

It's not Microsoft-add-all-the-bloatware-and-adverts-we-can worse, but it's 20-year-old-operating-systems-were-better-designed worse.

We're getting to a point where I think Linux windowing systems like KDE are better designed. And it seems that all they had to do was not change much over the span of a few decades.

Or am I out of touch? It feels like I could use a computer better back when XP was the mainstay.
by aylmao | 2026-01-05 12:42:00+00:00
> Apple could release a new system with zero UI updates and tons of internal improvements and people would call it 'old' and 'dated' and 'lack of innovation'.

Apple has released incremental upgrades to macOS for years, and I've never heard this criticism of them. On the contrary, I ofter hear people missing Leopard design, and when UI has changed I've heard pushback (ie, when System Settings was renamed and redesigned). On macOS people care about the apps and interactions, not wether the buttons got a new look.

> There's been reports that new emojis are one of the drivers for getting people to upgrade. No one cares about a zero day security flaw, but that new kiss emoji everyone wants.

I agree with this. New emojis are new functionality; you can now express something you couldn't. A zero day security flaw brings no new functionality. Equally, updates to to apps and interactions bring new functionality. A re-skin of the OS doesn't.
by sipofwater | 2026-01-05 12:42:03+00:00
"Why 2026 Will Be the Year of Leo" "AI, electoral politics, and spiritual renewal in America are other themes set to shape the year ahead.": https://www.ncregister.com/news/new-pope-why-2026-will-be-th... (www.ncregister.com/news/new-pope-why-2026-will-be-the-year-of-leo), https://archive.ph/EAGVx
by TheAceOfHearts | 2026-01-05 12:42:28+00:00
Looking at the old Microsoft menu gave me a pang of nostalgia for what we lost. It was so clear and readable. The icons were clearly colored and so easy to understand.

I think the key issue with macOS is that they don't seem to have someone who is looking at the whole ecosystem holistically to make sure that there's consistency and integration across experiences. You probably have development silos for different applications and they don't really integrate with each other. There should really be a role like Integration Emperor that exists outside of the traditional corporate hierarchy who can go to different teams to push for increased consistency.
by anhner | 2026-01-05 12:42:38+00:00
I appreciate the reply.

> If upvoting doesn’t require justification neither should downvoting.

I disagree, since downvoting is not equal to upvoting. First off, not everyone has the ability downvote (at least on hackernews). Second, upvoting usually means you agree with something, while not agreeing should be reserved to the action of NOT upvoting. This is how most social media works. Downvoting should be reserved for something that should not belong on the thread.

Regarding the topic of the discussion, I agree that "builders" should be proactive and knowledgeable about the system that they are building, but the "chief architect"/project manager should be the intermediary between them and the clients, if for nothing other than being a single source of truth.
by raxxorraxor | 2026-01-05 12:43:19+00:00
I will miss it but you are right about moderation. I don't know what the issue is on some platforms, reddit and SO come to mind. Moderators on many other platforms or forums seem to be alright and keep a clear head, even when they have to deal with a lot of vitriol and they get little thanks for their work.

There are probably negative examples as well but some platforms seem to be especially vulnerable. If I had to run reddit or SO, I would limit moderation to one subreddit/subdomain. No idea if that would help, but the problem isn't exactly invisible.
by ajross | 2026-01-05 12:43:26+00:00
The irony here isn't so much that it's the minutiae of the menu design that's wrong, it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm. Nothing uses them anymore. Leave the mac for a moment and go to your windows device. Pull up Chrome. No menu. The file browser, nope. Not in the terminal either. VSCode still has one![1] But the office suite doesn't anymore[2]. And obviously, the proximate cause of that is that most interaction these days is with phones where horizontal text menus are a non-starter.

No one uses menus. So why so get so upset over the mac implementation of a dead paradigm? Because ironically the Macintosh bakes a "menu" into the screen space for you, and has since 1984. Giving up menus on a mac requires that you give up one of the things that make a mac a mac. And that's hard, for marketers even more so than designers. So it persists and festers.

But in the rest of the world, we walked away and never looked back. The icons aren't the problem here.

[1] "Big" apps for experts still get value out of putting their actions into tightly packed text. Photoshop too, etc... But these are increasingly the exception and not the rule, and even there the next generation of big tools (c.f. Cursor) don't have them.

[2] Even worse there, because the tab bar it does have actually looks like a menu but isn't.
by risyachka | 2026-01-05 12:43:40+00:00
>> but I reworked the code manually to 1/10 of the size proposed by Opus.

yeah it writes so much code its crazy - where it can be solved, like you mentioned, with 1/10th

I mean they are in the token business, so this is expected to continue as long as they possibly can as long as they are a bit better than competition.

This is what 99% of devs that praise Claude Code don't notice.
The real productivity gains are much lower than 10x.

Maybe they are like 2x tops.

The real gains is that you can be lazy now.

In reality most tasks you do with LLM (not talking about greenfield projects, those are vanity metrics) can be completed by human in mostly same time with 1/10th of code - but the catch here is you need to actually think and work instead of talking to chat or watching YouTube while prompt is running, which becomes 100x harder after you use LLM extensively for a week or so.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-05 12:44:02+00:00
That's just one that comes to mind. Anywhere that has positive ID would work. Which if we account for data brokers can potentially include anywhere you use a credit card. (Yes that will not be a perfect 1 to 1. Obviously that doesn't really matter in practice. LE is used to dealing with lots of noise.)

But suppose there's no hit. That's a hit in and of itself. Someone just needs to have the idea to have the software that ICE agents use flag anyone who fails all recognition methods (facial, gate, etc) because it means they haven't been through an airport, haven't crossed a border in a legal manner, don't have a passport, and don't show up with any of the data brokers.
by terribleperson | 2026-01-05 12:44:19+00:00
It's the perfect "I just want my 3d printer to be a tool" printer.
There are better options now, of course, but it's one of the best purchases I've ever made.

Much better than my Printrbot Metal Plus, which turned out to require all the tinkering of a budget printer at the price of a high-end printer.
by greenavocado | 2026-01-05 12:44:57+00:00
This specific point is addressed in a famous 1995 anti-technology essay by Ted Kaczynski.

Specifically paragraphs:

127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. ...

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. ...

129. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
by wbazant | 2026-01-05 12:45:45+00:00
Location: Glasgow, UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: within Scotland

Technologies: Python, Perl, Unix, Bash, Java, Nextflow, R, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Redux, AWS Lambda, Serverless, Apache Spark, Databricks, MLFlow, MariaDB, SQLite, Postgres, and more

Résumé/CV: https://wbazant.github.io/wojciech_bazant_cv.pdf

Email: wojciech.bazant@gmail.com

Github: https://github.com/wbazant/

I am a broadly skilled generalist senior developer, with focus on data engineering. I worked in life sciences, AI, and healthcare - last engagement was for a seed genomics unit of a big agritech company. Looking for ambitious work! Available for remote engagements with some travel, or a commute within Scottish central belt.
by gcanyon | 2026-01-05 12:46:24+00:00
I literally didn't notice that the snowflake icon turned it off:

1. I scrolled through the article getting more and more frustrated with the snow
2. I scrolled all the way back to the top and saw the snowflake icon
3. I clicked the snowflake, saw the hideous yellow, said WTF and clicked again to go back to blue
4. **I never noticed** that the snowflake *does* stop the snow, but *only* stops *new* snow, so the existing snow continues to fall across the screen
5. I clicked several other things, then came here to complain and saw this thread
by noduerme | 2026-01-05 12:46:34+00:00
Thanks for the great response. Honestly, TIL that 2^0 = 1. That was a new one for me and I'm not sure I understand it. I failed pre-Calculus, twice.

Visually I think I can understand the bitwise version now, from reading this. But it wouldn't work for 3 integers, would it?
by bluGill | 2026-01-05 12:46:44+00:00
C++ doesn't have a smart ponter for 'i will not need this for longer than something else' - shared pointer gets the overhead of reference counting. Rust makes borrows easy - taking and returning a unique_ptr is conceptually the same thing but the syntax makes it tedious. Borrows don't cover the case of I'll store it but whole program analisys would show I won't store it as long as the owner (i'm not a rust expert but I think my understanding is right here)

both languages don't have a good way to handle circular references should you need them (again my rust isn't strong but I think that is right). You are correct to say avoid that - but sometimes you need them.
by js98 | 2026-01-05 12:47:24+00:00
I tested ChatGPT Atlas as an alternative to writing a small scraper for collecting price distribution counts from Dubizzle (UAE Marketplace). It could extract correct numbers for a single filter, but consistently failed to repeat the same simple browsing steps across categories, hallucinating completion or stopping with vague time-constraint explanations. Curious if others have seen similar behavior with LLM-based browsing tools (or have had an alternative work for them)
by hnarn | 2026-01-05 12:48:27+00:00
This is the second time in just a few weeks I see a post from some UX person complaining about how some major tech company doesn't "understand" design while themselves having a design that is absolutely abysmal. What made this person think that having gigantic snowflakes flying down a page serving only text and images would be a good idea?

_edit_: I'd also like to point out that I know it can be disabled, the question(s) I then have are 1) why is it enabled by default 2) black text on yellow background is yet another obvious mistake
by aylmao | 2026-01-05 12:48:40+00:00
I don't work or have ever worked at Apple, so I don't know the full details, but I heard the new design wasn't introduced until very late in the development process, and at a point in time where teams are supposed to focus on polish, not redesigns or introducing new features.

So not only did teams have to rush incroporating this new design, they also didn't get time to think things through and polish. It sounds like they didn't have time to push-back either, and so there was no feedback/iteration loop where they could work out with whomever is in charge of wider system design what works and what doesn't on what apps.
by anhner | 2026-01-05 12:48:46+00:00
Absolutely agree, but in practice this means devs are expected to sit in meetings with clients multiple times a week just to make sure everyone is on the same page. This also means that either all the devs on the team are required to be present, wasting time, OR that devs meet with stakeholders individually and knowledge ends up decentralized.

And secondly, I think that devs are expected to know WHY "all frobs are percurators" instead of just knowing that they are. Besides keeping up to date with all the tech stack, you are now expected to keep up with all the business details of your client (client which might change in a year or two).
by hagbard_c | 2026-01-05 12:49:10+00:00
A hint to the site developer: add an option to purchase the Weather Control Pack Platinum Pro+ to get to choose your site weather any way you like. It would fity nicely next to that 'Personal Information' section. Who knows, someone might even 'purchase' it since that seems to the thing to do in the Cult of the Fruit.
by core2quad | 2026-01-05 12:49:19+00:00
Funnily enough, I find icons an improvement overall - even if those are inconsistent, it feels like it gives me more points to anchor my eyes on when skimming through an unknown menu and gives me any context.

Starting to use Mac ~3 years ago, I often encountered giant blocks of text in right-click menus and while pleasing aesthetically, those were a chore to actually parse. For someone who daily drives macOS for, I assume, multiple years more than me, it probably comes down to memorisation, and how it looks becomes more important (with Tahoe breaking habits), but I find the inconsistencies and icons something that actually helps me find my ground.

Granted, the execution leaves a lot to be improved, I won't argue against it. Tahoe in some places feels downright amateurish. Despite that, I'll still take what Tahoe added over no icons at all... I feel like color icons + using them more sparingly would certainly be better though.

I guess a justification for Tahoe icons on my end is - those help me navigate the UI despite all their shortcomings (and ugliness they bring in many places).
by xialeistudio | 2026-01-05 12:49:24+00:00
Hey HN! I built HIDConsole, a cross-platform HID device debugging tool.

What it does:
- Scan and connect to HID devices
- Real-time data monitoring with optional timestamps
- Send hex data with validation
- Configurable frame size

Tech stack:
- Frontend: React 19 + TypeScript + TailwindCSS
- Backend: Rust + Tauri 2 + hidapi
- Runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux

I built this because I needed a simple tool to debug HID devices and existing options were either too complex or not cross-platform. The UI is clean and focused on the core debugging workflow.

Repo: https://github.com/xialeistudio/HIDConsole

Would love to hear your feedback!
by thrance | 2026-01-05 12:49:52+00:00
I don't think this is a useful framework for understanding these issues. What you are saying can, in essense, boil down to "any law enforcement is bad". ICE and its inhumane practices are just symptoms of an increasingly authoritarian administration that receives sufficient mandate from the population to push for increasingly authoritarian practices. The tools are just that, tools. The situation will keep getting worse until the population gets sick of it enough to push the wannabe autocrats out of power (and not replace them by other wannabe autocrats), and have the new administration dismantle these tools. Easier said than done, I know.
by properbrew | 2026-01-05 12:51:12+00:00
The name rings a bell but I hadn't looked in a long while. The videobridge might be very useful when I look to expand from just 1-2-1 video calls, so thanks for the nudge in that direction.

I know it's stuff that's been done before, but it's fun seeing how this stuff works and fits together, along with the limitations you have within a browser environment.
by raxxorraxor | 2026-01-05 12:52:27+00:00
Sonnet does it as well, I use it to save credits, I honestly don't see much difference to Opus if you keep your problems/codebase/general context window small enough. In JavaScript land, known for its volatile ecosystem, it often uses constructors that don't exist anymore because of API changes. But a small lookup of the source is usually enough for it to correct the code immediately.
by MarkusWandel | 2026-01-05 12:52:31+00:00
This used to actually work, at least on some sites. The text would load first, then it would reformat as the fonts and CSS assets are loaded. Ugly and frustrating, which is probably why, now you don't get content until the eye candy is all ready.

But the progressive, text first loading, would be readable from the get go, even if further downloads stalled.
by packet_parser | 2026-01-05 12:52:49+00:00
Location: Germany
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Python, Ansible, Rust, BGP, MPLS/SR/TE, EVPN, ISIS, QoS, Docker & k8s, GitLab CI/CD
Résumé/CV: Via Email
Email: "hncontact", then the at symbol, followed by "pm.me"

19 YOE designing, testing, building, operating, and automating networks. From tiny three PoP mini ISP networks, to thousands of PoPs and tens of thousands of devices, and multi-continent global routing; I've worked on a wide range of networks. I attend and speak at conferences, engage in the IETF, and help to organise industry events. My spare time projects were in C, now I’m using Rust. I've most recently been working on network architecture, BGP analysis, and product development, but I love all areas of networking.
by miningape | 2026-01-05 12:53:34+00:00
But taking the time to investigate that, get it approved by legal, etc. all takes longer than just slapping a cookie banner component on it.

This is why people complain about the unclear and bureaucratic nature of these laws, it leads to an over complicated investigation and compliance isn't always simple - meaning the safest option is to comply at the highest level and degrade the user experience.
by Tsiklon | 2026-01-05 12:53:39+00:00
From reading the other comments this happened a while ago, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

This is rather annoying and short sighted of Microsoft. If anything this change is emblematic of the rot that exists in Microsoft currently.

Microsoft Office is one of the strongest recognised brands in technology, if you’ve used a windows PC at any point in the last 30 years you will know of Microsoft Office.

Not only that but the brand name is trusted; office and the applications therein are the standard for general purpose business work (as much as I’d prefer Libreoffice etc to gain market share)

Throwing that brand away in favour of an untrusted, unwanted, undesirable name seems headstrong and foolishly iconoclastic. Not only that but their implementation of the new name is just inelegant. Which further lends credence to the idea that Microsoft cannot name products

Skype for Business

Microsoft Windows App

Xbox One (and Xbox Series…)
by snowwrestler | 2026-01-05 12:53:42+00:00
I made this change as well. Specifically, I switched from heel strike to forefoot strike, AKA “landing on the ball of my foot.” I changed shoes to zero-drop (Altras) which makes this easier to do.

This sort of automatically limits how far in front of your hips you can land your foot. But then the next step is to change posture and “lean forward” so that it feels like you’re just barely catching yourself with each foot before falling on your face.

The goal is to have your foot land directly under you, then use your quads and glutes to push your foot backward, to create or maintain your forward momentum.
by zero_k | 2026-01-05 12:54:10+00:00
I worked at a company that wanted to implement an AI chatbot. I was helping to review the potential issues. On the first try I realised it was given full access to all past orders, for all customers via an API it could query in the background. So I could cajole it to look up other people's orders. It took less than 3 minutes of checking to figure this out.

Often engineers and especially non-technical people don't have the immediate thought of "let's see how I can exploit this" or if they do, they don't have the expertise to exploit it enough to see the issue(s). This is why companies have processes where all serious external changes need to go through a set of checks, in particular, by the IT security department. Yes, it's tedious and annoying, but it saves you from public blunders.

Such processes also make sure that the IT security department knows of the new feature, and can give guidance and help to the engineers about IT security issues related to the new feature. So if they get feedback about security issues from users they won't freak out and know who to contact for support. This way, things like accusing the reporter for "blackmailing" don't happen.

In general, this fiasco seems to show that Eurostar haven't integrated their IT security department into their processes. If there was trust and understanding among the engineers about what the IT department does, they would have (1) likely not released the tool with such issues and (2) would have known how to react when they got feedback from security researchers.
by dmantis | 2026-01-05 12:54:36+00:00
Tor and I2P is a better fit. Nostr is very weird. It sells itself as decentralized, but basically all frontends provide same several relays.

When those relays get subpoenas and remove your resource, you're done. You can use some unknown relays to publish, but who's gonna use them as clients outside of the defaults? It's effectively designed for shadowbans.
by 05 | 2026-01-05 12:55:33+00:00
> No highres 3d scan of your home being phoned back

You should look at a teardown of one of those sensors. It's a 1D lidar (if you can even call it that, until recently all of those were not ToF but more triangulation/reflection angle) being spun, no high res scans of anything can be achieved using that tech :)
by finnlab | 2026-01-05 12:56:19+00:00
I’ve always respected macOS for being the 'stable' choice for not-as-techy people. But recent versions feel like a mess. Running Tahoe on my 2019 Mac Pro (Yes the cheese grater one) has been surprisingly frustrating. Simple things are broken: Ableton couldn't even trigger a microphone permission prompt, forcing me to meddle with a SQLite database, which is definitely not meant for end users to touch, just to get it working.

Logitech’s software is stuck in a loop denying it has Bluetooth access (Which it has). And with the added graphical glitches (Apple likes to call them liquid glass) and weird window artifacts (For some reason, all my windows had a black, rectangular border one day), it’s honestly less reliable than my macOS-style Linux rice from 2015.

I've recently watched this talk by an ex-apple UI/UX engineer: https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ
I think what he's talking about is precisely what got lost at apple.
by postalcoder | 2026-01-05 12:56:33+00:00
This is an excellent article.

Apple has been rudderless on the interaction design front for over a decade now. The windowing mess is evidence of it. We now have Mission Control, Spaces, Stage Manager, and now tiled window control. None of those interaction metaphors have been expanded upon since their initial launch.

I'm a "mac guy". I understood why Apple initially eschewed windows style alt-tab, given the emphasis on app-centricism. But now, they've created a thousand different ways to switch windows without giving us a proper window switcher. There are apps that bring alt-tab to Mac, but those solutions are all bad.