MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AnimalMuppet | 2026-01-30 14:20:23+00:00
You know what this reminds me of? Language X comes out (e.g., Lisp or Haskell), and people try it, and it's this wonderful, magical experience, and something just "clicks", and they tell everyone how wonderful it is.

And other people try it - really sincerely try it - and they don't "get it". It doesn't work for them. And those who "get it" tell those who don't that they just need to really try it, and keep trying it until they get it. And some people never get it, and are told that they didn't try enough (and also it gets implied that they are stupid if they really can't get it).

But I think that at least part of it is in how peoples' brains work. People think in different ways. Some languages just work for some people, and really don't work very well for other people. If a language doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean either that it's a bad language or that you're stupid (or just haven't tried). It can just be a bad fit. And that's fine. Find a language that fits you better.

Well, I wonder if that applies to LLMs, and especially to LLMs doing coding. It's a tool. It has capabilities, and it has limitations. If it works for you, it can really work for you. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't, and that doesn't mean that it's a bad tool, or that you are stupid, or that you haven't tried. It can just be a bad fit for how you think or for what you're trying to do.
by tsimionescu | 2026-01-30 14:20:24+00:00
While the title is slightly biased, it's completely fair to analyze all of the public data a company provides about a very public problem (how safe their autonomous cars are), and show what the risks are. If Tesla wants us to believe their robotaxis are safe (which they implicitly do by putting these on public roads), it's entirely on them to publish data that supports that claim. If the data they themselves publish suggests that they are much worse than human drivers, then I want journalists to report on that.

It's also extremely implausible that Tesla has data that their cars are very safe, but choose to instead publish vague data that makes them seem much worse. It's for example much more likely that these 9 incidents reported are just the bad incidents that they think they won't be able to hide, rather than assuming these are all or mostly minor incidents like lightly bumping into a static object.
by onionisafruit | 2026-01-30 14:20:56+00:00
I’m having trouble with the football-field to acre conversion in this article. It talks about the complex being the size 12 football fields and the data center being 520 acres. I could believe it if those numbers were swapped and there was a 12 football field data center in a 520 acre complex. So I don’t know if they swapped the sizes of the complex and the actual data center or the author thinks football fields are much larger than they really are.
by Someone | 2026-01-30 14:20:59+00:00
EV trucks got a head start because we already have extensive electricity networks, though. That makes rolling out charging stations a lot easier than rolling out a hydrogen distribution network (the existing network to distribute gasoline will not work because it’s made for fluids, that of natural gas won’t work either because hydrogen molecules are so small, and the natural gas distribution network often doesn’t have the necessary density)

Because of that, EV trucks might be a local optimum.

Having said that, hydrogen is difficult to handle. To get reasonable power density, you have make it liquid, compress it, or do both. Purely liquid is impractical, given that it happens at 33K at normal room temperature, so you need pressure, lots of it.
by bell-cot | 2026-01-30 14:21:10+00:00
There are valid uses. McDonalds may not want Burger King to know they're planning to build a new location in Smallville, 'till they actually break ground, or vice versa. Don't blabber to everyone that the City wants to expand a park, so neighboring property owners will know to demand top dollar. Etc.

But yeah - honest uses are pretty limited. Which limits we can hope will be tightly enforced by new legislation.
by calgoo | 2026-01-30 14:21:45+00:00
I would not worry too much about the mod community! They are the one persistant group of people who will hack the software to their liking. Yes you can't play full FiveM GTA V right now, but it will get there eventually. There is nothing technical that is limiting the mods from working on Proton, just time from some annoyed mod dev that has had enough with windows, and it will be migrated over.
by phailhaus | 2026-01-30 14:21:51+00:00
And then the rivulets disappear or change completely because you looked away. The reason this is a dead end is because computationally, there is absolutely no way for the model to keep track of everything that it decided. Everything is kept "in its head" rather than persisted. So what you get is a dream world, useless for training world models. It's great for prototyping, terrible for anything more durable.
by wlesieutre | 2026-01-30 14:23:22+00:00
They don't care about it as an abstract idea, but they do notice that Windows 11 is worse than Windows 10 was worse than Windows 8 was worse than Windows 7.

I'm not saying there have been zero useful improvements in later Windows releases, but 7 looked good and did what you told it to. "Openness" is a very abstract idea but "Only does what you tell it to" is a selling point for Linux.

You know it's not going to upload all your documents to OneDrive and then erase them from the computer.
by matsemann | 2026-01-30 14:23:51+00:00
Unfortunately we're here selling ourselves too cheap. Municipalities gets blinded by big tech asking for cheap electricity and land and give them all they want, thinking it will lead to massive activity, affluent jobs etc. But after everything is built, there's a few janitors left and it's all controlled from abroad. But now the citizens pay more for their electricity, and have to build new water facilities to deal with the water usage from the centers.
by adregan | 2026-01-30 14:24:01+00:00
For pines, not great. Timber farming was so heavily encourage for so many years that there is a glut and prices have stayed about the same in real dollars for decades.

Solar panel leases are so long (50 years on top of the decade to interconnect), so they come with additional negatives as you are often signing up the next generation for a relationship that they had no say in.
by jaffee | 2026-01-30 14:24:10+00:00
Internet -> Obvious value, more efficient communication, knowledge sharing, transactions etc.

AI -> Value is very obvious to me as a developer.

Blockchain -> ? What is the actual value? Something about decentralized finance and not having to trust anyone? And the tradeoff is every transaction costs $10 or more. It was always a dubious proposition with its "value" driven by speculative investment which fueled the hype machine.

Yeah there are parallels in that in all cases people got really excited about something tech and poured a bunch of money in, but the outcomes and actual amount of value derived can be wildly different.
by timmg | 2026-01-30 14:24:16+00:00
I find it strange how data centers are getting (sorta) vilified. I keep hearing stories on NPR that are kinda subtle fear-mongering.

Like data centers are probably the least bad thing to build nearby. They take in power and produce computer. No pollution, no traffic, no chemicals or potential explosions.

They do take power. But, like, we know how to generate electricity. And solar is getting really cheap.
by mothballed | 2026-01-30 14:24:20+00:00
Why would they find it inappropriate? It's fun for them and they're guaranteed to get away with it. All the opposition does is vote harder and ask nicely that the state not do it again.

Worst case, someone sues and it's paid by OPM. But having been the subject of brutality by CBP, I can tell you it's almost impossible to find a lawyer (all the ones I talked to had already tried and lost so many times they wouldn't take a case, though maybe you have better luck now since immigration law is in vogue) and if you do your chances of overcoming supremacy clause and immunities are next to nill. (Lady in a more egregious case but otherwise similar facts to mine, was raped via hand because the argument was there was drugs up there -- she lost even though there weren't any).

The reason why Trump chose ICE/CBP as his gestapo is precisely because they have excellent overlap of both being largely carved out from constitutional protections via both precedent and their situation as an executive nominally border facing police and the fact they answer to POTUS and can function as an army without running afoul of posse comitatus. Trump simply called checkmate on the populace by taking advantage of 100+ years of precedent, law, and jurisprudence that perfectly teed up the opportunity.
by littlestymaar | 2026-01-30 14:24:39+00:00
I keep hearing about the low price of panels but where do you find the panels that cheap?

I'm asking because my uncle has a business of selling and installing swimming pools, he has the electrician working for him and it contemplated the possibility of installing solar panels for his customers (the more sun, the higher electricity consumption in the swimming pool because you need to filter out algaes before they bloom, so it's a perfect match and he has to do the wiring anyway) and the main reason why he abandoned the idea was the cost of the panels themselves.

I feel there's a huge disconnect between the talk about technology and real life. It's like when people keep talking about how battery cost have plummeted in recent years and how they now dirt cheap, yet when you want to buy one, electric cars are not cheaper than 4 years ago.
by techblueberry | 2026-01-30 14:24:58+00:00
Yeah in a lot of ways, my assertion is that @
“Code is cheap” actually means the opposite of what everyone thinks it does. Software Engineer is even more about the practices we’ve been developing over the past 20 or so years, not less

Like Linus’ observation still stands. Show me that the code you provided does exactly what you think it should. It’s easy to prompt a few lines into an LLM, it’s another thing to know exactly the way to safely and effectively change low level code.

Liz Fong-Jones told a story on LinkedIn about this at HoneyComb, she got called out for dropping a bad set of PR’s in a repo, because she didn’t really think about the way the change was presented.
by js2 | 2026-01-30 14:24:59+00:00
I also use a pressure cooker (instant pot) but it doesn't take nearly that long. 3 minutes on high, rest for 10 minutes, vent. I also use 1:3 oats:water and add a splash of half and half when I serve it. I'll usually do a batch of 1 cup oats, 3 cups water, two cut up apples, and a lot of cinnamon. That's four servings and I reheat the leftovers in a microwave with some additional water. I also like to add walnuts when I serve.
by themoose8 | 2026-01-30 14:25:16+00:00
Indeed, they're not AGI. They're basically autocomplete on steroids.

They're very useful, but as we all know - they're far from infallible.

We're probably plateauing on the improvement of the core GPT technology. For these models and APIs to improve, it's things like Skills that need to be worked on and improved, to reduce those mistakes that it makes and produce better output.

So it's pretty disappointing to see that the 'Skills' feature set as implemented, as great of a concept as it is, is pretty bogus compared to just front loading the AGENTS.md file. This is not obvious and valuable to know.
by jameszol | 2026-01-30 14:25:22+00:00
I’m not a lawyer but trademark isn’t just searching TESS right? It’s overly broad but the question I ask myself when naming projects (all small / inconsequential in the general business sense but meaningful to me and my teams) is: will the general public confuse my name with a similar company name in a direct or tangentially related industry or niche? If yes, try a different name… or weigh the risks of having a legal expense later and go for it if worth the risk.

In this instance, I wonder if the general public know OpenAI and might think anything ai related with “Open” in the name is part of the same company? And is OpenAI protecting its name?

There’s a lot more to trademark law, too. There’s first use in commerce, words that can’t be marked for many reasons… and more that I’ll never really understand.

Regardless the name, I am looking forward to testing this on cloudflare! I’m a fan of the project!
by reenorap | 2026-01-30 14:26:05+00:00
I have type 2 diabetes. Blood sugar levels are a concern for me. I switched medications to one that was equally benign and got my blood sugar levels decreased along with my blood pressure. I don’t know why you assume that the medication I switched to might have higher or worse side effects. That wasn’t a choice I had to make given the options I was presented with.
by threetonesun | 2026-01-30 14:26:08+00:00
I guess it's an answer to the obviously absurd idea that 98% of data centers be in Northern Virginia.

My less snarky answer is -- we've always had data centers all over the place? When I started in web dev we deployed to boxes running in a facility down the street. That sort of construction probably dropped considerably when everyone went to "the cloud".
by vlovich123 | 2026-01-30 14:26:36+00:00
It’s a stupid take IMHO because it’s not an either thing in politics. But yes, even EVs are noisy because there’s road noise from the tires which is the dominant noise on highways and can be substantial when lots of cars even at street speeds if there’s a lot of cars. And the wheel’s generate a lot of fine invisible particulate pollution in the air too.

Plus there’s the “whoo” sound they all play when reversing ;)
by patrickmay | 2026-01-30 14:26:38+00:00
> Takes like this seem to just have a completely different understanding of what "software development" even means than I do, and I'm not sure how to reconcile it.

You're absolutely right about coding being less than 20% of the overall effort. In my experience, 10% is closer to the median. This will get reconciled as companies apply LLMs and track the ROI. Over a single year the argument can be made that "We're still learning how to leverage it." Over multiple years the 100x increase in productivity claims will be busted.

We're still on the upslope of Gartner's hype cycle. I'm curious to see how rapidly we descend into the Trough of Disillusionment.
by sorenjan | 2026-01-30 14:26:48+00:00
There are other affluent countries that doesn't do nearly as well, so there's more to it than that.

> Qatar’s EV Market reported an impressive surge, with YTD sales up to September up by 119.6%. However, it remains under 2% of total light vehicle sales, with demand still lagging behind. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to scale up EV adoption in the future, establishing the goal to reach an EV share of 10 percent of domestic sales by 2030

https://www.focus2move.com/qatari-new-vehicles/

> In 2024, electric or plug-in hybrid cars made up 28% of new registrations in Switzerland (compared with 30% in 2023). This was the first setback for such vehicles after steady growth since 2015.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-solutions/electric-car-...
by pjmlp | 2026-01-30 14:26:57+00:00
There is nothing to save as long as it relies on game studios using Windows workstations, coding in Visual Studio and targeting DirectX.

The goal has to be to make native Linux attractive, so that they actually bother to create native executables, using Vulkan and co.

Until then it is no different from playing arcade games with MAME on Linux.
by ericmay | 2026-01-30 14:26:59+00:00
> As someone living in Europe: I don't trust the USA would, that's the reality now, there were ties spanning decades which I thought would take a lot more effort from any US administration to break but alas, it's been broken, I simply do not trust any of that right now. The US definitely wouldn't come to the defence of the Baltics which would be the frontline of any start of Russian aggression towards the EU.

Feel free to read more about literal US troops deployed on the frontline in the Baltics, and in Eastern Europe: https://www.cfr.org/articles/where-are-us-forces-deployed-eu...

> Sorry to say but this is not the reality anymore.

Factually incorrect.

> The US admin is cozying up with many far-right groups in Europe as well, given that China hasn't directly threatened to annex any territory from European countries we can see how between US vs China, China is becoming the more reliable partner. It's a quantifiable measure, they are predictable, it's easier to deal with.

Ok so if the US is cozying up with many far-right groups in Europe as well, that means the US and China are operating the same. Ok that's neutral.

The US has threatened to annex Greenland, which, let's be honest was most likely an extremely poor, stupid, and bombastic negotiating tactic as the island is effectively undefended and if the EU is going to own it they need to increase defense spending there to levels that are satisfactory to the United States.

And while I disagree completely with the Trump admin's approach, getting really angry about that one thing, and then all of sudden pretending that is somehow worse than the Chinese helping Russia physically attack Ukraine is beyond bizarre to me. But maybe that's kind of the point - EU doesn't actually care much about Ukraine.

> How exactly is China threatening the USA?

Are you really not aware of the geopolitical confrontation between China and the United States, or are you being facetious?

> Maybe you should do good deals with Russia if that's how you think, you're displaying exactly the reason why we in Europe don't really feel keen on dealing with the USA anymore.

You're displaying the exact reason why folks in the USA have stopped caring about Europe.
Show HN: I Put Mail on the Internet
by pruetj | 2026-01-30 14:27:23+00:00
I didn't actually put mail on the internet... but I did find it to be either really painful or really expensive as it exists today. There's no need for either of those things if you just want to simply send a physical, paper letter from your computer.

Why would you send a letter in today's age? A few use cases:

- You can be completely anonymous. ex: You have a neighbor who puts trash on the curb 3 days early... they need to know)

- You might have to and its a PITA if it's something you otherwise never do because you need paper, stamp, printer, ink, envelope, mailbox ex: legal, banking, government, etc.

- Lodge a complaint or make a request. This one has been fun for me. I've written Michael Dell asking him to support his alma mater and provide additional NIL money for the Texas Longhorns. I've also written a random developer at Apple stating how horrific iOS 26 has been. Make your voice heard!

https://mappymail.com is meant to be simple, cheap, and as private as you'd like.

- Simple: Start typing an address or just drop a pin.

- Cheap: You can get a single page letter out for $1.55.

- Private: You don't need to have an account, provide a return address, sender name, or even give an email if you don't want to. Once your letter is sent, we remove the blob from our server.

Would love to hear any feedback or answer questions!
by Revolution1120 | 2026-01-30 14:27:46+00:00
1. You won't know the detailed plans or goals of China's top leaders; nobody knows, not even the mouthpieces within the Chinese system. 2. There's a significant chance the US will intervene militarily in Taiwan, while Europe is highly unlikely to do so, as it hasn't even taken significant action in the Russia-Ukraine war. Japan, however, is very likely not to stand idly by. 3. Public opinion in Taiwan is already predominantly pro-independence, and a large portion of the remaining non-independence supporters are simply afraid of war.
Europeans (at least European media or commentators) are very unreliable; when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Europeans actually thought, "Wow, so there can be war in Europe too." Why would Europe be immune to war? There's no reason why Europe should be guaranteed to avoid war. If there is, then that reason is a "compensatory" one, using compromise with other evils to avoid war.
by carefulfungi | 2026-01-30 14:27:51+00:00
I personally think that mass deportation is a foolish policy. I also accept that it can be done legally. However, the current actions clearly exceed legal boundaries.

1. ICE claims the power to enter homes with out a warrant. And has done so: https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2026/01/judge-orders-release-....

2. ICE / DHS are shooting protesters. This is not a legal response to a protest.

3. ICE is ignoring court orders at an unbelievable rate: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

4. The administration is openly slandering citizens - claiming they are terrorists without evidence.

5. ICE is conducting mass surveillance of citizens and non-citizens alike.

There are certainly liberals who broadly oppose deportation and who would protest any mass deportation project. However, there, I believe, a lot of us who would grudgingly accept as foolish-but-legal a deportation program that followed the law. What is broadly - across all political stripes - despised is this despotic overreach. And that's what driving people into the streets.
by basket_horse | 2026-01-30 14:28:06+00:00
> If I were wrong, the whole charade would have been shut down after LLMs convinced people to kill themselves.

I hate this argument, and every time I see it in the news it feels like propaganda to me. Everything has risk. People have been committing suicide off google searches for years. There are thousands of fatal car crashes a year. Does that mean we should just abandon progress and innovation? Seems like a fragile argument made by people who dislike LLMs for other reasons
by 1dom | 2026-01-30 14:28:19+00:00
> Crypto only looked like it solved friction in places with messed up banking.

AI only solved friction in places work messed up, like giving developers enough time to program stuff.

> To people in the EU/UK who had free faster payments before Bitcoin was a thing, it never looked like an improvement at all.

To tech companies who were already content with their development team's velocity, AI never looked like an improvement at all.

> The solution expensive and slow banking was always political, not technical.

The solution to developers not coding fast enough was always political, not technical.

> Crypto was purely speculative, because it was never solving real problems.

AI was purely speculative, because it was never solving any problems. (Sorry, I have to point out here you said higher up a bunch of problems that Crypto was solving, and now you're saying how it was also speculative, which is the parallel between crypto that you were trying to argue against).

> I'm not speculating about problems being solved, I'm out there solving real problems. No-one in "blockchain" ever got to say the same. It was always a promise of things being better. And for many people, things already were better than what was being promised.

Again, either you're right above when you said crypto solved problems where banking was bad, or you're right here where you're saying blockchain never solved anything.

You're going round in circles trying to find a way that AI isn't like crypto whilst giving more examples of how AI is like crypto.

Remittance, micropayments, unbanked people, unstable economies: all of these did, can and do have problems solved by blockchain.
by sailfast | 2026-01-30 14:28:21+00:00
I wouldn’t overthink the SpaceX / xAI thing. Seems to me it’s a pure financing play to blend two companies owned by the same guy that might look meh on their own to the market but have a compelling narrative about “future growth” together.

All so that the same guy who is already quite rich can continue to run his funny-up money roll-up machine, re-capitalize on a bunch of froth and leave other people holding the bag.