MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sangkwun | 2026-01-27 09:17:17+00:00
Interesting project. I've been exploring this space but eventually pivoted in a different direction.

Two main things worry me about the 'always-on' agent approach:

1. Security & Surface Area: Giving an LLM broad permissions (Email, Calendar, etc.) while it's also scraping arbitrary web content is a prompt injection nightmare. The attack surface is just too wide for production use.

2. Token Economics: Seeing reports of '$300 in 2 days' is a massive red flag. For recurring tasks, there has to be a smarter way than re-processing the entire state every time.

I built Daigest to approach this differently. Instead of an autonomous agent wandering around, it's 'document-centric.' You connect your trusted sources, set a heartbeat, and the AI only processes what's changed to update a structured document. It's less 'magical' than a full agent, but it's predictable, auditable, and won't bankrupt you.

For 'gather and summarize' workflows, a structured document often beats a chat-based agent.
by m_rpn | 2026-01-27 09:17:28+00:00
The author is an absolute and utter embarrassment for all the good academic professionals out there, and he is also literally admitting to defrauding his students of their precious money, which they thought was going to human-led instruction, he's also put all of his colleagues in an very dodgy position right now. It is preposterous that we are even arguing about it, it is the sign of how much AI-sloppiness is permeating our lives, it is crazy to think that you can be entitled to give years of work to a chatbot without even caring and then write an article like this "uh oh, ai eat my homework".
by onli | 2026-01-27 09:17:47+00:00
Good commentary, good video. She is a little bit too harsh about the data loss though. The author did not realize that disabling data sharing would delete the history of the already occurred interactions, probably not realizing that everything was stored on an external server. And it's quite possible there was no proper warning about that.

I feel that makes her point weaker. Because she is apart from that completely right: The work practice admitted to here is horrible. It likely includes leaking private emails to an US company and in every case meant the job of teaching and publishing wasn't don't properly, not even close.
by docdeek | 2026-01-27 09:18:27+00:00
It is one thing to ban something on paper, another to actually ban it in practice. In France, mobile phones for students in college (junior high school) have been banned but surveys of schools suggested only 9% of the schools actually banned the phones, citing practical and financial constraints. [0]

0: https://www.ouest-france.fr/education/les-telephones-bientot...
by happymellon | 2026-01-27 09:18:46+00:00
The problem here is that you are cherry picking examples of successful technology.

The inverse would be to list off Theranos, Google Stadia, and other failed tech and claim that people said that there was massive steps that subsequently didn't materialise. In fact a lot of times it was mostly fabricated by people with stuff to gain from ripping off VCs.

Look at how bad it is with Microsoft in Windows despite their "all in on AI".

Ultimately no one really knows how it will pan out, and if we will end up with Enron or an Apple. Or even if it's a combination of a successful tech that ultimately is mishandled by corporations and fails, or a limited tech that regardless captures the imagination through pop culture and takes over.
by munksbeer | 2026-01-27 09:18:56+00:00
When they block adult content behind age gates, children still view adult content, via VPN or via websites that have no interest in complying with the UK but may well have worse motivations to access children's data.

Age gating legitimate VPN or VPS will result in the same thing. Children will end up using less safe services to view what they want to view.

When my children are old enough, if we're still in the UK, I will be providing them with enough education to avoid ill intentioned sites, and will also provide them with a private VPN.

We learn nothing from history.
by ezst | 2026-01-27 09:18:59+00:00
I tend to use strawberry these days, as an amarok convert from back in the kde3 days. My "workflow" is to go fish for the stuff that I'm in the mood to listen to in the moment, using the collection tree view, dragging and dropping mostly whole albums in a (new) playlist, then fine-tuning with the queue (generally hand picking 3-5 tracks I want to start with and then placing the marker on top of a whole album or something like that).

I like the ability to build playlists with tracks from different sources, including subsonic-compatible servers (my "staging area" for new music is my local drive, and that then goes to a remote navidrome server once "curated").

Over time, I end up with a dozen "topical" playlists, and here again, strawberry is pretty good at keeping things approachable and high-level.

I also like that the grid control intro which the tracks are listed is so configurable.

I like moodbars <3
by jasonvorhe | 2026-01-27 09:20:32+00:00
I was hoping to read a post about some tiny LLM running in the browser to do live adblocking.

Once I see the first ad in an LLM I'm paying for, I'll stop using it and cancel my subscription. It's that easy. If that means I'll be missing out on some fancy new model or if that rules out an entire vendor because they trained all of their models with ad-injection, so be it. Of course I can't trust anything from any model, this will distort the relationship between my

My browser is at least somewhat neutral and since it's a client connecting to various systems outside of my control, applying some client-side filtering to get rid of the nonsense some entities push into my direction, is basically just self defense I'll have to live with.

But once I'm fighting a dedicated service provider that owns the client and is intent on selling my eyeballs, I'm not gonna spend a minute trying to cleanup whatever they're sending in my direction. There's 0% chance any of it is still trustworthy.
by Someone | 2026-01-27 09:21:06+00:00
> he had a vo2max of 30, that probably means he can’t run a mile in less than 12 minutes or so. He’s probably not at all healthy…

Health and fitness correlate but are different things. VO2max is more about fitness than about health.

Also, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max#Reference_values, 30 is about average for men in their 40s/50s, which, form a quick google, I estimate is the author’s age range.
by belorn | 2026-01-27 09:21:14+00:00
TV the broadcast station was held responsible for the content they distributed and if they failed too much they would loose their access to the radio spectrum and unambiguous stop to exist.

The rules online is different. Not only are they not responsible for the content they distribute, but when they do break the law anyway the only punishment that they get is a small fine.

Around 30% of facebook advertisements are scams. That would not had worked with TV stations of old.
by m_rpn | 2026-01-27 09:21:17+00:00
The shame is not that much that he was so imbecile to not have appropriate backups, it is that he is basically defrauding his students, his colleagues, and the academic community by nonchalantly admitting that a big portion of his work was ai-based. Did his students consent to have their homework and exams fed to ai? Are his colleagues happy to know that probably most of the data in their co-authored studies where probably spat out by ai? Do you people understand the situation?
by terespuwash | 2026-01-27 09:21:25+00:00
My comparison is about the alarmism and you are doing the same by equivaliting chatting with friends online to smoking which can give cancer.

We are ourselves now on a sort of social media platform which shows it’s possible to be responsible and use it wisely with a better design and more rules. Framing the decision in France like a fight against a nocive substance is lazy and avoid talking about nuanced regulation and digital literacy which are more effective approaches. There are studies showing that regulating adolescent social media use is better than a ban for example.
by hdjrudni | 2026-01-27 09:21:45+00:00
Yes, but I don't know how effective it is. 99% of the time someone leaves a 'nit' the other person fixes it. So we're still dealing with most of them like regular comments. Only once or twice I've been like "nah, I like my way better" but I can only do that if they also leave an LGTM. Sometimes they do. There's one or two people that will hold your code hostage until you reply to every little nit. At that point they don't feel like nits. I always LGTM if the code is functionally correct or if the build breaks in a trivial way (that would also block them from submitting). Then they can address my nits or submit anyway and I'm cool with that.
by sfn42 | 2026-01-27 09:22:19+00:00
To add to this, here's a piece of anecdotal evidence. I've watched a lot of traffic accident videos in my life, and in the vast majority of the videos including two vehicles, both drivers are at fault.

They may not be legally at fault, I don't really worry too much about that, but by my judgement they could have avoided the accident by paying attention or driving slower or driving less aggressively etc.

Same goes for pedestrians by the way. The absolute vast majority of pedestrians who get hit by cars could have avoided it by paying attention and taking some responsibility for their own safety.
by bandrami | 2026-01-27 09:22:22+00:00
> But in 2026 in the US only Waymo has highly autonomous driving systems, in only a few markets

10 years ago I predicted that the uptake of autonomous vehicles would be slow but that it would be because of labor protections. While those have had some impact, that isn't really the issue: it's that the cars just don't quite work well enough yet and that last ~20% of function turns out to be both incredibly difficult and incredibly important.
by zbengrac2 | 2026-01-27 09:22:29+00:00
The rise of “Local-First” AI agents has introduced a new, highly lucrative attack surface for cybercriminals. ClawdBot, a rapidly growing open-source personal AI assistant, shifts the locus of computation from the cloud to the user’s local filesystem.

While this offers privacy from big tech, it creates a “honey pot” for commodity malware. Our analysis confirms that ClawdBot stores sensitive “memories,” user profiles, and critical authentication tokens in plaintext Markdown and JSON files.
by grishka | 2026-01-27 09:22:53+00:00
Airport security never makes me feel safe. It makes me feel violated and anxious.

I haven't really flown before 9/11, but I have used the subway in my city daily both before and after they installed metal detectors and started randomly asking people to put their bags through a scanner. I'm deeply nostalgic for not having to deal with this utter bullshit.
by qalmakka | 2026-01-27 09:22:59+00:00
I for one still like the good old Cantata. It's still maintained by the community after the original dev bailed out, and it has good UX and lots of features. Feishin is also great but it's way heavier on RAM being basically a glorified website and all, so unless you have a reason to have Navidrome up and running it's overkill for most people
by heavyset_go | 2026-01-27 09:23:09+00:00
Some related information, I see a lot of talk about how people feel social media or phones affect young people, but little data or input from researchers who are not politicians or selling books.

From Nature[1]:

> Time spent on social media among the least influential factors in adolescent mental health

From the Atlantic[2] with citations in the article:

> The Panic Over Smartphones Doesn’t Help Teens,

> It may only make things worse.

> I am a developmental psychologist, and for the past 20 years, I have worked to identify how children develop mental illnesses. Since 2008, I have studied 10-to-15-year-olds using their mobile phones, with the goal of testing how a wide range of their daily experiences, including their digital-technology use, influences their mental health. My colleagues and I have repeatedly failed to find compelling support for the claim that digital-technology use is a major contributor to adolescent depression and other mental-health symptoms.

> Many other researchers have found the same. In fact, a recent study and a review of research on social media and depression concluded that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting adolescents’ mental health. The most influential factors include a family history of mental disorder; early exposure to adversity, such as violence and discrimination; and school- and family-related stressors, among others. At the end of last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report concluding, “Available research that links social media to health shows small effects and weak associations, which may be influenced by a combination of good and bad experiences. Contrary to the current cultural narrative that social media is universally harmful to adolescents, the reality is more complicated.”

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-023-00063-7

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/candi...
by duskdozer | 2026-01-27 09:23:10+00:00
As much as I want to dunk because it's an AI user, I do think it's really frustrating and bad design when actions don't clearly indicate they will make permanent deletions. I've been bitten by similar things before because the effects weren't obvious to me, in part because when I design things I automatically think to give a warning before doing things that may be unintuitive. Even if I do have backups, it's usually a big annoyance for me to restore, and I'd rather never need to.
by seec | 2026-01-27 09:23:30+00:00
From experience, I can assure you LibreOffice is no real equivalent to Office.
I can guarantee you that you will have people asking you about stuff that Office does just fine but isn't really possible in LibreOffice or is a major hassle.

I have been the one touting alternatives since I was very young and foolish (in particular advocating for the free Apple suite), but I have run into enough problems I couldn't solve that I don't bother anymore.

Microsoft is winning with Office because everyone else is more incompetent than them; it's simple as that.
If someone could come up with a true, cheaper competitor, everybody would switch, regardless of the file format arguments.
In fact, the generalized use of Google Suite for the simple stuff shows that it is the case. When people insist on Office, they generally have a good reason, and you should trust them.
by 4ggr0 | 2026-01-27 09:23:41+00:00
> Invest your money (e.g. world passive mutual fund, or VT ETF).

i despise stock markets, investments etc., so i just kind of have accepted that i'll probably never grow my money passively. from time to time i stumble across advice like yours, talking about ETFs, and feel a bit left out again.

money just sits in my bank account with close to 0% interest. i know that ETFs would slowly generate more money, but i also know that my money would then be invested in a ton of companies i absolutely don't want to be a part of, even when considering that my sums would be a drop in an ocean.
by nephihaha | 2026-01-27 09:24:11+00:00
I think the problem nowadays is that there are so many channels and so much space to fill. TV runs 24/7 now on hundreds of channels. In many cases, it isn't worth the while of a small channel to make an expensive programme as they would lose money.

Sometimes, the "wrong" programme is the hit. I know the History Channel started off with serious documentaries (some of them excellent quality) which not enough people watched. They then tried Nazis and Ancient Egypt, but it seems to be "Ancient Aliens" which is their biggest hit. Its version of history is questionable, to say the least.
by darcien | 2026-01-27 09:24:26+00:00
I also can recommend fooyin[0]. I really miss foobar2000 after switching away from Windows, and fooyin fills that hole in my heart.

Technically fooyin also builds on macOS, but it's not officially supported yet, there's some works here[1] and there[2].

[0]: https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin

[1]: https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin/pull/476

[2]: https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin/pull/579
by ezst | 2026-01-27 09:24:53+00:00
> MacOS however truly takes the cake. An OS that’s great for creative softwate, working with images, video, audio and so on

Funny since there was quite a thread here yesterday or the day before about Mac users regretting the dumbification of their software, using aperture as a striking example.

Don't read me wrong, I'm not saying that MacOS doesn't have great software, I just no longer trust Apple to pander to their users. A stable, open and progressive OS like Linux+KDE with "specialty" software on top seems like the most productive combo, I hope more software editors will consider that.
by munksbeer | 2026-01-27 09:24:58+00:00
People say this, and maybe it is true. But do you live in the same Britain as me? The majority of parents and older people want this. They are ignorant of how it all works and want the government to "do something". They support stuff like this.

It doesn't actually matter how flawed it is. All that matters to the government is votes. Always. Governments exist to buy votes, otherwise they're not governments. Any time you see a government action, you can be very sure they think it will buy them votes.
by b1temy | 2026-01-27 09:24:58+00:00
I'm surprised the author didn't list KDE's Elisa: https://apps.kde.org/elisa/ Especially since they referenced KDE when they voiced their wish for Strawberry to be more modernized to match the appearance of KDE's Plasma desktop.

I haven't used it for a while (I generally don't listen to music outside of my drive to work these days), but I remember it being a pleasant replacement for MusicBee when I first switched over to a Linux distro full-time, coming from Windows. The Elisa UI is nice too imo, though it's more of a "native UI" look compared to some of the others in the list, though which style is nicer is up to personal preference.

It may also be a plus to some that it is not using Electron , and uses Qt instead (Well, apparently it uses QML, so still kind-of using ECMAScript/Javascript. But only for the user interface, and not the main business logic.)
by aarroyoc | 2026-01-27 09:25:14+00:00
It is still GPL, it is still free software, the source code is there. Only the Windows and macOS binaries are behind a paywall, but you can build yourself the binaries, or use it on Linux. RedHat does this and is "an example of free software monetization", Strawberry does it "and it should no longer be called free software".
by Gym-Berlin | 2026-01-27 09:26:06+00:00
A silent confrontation is unfolding behind palace walls and diplomatic smiles — a struggle that could redraw the balance of power from Washington to Riyadh. As the United States recalibrates its strategy on Iran, a deeper game emerges: pressure, succession, and the quiet resurrection of a prince once written off.
This is not just geopolitics.
This is a battle of leverage, loyalty, and legacy.
by ekr | 2026-01-27 09:26:42+00:00
Not when installed properly, i.e. on a level, compacted base. Where I live, in the Netherlands, a great portion of streets, driveways, sidewalks, bikepaths are from klinkers, or bricks. Very rarely do you see any indentations in them (mostly when there was some roadwork and a part of them removed and then reinstalled. The whole reinstalled section sinks a bit, probably because there workers were not careful and did not compact the substrate to the same degree).

Some of these klinker roads see heavy traffic and they're perfectly fine. It's also nice to see the automated machines they have for laying them.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-27 09:27:06+00:00
Berlin had a mix of modern scanners and old scanners last time I flew. I had one flight where they were using the modern scanners. And then a few weeks later I used a different security gate and I still had to remove everything from the bag. If you fly from there, the security at the far end of the terminal has the new machines and is usually also the fastest because people generally use the first security gate they see. Good tip if you are in a hurry. The last few times I was through in a few minutes.

At some airports, you can now check your own bag using a machine that weighs it and prints a sticker. Then you drop it on a belt yourself and you walk through security scanners; all without having to talk to anyone. And finally you board using your phone. Lots of automated checks. I've boarded a few times now without anyone bothering to look at an id now. It seems that with self check in the id check at the gate disappeared. And inside the Schengen zone, nobody checks ids at security either.
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-27 09:27:10+00:00
> note that PCA components are not interpretable

If PCA components are not interpretable, but deep artificially-axis-aligned trees are, I think maybe we should reconsider the definition of "interpretable". (see also: curve fitting via thousands of piecewise linear lerps) Then again, we're projecting six dimensions down to two; might be interesting to see if there is a separating plane when the others are taken into account...

Note also that Lagarde is inner party, just not upper class — so there's an axis skew there as well. (or is she? "You never know if she personally agrees with what she has been asked to pursue." is clearly middle class, but does it also smack of outer party?)

[how many hundred words was this story? and yet it took 7382 lines of html to convey?]

EDIT: upon re-reading "Theory and Practice" I think we can comfortably assign Lagarde to the Inner Party. Both Inner and Outer Parties (unlike sociopaths vs clueless) must rely on doublethink, and EG says belief in the Party dicta actually rises as one rises within it (unlike upper vs middle.

Then again, even if the initial difference between Inner and Outer is one of exam scores (for which we'd call CMOL inner), she has been an outsider (for l'américaine was not an ENArque), and the practical difference between Inner and Outer seems to be that the former propose and the latter dispose (for which she is clearly not the head but the hands).

lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MPtXUeUznY
by m_rpn | 2026-01-27 09:27:18+00:00
The issue is not backup, the issue is that he is publicly and nonchalantly admitting that most of his work for the past years was ai-based, which might or might not constitute fraud given his professional position. Imagine being a student paying thousands over thousands expecting an expert human led instruction just to get this, imagine being a fellow researcher and suddenly being in a situation of not being able to trust this guy's current and past work.

The worst thing is all the people looking at this behaviour as normal and totally acceptable, this is where ai-sloppiness is taking us guys. I hope it's just the ai bros talking in the comments, otherwise we are screwed.
by qrobit | 2026-01-27 09:27:27+00:00
I was surprised not to find cantata[1], another MPD graphical client, on the list. Used it for the past three years, despite it being unmaintained for quite some time now. The client is very featureful, allows downloading lyrics and covers automatically (TBF had many mismatches, like downloading some Gillette ad as an Eminem's album cover). Most important to me is the ability to listen do directories and not artists/albums, which cantata does perfectly. Recently nixpkgs replaced cantata with a fork[2], so cantata is kind of online again.

[1]: https://github.com/CDrummond/cantata

[2]: https://github.com/nullobsi/cantata