MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by yabones | 2026-01-08 13:53:26+00:00
If I'm remembering correctly, it's because the previous government set the price floor to the average natural gas price, artificially propping up their north sea oil & gas industry that's been noncompetitive for decades. Even though they can make cheap energy, consumers get screwed because of national security concerns.

Unfortunately I don't have a source, and would appreciate a UK national with better understanding than me to chime in :)
by yarekt | 2026-01-08 13:53:57+00:00
Since no-one mentioned the Cynefin framework yet: Notice that there's a little fold at the bottom centre of the diagram: Chaotic (unknowable unknowns, etc) things will always resolve themselves to simple states.

Fires will eventually burn out, the result will be simple to understand. Simply your business won't exist anymore.

There are more nuanced examples but I believe the above explains the principle.

The Key is to handle things early, before the most probable/default resolution, if its one you're not happy with.
by websiteapi | 2026-01-08 13:54:33+00:00
> South Korean TVs are cheap, too

more expensive than chinese

as for salaries - yes indeed they are up. not every chinese laborer is a slave obviously, but many are - not usually for electronics directly though, more often for the inputs of such (energy and what not).

i'm surprised there's contention about this - it's all over the news.
by perihelions | 2026-01-08 13:54:35+00:00
Primary source is:

https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/07/ice-officer-fatally... ("Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer")

https://web.archive.org/web/20260108053100/https://minnesota...

I've confirmed, with search engine caches, that this is the photo Reddit Trust & Safety intervened to remove from Reddit's front page, at the permalink here,

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1q6tclo/removed_by_re... ("[ Removed by Reddit ]" (1147 comments))

Thankfully, Silicon Valley does not (yet) have the power to remove stories from newspapers who self-host.
Show HN: Open-source iOS app for controlling your AWS DeepRacer
by chuckwolfe | 2026-01-08 13:54:41+00:00
Hey HN! I built an iOS app that gives you a better way to manually drive your AWS DeepRacer.

If you own a DeepRacer but aren't actively racing it anymore, the default web UI for manual control is pretty clunky. This app gives you a cleaner mobile interface with a live camera feed from the car, making it actually feel like driving an R/C car.
What it does:

Streams video from the DeepRacer's onboard camera to your iPhone
Simple touch controls for driving
Direct connection to your DeepRacer on your local network

Why I built it:
The DeepRacer is great for learning reinforcement learning, but with AWS ending official competitions and no local races in my area, mine was just sitting on a shelf. Since you can now pick up used DeepRacers on eBay for under $100, I figured others might want a better way to actually use them.

It's free and open source. The code isn't particularly novel, it's mostly gluing together the DeepRacer's existing APIs with a native iOS interface... but it works well and makes the car a lot more enjoyable to use casually.
Setup is straightforward: Connect to your DeepRacer's WiFi network, launch the app, and start driving.
The app currently supports single camera view (dual camera support is untested). If you've got a DeepRacer collecting dust, give it a try!

GitHub: https://github.com/charleswolfe/deepracer-teleoperation/
by rgoulter | 2026-01-08 13:54:46+00:00
I could see it in cases.

LLMs excel at tasks that are fresh. LLMs are wonderful at getting the first 80% of the way there. -- LLMs are phenomenally good for a first draft or so.

I've had worse experiences for getting LLMs / agents to refactor code. I would believe in many cases it could be quicker to just manually go through and make refinements compared to merely getting the LLM to keep trying.
by bhouston | 2026-01-08 13:54:58+00:00
Using cost per area metric for LCD panels when we stopped for the most part increasing resolution means you will find that the main driver of lower costs is the cost of glass.

Basically, we have been, since 2010, only spreading out the same number of pixels on larger areas of glass, so the number of pixel components per unit area has decreased.

I have tried to price out 8K TV/monitors and they are horribly expensive (also not supported on MacOS). Probably both because of the larger number of components and we haven’t yet achieved economies of scale.
by distances | 2026-01-08 13:55:29+00:00
Australia indeed has great coffee culture, I had no idea before visiting. On my holiday there I never had bad or mediocre coffee, which was a bit wild. Not once.

You can get great coffee in Europe of course, but you'll specifically have to go to a cafe that knows what they're doing, or the likelihood of a mediocre brew is high. Australians, I bet most of you don't realize how good you have it there.

Sorry for the off topic.
by everdrive | 2026-01-08 13:55:46+00:00
That's fairly interesting, and honestly lower than I would have thought. I really have no idea how long the average consumer holds onto a TV, but if we guess 3-5 years then we're at $120 - $200 subsidy per customer. And this is before you think about the maintenance of their advertising / tracking servers. (although maybe that is factored in?)

Yes, most consumers would buy a $250 TV rather than a seemingly-equivalent $450 TV, but another $200 just to not be tracked and advertised to is really a small lift. Kind of surprising that there aren't options for this in market if the numbers are really that tight. Compare a cheap Windows laptop to a macbook -- yes, they're not really equivalent from a technical standpoint but to a lot of consumers they may effectively be equivalent as the "device my kid needs for school." But the price differences there will be much greater. Perhaps as much as $500 or more.
by chrisvenum | 2026-01-08 13:56:08+00:00
As a dyslexic programmer, I often think about how I would never be able to do the job I do without syntax highlighting.

I don’t really know why it works so well for me, but I think it helps me skim and pattern match syntax much more easily without spending too much time reading every single word, which is exhausting for me.

Types and autocompletion in an IDE also help me massively reduce issues with spelling and ultimately free up my brain to think about the logic rather than stressing out about every single thing I type.

Really cool that some people don’t need it, but for me, I am grateful to those who have spent the time on great themes. Solarized Dark is a favourite of mine.
by rl3 | 2026-01-08 13:56:28+00:00
>You followed up a sweeping generalization with a sweeping generalization and a touch of bias.

As opposed to what, proving that GPs are highly trained, not inherently inferior to other types of physicians, and regularly conduct complex problem solving?

Heck, while I'm at it I may as well attempt to prove the sky is blue.

>I imagine the issue with problem solving more lays in the system doctors are stuck in and the complete lack of time they have to spend on patients.

Bingo.
by exabrial | 2026-01-08 13:56:41+00:00
Going to a probabilistic system for something that can/should be deterministic sets off a lot of red flags.

I’ve worked medical software packages, specifically a drug interaction checker for hospitals. The system cannot be written like a social media website… it has to fail by default, and only succeed when an exact correct solution was determined. This result must be repeatable given the same inputs. The consequence is people die.
by DrScientist | 2026-01-08 13:57:07+00:00
> Again, that is not speaking well of the acting government.

Being forced to leave in itself is not a bad sign - do people not flee the US to Mexico to avoid justice? Perhaps they were part of an old corrupt cabal running the country for their own benefit?

Or perhaps they had to leave because of dire economic circumstances largely caused by foreign sanctions rather than internal mismanagement?

Let's be clear I'm not a fan of the current governments in the countries I've listed, but then I'm not a fan of Trump either. In neither case does it justify military invention - I'm not advocating abducting Trump to free the America people from a leader who sends troops on to the streets in cities of his political opponents.... and openly ignores the constitution.

> But OTOH, there are many people again, does not matter if they went or stay... many people from that very country that are very happy with the intervention...

The whole point of democracy is you don't have people like you and me making arbitrary choices from afar based on hearsay - and if there isn't democracy - in my view it's still a democratic choice to decide whether the cost of a rebellion is worth the price. Outside countries shouldn't be making that choice for other people ( We decided that your son dying is a price worth paying for a change in political system ).

Note that doesn't mean you should stand for your values and be assertive - and driving very hard to ensure no military inbalances. However that's a long way from self-interested coups under pre-texts.

> WWII + Plan marshal was basically the same, wasn't it? And I'm pretty happy with the results and how everything played out...

Not sure it was that great - one of the results of WWII was a massive expansion of the soviet empire for example, and you could argue that the resulting settlements also led to decades of instability in the Balkans, Africa and the middle east - where wars are still being fought today as a result of the rather arbitrary carving up of the world post WWII.

Note in 1939 we didn't have much choice - WWII at that point was inevitable - the question is could policies in the decades before have avoided getting to that point - not whether the 1939 ( or 1941 in the US case ) decision was correct or not.
by arnsholt | 2026-01-08 13:57:17+00:00
For about two and a half years I worked on a Smalltalk system, written in a quite old Smalltalk, which gave me two idiosyncrasies editor-wise: I no longer care very much about syntax highlighting (though I don't really bother to turn it off), and I now prefer to use proportional fonts for my programming. The only syntax highlighting I missed in the Smalltalk was a fading out of comments (which would in fact have prevented a stupid issue similar to the comment thing shown in the OP).
by cons0le | 2026-01-08 13:57:28+00:00
Europeans are telling me right now that americans have a moral imperative to mount an armed insurrection against the government.

Which do you think is easier, insurgency or leaving twitter?

I didn't just protest against this.

I voted, ran mutual aid networks, donated, and canvassed for progressive candidates. And when that failed I canvassed for moderates that I didn't want. I went to churches and asked why they were pushing this garbage. My aunt and uncle were told they weren't welcome in their local church unless they voted for trump and disowned all family members that didn't. The church has a trump sign right on the front lawn. When I went to ask about that being illegal they looked at me like I had 3 heads. My aunt and uncle had to move cities.

My friend at the the no kings protest had police fire a beanbag into his eyesocket. He was in his second story apartment watching the protest from above, I was right next to him. We weren't even on the street and they fired right into his eye. He was forced to take a plea deal even though the cops had body cameras. The footage was never handed over, despite a FOIA request. He got no money. He already didn't have health insurance.

Its comes off as incredibly hollow when I hear europeans say "nobody tried to stop this" or "Its amazing how little resistance they've faced". We had millions of people protesting without a peep in the news.

I really don't want the hear talking about how we should use the 2nd amendment from people that can't even quit twitter.
by utopiah | 2026-01-08 13:57:32+00:00
How are they more keystrokes between one screen and N screens? Don't you have to switch windows regardless of their visibility? I mean if you copy then paste elsewhere you still the same number of key strokes, don't you? Maybe I'm missing something.

Regardless what I'm suggesting, and I believe OP too, is NOT to replace your setup with a mobile one, only that they can complement each other. Namely if you are on your way somewhere, you do not have to stop programming, you can still do it even though in a different way, so I do not believe comparing them helps. The point is not to convince somebody to go from their favorite setup to something they like less, rather to show other ways in which some parts of the process are still acceptable on the go. Nobody is suggesting to remove a screen or keyboard.
by alcasa | 2026-01-08 13:57:52+00:00
Having worked in rare disease diagnostics in a non-US country with good public healthcare, most patients had to fight their way to the correct speciality to get their diagnosis. Without the persistence of family/specific doctors, its not possible.

AI might provide the most scalable way to give this level of access/quality to a much wider range of people. If we integrate it well and provide easy ways for doctors to interface with this type of systems, it should be much more scalable, as verification should be faster.
by verelo | 2026-01-08 13:58:00+00:00
Claude opus is absurdly amazing. I now spent around $100-200 a day using it. Gemini and all the OpenAI models can’t me up right now.

Having said that, Google are killing it at the image editing right now. Makes me wonder if that’s because of some library of content and once Anthropocene acquires the same they’ll blow us away there too.
by helsinkiandrew | 2026-01-08 13:58:05+00:00
> "Resident experience is hurting as a result," said Jeff Holzmann, COO of RREAF Holdings, a Dallas-based real estate investment firm with over $5 billion in assets. "Instead of you calling your landlord to discuss a problem, you're calling a call center that gives you the runaround."

I'm not sure I understand the difference between "Wall Street" buying up all the property and real estate investment firms like RREAF doing the same, or come to that the guy down the street buying a few properties to rent out.

A small company or single investor can buy up a large percentage of local available property and be just as bad a landlord.
by troupo | 2026-01-08 13:58:11+00:00
According to https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/how-much-sugar-is-in-m...

Milk Sugar Content (per 8 oz. serving): 24 grams sugar (12 grams natural sugar, 12 grams added sugar)

According to https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-su...:

Adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day,
(roughly equivalent to 7 sugar cubes).

Children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g
of free sugars a day (6 sugar cubes).

So one small carton they have at school has 30% of an adult's daily intake of added sugar.
by mothballed | 2026-01-08 13:58:13+00:00
We are all cowards. A dozen people watched their friend murdered and all they did was shout 'murderers' and then back off from helping the corpse when instructed by the people in masks and unmarked cars claiming to be police.

I surely wouldn't have been braver, we all saw the consequences of even the meakest assertiveness. Those people are the bravest we have to offer, we are fucked.
by troad | 2026-01-08 13:58:26+00:00
This is spot on and has really reduced my willpower to post, tbh.

Like begets like. A glib and snarky comment gets an emotional response, leading to quick, emotional votes. A nuanced, thoughtful comment gets the reader to think, but that's rarely conducive to upvotes unless they were already in agreement.

Over time everyone is Pavlovian-conditioned by the dopamine hit of upvotes to stick with the glib and snarky comments.

The whole upvote system is just a slow-acting poison that inevitably destroys any online community. HN has fared better than most, thanks to great moderation, but it won't resist forever.
by websiteapi | 2026-01-08 13:58:28+00:00
cocoa is the main input for that and is subject to weather and crop failure, which - surprise - is why its' more expensive. however if you're talking about chocolate candies (not raw cocoa) it is indeed less expensive now adjusted for inflation. the problem is the quality of chocolate candies has reduced, so the equivalent chocolate bar is probably more expensive even though the similar one is cheaper.

ironically cocoa is a great example of my point though - it's not imported from china, so there isn't a huge cost reduction.
Show HN: PurchaseKit – In-app purchases for Rails and Hotwire Native
by joemasilotti | 2026-01-08 13:59:26+00:00
I built PurchaseKit to add in-app purchases to Hotwire Native apps without writing native code.

Adding subscriptions to a native app means learning StoreKit and Play Billing. Two platforms, two languages, two sets of documentation. Then you try to wire it all up to your Rails backend.

PurchaseKit gives you drop-in bridge components for iOS and Android. Your paywall stays in ERB. No Swift, no Kotlin.

It also normalizes Apple and Google webhooks into four events (created, updated, canceled, expired) so you don't have to deal with their different formats.

Works with the Pay gem or your own models.

Free for up to 10 paying customers, $99/mo after.

https://purchasekit.dev
by poemxo | 2026-01-08 13:59:54+00:00
I think economies of scale, while only mentioned in the penultimate paragraph in TFA, is an underrated factor. Whenever something looks like alien technology but is available for $200-300, I assume an economy of scale helped.

TFA goes into the industrial engineering efforts associated with LCD manufacturing, but I don't think those wins would have shown up without a huge market for TVs.
by bluGill | 2026-01-08 14:00:21+00:00
A quick search suggests that most headphones and hearing aids don't support it yet. This will be your greatest problem - nobody can use it. This seems like the future though so you should probably install it in your venue and get a few headphones that do support it to test it and to borrow to those who need help.

That few support it implies that there are likely going to be implementation/interoperability bugs for a few more years at least - nobody knows how bad these will be. Maybe things will just work, but growing pains should not be a surprise.

They claim latencies as low as 40ms - this is unacceptably long for a lot of music applications. For listening to the sermon at church good enough, but people may noticed if you are singing along. I'm not sure if this will be an issue, but it is something to consider. You might need a different system though.
by LatencyKills | 2026-01-08 14:00:36+00:00
I was an engineer on the Visual Studio team when we first introduced syntax highlighting and code completion. The rollout triggered quite a bit of internal controversy. A sizable group of developers strongly opposed these features—syntax coloring, parameter completion, signature validation—arguing that “real programmers write their code unaided.”

I can’t help but wonder how those same engineers are adapting to the current wave of AI-powered development tools like Claude Code and Cursor.
by dailyagi | 2026-01-08 14:00:43+00:00
This is genuinely useful. I tested it on a debugging question I was about to paste into Claude.

My original prompt: "my react app crashes when I click the submit button, here's the error: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map')"

After enhancement (XML mode):

<error>
TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map')
Triggered by: submit button click event
</error>

<request>
Identify the root cause of this undefined array error and provide a fix. Consider common patterns like async state updates, missing default values, or race conditions.
</request>

The enhanced version got Claude to immediately ask about my initial state and whether I was mapping over API response data before it loaded - which was exactly the issue. Before, I'd usually go through 2-3 back-and-forth messages to get there.

Nice work on this.
by wccrawford | 2026-01-08 14:01:15+00:00
To do that, they'd have to admit what they're doing out loud, and then they'd have public sentiment against them. It'd ruin what they have.

Instead, they'll wait for the revolt, and then sell the upgrade. Then they look like heroes for doing what people are asking for, instead of villains that cause the situation in the first place. They'll spin it as offering affordable TVs to those can't afford them without the advertisements, and no-ad TVs for those who are willing to pay the extra.

And most people will eat it up.
by crispyambulance | 2026-01-08 14:01:28+00:00
Given that HHS is now run by a nutcase, it’s surprisingly not a completely insane dietary recommendation. I think a sensible person would do OK following those general guidelines.

That said, if you don’t like it, disregard it. No one is forcing you. I think it has too much emphasis on protein but that’s just me.

These guidelines theoretically could influence school lunches. Will it make them worse or better or change nothing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
by jacobthesnakob | 2026-01-08 14:01:45+00:00
Why are you putting the onus on the commenter you’re replying to, to show you examples that disprove the point of the article when you’re the one being a contrarian?

TVs are super famous as the economic example of a good getting cheaper in nominal terms every year as they get better specs. Because it’s such a strange phenomenon. You looking for cheaper real goods, opposed to nominal, misses half (or more) of why TVs are so interesting.

Why don’t you show us some other goods that are cheaper in nominal terms compared to the 90s “because China”?
by DonHopkins | 2026-01-08 14:02:22+00:00
>The nice thing about prolog is that you write logical rules, and they can get used in whatever order and direction that is needed.

This generalizes!

Prolog: declare relations. Engine figures out how to satisfy them. Bidirectional -- same rules answer "is X a grandparent?" and "find all grandparents."

LLMs do something similar but fuzzier. Declare intent. Model figures out how to satisfy it. No parse -> AST -> evaluate. Just: understand, act.

@tannhaeuser is right that Prolog's power comes from what the engine does -- variables that "range over potential values," WAM optimization, automatic pruning. You can't get that from a library bolted onto an imperative language. The execution model is different.

Same argument applies to LLMs. You can't library your way into semantic understanding. The model IS the execution model. Skills aren't code the LLM runs -- they're context that shapes how it thinks.

Prolog showed that declarative beats imperative for problems where you can formalize the rules. LLMs extend that to problems where you can't.

I've been playing with and testing this: Directories of YAML files as a world model -- The Sims meets TinyMUD -- with the LLM as the inference engine. Seven architectural extensions to Anthropic Skills. 50+ skills. 33 turns of a card game, 10 characters, one LLM call. No round trips. It just works.

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/designs/stanza...

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-01-08 14:02:34+00:00
I don't think Stasi is the most apt comparison, rather the Gestapo, where the "Geheime" did not refer to their existence being secret, rather their standards of operation, chain of command, and general accountability being beyond oversight from the electorate.

Apples and oranges, though, and it's all fruit.