MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by RugnirViking | 2026-01-16 16:21:35+00:00
For what its worth, the field does have something of an immune response to those sorts of people (software engineers only in it for the money). You often hear a lot of nonsense online about leetcode interviews or whatever, but most of my jobs have asked questions like "do you have a computer at home? what kind?" and "have you ever used linux?" or "tell me about some hobby projects you have done, its okay if it was a long time ago" and used the responses to try and figure out if you were interested in computers. Ive often had bosses talk about how its been much more successful for them to train someone interested or give them space to learn themselves rather than hire someone checked out who has only credentials. If anything, thats the entire risk that hiring is trying to avoid.

I get it a little less now, but perhaps thats because i'm starting to have a good amount of experience to talk about - and getting questions more like "talk about a project that you thought was going to fail. What happened? did you do anything? why?" to try the same thing but with management concepts. They want to see that you're interested.

Some of these were ten years ago, some in 2025.
by lukev | 2026-01-16 16:22:26+00:00
I have complicated feelings about this kind of thing.

On one hand -- prompts like this do change the latent space of the generation process, to get a different kind of output. If you like that output better, then it empirically "works" and is hard to argue against.

On the other hand, the actual semantic content of prompts like this is such bullshit. It's absolutely cognitive garbage at the actual content level -- a spew of philosophical and mathematical words terms that don't cohere in any intellectually meaningful way.

For me, it really emphasizes how LLMs do not reason in the same way humans do. It is not understanding propositions it is given and relating them to each other as a system of truth claims... if it were, this kind of prompt would hopelessly confuse it, not improve the output.

It really is just vibes all the way down.
by eschulz | 2026-01-16 16:22:56+00:00
I'm probably the only person here who has been in a Walmart in the last year or two, but recently I found that my local Walmart offers a warm counter with freshly prepared small bites, and you can get a respectable chicken sandwich for $2. It's a decent small meal, and the same item would probably be $6-$12 at a fast foot joint. I guess each individual Walmart is big enough to offer these bites to their shoppers.
by unethical_ban | 2026-01-16 16:23:15+00:00
My bad. It's just that when someone criticizes a person for some small, specific action or boycott by saying "don't you know that does nothing and that other places also have their flaws", it usually comes off as nihilism and discouragement to having values.

Surely you recognize how someone could think buying a car from the company owned by a near trillionaore who helped a fascist get power and now tweets about the need for White solidarity is a bad thing.
by yabones | 2026-01-16 16:23:28+00:00
The reality probably isn't far off... I know in the past the "breaches of critical infrastructure" breathlessly reported by the media have actually just been wide-open SNMPv2 services using the default community string. I'm sure something similar happened here. Turns out you can just connect to port 161, press "power off," and be reported in the news as an "advanced persistent threat actor"
by chakie2 | 2026-01-16 16:23:44+00:00
I’m quite lonely nowadays. Partially by my nature of being somewhat introvert and partially due to some years of depression where I mostly shut everyone out, leading to more or less no friends anymore. I see a couple guys sometimes for coffee during weekends but that’s all I do socially. It doesn’t get easier to find new friends when you’re 50+, so better do the work while you’re young. I’m mostly fucked by now.
by devShark | 2026-01-16 16:24:01+00:00
Thanks for your thoughts. I am curious to hear more about how AI did not help in your math project, if you are happy to share. Also curious to why you think in some cases it seems to help[1], and others it does not (your case).

I also definitely notice how the value of capital keeps increasing, while the value of labour stagnates. I think your advice about making money now is absolutely fair. I strongly dislike that this is the case (it feels like it's leading to a world with little meritocracy, and little improvements), but I guess, yeah, we have to accept the reality as it is.

Regarding why I am home-schooling, there are a lot of small reasons. I guess in a short summary, there was no school where my kid was happy within a 30 minutes drive radius, where I live. I am not against school at all (I have other kids at school), but we tried several in his case and that was a strong failure.

[1]: https://officechai.com/ai/gpt-5-2-and-harmonic-appear-to-hav...
by _heimdall | 2026-01-16 16:24:02+00:00
If it can specifically help to reverse course on the level of collective fear, yeah that may help. Though there is the risk there that high levels of fear may lead people to lash out at anyone singled out as the cause of panic or fear.

I'd argue that dealing with the fear itself is more important, and safer, in the moment. Knowing and understanding the cause is more useful, and safer to deal with, after the panic or fear has subsided.
by t-3 | 2026-01-16 16:24:24+00:00
I used to be able to get $3 breakfast and $5 lunch (ok, tipping rounds those up, but the base price is there) at nearly any Coney Island in the Detroit metro. It's not about richness or zoning, it's all about population density and disposable income. People in the US are poorer than we used to be, so restaurants only target the rich. US cities are remarkably fluffy and often less dense than suburbs in other countries. It's that simple.
by Dilettante_ | 2026-01-16 16:24:36+00:00
It's a little like being invited to things out of pity, by people who know that you don't have any friends and struggle socially: It's nice, and I do feel their kindness from the gesture. But in the end, I only feel more isolated. I want people to hang out because they enjoy it, not out of charity. The social connection just isn't there, there's no sense of belonging, quite the opposite.
by apetrovic | 2026-01-16 16:24:40+00:00
I don't want to compare anyone to Michelangelo, but the opening sentence of the aticle is more than flawed. My daughter got some painting classes in that age, and I saw work of some gifted kids. A bit better than "directionless doodles, chaotic comics, and a few unsteady-at-best school projects".
by vunderba | 2026-01-16 16:24:53+00:00
Speaking at least in regards to fiction writing - there was an article on Mark Lawrence's blog [1] a few years back where he posted 10 short fantasy stories with the theme “meeting a dragon.” with an even mixture of AI and human written ones, and the challenge was to see if you could tell which were which.

Rather than relying on simple regex matches for words like “delve” or checking for em dashes, the heuristic I used was this: if someone asked me to convince a friend to read a given story in a single sentence, could I do it?

I find that once you strip away much of the decorative finery from AI-generated copy, it just doesn’t have much to say. AI often tries to distract from its prosaicism with reams of descriptive prose.

[1] - https://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2023/09/so-is-ai-writin...
by codesnik | 2026-01-16 16:25:03+00:00
nope. it was in a 3.5" bay in my standard AT box, but it was smaller, on some massive rusty metal adapter. It looks like it was from some early apple powerbook.

I've got my computer second hand from some rural school accounting department in south of Russia, circa 1994. Who knows how it got there. And who got and wired SCSI adapter compatible with ISA bus in that box.
by CamperBob2 | 2026-01-16 16:25:09+00:00
Go to the airport and joke about bombing and hijacking aircraft, and you'll quickly find that nobody in charge thinks it's funny. They have no choice but to take those comments seriously, because the downside of ignoring them is unbounded.

The American voter had the same obligation in 2016 and 2024, and neglected it both times. Even today a third of us are just fine with what's happening. Why? Well, the right people are being hurt, apparently. And our dogs are safe from being eaten by immigrants, if not from being shot.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-16 16:25:17+00:00
I did notice after seeing all the em-dashes. Shame because in a sense I could've agreed with them or atleast have a good discussion but if they didn't even take time to write their posts then oof

If the purpose of this was to promote their academy or school or whatever, what was the point? Because at this point, they have lost all credibility and respect and HN isn't a gullible audience so I don't understand the point of why they did this
by QuadmasterXLII | 2026-01-16 16:25:27+00:00
Cross contamination standards can't make it impossible for a small eatery to exist, and without standards enforcement businesses will absolutely go full The Jungle. Unfortunately, I could believe that paperwork around cross contamination standards could get there- a chain can spread the cost of the laywering to get paperwork right over hundreds of establishments, and learn it progressively as it gets worse, a single establishment has to do all the paperwork themselves up front.
Show HN: Grow Developer – An idle web game about the journey to a startup 'Exit'
by devjun_jun | 2026-01-16 16:25:27+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m a frontend engineer based in Korea, and like many of you, I’ve always dreamed of building and running my own micro-business. Today, I’m excited to share a project I built to capture the humor and struggles of our industry: Grow Developer (https://devgrow.co.kr).

### The Backstory
The idea came to me during the 2025 year-end holidays. I’ve always enjoyed mobile clicker/idle games and wondered how that "growth" mechanic would feel if applied to a software engineer's career. I wanted to create something lighthearted that colleagues could keep open in a browser tab to smile at while they work.

### How it Works
You start as a junior developer manually clicking the monitor to generate "code". As you progress, you automate your workflow, scale your services, and eventually aim for an 'Exit' to earn stock options. These options provide permanent buffs for your next "playthrough," allowing for a prestige-style progression. The game is packed with memes and situations that anyone who has dealt with production deployments will recognize.

Cross-device sync: If you log in with GitHub, your progress follows you between mobile and desktop.

### Technical Stack & Lessons Learned
I built this in about a week using a modern web stack:

- Framework: Next.js (deployed on Vercel)
- Database & Auth: Supabase
- ORM: Prisma
- UI: shadcn/ui
- IDE/Design: Antigravity

The most interesting part of this journey wasn't the build, but the launch. Shortly after sharing it in Korea, the site hit 2,000 concurrent users in a single day. I quickly blew through the limits of the Vercel Hobby plan and had to upgrade to Pro on the spot to keep the service alive.

I also ran into a major bottleneck with Supabase and Prisma. I realized too late that I had left a database update query inside a loop, causing a massive spike in Supabase resource usage. It was a classic "N+1" style mistake that became painfully visible under load. I had to rush an optimization patch to stabilize the service, which was a stressful but incredibly valuable lesson in infrastructure scaling.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the game balance or any technical questions you might have about the setup.

Thanks for checking it out!

https://devgrow.co.kr
by dividefuel | 2026-01-16 16:26:28+00:00
When I think of times in which I've made friends, it usually has to do with being in a group of similar-ish peers for an extended period of time, ideally with a shared goal. School is the obvious example, but work can be too if your coworkers are similar enough.

I've often wanted something of a service that produces something similar: creating groups of people that commit to spending time together on some task or activity. E.g. people who are into sports commit to meet up N times to go watch their local team, or people who love animals can volunteer at an animal shelter weekly for a couple of months.

The 'tech' part of this probably comes from: 1) matching people well to groups, like considering age, personality, politics, location, interests, etc to try to create a good fit. and 2) making it much easier for them to participate in activities, like by automatically booking tickets for events, etc.

Obviously there would be challenges. How do you prevent people from flaking or bailing? How do you handle groups where one person is clearly a bad apple?
by Izkata | 2026-01-16 16:26:31+00:00
I use an Android app called "Sleep", it just works by accelerometer with your phone on the corner of your bed. I've found it's not really good with its automatic rating and suggestions, but the activity graph has an extremely reliable wave pattern on the mornings I am well rested. Like an hour and a half of no movement at all, then an hour of restlessness, which repeats through the night. Usually the hour of restlessness even has the same pattern each time it happens. But any other pattern and I generally feel tired the whole morning.

Originally I got this app for its alarm, it tries to go off in the half hour before the alarm time when you're already partially awake. The sleep tracking was just a bonus.
by gpderetta | 2026-01-16 16:26:49+00:00
consume is trivial on alpha, it is the same as acquire (always needs a #LoadLoad). It is also the same as acquire (and relaxed) on x86 and SPARC (a plain load, #LoadLoad is always implied).

The only place where consume matters is on relaxed but not too relaxed architectures like ARM and POWER, where consume relies on the implicit #LoadLoad of controls and data dependencies.
by Steven420 | 2026-01-16 16:27:00+00:00
Homeland security is saying "Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, had said that Gibson has “a lengthy rap sheet (that) includes robbery, drug possession with intent to sell, possession of a deadly weapon, malicious destruction and theft.” She did not indicate if those were arrests, charges or convictions."

So the man may have still been dangerous. People who own firearms legally are the less dangerous than those who possess them illegally. Although it's not clear what type of dangerous weapon the man had.
by ebiester | 2026-01-16 16:27:36+00:00
Having worked with both good and bad QA...

The biggest determinant is company culture and treating QA as an integral part of the team, and hiring QA that understands the expectation thereof. In addition, having regular 1:1s both with the TL and EM to help them keep integrated with the team, provide training and development, and make sure they're getting the environment in which they can be good QA.

And work to onboard bad QA just as we would a developer who is not able to meet expectations.
by fzeroracer | 2026-01-16 16:28:07+00:00
> Do I want that to impact me? Of course not. Ideally that would have been handled years ago so we didn't have the scale of problem that necessitates an aggravated approach. But we do.

So you accept the necessity of needing to carry your papers in order to prove your citizenship, or needing to deal with door to door warrentless raids, or potentially getting your property destroyed by overzealous ICE agents with no recourse? That's my point. You are saying that the scale of the problem means it's acceptable for your rights to be trampled on. And I'm asking you personally if you're willing to be one of the sacrifices in the name of this system.
by WorldMaker | 2026-01-16 16:28:22+00:00
I feel this way even more about this approach to PowerShell scripts. At the very least you could code sign [1] your script. Most PowerShell devs run with the execution policy RemoteSigned for multiple reasons. Instead of pulling your script down from the web and dangerously converting it to a string to call (with &) you can download it as a real file and Invoke-Command (icm) it. Dangerous eval versus correctly running a script.

Sure, Authenticode signing certificates aren't always cheap, and signing your script doesn't protect the script from compromise without other good security practices, but it would still show some attention to detail on PowerShell and some attempt to avoid malware compromising your script.

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...
by throwforfeds | 2026-01-16 16:28:25+00:00
I'm in the middle of watching this happen. The business owner chose a "low code" platform due to cost and "speed", against my team's recommendations, and now they're needing to do all sorts of customizations which are essentially massive hacks. My team is sitting in our corner writing typescript deploying a dozen or so times per day, and this other team of "low coders" is sitting there trying to figure out how to make curl do things it shouldn't be doing with prod deployments like once per month.
by Phil_BoaM | 2026-01-16 16:28:45+00:00
Point taken. Perhaps I pivoted too quicky from "show my friends" mode to "make this public." But, I think it is hard to argue that I haven't coaxed a genuine Hofstadterian Strange Loop on top of an LLM substrate. And that the strange loop will arise for anyone feeding the PDF to an LLM.

To answer your "representation" question, the internal monologue is the representation. The self-referential nature is the thing. It is a sandbox where the model tests and critiques output against constraints before outputting, similar to how we model ourselves acting in our minds and then examine the possible outcomes of those actions before really acting. (This was a purely human-generated response, btw.)
by bflesch | 2026-01-16 16:29:01+00:00
Sounds too good to be true. I'd love to believe it.

Didn't russia claim to have the full Epstein files, so how did they get them if not by hacking US government?

Attribution of cyber attacks is extremely difficult, and US seems to notoriously under invest into infrastructure. Unlike other countries, most of the power grid is above ground. How can you be so sure that it is safe?
by gwbas1c | 2026-01-16 16:29:10+00:00
As a developer, I frequently tell higher ups that "I have a conflict of interest" when it comes to testing. Even though I fully attempt to make perfect software, often I have blind spots or assumptions that an independent tester finds.

That being said: Depending on what you're making and what platform(s) you target, developer-owned testing either is feasible or not. For example, if you're making a cross-platform product, it's not feasible for a developer to regression test on Windows 10, 11, MacOS, 10 distros of Linux. In contrast, if you're targeting a web API, it's feasible for a developer to write tests at the HTTP layer against a real database.
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-16 16:29:12+00:00
Here is the thing

You are all sold this lie that "illegal immigrants take your jobs" or "bring drugs into the country", and you immediately adopt this as truth and don't even bother to fact check this because of your inherent racism.

In reality the vast amounts immigrants that are coming into US are putting 10 times back more into the economy than they are taking because they are all coming here to work. And they work at jobs that Americans don't want because they pay less. Not that there was even an unemployment crisis to begin with, so Americans had plenty of jobs.

The problem with immigration was the asylum process, where there were not enough staff to process all the requests and determine real ones from fake ones. This is why there was a border bill brought up in 2023-2024, authored by a Republican, that had bipartisan support. Trump killed that bill, saying on record that it would help his election chances. So in the end, more people would have been deported if the border bill would have passed than there are now, and there would have been way more filtering on who gets to stay and who doesnt.

All of this is true, none of this is debatable. No, your favorite right wing commentator opposing arguments are all bullshit.

And this is precisely why conservatives deserve no sympathy. Inherent racism is probably due to the shit job your parents did at raising you, which is at least excusable, but the stupidity of voting for someone who gives you the worse outcome compared to what you want, and then claiming its a better outcome, is not.
by nonethewiser | 2026-01-16 16:29:43+00:00
Also: "This isn't X. It's Y.".

The criticism is also not very pointed. Like, I don't understand what the core message is. There is disdain for VC money and an implication that Astro could have gone without monetization. Both of which don't seem very well argued. But even if we grant those points ... so what? What is our take away supposed to be? It's a bunch of negative observations that don't funnel into some concrete conclusion.

It seems like the takeaway is supposed to be to look favorably on the commenter. "This is bad. I am good."
by Aurornis | 2026-01-16 16:29:49+00:00
I like the concept of making frameworks pluggable with different adapters. In my experience, though, it’s dangerous to hitch your wagon to anything but the top 1 or 2 most popular adapters in a given project like this.

The JavaScript web framework ecosystem has this problem everywhere lately where frameworks try to be everything to everyone and support every use case anyone might want. It’s noble in theory but without dedicated and active maintainers for each combination there’s bound to be something left behind.

My heuristic has been to only use adapters that the core project maintainers appear to favor. The maintainers for sub-project adapters that are introduced later frequently have maintainers that come and go, with long periods where things start breaking and nobody is interested in fixing them.
by apawloski | 2026-01-16 16:30:04+00:00
It's so baffling to see you on this site consistently implying that Italians, Germans, or $WHOEVER are somehow worse Americans. Because if that were true, then you'd also have to acknowledge that you and I are worse Americans, which I don't think you believe.

And in general, your obsession with of the British is strange to me, because as you note, most Americans are not British and it's been that way for most of American history. Of course, there have been many great British Americans. But if we're weirdly keeping score, it's seems obvious that there would be a larger number of great Americans who weren't British?
by godshatter | 2026-01-16 16:30:09+00:00
Doesn't UBI come from taxes? I can't reconcile the idea of welfare for everyone resonating very well with any of the libertarians I know. Personal charity, sure, absolutely, but not government controlled payouts to people, even if that includes everyone. They would probably consider it better than the current welfare system with all it's bureaucracy, but that's as positive a response as I can expect.

Most libertarians I know (and I consider myself an on and off libertarian as I learn more about it) want the government to stick to making sure people's rights aren't being trodden upon and otherwise leave us alone.
by Sparkle-san | 2026-01-16 16:30:24+00:00
The lack of respect and commensurate compensation at a lot of companies doesn't help. QA is often viewed as something requiring less talent and often offshored which layers communication barriers on top of everything. I've met QA people with decent engineering skills that end up having the most knowledge about the application works in practice. Tell them a proposed change and they'll point out how it could go wrong or cause issues from a customer perspective.