MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by charcircuit | 2026-01-20 17:43:01+00:00
This article seems to argue:

- Attorney client privilege is unethical.

- Reducing your legal risk by deleting old data that is no longer needed and no longer on legal hold is unethical.

- Violating laws that say you can't collect data on children is okay to do.

I personally don't see these as bad things. Lawyers will trying and minimize the risk the company is in for violating various laws that exist around the world. I think it is ethical for them to give such advice. I also think attorney client privilege is also a big part of being ethical and saying that it is unethical is just trying to manipulate people's values to the author's benefit.
by hedayet | 2026-01-20 17:43:17+00:00
Ex-facebook employee here: abandoning ethics in facebook didn't start in near past. And it's not only the legal team; engineers and PM team are even worse in this matter.

Only people ready to do "anything" to optimize their performance rating and team goal are successful at facebook. And remember, facebook only hires smart people. So they do know what they are doing.
by nemomarx | 2026-01-20 17:43:24+00:00
Did you pay attention to his last impeachment?

The much vaunted checks and balances rely on Congress and the supreme Court checking the executives power. Since the presidents party controls both, this doesn't happen. The Imperial Presidency has been absorbing power from the other branches since the 90s, and we are pretty close to the end of that process right now.
by roryirvine | 2026-01-20 17:43:44+00:00
"I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I'd want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."

Sure, maybe Trump's peculiar mix of ego and ignorance might mean he's one of the few exceptions to that rule - but if he were to actually try claiming that a bond rout is somehow good news in the middle of a market panic, the reaction from distressed would be investors would be hard even for him to ignore.
by lenerdenator | 2026-01-20 17:44:01+00:00
> It's symbolism. But it's important symbolism. Far more notable, I think, is Macron saying this morning that Europe needs more investment from China. Canada signing a deal with China to allow their cars to be sold in the country.

The better move would be to invest internally. China wants a hegemony, whether they acknowledge it out loud or not. As Europe and Canada start seeking Chinese investment, the Chinese will seek something in return. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

I'd also like to think that the American/Western investment in places like China and Russia are part of how we got to where we're at now. It became apparent for Western capital that human rights aren't necessarily compatible with economic growth and can even run contrary to it. Eventually that mindset permeates a society, and it has in the US. A large plurality of the population thinks that a billionaire strongman is necessary to remain competitive in the global marketplace. This mindset didn't show up overnight, it was a slow burn.

Some of it was fueled by the demographic transitions of the last fifty years, some by American economic anxiety - which was caused by American/Western investment in China - and the rest of the West has the same problems in those departments that the US has to one extent or another. The European/Canadian welfare state that provided protection from some of the economic anxiety that was seen in the US must get its funding from somewhere, and you get it from taxing economic expansion. Economic expansion relies on at least some population growth. Right now, you don't see native population growth in most Western countries. They have to have people immigrate in to stay competitive. In pretty much all of these countries, you've seen at least some friction between the "native" population and immigrants. You'll see more of that in the future, and that's how the Canadian/European Trump will show up. Doubly so in Europe, because their nation-states are partially defined in terms of ethnicity.
by lotsofpulp | 2026-01-20 17:44:14+00:00
Health insurers are required to accept all insureds without pricing the insured’s risks. It would increase premiums a lot if people could bounce around, as it would make already difficult to forecast medical loss ratios even more volatile.

This really is a problem only the government can solve, by continuously auditing coverage decisions at random, and sufficiently penalizing the companies that understaff at best, and intentionally deny or delay payment at worst.

Currently, years might go by until CMS audits the company, and even then, there are no consequences. Try arguing for a higher budget for more $400k doctors and $200k pharmacists in this environment.

The current situation is because one company can lower premiums by reducing quality of service, all the other ones have to also, and the buyer rarely buys on anything but price since it’s usually a third party buying it, like an employer.
by galaxyLogic | 2026-01-20 17:44:25+00:00
I wonder, is the quality of AI answers going up over time or not? Last weekend I spent a lot of time with Preplexity trying to understand why my SeqTrack device didn't do what I wanted it to do and seems Perplexity had a wrong idea of how the buttons on the device are laid out, so it gave me wrong or confusing answers. I spent literally hours trying to feed it different prompts to get an answer that would solve my problem.

If it had given me the right easy to understand answer right away I would have spent 2 minutes of both MY time and ITS time. My point is if AI will improve we will need less of it, to get our questions answered. Or, perhaps AI usage goes up if it improves its answers?
by pembrook | 2026-01-20 17:44:34+00:00
Native radios are notoriously hard to style consistently across browsers. You can do it with appearance: none, pseudo-elements, etc., but:

- You re-implement focus rings, checked states, hover, disabled, error states.

- You end up bloating your stylesheet incomprehensibly

- Cross-browser differences (especially Safari) still leak through.

- Controlled components, validation layers, animations/transitions, rich layouts are annoying and break accessibility

- Turning native radios into radio cards for example breaks accessibility and keyboard navigation

- Rows with icons, badges, subtext, etc. between the radio and label is a huge issue

Hence why everybody uses Shadcn instead.
Show HN: Trinity – a native macOS Neovim app with Finder-style projects
by kidproquo | 2026-01-20 17:44:54+00:00
Hi HN,

I built Trinity, a native macOS app that wraps Neovim with a project-centric UI.

The goal was to keep Neovim itself untouched, but provide a more Mac-native workflow:
– Finder-style project browser
– Multiple projects/windows
– Markdown preview, image/pdf viewer
– Native menus, shortcuts, and windowing
– Minimal UI, no GPU effects or terminal emulation

It’s distributed directly (signed + notarized PKG) and uses Sparkle for incremental updates.

This started as a personal tool after bouncing between terminal Neovim and heavier editors. Curious to hear feedback from other Neovim users, especially on what feels right or wrong in a GUI wrapper.

Site: https://scopecreeplabs.com/trinity/
Direct download: https://updates.scopecreeplabs.com/pkg/Trinity-1.0.202601192...
by recursivecaveat | 2026-01-20 17:44:55+00:00
Also, all the biggest software companies run network services. You could download your own search engine forever, but it doesn't mean anything without the Google data centers and crawlers. Likewise there's a million open source twitter clones, but without the users they have no real utility to the average person. The era of shrink wrap software has been over for a long time.
by pixl97 | 2026-01-20 17:45:04+00:00
>Rinse and repeat for Korean cars

My last few cars have been Hyundai's. Unfortunately my driving habits don't allow full EV driving, but I did go with one of their (non-plugin) hybrids.

And almost all of my family has moved to Hyundai over time. The pure US car companies have been dumping out total crap for the longest time, it's an easy sale for almost anything else.
by IAmBroom | 2026-01-20 17:45:05+00:00
> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.

Well, and the isolation of the country by oceans on both east and west, and by the glaciers to the North, which make invasion by any but Mexico or Canada unthinkably expensive.

As for prosperous, a vast, then-untapped swath of forests, thick humus deposited by glaciers, and mineral deposits, all serviceable by waterways unprotected by competing nations, did play a minor role.

American exceptionalism is always a falsehood.
by pessimizer | 2026-01-20 17:45:15+00:00
Software can leave your country in a fraction of a second. Manufacturing is infrastructure. This is also basic. Manufacturing in the US is shrinking, comparatively with other countries that actually make things. People just think they can just play with numbers, categories and dollar values to hide it.

The US has been playing a currency game since 1980 to make up for the loss of the free money it got for reconstructing Europe and Japan, and using that money to buy things from impoverished workers in China. And as China got on its feet through careful planning and management, it moved to India, Pakistan, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, anywhere that was willing to stomp on its workers and pollute its air and water.

Now China has gotten to the point that it is a viable alternative to the US, so the US can't unilaterally set terms anymore for its suppliers. It's dumping US treasuries. It's competing for natural resources in countries that the US just tried to topple and steal their natural resources through sieges that ironically served to cut the US's legs from under them, giving China a huge discount. The game is up.

China going from nowhere to the greatest economy on the planet in 50 years is what happens when you manage and cultivate manufacturing. US real estate and an economy run on luxury consumption is what you get when you outsource manufacturing and play word games to cover it up. We literally can't tariff China significantly, they could crush our economy just by embargoing us like we freely embargo everyone else. That's the power of a manufacturing base. We might want to fix our bridges, too.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-20 17:45:19+00:00
> US century is already over

Maybe, maybe not. We're currently the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Gerontocratic. Sclerotic. Hyped up on a new mythology. And economically uncompetitive on several levels, with the future (then computers, now elecrification) sweeping past us to our applause.

Unlike the Soviets, however, we can see it happening and debate it. If '26 and '28 change course, the damage will still be done. But the America Empire is still young. And Trump's stupidest policies–the tariffs, fighting the Fed, Greenland and raising a Gestapo–don't have the support of most Americans. That leaves hope for reform through electoral pressure.

It will take work. But it's as incorrect to assume indefinite American hegemony as it is to preëmptively concede the game.
by epistasis | 2026-01-20 17:45:30+00:00
This is precisely it.

People in the US have been living with the insanity of Trump for so long that they have become numb to it, and don't realize just how crazy and out of bounds every day is now. We continue on, because we have to, but it's hard to reevaluate everything every single day because it's so crazy.

Europe and the rest of the world are making completely rational decisions in response to the utter self-destructive actions taking place by the entire US political system right now.

The US population has been cowed into complacence and numbness, but the rest of the world has not yet, and will take appropriate action.
by prabalsaxena | 2026-01-20 17:45:55+00:00
That is huge news! Thanks for confirming NVDA is working smoothly.

Re: The Monthly Book Goal That's a great question. The philosophy behind Life II is actually 'Systems > Goals' (similar to Atomic Habits).

The trap with a '1 Book a Month' goal is that it's just a deadline—it's easy to ignore it for 3 weeks and then try to cram it all in at the end.

I designed 'Acts' to track the daily input. Instead of tracking the book, try creating an Act called 'Read 5 Pages' or even just 'Read 10 Minutes'.

It’s low pressure.

You get a dopamine hit (and Gold!) every single day.

If you hit the daily Act, the monthly goal happens automatically.

You can still use the Quests tab (in the sidebar) to track the big finish line (e.g., 'Finish The Hobbit'), but keep your main dashboard focused on the small daily wins.

Does that flow make sense, or do you strictly prefer the monthly deadline style?
by monideas | 2026-01-20 17:45:57+00:00
Making money and other types of material gratification has trumped ethics, notions of virtue and honor, and responsibility towards posterity in the general US population, the US ruling class, and US elites.

Ascribing this to just "US companies" is a cop-out or a cope. The US is in complete social collapse across the entire spectrum of society.

I am coming at this from a right-wing perspective.
by infecto | 2026-01-20 17:46:07+00:00
I have still been unable to see how folks connect AI to Crypto. Crypto never connected with real use cases. There are some edge cases and people do use it but there is not a core use.

AI is different and businesses are already using it a lot. Of course there is hype, it’s not doing all the things the talking heads said but it does not mean immense value is not being generated.
by alwa | 2026-01-20 17:46:20+00:00
I’d argue that its primary functions are core government functions in a way that passenger rail and postal services are not. Amtrak and USPS sell services at retail (and compete; see i.e. SunRail and UPS). The public aspect of their prerogative is relatively small (I tend to care much more about whether the train is on time than I do who operates, and who owns the tracks, and what the liability cap is; I tend to care about speed and price more often than I care that USPS will go places where FedEx won’t). And the “product” is a set of individual services executed by a big workforce—the higher-ups exist to make sure the services get delivered down the line. Quasi-corporate structures make a lot of sense for that.

Whereas the Fed’s jobs involve setting monetary policy and regulating the financial sector. The “product” is the set of policies the board vote to implement, and the staff exist to gather information and pass it upward to support those decisions (maybe using powers delegated downward to them). Like any other government agency.
by denimnerd42 | 2026-01-20 17:46:26+00:00
1-3 is too short but they aren’t making new A100s, theres 8 in a server and when one goes bad what do you do? you wont be able to renew a support contract. if you wanna diy you eventually you have to start consolidating pick and pulls. maybe the vendors will buy them back from people who want to upgrade and resell them. this is the issue we are seeing with A100s and we are trying to see what our vendor will offer for support.
by nlawalker | 2026-01-20 17:46:37+00:00
I don't think that's necessarily the case, it could just be that, in the author's role, the only people that articulate a need for help from him is his management chain.

I've had roles where my job satisfaction came from largely ignoring my management chain and helping people outside of my org for whom I was the point of contact for a set of services offered by my team's internal platform, and this piece really resonated with me.
by aja12 | 2026-01-20 17:47:00+00:00
> cloud-based synchronization

Well I don't disagree that it might be possible to abuse cloud sync in some way to export the secrets, but it's not quite as egregious as just including the secrets by default in an app backup

Not perfect, but (imho) still better than SMS 2FA, mail 2FA, or lack of 2FA
by Night_Thastus | 2026-01-20 17:47:01+00:00
Auto enthusiasts no, but cars are definitely not appliances in the US.

Cars are a way people mark their social status - whether they will admit it or not. A big, luxurious SUV with a small mountain of space, the latest tech, etc is not an 'appliance'. It's a luxury people are choosing to buy.

The difference is in priorities. Americans wanted a very different kind of car than China is/was making.
by epistasis | 2026-01-20 17:47:15+00:00
> Today, US policymakers see China as the main adversary.

That is not evident at all in how any US policymaker acts these days. China is stronger than ever, precisely due to US actions. Every day, the US gives up power and throws it away, and China picks it up off the ground for free.

The supposed "China Hawks" are all chicken hawks without anything to back them up.
by al_borland | 2026-01-20 17:47:16+00:00
My last ICE car (a VW GTI) did this. I could turn the engine noise up or down in the settings on the touch screen.

I think I’d prefer it sound like an ICE car vs the weird electric noises. I don’t notice when most cars drive by my house, unless they are obnoxiously loud. But someone on my street got an electric SUV about 6 months ago and I can hear it every single time; it drives me crazy.

I was hoping electric cars would cut down on noise pollution, but no such luck. I understand the sounds is there for blind people, but the sound some of these companies have picked cuts right through the walls of my house like few other things do. I’m wondering what it will sound like when we have a whole city full of them.
by advisedwang | 2026-01-20 17:47:19+00:00
> the first and only duty of a for-profit company is to create returns for shareholders

That's a choice, not a law of nature. We can make law that changes that. Individual executives can push back. Society at large can change norms and expectations.

Why would we choose the nightmare world where profit must come first?

The only reason you hear this argument deployed seriously is when the person saying it has their own motivations for wanting profit to be supreme.
Show HN: A Pastebin app to quickly turn code into shareable registry items
by rbadillap | 2026-01-20 17:47:22+00:00
If you use shadcn registries, you may faced the challenge to continuously create a registry app to distribute components, snippets, or files.

I just created a Pastebin/GitHub Gist service with a shadcn-registry compatible included.

No setup required, just save, create and share.

Appreciate your comments!
by prashantdudami | 2026-01-20 17:47:38+00:00
Author here. I've been building enterprise LLM systems and noticed we were burning tokens on repeated JSON attribute names.

TOON separates schema from data—you declare field names once, then send pipe-delimited values. LLMs (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) parse it correctly.

Install: pip install toon-token-optimizer

The format is simple:
@schema:name,age,city
John|30|NYC
Jane|25|LA

Handles nested objects (dot notation), arrays, escaping, etc.

Full writeup on the methodology: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/prashantdudami_llmarchitectur...

Happy to answer questions!
by nomilk | 2026-01-20 17:47:41+00:00
I find predication markets the most accurate form of 'news'. For example, if I want to understand if a claim (e.g. a news headline) has merit, I check the prediction market and easily dismiss/confirm it. Recently it has been useful to understand the situation in Iran. It has also informed my travel decisions to other countries based on geopolitical dangers.

Are prediction markets perfect? Of course not. But the difference is in prediction markets someone has something to lose (real money), whereas legacy news values sensationalism over accuracy and sobriety.
by TrueDuality | 2026-01-20 17:47:44+00:00
I'm not sure the distinction matters, and attribution is inherently hard and easy to get wrong. I frequently read Country X is doing Y, less as a indicator of government action and more of a single that we can't be more specific of who within the country is performing an action but we know the behavior is occurring there.

In the case of IP address purchases, these are publicly tied to specific public and private entities and can be easily queried through the regional registries. These private entities are frequently the same kind of shell company you'll get with hiding shady financial details.
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-01-20 17:47:55+00:00
Since reading too much philosophy (username relevant), I don't think ethics are worth teaching. Instead, put laws in place that benefit the state/population(I know these can conflict, but at least in a republic, there are power sharing agreements that can balance these).

At best, you can indoctrinate people with a religion, conventional religion or a modern ascetic stoic humanist religion.

But its silly to think that religion is going to stop 100% of the population from doing anti-social things.

This might be strange to hear, but people have different and conflicting values. The worker at Meta might have a life goal to help society, the executive might have a life goal of making lots of money. These conflict, and its overly optimistic to rely on individual ethics to create a good world to live in.

Now I'll give an example: Should affairs be punished? Currently, there are plenty of US states that don't have laws on this. However, there may be something to be said about having a contractual agreement that penalizes this. If there is no contract, then it doesn't matter.

We can enforce pro-social values, we don't need to rely on individuals being wholly good.
by ahnick | 2026-01-20 17:47:58+00:00
Literally cryptocurrencies are the single greatest alternative ever made. Opt out of the system where the government can just print money into thin air and old guys drawing dots on a plot set interest rates in closed meetings. If you want to hedge USD exposure just buy a Bitcoin ETF or if you really can't stomach cryptocurrencies b/c you don't want to be ostracized from the orange site, buy Gold. We are not going back to the way the world was and if you have all your money in USD realize you are on a leaking boat.

It is entirely possible to manage funds in crypto for growth and move some amount into more liquid USD denominated assets or MMFs when you need liquidity.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-20 17:48:00+00:00
> constant devaluation makes it unappealing

If this is the complaint the dollar is safe. And international holders of dollars aren't idiots. They hold Treasuries, which more or less preserve their purchasing power. (Nobody outside the poor, who have to, and nutters, who don't know better, hold cash as an asset. It's so thoroughly assumed that in finance, cash refers to cash and cash equivalents.)
by UncleEntity | 2026-01-20 17:48:06+00:00
Yeah, if you can somehow convince them you really, really want them to follow the specification and not just do whatever they want.

And is doesn't matter how many times you tell them the implementation and, more importantly, the tests needs to 100% follow the spec they'll still write tests to match the buggy code or just ignore bugs completely until you call them out on it and/or watch them like a hawk.

Maybe I'm just holding it wrong, who knows?