MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pixl97 | 2026-01-13 03:37:59+00:00
In reality there were times of excess and times of shortages far more often in past times. In times where there were plenty of items that didn't last you over consumed. By late winter you were getting lean.

>If it was off by 1% consistently, everyone would have died...

You do realize that starvation was a massive killer in the past. Everyone didn't die, but the young, the old, and the weak sure did.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-13 03:39:56+00:00
The no one ever got fired for buying IBM wasn’t about quality. It’s always safe to buy the default choice that everyone else uses. Especially when things go wrong.

Many want to be founders here on HN don’t get that. Even if your product is better and cheaper, there is too much of a reputational risk signing a contract for a B2B SaaS product with an unknown vendor.

On a completely unrelated note, for the love of all that is holy don’t try to do B2B SaaS without SSO support.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-01-13 03:39:59+00:00
I pointed out exactly the opposite: surely moral action is only possible when one has agency.

If an airline needs to force you to be a decent person, then you have no right to claim decency in the first place.

People who lean their seats back are assholes. Claiming “but this is permitted!” proves my point.

I can’t imagine what a nightmare world it would be if decency were only possible through the exercise of external authority.
by wakeless | 2026-01-13 03:42:44+00:00
So I built a thing that looks _very_ similar to this a while back: http://pipie.io/agent-tracker (it doesn't orchestrate)

And what's really fascinating isn't that multiple people have built the same thing is just how convergent all the ideas are. This makes a heap of sense given that they are all vibe-coded and using similar libraries. It's just very real when you see it right in front of your face like this.

I think there's a heap of really interesting stuff when you start linking into hooks which can also create tmux splits and really make the agent the center of an ide which seems like this is on the way to.
by karel-3d | 2026-01-13 03:43:22+00:00
Well, it was "normal" crawlers that needed to work perfectly and deterministically (as best as possible), not probabilistically (AI); speed was no issue. And I wanted to debug when something went wrong. So yeah for me it was crucial to be able to record/screenshot.

So yeah, everything is a trade-off, and we needed a different trade-off; we actually decided to not use headless chromium, because they are slight differences, so we ended up using full chrome (not even chromium, again - slight differences) with xvfb. It was very, very memory hungry; but again was not an issue

(I used "agent" as in "browser agent", not "AI agent", I should be more precise I guess.)
by pixl97 | 2026-01-13 03:44:05+00:00
One particular thing on items like bananas and yogurt is they are very quickly perishable. You better be around and have a plan to eat them.

Same with rice and beans, unless you're buying instant packs you have to plan and cook them, and be around to eat the leftovers.

This is the thing about most crap foods. They require no commitment. Keep them around for months. Even after opening them they last for days or weeks.

Processed foods don't require the further processing you're leaving out of the equation.
by literallywho | 2026-01-13 03:44:08+00:00
There are plenty of shortcuts. I've fixed my sleeping schedule by taking lorazepam and melatonin every night. I've gotten over many illnesses faster than healing naturally by taking many a pill. Why shouldn't there be medicine for issues with weight, especially for people who haven't been able to beat it themselves in decades? I've been fat most of my life and managed to lose a significant chunk of it by myself and regained it all over the following 5 years. Honestly, at this point, it's not happening without something like Ozempic. And I think it's the same for many people. Also, I don't care for the "not natural" debate, personally. If I wanted everything to be natural, I'd live in the woods and hunt animals.
by acdha | 2026-01-13 03:44:44+00:00
> Google's founders can buy all the yachts they could possibly eat, yet Google Searches are offered for free.

Google searches cost many billions of dollars: your confusion is because the customer isn’t the person searching but the advertisers paying to influence them. Healthcare can’t work like that not just because the real costs are both much higher and resistant to economies of scale but, critically, there aren’t people with deep pockets lining up to pay for you to be healthy. That’s why every other developed country sees better results for less money: keeping people healthy is a social good, and political forces work for that better than raw economic incentives.
by t-3 | 2026-01-13 03:45:20+00:00
> In Europe you don’t expect your bread to have added sugar, for instance.

Were you eating sweet bread meant for coffee or desserts and thinking it was for making a sandwich? Most breads use just enough sugar to rise the yeast.

> You also don’t normally expect sweeteners in your meat.

Were you eating barbecue, where the sauce is whole point? There is plenty of unsauced meat in the US. Any steakhouse will give you as much meat as you want without any sauce unless you pour it on yourself.
by dboreham | 2026-01-13 03:45:26+00:00
That's not how these drugs work. Think of it in terms of there being a programmable neural network in the gut (and associated brain I/O areas). This network is designed to get the animal to eat appropriately. But food makers figured out ways (by thousands of years of machine learning) to tweak its weights such that it tells the animal to eat too much. GLP-1 works by un-tweaking those weights (not quite: more like it clamps some of the inputs to the network but the result is the same). So it does indeed work by stopping the consumer from eating as much.
by kimixa | 2026-01-13 03:46:29+00:00
That happened to me when I had an ipad in a stanging case and the seat in front cranked back - trapping then pinging the tablet across me and by neighbour's lap.

Though the ipad itself wasn't damaged, a couple of glasses didn't make it, and required the steward to try to brush up whatever fragments of glass they could.

I feel that airlines are a microcosm of "Do you care about who you actions might affect?" - similar to the "Do you return the cart to the corral" test at supermarkets - are you willing to put even the smallest bit of effort to significantly improve other people's experiences?
by varenc | 2026-01-13 03:46:50+00:00
Also consider putting a security.txt[0] file on your main domain, like here: https://opencode.ai/.well-known/security.txt

I also just want to sympathize with the difficulty of spotting the real reports from the noise. For a time I helped manage a bug bounty program, and 95% of issues were long reports with plausible titles that ended up saying something like "if an attacker can access the user's device, they can access the user's device". Finding the genuine ones requires a lot of time and constant effort. Though you get a feel for it with experience.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security.txt

edit: I agree with the original report that the CORS fix, while a huge improvement, is not sufficient since it doesn't protect from things like malicious code running locally or on the network. But looks like you've already rolled out a password.
by pixl97 | 2026-01-13 03:48:11+00:00
>No, it doesn't

If you owe the bank $100,000 that's your problem.

If you owe the bank $10,000,000,000 that's the banks problem.

Obesity is a 'bank problem' issue. When everyone around the globe is massively gaining weight, in every country on this planet that's not in a war or famine, this isn't a human willpower issue. Something has changed, and to ignore that is unscientific.
by drekipus | 2026-01-13 03:48:53+00:00
I actually like that. ambitious!

the issue I have is that I want to have some apps that will need to be approved somehow. banking for starters, but some other things as well.

I just got the bigme hibreak pro, which is an e-ink android phone, and while I loved it in all cases, I realised it was a total dealbreaker that the Android Auto navigation was broken (something to do with their display chip couldn't report the right display size, I also want to be able to take and look at colour pictures. so e-ink didn't quite work for me there.)

Otherwise, I love the idea of this!

I think I would like a bit of an escape hatch: maybe have the normal web-browser that's accessible under like 4 or 5 clicks.

The big issue isn't just that these phones are set up to be addictive, but they are also too legitimately useful in other situations as well. I use facebook to scroll AND check marketplace. I use instagram to scroll AND talk to friends.

so some friction is necessary, but some friction is a total dealbreaker. if I can't bank or navigate, then the change of phone had affected me too much for me to not counteract my whole life needs to change in some way.

I've been thinking about this often, because i wanted the hibreak to work.. I actually think there needs to be some sort of "Life OS" where we can get told how to live in this new world where we can't check our phones as often. Do we include "look at a physical map" as part of our routine or do we just allow android auto to work and accept that it might be an avenue of leaking through some content? (not a great example)
by phil21 | 2026-01-13 03:49:30+00:00
> as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight

This was simply when the studies ended. Weight loss for most definitely tails off, but doesn't completely stop if you continue longer than the 18mo SURMOUNT-4[0] study went for with Tirzepatide.

I also do not know if this was patients going on maintenance dosing, staying the same, or ramping up doses to the full 15mg max dose. Would need to re-read it as it's been some time.

fwiw Tirzepatide is actually around 25% average loss vs. 20%. My anecdotal evidence from my peer group shows that the vast majority can go further than 25% (if needed) and then maintain it - but that does require significant lifestyle changes to maintain. The few who simply kept eating junk but less of it had far less drastic results.

I do consider it a performance enhancing drug for dieting due to that fact. Those that use it as one tool of many seem to do incredibly well. Those that use it as the only tool have much worse outcomes. No surprises there, but it was surprising to me how durable so far those who decided to make life changes have stuck with it now over the course of around 3+ years.

My random guess would be that if you use it to break habits and establish new ones, you tend to become a super responder. I like to tell people it was perhaps roughly 60% of my weight loss (36% or so, but I tapered off due to hitting my goal) was due to the drug, 40% due to other factors like eating better and creating new workout habits. The drug simply made it much easier than previous attempts at dieting, and the results turned into a feedback loop.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38078870/
by ceroxylon | 2026-01-13 03:51:03+00:00
I am involved in both botanical field work and ML, unfortunately most of the data that I have gathered and analyzed in the last 12 years indicates how quickly many ecosystems are degrading. Often I wonder why I do the analysis, simply taking a photograph in the same spot ~7 years apart allows any average person to see that things are not on a positive trajectory.

Attempting to convince people to change course and focus on restoration has mostly been a losing battle, with much larger forces behind the main detriments that make local changes feel inadequate.
by nubinetwork | 2026-01-13 03:51:49+00:00
> (CPAP machines) it’s hated by most everyone who has to use it. Many people with sleep apnea refuse to try it or won’t even get diagnosed for fear they may have to.

After knowing I've had sleep apnea for the past 10 years, I actually want the damn machine... I'm sick of having to sleep 3-4 times a day and still feeling like trash.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-01-13 03:52:35+00:00
https://youtube.com/shorts/4RgVrYYBgwY

Tangential:

(As a FW-curious noob I wondered if Gemini understand, Why do foxes struggle, compared to wolves of all gender)

>Yes, many fox species, particularly the red fox, exhibit more neotenous (juvenile-like) traits compared to wolves, such as shorter muzzles, larger eyes relative to head size, and different skull development, reflecting a divergence in evolutionary paths within the canid family, with foxes often retaining softer, more generalized features compared to the larger, more specialized wolf. While wolves are highly SOCIAL pack animals with traits adapted for cooperative hunting, foxes are generally SOLITARY, and this difference in lifestyle and morphology highlights their distinct evolutionary strategies, with foxes leaning towards juvenile-like features in their adult forms.

Hows foxwork doin
by acuozzo | 2026-01-13 03:53:02+00:00
I wish I could see you try to tell this to my father when he was working manual labor. I'd pay money.

Manual labor which was so grueling that he had sue his company in order to retire early because he could literally no longer walk and required surgery to remove the extreme bowing in his legs.

You could come in, look at the latest Creosote burns on his skin, and tell him that something-- anything! --would be better than watching an hour of Football.

And, while you're at it, you could try to convince him that smoking's bad too.
by venndeezl | 2026-01-13 03:53:18+00:00
"Heal yourself" is an emotional relative.

If epigenetic markers have activated there is no meditating them "off". Many other factors existthat foster diverse set of biological traits that are not toggled off by sitting by water.

Don't play doctor online as observers may be confused and make poor choices relative their unique circumstances.

Stick to over-charging people wracked with guilt and seeking salvation, and the bizarre longtermism you think you're bringing to fruition. Gonna stick around 10,000 years to ensure it all goes according to plan?
by pseudohadamard | 2026-01-13 03:53:19+00:00
Not only that but if you're not trapped in the Microsoft hell of forced hardware updates there's no reason to move on from what you've got now. My desktop PC is from 2007 and, for what I use it for, not noticeably different in operation from what you'd buy now. The only change I made was upgrading to an SSD at some point, apart from that it's the original hardware.
by deadbabe | 2026-01-13 03:54:03+00:00
Becoming addicted to food can seriously wreck your life. Nothing makes every aspect of your life harder than being fat. And it just sneaks up on people because no one talks about it, like alcohol, it’s just a thing people assume you will do.

When I’m hungry, I eat, and that’s it, I don’t think about food until hours later when I get hungry again. It blows my mind that there’s people that just never stop thinking about food, even shortly after they’ve eaten, even when they’ve had their fill. We don’t have to live this way. Try to think about food less, it starts in the mind.
by bschwindHN | 2026-01-13 03:54:05+00:00
My ideal airline would be one where you show up to the airport with your luggage, check it in, and then they knock you out and load you on the plane.

You get woken up at your destination after they've taken you off the plane. It would be the closest thing you can get to teleportation.

Then the airline wouldn't have to fuss with preparing shitty food and coffee or deal with annoying passengers. A win for everyone!
by heffer | 2026-01-13 03:54:08+00:00
My local Indian restaurant offers tiffin service for CAD 250/month. That's enough food for my wife and I for lunch on the 5 out of 7 days of the week included in the price (and we usually have leftover Naan each day that we can snack on in the evenings). I would be hard pressed to walk out of a grocery store in Ontario buying fresh ingredients for that level of variety for 20 days out of the month. We can easily spend more on groceries each month for the 10 days that we do actually cook for ourselves.

Granted, this setup does require that you do like Indian food and don't mind having the bulk of what you eat each month generally be of that cuisine. But in our case the restaurant has enough variety that with both of us having a different dish for each meal there are enough dishes to choose from that we don't have to eat the same thing more than once all week.

With all that said, we haven't even talked about how there is no cooking or cleanup involved either, so there are massive time and convenience benefits as well.

But I can appreciate that not everyone would be satisfied with this.
by techblueberry | 2026-01-13 03:54:12+00:00
I dunno, I sort of wonder if we’re about to hit a massive productivity loss. Before, we had a shared limited set of docs and artifacts that we like shared and kept up to date. When we wanted to do something, we could peruse it, there was a shared source of truth Now everyone on my teammates can generate 100’s of pages of documentation in seconds. Maybe this will change as I adapt to the technologies, but the possibility I can do anything is really making me wonder why I should do anything. Why put another doc out there that no one is going to read.

I dunno but it feels to me like getting a clear signal is going to become impossible for all but maybe a select few.
by kstrauser | 2026-01-13 03:54:30+00:00
I'm about 6' tall, even. In some cattlejets, my knees physically touch the seat in front of me. A lady on a recent flight flung her seat back and I cried out involuntarily in sudden pain.

I understand why she wanted to lean back. And yet, when she did, it freaking hurt. I'm around the 80th percentile in height in the US, and while my doctor says I could lose a few pounds, I wear a men's large shirt so I'm not exactly enormous. Even though they seat can technically recline, you cannot convince me that they're actually meant to.
by promiseofbeans | 2026-01-13 03:55:16+00:00
Please never do version checks. Test for the existence of the exact features/methods you need instead - this is trivial in JS: if(Temporal)

Checking against version numbers helps cement existing browser monopolies, makes it difficult for new browsers to view websites (even if the browser correctly implements every feature), and encourages everyone to spoof version numbers / browser names which leads to them becoming a less and less useful signal. See any browser’s User-Agent string for an example of this
by brailsafe | 2026-01-13 03:55:16+00:00
I wonder if the actual productivity changes won't end up mattering for the economics to change dramatically, but change in terms of a rebound in favour of seniors. If I was in school 2 years ago, looking at the career prospects and cost of living, I just straight up wouldn't invest in the career. If that happens at a large enough scale, the replenishment of the discipline may reduce, which would have an effect on what people who already had those skills could ask for. If the middle step, where wild magical productivity gains don't materialize in a way that reduces the need for expert software people who can reasonably be liable for whatever gets shipped, then we'll stick around.

Whether it looks easy or not doesn't matter as much imo. Plumbing looks and probably is easy, but it's not the CEOs job to go and fix the pipes.
by Uvix | 2026-01-13 03:56:01+00:00
You mean, like in the next two sentences? First "what this isn't":

> "If the app is requesting any kind of repository, organization, or enterprise permission (read or write) then the note still appears."

And then "what this is":

> "This allows applications to sign in users and get their profile information and email addresses (if requested) without undue alarm."
by pixl97 | 2026-01-13 03:57:42+00:00
It's really closer to 70 years ago to see the roots of the obesity epidemic in the US and had a lot to do with the post war world. To put it in another way, machines have taken over the vast majority of labor. Even people that do 'hard' jobs are still using a ton of tools that decrease the amount of physical effort they put in the job. Add in we converted the country from a human oriented place to one where cars rule, all while increasing the ease of consumption and we now have an epidemic.
by euroderf | 2026-01-13 03:58:16+00:00
In Finland AFAICT there's no bulk postal rate. Instead, paper spam is delivered thru mail slots by private services that hit all the buildings in the neighborhood and drop collections of paper spam. So, many people post a note on their door opting out from this stuff. (Ei mainoksia = No ads.) It must be saving absolutely huge amounts of paper.
by serf | 2026-01-13 03:59:35+00:00
the problem isn't that search engines are polluted; that's well known. The problem is that people perceive these AI responses as something greater than a search query; they view it as an objective view point that was reasoned out by some sound logical method -- and anyone that understands the operation of LLMs knows that they don't really do that, except for some very specific edge examples.
by greiskul | 2026-01-13 03:59:59+00:00
In Ruby, I assume this is done by monkey patching, so yes, it would have all the issues you mention and fear.

In more modern languages like Kotlin, there is a notion of extension methods and properties, where you would be able to write a library that allows this syntax, but the .days property would only be accessible in files where you have explicitly imported it (so basically a synthetic sugar for a static function call).
by echelon | 2026-01-13 04:00:12+00:00
> To be fair, the new opt-in "use strict" here is "switch to Temporal".

This. Don't break old code, just provide new best practices.

Update linters (or ideally first class language rules, like in Rust's "edition"s), to gradually kill off old behavior. Without having to do a decade long Python 2 -> 3 migration.
by bicepjai | 2026-01-13 04:01:54+00:00
All the problems you mentioned can be reframed as positive feedback for the economy we’re evolving into. Let me dream the arguments for each of your bullet points:

1. Power fail-over (battery + generator backup) in every house?
- I recently listened to a Planet Money episode about how DC/AI infrastructure needs are driving up electricity prices in Ohio. Ordinary households end up paying higher bills while big entities plan/build for reliable power.
- Maybe household-level infrastructure could be improved as part of making this kind of model viable. This applies to networking infrastructure too

3. Could get expensive flying a technician to every household to upgrade hardware in the racks
- People with enough education can be trained, and with the incentive of being paid, households themselves could become the technicians.

4. Probably don’t want everyone at home having physical access to storage devices
- Same idea: if households are being paid and it’s “their role” to manage, the access concern gets reframed as operational responsibility.

5. Massive theft risk
- Theft risk already exists today (even in good neighborhoods). The incremental risk might be negligible.

6. Homeowner’s insurance would probably…
- If we squint hard enough, there are arguments here too (e.g., payments not missed, additional compensation).

(Planet Money link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id2907834...)
by DonHopkins | 2026-01-13 04:02:03+00:00
I knew a guy who worked at one of the national labs that had its own Cray supercomputer, in a computer room with a big observation window that visitors could admire it through, of course (all Crays required observations windows to show them off).

Just before a tour group came by, he hid inside the Cray, and waited for them to arrive. Then he casually strolled out from the back of the Cray, pulling up the zipper of his jeans, with a sheepish relieved expression on his face, looked up and saw the tour group, acted startled, then scurried away.