MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nateb2022 | 2026-01-09 16:15:13+00:00
> Zero-shot means zero-retraining, so think along the lines of "Do you need to modify the weights? Or can you keep the weights fixed and you only need to supply an example?"

I would caution that using the term "example" suggests further learning happens at inference-time, which isn't the case.

For LLMs, the entire prompt is the input and conveys both the style and the content vectors. In zero-shot voice cloning, we provide the exact same inputs vectors but just decoupled. Providing reference audio is no different than including "Answer in the style of Sir Isaac Newton" in an LLM's prompt. The model doesn't 'learn' the voice; it simply applies the style vector to the content during the forward pass.
by pcaharrier | 2026-01-09 16:15:24+00:00
I think this (from near the end) is also noteworthy (based on the two quotes from the late Justice Scalia at the beginning of the article):

>Still another point illustrated by Justice Scalia’s reactions is the ubiquity of cultural cognition. The disposition to form perceptions of fact congenial to one’s values isn’t a pathological personality trait or a style of reasoning integral to a distinctive, and distinctively malign, ideology. (Indeed, the appeal of those sorts of surmises could themselves be seen as evidence of the disposition to form culturally congenial perceptions of how the world works.) Precisely because cultural cognition doesn’t discriminate on the basis of worldview, members of all groups can anticipate that as a result of it they, like Justice Scalia, will likely find themselves members of a disappointed minority in some empirical or factual debates and a member of the incredulous majority in others.

The kind of cultural cognition highlighted by the article/study is common to everyone, not to some groups that just are incapable of seeing it in themselves.
by tgv | 2026-01-09 16:15:33+00:00
> A key feature of the university research system is that it is where people are supported without the expectation that their work is going to be commercially useful in any near-term time frame

Idk where you got that idea from, but it's not an accurate picture since the mid 1980s. Yes, there is "fundamental" research, which is mostly a label for commercially not that interesting work (and cannot be expected to yield much open source anyway), but short-term project work and third-party funding are big. Also, much of the research is done with an eye towards profit, certainly in the medical and tech sector. And in the US, universities rely on a lot of private money.

> Knowledge

Knowledge isn't OSS. This (part of the) thread is specifically about (usable) software.

> the progress of the entire species

Them's big words.
by tacostakohashi | 2026-01-09 16:15:49+00:00
You seem to be in Europe. The problem you'll find is that Europe is composed, to a greater or lesser extent, of US proxy/vassal states. This is for historical reasons, WWII, Marshall Plan, Lend-Lease, NATO, Bretton Woods, IMF, "rules-based order", etc., etc.

There is really no point in worrying about personal independence for smart phones, github hosting and operating systems if the state itself is not independent and self-sufficient.
by amoshebb | 2026-01-09 16:16:05+00:00
We should run electric third rail along the Mississippi. It’s already barges with tugs so a few electric tugboats mostly running during daylight hours, we could electrify most of this by just replacing a few tugboats. Make the lines high capacity enough to run along the coasts, and a fleet of tugs could be a huge dispatchable load, slow steaming could free up a lot, and going just a few kts faster would mop up a ton of what may be otherwise curtailed
by runjake | 2026-01-09 16:16:17+00:00
It's worth little coming from some random HN guy, but I can confirm eric_hard_jams was Richard D James. We used to hang around similar circles online, and there were a couple meetups. There were a bunch of other Rephlex and Rephlex-adjacent musicians using pseudonyms, as well.

Richard was sort of annoying at times, in the way someone on the spectrum can be. A bit of a troll with poor timing, and poor social skills, but a good, kind lad who spent his time doing things completely orthogonal to anyone else and that made him quite interesting.

I lost touch with him in around 2000-2001. He kinda went dark in those circles. I don't know what he's up to these days, probably raising a family like me.
by Pxtl | 2026-01-09 16:16:22+00:00
Hilariously the only impressive thing I've ever heard of made in AI was Yegge's "GasTown" which is a Kubernetes like orchestrator... for AI agents. And half of it seemed to be a workaround for "the agents keep stopping so I need another agent to monitor another agent to monitor another agent to keep them on-task".
by doublerabbit | 2026-01-09 16:16:30+00:00
I do, I never understood it then, I do now. Hyrbid ircd ftw. I never understood UnrealIRCD with +q, +a. Op and half-op is all you need or you could be cool and use Ratbox...

Documentation was never fun so I'll use my age as an alibi. I was just a script kiddie and recalling downloading MB's of scripts and uploading them on to polarhome [0] where some awesome swede was hosting shell access to different systems on his home DSL. Me kitted with my three-hour limited 56k and my fathers work 128K ISDN line.

Oh well, nostalgia over back to work, writing IT architecture docs.

[0] http://www.polarhome.com
by gradascent | 2026-01-09 16:16:54+00:00
I just took the Amtrak from Southern California to Seattle.

Pros:

- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)

- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar

- Spectacular views

- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports

- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.

Cons:

- 32 hours of travel

- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat

Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.
by anotherhue | 2026-01-09 16:16:56+00:00
Yeah I've heard this my whole career, and while it sounds great it's been long enough that we'd be able to list some major examples by now.

What are the real world chances that a) one's compiled code benefits strongly from runtime data flow analysis AND b) no one did that analysis at the compilation stage?

Some sort of crazy off label use is the only situation I think qualifies and that's not enough.
Show HN: BuildFix– Semantic feature-extraction transfer between TypeScript repos
by RichBennett | 2026-01-09 16:17:24+00:00
Hey HN,

I'm Rich. I run a SOC by day and built this at night over the past 6 weeks.

*What it does:*
BuildFix treats features (as opposed to files) as complete, transferable units. Select "Auth System" and it identifies routes, middleware, models, config, and secrets handling. Then it traces all dependencies, adapts the files to your target project's conventions, and creates a PR that actually builds.

*The tech:*
- TypeScript AST analysis for semantic understanding
- PageRank-based import traversal for context selection
- Dual knowledge base system (source + target) for convention adaptation
- 5-layer validation: AST → TypeScript → ESLint → imports → backward compatibility

*What makes it different from Copilot/Cursor:*
Those tools generate code. They don't understand features as first-class entities, can't trace feature completeness across a codebase, and can't guarantee operational parity in another repo.

*The "oh shit" moment:*
It used itself to improve itself. BuildFix scanned its own codebase, generated docs about its patterns, then used those docs to refactor 100+ lines when I added 3 lines of new code. Unprompted.

*Stack:* Next.js 14, TypeScript, Redis, Clerk, Vercel
*Pricing:* Bring Your Own Key, Free for as long as I can keep it free.

Happy to answer questions about the architecture or approach.
by academia_hack | 2026-01-09 16:17:31+00:00
++

Anecdotally, I find you can tell if someone worked at a big AI provider or a small AI startup by proposing an AI project like this:

" First we'll train a custom trillion parameter LLM for HTML generation. Then we'll use it to render our homepage to our 10 million daily visitors. "

The startup people will be like "this is a bad idea because you don't have enough GPUs for training that LLM" and the AI lab folks will be like "How do you intend to scale inference if you're not Google?"
by DonHopkins | 2026-01-09 16:17:37+00:00
In the same sense that we also got [total surrealistic non sequitur] out of it -- no causal connection.

Cocaine addled money laundering sexist nepotistic bro culture deserves all the harshness it gets.

I dare you to waste 6:17 minutes of your life that you will never get back watching this, and tell me they didn't spend a huge chunk of their investor's money on cocaine.

The synthesis of imagination: Rony Abovitz and Magic Leap at TEDxSarasota:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8J5BWL8oJY

>Surprises abound in this multimedia, surrealist talk/performance by Rony Abovitz and Magic Leap at TEDxSarasota. Rony is a recognized innovator and entrepreneur, having co-founded the pioneering robotics company, MAKO Surgical Corp, which was recognized by Deloitte as the #1 fastest growing tech company in North America in 2011. Part of TEDxSarasota's inaugural conference held on 12/12/12 with the theme "Creativity Matters" at the Historic Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, Florida.
by lenkite | 2026-01-09 16:17:55+00:00
> It could be the continued lack of DOM bindings that have been considered a key missing piece for several years now, or maybe something else or more fundamental.

No, it is NOT "something else or more fundamental" - it is most certainly the lack of proper, performant access to the DOM without having to use crazy, slow hacks. Do that and frontend web-apps will throw JS into the gutter within a decade.
by walterbell | 2026-01-09 16:17:59+00:00
Linux on Pi Zero can be used as a sidecar for iPads.

https://schwarztech.net/articles/my-ipads-raspberry-pi-sidec...

This method configures the Raspberry Pi [Zero] in “gadget” mode, creating a private link that appears as a wired Ethernet connection over a USB cable. The Pi’s address will never change, either as it is also a DHCP server for the iPad. As an added bonus, the same cable powers the Pi, creating a setup as simple as plugging the Pi into your iPad and waiting for it to appear .. you have a full-blown Linux computer working in tandem with your iPad and the iPad acting as a directly-connected console that is also providing power.
by mistersquid | 2026-01-09 16:18:02+00:00
From Ken-ichi Ueda's remarks in the OP, after graduating from Berkeley he moved into a role that resembled the loosely-structured organizational patterns of an undergraduate team collaborating on a term project. Of course, such a gloss oversimplifies the complexities of the relationships and outcomes of people working together in what would become a non-profit, but even tone of the OP seems characteristic of someone still in the mindset of high-achieving baccalaureate: laissez-faire governance, aversion to hierarchy, prioritization of intellectual freedom, etc, none of which are bad or good in and of themselves.

Anyhow, Ueda's 2024 commencement address (especially the opening) bears markers of just such a mindset. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0
by tchock23 | 2026-01-09 16:18:29+00:00
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. These are valid criticisms of platforms like Lovable, Bolt, Replit, etc. that cater to "fast MVP" type customers. I'm not sure how you sustain the valuations if the churn inherent to those type of "hobbyist" or "solopreneur" type customers isn't solved.
by Izkata | 2026-01-09 16:18:44+00:00
> I'm far more worried that becoming a glorified code reviewer will atrophy those skills

A co-worker who went all-in around a year ago admitted a few months ago he's noticed this in himself, and was trying to stop using the code-generating functionality of any of these tools. Emphasis on "try": apparently the times it does work amazingly makes it addictive like gambling, and it's far too easy to reach for.
by square_usual | 2026-01-09 16:19:19+00:00
I've really shortened the loop on deploying my side projects with Claude Code. I run it with `--dangerously-skip-permissions` on a prompt I've written and it adapts it for the project in hand with a "safe" set of defaults, and I've got a basic verification script to ensure it's not unsafe (e.g. can't access postgres from the web, firewall blocking all non-required ports). The rest - which can vary from project to project, like creating VMs, configuring rules, whether it's a rust project or a docker compose file - Claude knows how to handle pretty well. Super super simple now.
by JR1427 | 2026-01-09 16:19:31+00:00
This reminds me of a video I watch recently of a comfortably off guy who decided to try and do a long-distance cycle with just £100.

He could afford not to rely on others, but instead he let people buy him food, give him a bed, etc.

This didn't sit well with me. If you can pay your own way, but choose to instead let others pay for you, you're just sponging off people.
by Maro | 2026-01-09 16:19:31+00:00
Great point, thanks for making it. Following onward, NumPy has a non-profit called Numfocus who is behind it:

https://numfocus.org/

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/454...

Apparently they have an annual budget of ~$10M. From the contributors, it's easy to recognize the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (so Meta), Google, MSFT. This is great.

Having said that, I'd still say that $1-2M for a CSS library seems more than enough. Not everything needs to be "scaled"..
by SketchySeaBeast | 2026-01-09 16:19:52+00:00
If we're thinking that far out we might as well all just lay down and wait for rain because there's no avoiding the heat death of the universe. Treating the sun dying out like it's a real concern that we need to address in the next 2, 200, 2,000, or 2,000,000 years is comical. Whatever is around to experience that won't be human as we know it.
by silexia | 2026-01-09 16:19:53+00:00
There are always a few bad apples in any profession including the police, and bad apples should be prosecuted and convicted.

I once severely injured my knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. I was extremely bored and became temporarily obsessed with watching videos of police shooting people. I probably watched over 500 of these videos. I would guess I have seen a majority of the police shooting videos that are available on the internet. In every single video, I would have shot before the police officer did. I was amazed by the restraint the vast majority of police have, despite dealing with extraordinarily dangerous situations with people attacking them with guns, knives, vehicles, and other weapons. I would suggest you look beyond your lived experience and privilege and consider what police actually have to deal with day to day.
by pstuart | 2026-01-09 16:19:56+00:00
There are many things to criticize about China but they are absolutely to be admired in how they focus on building for the future.

The problem is that American industrial policy is based on quarterly earnings and not long term health of the republic as a whole. Biden's IRA program was effectively a step in the right direction but has been erased. We need our economic incentives to be aligned with long term growth and prosperity for all, not just wealth for those at the top of the dog pile.
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-01-09 16:20:05+00:00
Discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45840321

And more developments and analysis since:

An initial analysis of the discovered Unix V4 tape

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46367744

Unix v4 (1973) – Live Terminal

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468283

Fixing a Buffer Overflow in Unix v4 Like It's 1973

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46544610
by jf22 | 2026-01-09 16:20:18+00:00
Yes the workflow has shifted.

I've handled the sloppiest slop with llms and turned the worst code into error free modern and tested code in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

People aren't worried about cost because $1k in credits to get 6 months of work done is a no brainer.

A year from not semi-autonomous llms will produce entire applications while we sleep. We'll all be running multi-agents and basically write specs and md files all day.
by jqpabc123 | 2026-01-09 16:20:43+00:00
Apparently, Casio fails to recognize that nowadays, most people don't really need a watch for timekeeping because they carry a smartphone that does time perfectly well.

I wear a cheap $5 Chinese made watch only because I use it to carry a backup of all my crucial data with me at all times, even in the shower. If something goes bump in the night, my data is always with me so all I need to worry about is my own personal safety.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6784665

Casio could easily and cheaply add this to their watches and instantly make them much more desirable in my opinion.
by orbital-decay | 2026-01-09 16:20:47+00:00
There's nothing good about this, and you'll be surprised how many people are willing to spend more than $1k/mo just to cheat in video games. Your game will still be ruined in a worse way, and every step towards the full lock-in just makes this closer. As I said, closet cheaters are MUCH worse than obvious ones, and much harder to catch (and for the context, I used to host very popular servers for several games, so I've seen player complaints and retention rates).

Here's my previous comment about what it takes to actually eliminate cheaters. Anticheats are only marginally helpful in this, it's all about observability, manual control, and community building. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139481

Intrusive DRM schemes will just take any semblance of computing freedom away from you, while actually making the problem worse in the end.
by wanderlust123 | 2026-01-09 16:20:55+00:00
I think you should probably read a bit more on the history of sanctions, their effect and incentives before calling someone “tad careless”. Your argument basically devolves to semantics about the labelling of who is being sanctioned, vs the impacts.

Look up who the US has sanctioned historically, and what the geopolitical objective was. Someone is always being enriched, question is who.
by bloomingeek | 2026-01-09 16:21:01+00:00
And therein lies the fault, they only do "good" because they were made to do it. Rewarding them for "reluctantly" improving won't change their bad behavior. They should improve because it's the decent thing to do. By doing the decent thing, the praise would have been tenfold, which is the best incentive. (I do appreciate your comment because most companies do live in a moral vacuum.)
by JimmyBuckets | 2026-01-09 16:21:45+00:00
This person is being honest about how he feels about a hypothetical situation. I appreciate the humility of sharing a thought people might look down on and would be trivial to lie about. Also based on this article I would be surprised if he is not the type to show such kindness - if anything this reflection shows that such openness is not to be taken lightly, that it is special and should be appreciated as such. How wonderful then that is is so ubiquitous.
by JoeAltmaier | 2026-01-09 16:21:55+00:00
" 58 preservatives on some 105,000 people who were free of cancer in 2009 and were followed for up to 14 years. Only those who completed frequent 24-hour, brand-specific food questionnaires were included."

It's hard to get someone to fill out a questionnaire about food over a whole weekend. Are we to believe, these participants kept it up for 14 years? There's a lot not said in this article.
by gnabgib | 2026-01-09 16:21:56+00:00
Paper Intake of food additive preservatives and incidence of cancer: results from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort (open) https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-084917

Associations: potassium sorbate, potassium metabisulfite, sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, acetic acid, and sodium erythorbate
by palata | 2026-01-09 16:23:13+00:00
My point is that they are genuinely trying. I have been in contact with such people, and they are not idiots.

They have government money that they want to spend wisely. And experts from private companies convince them that they can solve their problems.

If the government employee was the expert, they would not have to contact the private companies in the first place. The private companies know that, and they abuse their dominant position by convincing (sometimes downright lying) to the government employees.

It is a very difficult position to be in. It's not about buying a car and being able to just test it. Many times the government funding goes for some kind of R&D. Which makes it easy for the experts to bullshit them and never produce anything useful.

Those who say that it's 100% the government fault should maybe try to go work there. They could truly help their country, if they could actually do better. But chances are that they can't.
by Folcon | 2026-01-09 16:23:48+00:00
I mean you're not wrong

I suppose the way I approach this is, I use libraries which solve problems that I have, that in principle understand, because I know and understand the theory, but in practice I don't know the specific details, because I've not implemented the solution myself

And honestly, it's not my job to solve everything, I've just got to build something useful or that serves my goals

I basically put LLM's into that category, I'm not much of a NIH kinda person, I'm happy to use libraries, including alpha ones on projects if they've been vetted over the range of inputs that I care about, and I'm not going to go into how to do that here, because honestly it's not that exciting, but there's very standard boring ways to produce good guarantees about it's behaviour, so as long as I've done that, I'm pretty happy

So I suppose what I'm saying is that isn't a hidden cost to me, it's a pragmatic decision I made that I was happy with the trade off :)

When I want to learn, and believe me I do now and again, I'll focus on that there :)
by sanjeevkumardev | 2026-01-09 16:24:31+00:00
Hi everyone, I’m the builder of OurNetHelps.

I started this platform to make everyday tools easily accessible without signup, tracking, or paywalls.
It includes calculators, generators, quizzes, and simple utilities for students and daily use.

I’d really appreciate feedback on usability, missing tools, and performance.

Thanks for checking it out!