MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by conartist6 | 2026-01-05 20:23:29+00:00
1. "More leisure for everyone" is utter bollocks. We know it doesn't work like that. If it did we would all be doing nothing but leisure because of how much leisure we gained by switching to email.

2. Games are just code that's fun. How does this sounds as a process for making something fun: "Start by de-risking." Hmmm OK, yes, this tracks with my experience of private equity companies being the most innovative and successful creators of games.
Show HN: Diamodel – Estimate T1 Diabetes parameters from data
by Renat | 2026-01-05 20:23:31+00:00
Hey HN!

Currently, the key parameters for Type 1 diabetes management, like Insulin-To-Carb ratio (ICR) and Correction Factor (CF), are estimated manually by eyeballing historical charts and making a subjective guess about what the "true" values should be.

There is a lot of uncertainty and noise in the data itself, so the estimation task is hard even for Diabetic doctors.

I thought there had to be a more principled way to make such decisions from the data, so I built a Bayesian ML model that models data the same way these parameters are supposed to be used (i.e., a linear model assumption). Essentially, it tries to answer the question: "What are the best ICR and CF values to use given the observed noisy data?"

You can try the model on the test data in Google Colab. See the README for details.

I'm looking for feedback and collaboration to validate the model on different patient data.
by yieldcrv | 2026-01-05 20:23:32+00:00
I’ve taken risks like that, bucking “reputation” scare tactics, and people respected me more

I’ve seen a lot of things like that flip over the last 2 decades

Where the abuser doesn’t tend to be able to control reputation across an industry, so they can be called out

A freelance software developer wouldn't be affected by that, YMMV
by gorbot | 2026-01-05 20:23:59+00:00
Come on man. Really? You think this is a good argument?

Why not charge the people who make my glasses cuz they help me see the CP? Why not charge computer monitor manufacturers? Why not charge the mine where they got the raw silicon?

Here you have a product which itself straight up produces child porn with like absolutely zero effort. Very different than some object which happens to be used, photograph materials

Nikon doesn't sell a 1-minute child porn machine, xAI apparently does.

Maybe you think child porn machines should be sold?
by zahlman | 2026-01-05 20:24:08+00:00
From that link:

> For certain factual domains, you can also train models on getting the objective correct answer; this is part of how models have gotten so much better at math in the last couple years. But for fuzzy humanistic questions, it's all about "what gets people to click thumbs up".

> So, am I saying that human beings in general really like new-agey "I have awakened" stuff? Not exactly! Rather, models like ChatGPT are so heavily optimized that they can tell when a specific user (in a specific context) would like that stuff, and lean into it then. Remember: inferring stuff about authors from context is their superpower.

Interesting framing. Reminds me of https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42983571). It's really disturbing how susceptible humans can be to so-called "cold reading" techniques. (We basically already knew, or should have known, how this would interact with LLMs, from the experience of Eliza.)
by kshacker | 2026-01-05 20:25:09+00:00
It will be interesting to see the legal boundary develop for this in future.

1. An individual may not want to share their chats with anyone. They may assume the chats to be privileged, just like attorney client privilege.

2. An individual may still want a legacy contact to get their past chats -- but only some chats, not others. Like you have attorney client privilege, but you can rope in your spouse. But what about inheritors, more so, named inheritors in a will or trust?

3. Law may require some chats to be shared with law enforcement

4. An aggrieved party may want to subpoena the chats

5. Laws may vary from country to country, or even county to county

6. Contracts, such as non-compete or otherwise, require some money to be paid for the agreement. A standard $20 per month may not be enough for that.

And on top of all of that,

7. LLM vendor may have something to hide :) and may not want to share the chats
by teraflop | 2026-01-05 20:25:25+00:00
It's referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-ring_theory_of_economic_deve...

The name is a reference to the Challenger disaster, which was caused by a failure of actual sealing O-rings, but the theory itself is abstract.

Basically, it's modeling complex production chains where the quality of the "weakest link" is the limiting factor of the quality of the whole process.
by meanmrmustard92 | 2026-01-05 20:25:30+00:00
It's a reference to a model of growth that in itself is a reference to the challenger disaster. Basically something like a "weakest link" theory of growth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-ring_theory_of_economic_deve...

Was surprised to see this here; i think it is a good model for thinking about tech productivity
by vrnvu | 2026-01-05 20:25:47+00:00
First. Love that more tools like Honeycomb (amazing) are popping up in the space. I agree with the post.

But. IMO, statistics and probability can’t be replaced with tooling. As software engineering can’t be replaced with no-code services to build applications…

If you need to profile some bug or troubleshoot complex systems (distributed, dbs). You must do your math homework consistently as part of the job.

If you don’t comprehend the distribution of your data, the seasonality, noise vs signal; how can you measure anything valuable? How can you ask the right questions?
by palewire | 2026-01-05 20:26:24+00:00
Today I'm happy to release "First Basemap," a free tutorial that shares one of our most valuable recent innovations at Reuters.

It's at https://palewi.re/docs/first-basemap/

Follow the step-by-step guide and you'll learn how to create a shockingly fast and virtually free interactive map of the world.

This type of map is often called a basemap because it provides the foundation for displaying data layers like weather conditions, election results, demographics or the location of newsworthy events.

Until recently, creating a basemap was a difficult task that required specialized skills and expensive servers. Rather than take on the challenge, many organizations chose to pay for commercial mapping services, which can be costly for applications that draw a lot of traffic.

Then open-source software changed the equation.

Partnering with Scott Reinhard, we used Protomaps, OpenStreetMap, MapLibre and other free tools to craft a stylized version that will serve as the foundation for all Reuters mapping projects going forward. Casey Miller has already used it to track hurricane activity and share the latest forecast with our readers.

Scott has written a detailed explanation of his design process on his site. While the fonts, styles and other customizations he tailored for Reuters are copyrighted, his underlying techniques are free for anyone to adapt.

That's at https://scottreinhardmaps.com/blogs/custom-mapping-projects/...

One challenge in creating a basemap is the size of the massive database containing almost every border, road, building and natural feature on the planet.

"First Basemap" walks you through how you can use inexpensive cloud computing tools to solve the problem. Follow along and you'll have a basemap of your own for less than $10. Where you go from there is up to you.

Has anyone else on HN had experience rolling their own basemap? I'd love to hear how you're making it happen, what's working and what isn't.
by jandrese | 2026-01-05 20:26:28+00:00
Hmm, I have an old Twitter account. Elon promised that he was going to make it the best site ever, lets see what the algorithm feeds me today, January 5 2026.

1. Denmark taxes its rich people and has a high standard of living.

2. Scammy looking ad for investments in a blood screening company.

3. Guy clearing ice from a drainpipe, old video but fun to watch.

4. Oil is not actually a fossil fuel, it is "a gift from the Earth"

5. Elon himself reposting a racist fabrication about black people in Minnesota.

6. Climate change is a liberal lie to destroy western civilization. CO2 is plant food, liberals are trying to starve the world by killing off the plants.

7. Something about an old lighthouse surviving for a long time.

8. Vaccine conspiracy theories

9. Outright racism against Africans, claiming they are too dumb to sustain civilized society without white men running it.

10. One of those bullshit AI videos where the AI doesn't understand how pouring resin works.

11. Microsoft released an AI that is going to change everything, for real this time, we promise.

12. Climate change denialism

13. A post claiming that the Africa and South America aren't poor because they were robbed of resources during the colonial era and beyond, but because they are too dumb to run their countries.

14. A guy showing how you can pack fragile items using expanding foam and plastic bags. He makes it look effortless, but glosses over how he measures out the amount of foam to use.

15. Hornypost asking Grok to undress a young Asian lady standing in front of a tree.

16. Post claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine caused a massive spike (5 million to 150 million) cases of myocarditis.

17. A sad post from a guy depressed that a survey of college girls said that a large majority of them find MAGA support to be a turn off.

18. Some film clip with Morgan Freeman standing on a X and getting sniped from an improbable distance

19. AI bullshit clip about people walking into bottomless pits

20. A video clip of a woman being confused as to why financial aid forms now require you to list your ethnicity when you click on "white", with the only suboptions being German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish, and French.

Special bonus post: Peter St Ogne, Ph. D claims "The Tenth Amendment says the federal government can only do things expressly listed in the Constitution -- every other federal activity is illegal." Are you wondering what federal activity he is angry about? Financial support for daycare.

So yeah, while it wasn't a total and complete loss it is obvious that the noise far exceeds the signal. It is maybe a bit of a shock just how much blatant climate change denialism, racism, and vaccine conspiracies are front page material. I'm saddened that there are people who are reading this every day and taking it to heart. The level of outright racism is quite shocking too. It's not even up for debate that black people are just plain inferior to the glorious aryan race on Twitter. This is supposedly the #1 news source on the Internet? Ouch.

Edit: Got the year wrong at the top of the post, fixed.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-05 20:26:29+00:00
> We're also producing 25mg of oral medication for the same effectiveness as 2.4mg of injection; that doesn't make economic sense

Plenty of people can’t or won’t inject. And plenty of people don’t need 2.4mg injected.

The pill is cheaper to make, distribute and take. That seems to make economic sense to me.
by robotnikman | 2026-01-05 20:26:50+00:00
I've been thinking of trying GLP-1's since I have not been able to put off the extra weight I've gained since covid. I'm in my 30's now and I feel like around this age I am starting to feel the effects of this extra weight on my body.

What is HN's experience with using GLP-1 inhibitors, for those who have used them? I've heard of side effects like bone density loss, but I've heard those side effects are caused by taking too large of a dose.
by lukan | 2026-01-05 20:27:00+00:00
"but what's the point? "

The point of playing video games?

Having fun. You don't achieve anything for real anyway, unless you are playing professional e-sports. And some games can still be fun, with aimbot. There is more to games than precision mouse work. I remember a arcade space shooter, where flying the aircraft was speedy action with dogfights, and you had only to do rough aiming, the rest did the "targeting computer". But I also have seen FPS shooters with that option and people enjoying the action and boom boom boom feeling powerful.

"There are people who get bothered by things like .. lip synced live performances, and manufactured artists"

And that would actually be me as well. But I try to keep an open mind even with the shallowest mainstream popsongs. Not liking it because of the source, but to see if I feel the music. Usually I turn it off a very quickly though, but I still don't talk down to my niece for example who likes it.
by CuriouslyC | 2026-01-05 20:27:00+00:00
We need to disambiguate what you mean by "AI" here. If you're referring to people typing prompts in a frontier web UI, maybe. But if you're using local models, you can do quite a bit more, ComfyUI workflows can get crazy. Multi-region controlnet guided generations with IP adapters and loras, etc.

The art gatekeepers want to try and paint everyone using AI creatively as monkeys mashing ignorantly on keyboards, taking the unmodified output and parading it around like Picasso. The reality is that is to AI art as bathroom dick graffiti is to manual art.
by mNovak | 2026-01-05 20:27:10+00:00
I agree that the worker becoming more productive due to some capital equipment generally won't see any benefit from doing so (unless it requires special skills to operate). But I think the argument is that the end consumer will eventually benefit from the increased productivity.

In your example, yes, the factory owner can take their $100/hr of profit. But among the various factories, some owner might take $25 of that profit and instead undercut their competition to grow their order book. Other factories respond in kind, and the consumer is getting cheaper products.
by stale2002 | 2026-01-05 20:27:11+00:00
> where all the musicians live, and they have no other place to go, only disconnect.

No actually. Those musicians are free to continue making whatever music that they want and can refuse to listen to the AI music if they dont want to.

The fact that 2 other, unrelated 3rd parties both like to make AI music and listen to AI music is not the musicians area of control here. They do not get to decide what other people like to listen to or make.
by TZubiri | 2026-01-05 20:27:53+00:00
If your boss tells you explicitly that this is ok, then go ahead. And also if they don't tell you this, it might be ok too. But there's scenarios were you are being paid to do a very specific job, and trying to get promoted is a form of escapism for many and it can be an organizational problem.

In argentina we have a saying "Too much chief for too few indians"(as in indigenous people), everyone wants to be the boss, no one wants to do the dishes.

I've been a victim of this, and it especially was a problem when my actual role responsibilities suffered, but even if I managed to fulfill my responsibilities perfectly, it caused friction and a command chain confusion. (especially when other people tried to compete for a promotion as well)
by JasonADrury | 2026-01-05 20:27:58+00:00
I don't think you'd want to go through the trouble for smaller botnets though. It's really only the very big ones that face co-ordinated takedown efforts.

For a very small botnet that doesn't attract attention, you could really use any social media site for C&C if your goal was to avoid network-level detection.

For a slightly bigger botnet that might get abuse reports, you could just get a bunch of domains on different ccTLDs from various bulletproof registrars. There are some huge botnets doing this without much trouble.

It's really only the really big botnets where you want to worry about things like P2P C&Cs for censorship resistance, they're the ones that will face co-ordinated efforts to shut them don.

I feel like the block explorers aren't a really good solution, for small botnets there are less conspicuous options. Here's a (real) botnet C&C that uses Steam, and has been doing so for a long time https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199621451974 It's a rather silly implementation though, not sure why the developer decided to do it this way.

It's also worth noting that most botnets aren't targeting networks where they'd really have to worry about network-level detection, so in almost all cases using your own domain names is by far the easiest and most reliable option.

I'd also guess the most common malware these days is of the often short-lived "stealer" type, where the operator doesn't necessarily really care about keeping their bots alive as the malware just immediately grabs all the interesting data from your computer and uploads it.
by jaffa2 | 2026-01-05 20:27:58+00:00
Well - that's just your --- opinion, man.

But answer me this. You say "but most [but not all? - interesting] of the icons do make it easier, faster and more pleasant for my brain to parse the menu vs no icons."

How does a list of icons that are used inconsistently, duplicated, used in other places, sometimes used and sometimes not used, not to mention illegible, positioned inconsistently, go directly against the broad (reasoned) rules of the Apple HIG, help 'make it easier' as you say?

This is literally what half the article is explaining and you are just saying - no it's easier to not be able to tell an icon apart, and it's easier to have the icons sometimes be the same or move locations, be so small as to be illegible.

How many did you get when the menu text was removed ? I just don't believe it makes it easier. But who am I to argue against someones 'subjective opinion evaluation' I'm just a guy on the internet.

ps I assume by the opening image, you mean the first screenshot supplied by the author of the article - the Sequoia to Tahoe menu comparison, which he brilliantly posted below a shot of the HIG which literally is explaining the exact same thing and why not to do it the Tahoe way. That in it self is confusing.

It makes no sense why Apple chose to do that with Tahoe?

I'll add a general comment - one of the reasons I use Apple systems was they had the UI stuff nailed down. Stuff was consistent. It looked and behaved in proper ways. It felt like a properly designed, holistic approach to UI design. Lately it's just a mess. This article touch the surface of the issues. My current beef is this stupid 'class of window' that appears now and again which is half-way between a dialog and a window. Best place to see it is immediately after a screenshot - click the thumb that appears. This window type doesn't behave like any other window. Z-order, closing, focus, actions that occur when you click certain things, are all different and inconsistent. But it does look a little like IOS though.
by stickfigure | 2026-01-05 20:27:59+00:00
The future is always uncertain. Sometimes you just have to take the rare chances afforded. "Maduro suddenly recognizes the value of democracy and transitions power to Gonzáles" wasn't on the table.

I'd push the delete button for every unelected dictator on the planet if I could. Repeatedly. It's morally offensive not to.
by freehorse | 2026-01-05 20:28:20+00:00
The one time I tried to use it for navigation (I don't remember exactly why, but I had some trouble opening a link I was sent elsewhere, and I was lazy to copy and paste the coordinates to another app) it sent me somewhere else than where I was supposed to go, around 5km away. I remember I was sent a link with coordinates to the meeting place, but somehow when opening the link in apple maps and asking the directions to there, it changed to a different destination, that happened to be a similar (but otherwise unrelated) place.
by Someone1234 | 2026-01-05 20:28:36+00:00
Obesity has a known, well established, multi-modal cancer risk, and then on top add metabolic syndrome (T2, heart disease, etc).

So, you're weighing a hypothetical risk against and establish risk, and concluding that the unknown risk is scarier than the known risk. Which is irrational.

Imagine if someone asks you if you want to take the "obesity pill," and you looked at the side effects objectively. But instead you weight obesity as "normal" and this as "new and scary."
by MPSimmons | 2026-01-05 20:28:44+00:00
> scale and degree matter

I agree, but I don't know where that line is.

So, back in the 90s and 2000s, you could get The Gimp image editor, and you could use the equivalent of Word Art to take a word or phase and make it look cool, with effects like lava or glowing stone, or whatever. The Gimp used ImageMagick to do this, and it legit looked cool at the time.

If you weren't good at The Gimp, which required a lot of knowledge, you could generate a cool website logo by going to a web server that someone built, giving them a word or phrase, and then selecting the pre-built options that did the same thing - you were somewhat limited in customization, but on the backend, it was using ImageMagick just like The Gimp was.

If someone used The Gimp or ImageMagick to make copyrighted material, nobody would blame the authors of The Gimp, right? The software were very nonspecific tools created for broad purposes, that of making images. Just because some bozo used them to create a protected image of Mickey Mouse doesn't mean that the software authors should be held accountable.

But if someone made the equivalent of one of those websites, and the website said, "click here to generate a random picture of Mickey Mouse", then it feels like the person running the website should at least be held partially responsible, right? Here is a thing that was created for the specific purpose of breaking the law upon request. But what is the culpability of the person initiating the request?

Anyway, the scale of AI is staggering, and I agree with you, and I think that common decency dictates that the actions of the product should be limited when possible to fall within the ethics of the organization providing the service, but the responsibility for making this tool do heinous things should be borne by the person giving the order.
by 8note | 2026-01-05 20:29:00+00:00
the first time you write something, descriptive names are handy, but if youre writing a second or thrid copy, or trying to combine several back down into one, those names are all baggage and come with a full mental model.

an alternative ive seen work well is names that arent descriptive on their own, but are unique and memorable, and can be looked up from a dictionary
Show HN: I made a tool that steals any website's UI into .md context
by exos-xyz | 2026-01-05 20:29:10+00:00
I made Steal UI because I got tired of wasting hours recreating design systems every time I shipped a new project.

Manually inspecting Linear's colors, guessing Stripe’s spacing, or reverse-engineering Vercel’s typography felt like a waste of time.

I’m a solution designer at a robotics company by day, but at night, I ship side projects.
After killing 5 previous projects because I burned too much time on design instead of shipping, I decided to automate the "DNA" extraction of the web.

How it works:
Paste any public URL.
Steal UI uses a mix of web scraping and AI interpretation to extract exact hex values, fonts, spacing, and shadows.

I’ve baked custom rules into the code to ensure the AI follows strict atomic design principles.

The output is a single .md file.
Drop it in Cursor as @context and you can start building production-ready UI in seconds.

Tech Stack:

Next.js for the frontend.
Headless scraping + AI APIs: I iterated on the prompts and heuristics until the output was clean enough for production code.

Looking for feedback