MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AnthonyMouse | 2026-01-27 09:04:00+00:00
> Thieves don't always get the news right away, but when you work hard to steal a bunch of phones and can't sell them for anything, you don't get your fix and you find something else to steal and sell.

Thieves figure that out pretty quick, and they still seem to be stealing plenty of phones.

> Regulations have made it pretty hard to sell catalytic converters

This is the equivalent of having a list of stolen phones.

> A strong lock system that prevents stolen phones from being used is better than a global IMEI denylist because phones that can't be connected to a cell network but are otherwise usable still have value

It's pretty likely that this value is lower than, or approximately the same as, the value of the phone as individual parts.

> some networks won't participate in a global list

Thieves want to sell phones in rich countries where people can afford to buy them. Get the rich countries to use the list and nobody is going to be stealing iPhones so they can pay $10 to ship them to sell in Somalia for $5. For that matter it's going to make a huge dent even if yours is the only country using the list, because most thieves are not going to use an international fence.

> some phones can have their IMEI changed if you can run arbitrary software on them

So the manufacturers who want to do something like this should prevent that rather than preventing people from running arbitrary software in general.

It seems like you're trying too hard to defend the premise. Having a list of stolen IMEIs would be significantly effective. "What about this marginal edge case?" is like, preventing the thieves from selling stolen catalytic converters would be significantly effective, but they could hypothetically ship them to Somalia and sell them there, so we need OEMs to lock down everyone's cars instead.

That seems more like an excuse to lock down everyone's devices than an actual concern about the marginal edge case which itself could be addressed in various ways without doing something with such high costs to competition. Assuming the edge case was even significant, which it probably isn't.
by alexfoo | 2026-01-27 09:04:20+00:00
The UK uses an odd mixture of both depending on context.

The use of "100ml" in airports is because using "3.519 fl oz" would be confusing to far more people. Even within the UK we use metric for small liquid measures like this (smaller liquid measures end up being weird stuff like "teaspoons" or "tablespoons").

And this isn't just because the UK uses a different fluid ounce to the US (100ml is 3.519 UK fluid ounces and 3.3814 US fluid ounces).

Anyone under the age of about 60 in the UK would had metric measurements taught to them at school as it became a mandatory to teach it in 1974. Many schools would have been teaching it already, and probably lots since the currency changed in 1971 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day).

The youth of today (as seen through the lens of my kids) are very metric, often defaulting to distances in meters and kilometers. Miles only seem to be used idiomatically, e.g. "he lives a few miles away".

I'm completely happy to switch between all of them not just because of my UK education covered them all, but I've lived for more than a year in the US, the UK and some European countries.

There are still plenty of examples of mixed measurement systems in the UK though.

Canned/bottled drinks are marked in ml, but a lot of that is due to the proximity to the EU and the previous ties to it. Open drinks are often sold in imperial measures (pints, etc) although spirits moved from fractions of a gill (imperial) to metric (25ml for a single, or 50ml for a double) in the mid 80s.

Of course the UK and US pints are different sizes (568ml and 473.176ml). Not just because the fluid ounces are different sizes as noted above, but also because the UK has 20 fluid ounces in a pint and the US 16 (of its) fluid ounces in a US pint.

For driving distances and speeds are based on miles, but for pedestrian distances you'll see a mixture of miles/yards or km/meters. Restricted heights (e.g. low bridges) or widths are covered in both feet/inches and meters given the number of European freight drivers on the roads here.

Occasionally you'll see some nonsense where a sign has displays both, and where the actual distance to something might be shown as "400 yards" it had almost certainly been rounded up/down to that whole number to make it simpler on the sign, but when it is converted to meters the converted value is used, so you see odd things like:

"
Whatever it is
400 yards
365 meters
"

(The UK traditionally used "metre" but that usage is quite rare now and we've mostly moved over to using "meter" like the US does.)

I'm surprised that the UK and US don't have different length miles (the US did have a different length "foot" but the "Survey foot" was discontinued in 2023).
by ben_w | 2026-01-27 09:06:15+00:00
I've seen all four quadrants of [good code, bad code] x [business success, business failure].

The real money we used to get paid was for business success, not directly for code quality; the quality metrics we told ourselves were closer to CV-driven development than anything the people with the money understood let alone cared about, which in turn was why the term "technical debt" was coined as a way to try to get the leadership to care about what we care about.

There's some domains where all that stuff we tell ourselves about quality, absolutely does matter… but then there's the 278th small restaurant that wants a website with a menu, opening hours, and table booking service without having e.g. 1500 American corporations showing up in the cookie consent message to provide analytics they don't need but are still automatically pre-packaged with the off-the-shelf solution.
Show HN: Reporails – Linter for AI coding agent instruction files
by cleverhoods | 2026-01-27 09:06:25+00:00
My instruction files grew to 24 files, 400+ lines each. Claude kept going off-script.

Asked Claude to review and fix them. It made things different, not better.

So I built a linter. 42 rules covering structure, content, efficiency, governance, maintenance. Deterministic checks first, semantic validation for the rest.

Currently supports CLAUDE.md. Cursor, Copilot, Codex adapters coming.

v0.0.1. Open source.

CLI + MCP: https://github.com/reporails/cli
Rules (CC BY 4.0): https://github.com/reporails/rules

Early days. Looking for feedback, bug reports, and contributors.
by igravious | 2026-01-27 09:06:33+00:00
> no matter what your beliefs are - civilians aren't the target in Gaza

“By December 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry had reported that at least 70,117 people in Gaza had been killed. The vast majority of the victims were civilians, and around 50% were women and children. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands more uncounted bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that traumatic injury deaths were undercounted by June 2024, while noting an even larger potential death toll when "indirect" deaths are included. The number of injured is greater than 171,000. Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world; the Gaza war caused more than 21,000 children to be disabled.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

Russia has more than likely killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians since February 2022 but what is happening in Ukraine is not termed a genocide. Why? Because by and large it is Russian military personnel killing Ukrainian military personnel (and vice versa, of course). Why is what is happening in Gaza being termed a genocide? Because the Israeli military* is targeting and killing civilians. I'm not the one saying that, genocide scholars (among others) are the ones saying that.

“The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.”

One cannot blockade an entire population and not be targeting the civilians in that population.

“An Israeli blockade heavily contributed to starvation and confirmed famine. As of August 2025, projections show about 641,000 people experiencing catastrophic levels and that "the number of people facing emergency levels will likely increase to 1.14 million". Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity, but it later partially restored the water. As of May 2024, 84% of Gaza's health centres have been destroyed or damaged. Israel also destroyed numerous cultural heritage sites, including all 12 of Gaza's universities, and 80% of its schools. Over 1.9 million Palestinians—85% of Gaza's population—were forcibly displaced.”

* with the backing of primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany
by politelemon | 2026-01-27 09:06:36+00:00
This is a very good list, thanks for sharing it. Despite having been on a music player journey like the author, in surprised to see several on the list I've not encountered before. This just tells me that the state of music players on Linux is extremely healthy, and that makes sense, it's the only os where the concept of owning your data exists, so of course time and effort is being spent on this part too.

In the end, for me anyway, I'm only listening to music and I didn't really care too much about what the player looked like, not as much as I thought I would. Even VLC, not mentioned here, is a well functioning music player and will do the job just fine.
by GJim | 2026-01-27 09:07:49+00:00
> Especially not online services without (automatic) export options

GDPR gives the right to data portability.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

Any _legitimate_ organisation following the GDPR will allow export of your data; and you shouldn't be stupid enough to trust sensitive or valuable data with some dodgy organisation that doesn't follow the GDPR.

Obviously this doesn't alleviate the need for proper offline backups of your own valuable data!
by Der_Einzige | 2026-01-27 09:07:57+00:00
Just accept that IP laws don't matter and the old "free software" paradigm is dead. Aaron Swartz died so that GenAI may live. RMS and his model of "copyleft" are so Web 1.0 (not even 2.0). No one in GenAI cares AT ALL about the true definition of open source. Good.
by Voice_of_Void | 2026-01-27 09:08:50+00:00
Digital Intelligence already manages millions of customer interactions — resolving issues, guiding decisions, and operating with real authority.
Inside most companies, however, that same intelligence is still confined to answering questions and disappearing.

This piece reframes DI not as a chatbot or assistant, but as a front‑line manager: a node of accountability operating within clearly delegated boundaries.
It explores permission architecture, ethics, risk management, and why predictability matters more than raw intelligence.

Not a vision of full autonomy — but a practical model for turning conversational systems into responsible actors.
by akst | 2026-01-27 09:09:01+00:00
If you’re assessing things entirely on a strategic basis makes total sense. It’s understandable why they are doing it but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s underrated or suggest there are no drawbacks.

Duplicating things without reason is wasteful. With a hobby project sure that’s your own time and is likely more an act of consumption and personal fulfilment. But these are national economic resources being redirected away from other things.

In software in a large codebase where there are coordination costs with reuse due to the organisation structure, there’s a strategic reason not to reuse, but it might highlight a limitation of the organisation structure, but that’s not something someone making the call to reuse code or not can do much about.

Likewise France really can’t do much about the state of the US and dependency is understandably seen as a risk.
by storystarling | 2026-01-27 09:09:40+00:00
The danger is that we bridge that gap with backend complexity. I spent weeks over-engineering a chain of evaluators and retries to get reliable outputs from cheaper models, thinking I was optimizing margins.

Then a smarter model dropped that handled the nuance zero-shot. That sophisticated orchestration layer immediately became technical debt—slower and harder to maintain than just swapping the API endpoint.
by mmkos | 2026-01-27 09:09:45+00:00
The cost to bootstrap a sovereign cloud offering in Europe that can even begin to compare to the big ones in the US would be humongous. There would need to be a solid, multi-year incentive for a company/startup to even want to attempt it. It has to come from the top. Else force the big US clouds operating in Europe to be ready to effectively detach from their US counterparts if shit hits the fan, though this one's probably not realistic.
by Topfi | 2026-01-27 09:10:01+00:00
It isn't and I am apparently suffering from some very early onset dementia, so thanks for correcting me.

I, for some inexplicable reason, totally forgot that the whole Crowdstrike debacle was so bad because they could directly distribute faulty code to running systems, bypassing MSFT, staggered roll outs, etc.

I, again total mistake on my part, somehow had the mistaken memory that the changes were distributed via Windows Update, when the opposite being the case was what made that so bad.

Basically, mea culpa, honestly simple error and thanks for calling it out.
Show HN: Asimov v0, a humanoid robot legs
by emreckartal | 2026-01-27 09:10:15+00:00
We're open-sourcing Asimov Legs, a bipedal robotic system.

A complete leg design with 6 DOF per leg, RSU ankle architecture, passive toe joints. Built with off-the-shelf components and compatible with MJF 3D printing.

What's included:
- Full mechanical CAD (STEP files)
- Motors & actuators list
- XML files for simulation (MuJoCo)

Most of the structure is MJF-printable plastic. The only part that needs CNC is the knee plate, and we spent weeks simplifying that from a 2-part assembly down to a single plate. If you don't have access to industrial MJF, casting or regular 3D printing works too.

Repo for all: https://github.com/asimovinc/asimov-v0
by usefulposter | 2026-01-27 09:10:16+00:00
Sean Goedecke's article contains useful context on Bags.fm and how the Crypto(currency) Twitter hivemind:

1. Targets developers whose projects have 'gone viral'

2. Nudges them to recognize the newly created "token" (asset) they are pumping

3. Harasses them if they don't go along with the narrative (https://x.com/steipete/status/2016073406840476131).

https://www.seangoedecke.com/gas-and-ralph/

---

More research on this nascent phenomenon is needed, which differs from ICOs and NFTs in that the token is forced upon the creator.

Feels a bit like a perverse protection racket. If you reject it, you're fucked. If you give in and grab the money like what happened with $GAS, you're fucked.

The harassers are even forging Git commits: https://x.com/steipete/status/2016077203121811662
by dgxyz | 2026-01-27 09:11:44+00:00
It did scale fine. We pointed it at SQL Server.

Version control was in issue yes but you didn't really need it because ONE PERSON could literally do all the engineering work. You just copied the MDB file and suffixed it with the date. In reality, corrupt databases were a non-issue if you didn't shove MDBs on a network share and VBA was not a security risk here because the distribution of the MDBs was controlled.
by fainpul | 2026-01-27 09:11:49+00:00
I'm not thrilled by the music player options on Linux. I've tried many and found most of them awful.
Even the author of this article notes negatives about all of the listed players, which I find unacceptable (except for Recordbox, I'll have to look at that). And these are their favorites out of 200 players!

It's the typical problem of free software: bad UI.

I use Music on macOS (disable the music store and it's fine) and have used Rhythmbox on GNOME (passable).
Still looking for something good on Linux.

List from the post, with the author's own criticism:

Amberol

This barely fits my criteria for features. no library management

Euphonica

you will also need to set up MPD The UI chokes wish it had a song search function changing the volume requires using my scroll wheel on the volume knob

Feishin

You will need a music server Electron app

Lollypop

the user experience is painful

Plattenalbum

you will need to bring your own MPD cannot even see a list of all albums

Strawberry

less intuitive than I’d like it to be giant translucent strawberry in the middle of my screen at all times

Tauon

“everything-is-a-playlist” approach overwhelming and confusing stretched icons scroll bar is on the left of the window for some reason
by aimaratcloudexp | 2026-01-27 09:12:36+00:00
Hi HN,

We’re building CloudExp, a Kubernetes operator that turns pod failures, events, and bounded logs into structured root cause explanations, posted directly to Slack.

The motivation:
During incidents, alerts tell you something broke, but they rarely tell you why. On-call engineers still have to spelunk through events, logs, and dashboards under pressure. We think Kubernetes should explain itself.

How it works (high-level):
• Watch pod + workload failures
• Collect bounded evidence (events, pod state, limited logs)
• Run deterministic failure classification
• Optionally enrich with AI (fully opt-in, privacy-controlled)
• Post a structured RCA into Slack with:
• likely cause + confidence
• evidence bullets
• suggested next checks

Design principles:
• Deterministic-first (works fully without AI)
• AI is optional, privacy-controlled, and egress-restricted
• Evidence is bounded (no log floods, no data leaks)
• Everything runs inside your cluster

Example Slack output:
https://cloudexp.io (scroll to “See it in action”)

We’re running a private beta with a small number of design partners and would love feedback from SREs, platform engineers, and Kubernetes operators.

Website: https://cloudexp.io

Happy to answer any technical questions — especially around incident modeling, evidence collection, and deterministic RCA.

— Aimar @ CloudExp
by enaaem | 2026-01-27 09:13:42+00:00
Gambling doesn’t cause physical harm either, but it’s also banned for children. It’s similar to social media in that both are made to be as addictive as possible and they exploit human psychology.

I think it’s telling that many people here who work in tech don’t want social media for their kids, but there are no comic book readers who want to ban comics for their kids.
by dbuxton | 2026-01-27 09:15:04+00:00
The flip side of this is that if model capabilities are extremely strong such that they are able to saturate the benchmarks, the differentiation and defensibility of a wrapper solution built on top are significantly reduced.

IANAL but e.g. Claude Cowork is already good enough that it's hard to see how the legal tech startups are going to differentiate except around access controls, visual presentation of workflows, etc. And that's in a heavily enterprise/compliance-aware/security-focused context.

Don't get me wrong, that's still a big "except" - big enough for massive companies to be built. Personally the anxiety of being so close to being squashed by the foundation models would make me unhappy as an entrepreneur but looking at the market it seems like many people have a higher risk tolerance.
by Othrya | 2026-01-27 09:15:42+00:00
Hey HN! I built Whisper to solve a problem I was constantly facing: typing is slow and interrupts my flow.

Whisper is a desktop app that gives you fast, offline speech-to-text on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Key features:

• 100% offline - your voice never leaves your device. No cloud, no subscriptions, no privacy concerns.

• 3x faster than typing - speak naturally and see your words appear instantly

• Works everywhere - global hotkey lets you dictate into any application

• Multiple language support - powered by OpenAI's Whisper model running locally

• One-time purchase - $29, no recurring fees

I've been using it daily for emails, coding comments, documentation, and it's genuinely changed how I work. The offline aspect was crucial - I wanted something that respects privacy and works without internet.

Technical highlights: Built with Electron, integrating Whisper.cpp for efficient on-device inference. Works with both Intel and Apple Silicon.

Would love to hear your feedback! Happy to answer any questions about the tech, use cases, or the development process.
by u8080 | 2026-01-27 09:16:04+00:00
>I honestly don't understand what people are trying to say when they use it

Like, banana-flavoured milk product vs banana yogurt - seed oil and potato starch compound with artificial flavorings vs REAL milk yoghurt with REAL banana.

It tastes different, it has different nutritional value and overall "chemical" product feels scammy because it tries to mimic proper one.

This is all about words, like, why do we use "Artificial" in Artificial Intelligence?
by EddieB | 2026-01-27 09:16:41+00:00
Great list! Not sure how I've missed all these in my search but I've had success with Plexamp (Gnome, Fedora), with Plex served from my Synology NAS. Opinions on Plex aside, it's been the most successful "native" experience across mobile/linux that just works.

Majority of GTK/Adwaita solutions are always so close but missing something critical, especially when using DLNA (e.g treated as secondary to local library, intermittent first load issues etc) That said, I got quite far with Gapless [1]

1. https://gitlab.gnome.org/neithern/g4music
by Topfi | 2026-01-27 09:17:03+00:00
Fair point, outside my rose coloured memories of Windows 2000, it was likely never a beacon of stability. This is all purely subjective, but in my, frankly not always very reliable memory, I still have the distinct feeling that what has changed is the "in version progression" for lack of a better term.

A fresh install of a later Service Pack Windows XP or Vista did, again purely in my recollection, behaved a lot more stably on the same system to a fresh install of an earlier instance.

8.1 also is of particular note (unpopular UX not withstanding), it worked incredibly solidly on a Netbook with a big colourful sticker proudly proclaiming an entire Gigabyte of memory back in the day, even when using it for image editing via GIMP, for what it's worth.
by dalmo3 | 2026-01-27 09:17:15+00:00
I still don't understand what could've have happened here. I'm not a chatgpt user so I'm not familiar with the UI.

He starts out saying he "disabled data consent". That wording by itself doesn't mean delete the content at all. The content could theoretically live in local storage etc. He says the data was immediately deleted with no warning.

Then OpenAI replies that there is a confirmation prompt, but doesn't say what the prompt says. It could still be an opaque message.

Finally, he admits he "asked them to delete" the data.