MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ben_w | 2026-01-24 12:22:11+00:00
The current US administration is not competent to ensure continual financing in real terms.

If the White House keeps up current threats against allies it may find nobody willing to lend them money, and therefore the government will be forced to inflate its way to balancing the books each year; if they follow through with kicking out the undocumented migrant workers (even if they improve their current behaviour and limit themselves to *only* undocumented migrant workers), they mess up US agriculture at the same time; there is also visible corruption and self-dealing within the government.

The question is the level, rather than the existence of these factors.

There's been another authoritarian in my lifetime who messed with farms by actually kicking out non-native people in the way Trump threatens, demonstrating even worse corruption, and that actually did try to fund the government with inflation rather than my hypothetical of "will be forced to": Mugabe. It didn't go well for Zimbabwe, and the US military can observe what happened there and decide if that's what they want to see in the US.
by elcritch | 2026-01-24 12:23:42+00:00
Result or Error types may just be normal values, but they add overhead to the code as well when they’re ubiquitous.

Once they’re the standard error method then case every function has to intertwine branching for errors paths vs normal paths. Often the compiler has to generate unique code or functions to handle each instance of the Result type. Both add to code size and branching size, etc.
by delusional | 2026-01-24 12:24:18+00:00
I don't think it's really fair to compare IA to a real library. The Seattle public library for example spends 76% of their operating budget on employees, most of who are doing public services work. The second major expense for a real library is paying for books and materials, again IA doesn't do any of that.

It's not fair to compare an institution with a website.
by Dilettante_ | 2026-01-24 12:24:50+00:00
This is my biggest fear wrt gov't search-and-seizure. I know the police won't be able to get at my juicy encypted bits, but I also know they're vindictive basterds who'll be held to no accountability. Of course they'll wipe my drives just to get revenge for me "winning" by having blocked their access.
by pumplekin | 2026-01-24 12:26:41+00:00
This is due to advertising standards. They are required to advertise "average speed", although how this is actually calculated is nebulous.

A&A not advertising can just say what the link speeds actually are on the product pages.

Other ISP's could do this too, but it would cause confusion having one figure on the advert and one figure on the product pages, and they might get in trouble if they link to the product pages in the adverts.
by gdotdesign | 2026-01-24 12:26:49+00:00
It's perfectly fine to allow if in tags (the compiler can figure it out). In Mint you can do that no problem: https://mint-lang.com/sandbox/6lnZHiG8LVRJqA

component Main {
fun render : Html {
<div>
if true {
<div>"Hello World!"</div>
} else {
<div>"False"</div>
}
</div>
}
}
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-24 12:27:07+00:00
I'd say "meh" to VCVRack. Just like you, I got into music production to get away from the computer so I avoid software when I can, I basically only have hardware for production, so I can use my hands and not stare at screens, only do mastering in a DAW.

Like you, many people along the years been telling me that I'll love modular synths, and I should try it out VCVRack to get a taste. So I did, maybe once or twice a year. It never felt fun for me, even one bit. Never sure why.

Then at some point I borrow my friend's modular setup as he was going to play in places where he couldn't bring it, and I finally understood what's so fun about it. The hardware is what makes it fun and relaxing for me, not the concepts themselves, and seemingly for me, they don't translate into the digital realm.

I guess the point is: I'm kind of similar to you and I couldn't get into VCVRack but actual real modular synths are fun as hell. Maybe it's the same for you, so don't lose hope if VCVRack ends up not feeling fun :)
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2026-01-24 12:28:58+00:00
> in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.

Because there is no where else for that debt to go. No one else wants to take on so much debt.

Meanwhile there are a bunch of asset managers who are paying the mortgage on their beach home in the Caribbean with the bonuses they earn by investing in US debt. If the US defaults on that debt 10 tears from now that means they still earned 9 years of million dollar salaries, and anyways they won’t be blamed for something the entire industry suffered from at that point.

If they do the prudent thing and ask for a higher price they will end up investing fewer dollars which reduces their 2% commission on invested capital, money that might go to their international equity golfing buddy instead.

Entities where the money is managed by the investor itself (for example, foreign national governments) do indeed appear to be cutting back.
by omnicognate | 2026-01-24 12:29:56+00:00
I've been using this for a couple of years in my home now, with the same German Gigacopper devices. It's rock solid, very much unlike my attempts at power-line ethernet in the past. I used ethernet over coax in my last house too, which was also great.

I think many (most?) UK houses could get gigabit ethernet to at least some rooms without any new wiring. It's strange that the devices for doing it reliably are hard to get, but powerline ethernet modems are sold everywhere despite barely working in most houses.
by st_goliath | 2026-01-24 12:30:03+00:00
Yes, one can only hope Ken Shirriff eventually happens to come across one of those models, but I guess they are probably very rare these days.

Besides the multiplication, the 386 had quite a number of teething problems[1], including occasionally broken addressing modes, unrecoverable exceptions, virtual address resolution bugs around the 2G mark, etc...

A while ago, there was also an article posted here that analyzed the inner workings of the Windows/386 loader[2]. Interestingly, Windows simply checks a pair of instruction (XBTS/IBTS) that early 386 steppings had, but was later removed, raising an invalid opcode exception instead.

Raymond Chen also wrote a blog post describing a few workarounds that Windows 95 had implemented[3].

[1] https://www.pcjs.org/documents/manuals/intel/80386/

[2] https://virtuallyfun.com/2025/09/06/unauthorized-windows-386...

[3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110112-00/?p=11...
by necovek | 2026-01-24 12:30:30+00:00
Crazy stupid ideas like cars with only touchscreens have still taken a decade to come in and then to get considered ill-advised even though anyone driving a car could tell how bad of an interface it is. We are still not fully out through the other side.

So while OpenAI or Anthropic are maybe not profitable today, they've got at least 5 years to figure it out. And there is already talk of inserting ads into the "chat", but hopefully that does not work!

But really, LLMs are useful (yes, sometimes only in appearance, but sometimes for real), and with that, there will continue to be investment into them until they are made profitable.
by ben_w | 2026-01-24 12:30:54+00:00
IMO, the problem is that you must learn what "research" actually entails before attempting it, so that you don't fall into the trap of that fallacy.

Most people… eh. I don't know about the rest of the world, and my experience was in the 90s, but for me GCSE triple science was a list of facts to regurgitate in exams, and although we did also have practical sessions those weren't scored by how well we did Popperian falsification (a thing I didn't even learn about it until my entirely optional chosen-for-fun A-level in Philosophy; I don't know if A-level sciences teaches that).
by hintop_io | 2026-01-24 12:32:12+00:00
Competitive trivia game where every hint you reveal reduces your score. The challenge: guess the answer using as few clues as possible.

Features real-time 1v1 duels, daily challenges, and multiple categories. The core mechanic rewards deduction over encyclopedic knowledge.

Try it: hintop.io
iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hintop/id6757975518
by fatherwavelet | 2026-01-24 12:32:47+00:00
I love Korg but personally I think this is stupid.

I had an OASYS PCI and synthkit 20 years ago that had incredible physical modeling.

Maybe because I can picture what this would sound like with those OASYS models that it is not impressive at all.

I do always appreciate how daring korg can be though.
by resworksentinel | 2026-01-24 12:33:10+00:00
Hi HN, I built this because I wanted a privacy-focused alternative to LangChain/Zapier that runs entirely on my RTX 3080. It uses Qwen 2.5 and handles urgency detection and routing without any API calls.

Here is a short demo video of it handling 500+ tasks: https://youtu.be/tky3eURLzWo

The code is pure Python (no heavy frameworks). Feedback on the routing logic is welcome.
by ranguna | 2026-01-24 12:34:37+00:00
That's very alarmist, sensational and dramatic. The systems are going though some tough times, but they are not breaking down, that's what children would say to make their life more like a Hollywood movie.

My father had to go though multiple appointments and analysis to get his prostate and hernia checked. Never waited more than a week and paid 0 in total. Before, he'd probably only have to wait a couple days for appointments, but the stress the healthcare system is currently undergoing is abnormal due to the more aggressive cases of flue this season. All things considering, things are not "breaking down" (I'm even getting some second hand embarrassment reading those words).
by Latty | 2026-01-24 12:34:48+00:00
My experience with powerline is they can work well for low activity, but they all overheat if you actually use them continuously, and the advertised speeds are extremely misleading as they are before error correction (which is very significant) and for the whole network.

My guess is that the nature of them being in a power plug means that they struggle to isolate things from the mains for safety in a way that doesn't also make them hotboxes.
by g947o | 2026-01-24 12:36:46+00:00
The median user does not have a threat model.

Ask a non techy user:

* How do they backup their data/do they backup their data at all?

* Do they know 3-2-1 rule? Are they following it?

I bet 90% people will answer no to some of the questions.

And data backup is much more of an everyday topic compared to disk encryption.
by squid3128 | 2026-01-24 12:37:35+00:00
After 20 years in the industry, I haven't paid income taxes since 2022. After watching everyone in tech comply with mandates regarding what they put into their own body after years of siding with women regarding "my body, my choice", I'm just waiting eagerly for the civil war to start.

I hope everyone who complied enjoyed their additional ~3 years of employment!

Side note: after dumping all my savings into metals in ~2020, my net value has doubled despite no income in years! Have fun folks!

(awaits ban)
by seec | 2026-01-24 12:38:18+00:00
Wireless earbuds are convenient sometimes, but that comes at the price of inconvenience other times (thinking about charging and connecting).

I think the noise canceling is overhyped to oblivion. Sound isolation with good tips has been more than fine since the 2000s, and most of the annoying, hard-to-block noise comes from physical transfer via vibration anyway.
by justsomehnguy | 2026-01-24 12:38:53+00:00
It has as much sense as calling all the car roads in the world 'bridges'. They are interconnecting some areas via a physical connection, not some 5th dimension magik, after all.

It's even more egregious with 'ipvlan' and 'macvlan' drivers:

> ipvlan Connect containers to external VLANs.

Duh, that's a 'routed network' and nobody cares if it's on a separate vlan or not.

> macvlan Containers appear as devices on the host's network.

And this is a bridge!
by necovek | 2026-01-24 12:39:15+00:00
You can actually get a Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Linux on Lenovo US (and many other countries) pages: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bun...

I am sure it even applies to laptops like T and P series too.

And Dell was the pioneer of the big makes with XPS 13 (and they still seem to do them: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-laptop/s...).
by Latty | 2026-01-24 12:39:36+00:00
When looking at new build houses a year or two back (in the UK), I saw some stuff that made no sense to me: they installed some by default, but ran it to only the lounge and bedroom 1, the house also had a dedicated study (labelled as such by them) which did not have an ethernet run to it, and they refused to let you option in any more, very weird.
by 9rx | 2026-01-24 12:40:42+00:00
> it should have been 2025 with the forced retirement of the "forever OS" Windows 10.

Still too soon, no? Windows 10 continues to work just fine. The layman using it doesn't really care — and probably doesn't even realize — that it isn't supported anymore. Only when they start to have trouble will they start to care. Eventually a time will come when they want to use some new software that won't work in it, or what have you. When that time comes, that will be the true test.
by vampeta | 2026-01-24 12:41:58+00:00
Hi, I’m the author.
I built sendonedollar.net as a minimalist experiment: a single-purpose page that lets someone send exactly $1 with one click, using well-known payment platforms instead of a custom checkout.
The motivation was to explore how far ultra-simple payment UX can go before trust or clarity breaks. No forms, no explanations, no upsells — just the action.
I’d really appreciate feedback on:
whether the intent is clear without explanation,
the choice of payment platforms,
trust and legitimacy signals (what would make this feel safer or clearer).
If you notice any bugs or odd behavior, please mention browser + device. Thanks for taking a look.
by lunar-whitey | 2026-01-24 12:43:10+00:00
The funnel for design is a little wider. Nevertheless, if you aren’t early in your career, I suspect you’ll find that most firms are not interested in people who do not have specific experience building something fairly close to their current product. If none of the handful of players in your segment are interested, see above.

I suppose there could be some shift in market dynamics now that the political leadership here has decided to shut down what’s left of the talent pipeline. I think most firms will just accelerate their shift to more stable geographies, though.
by ranguna | 2026-01-24 12:44:11+00:00
I'm sorry, but in my mind, open source and commercial don't mix. What would a license for that even look like?

I'm not saying going commercial is bad, go for it. I'm just saying that when we are talking open source, we are not talking money, that's all. Money is just one of many things in life, sure it's important, but not by itself.
FlutterJS – Run Flutter code, get semantic HTML output
by flutterjs | 2026-01-24 12:45:18+00:00
Hey HN! I'm the creator of FlutterJS.
The Problem: Flutter Web is great for building apps, but terrible for websites. It renders everything to Canvas/WASM, which means:
2-5 MB bundles (slow on mobile)
Zero SEO – Google can't index canvas pixels
Poor accessibility (no semantic HTML for screen readers)
3-8 second initial load times
If you've ever tried to build a marketing site or blog with Flutter Web, you've hit this wall.
The Solution: FlutterJS compiles your Flutter/Dart code to semantic HTML + CSS + JavaScript instead of Canvas. Same Flutter syntax you already know, but the output is:
~50-100 KB bundles (50x smaller)
Full SEO support (real HTML elements)
Sub-1-second first paint
Accessible by default
How it works:
You write normal Flutter/Dart code
Our Dart CLI analyzes your AST and generates an Intermediate Representation (IR)
The IR gets transpiled to JavaScript with a lightweight runtime
Output is semantic HTML that search engines can index

Current Status: Beta (v0.9.x). We support the most common Material widgets (Scaffold, AppBar, Text, Button, Row, Column, StatefulWidget, etc.). Animation support and full Material 3 are on the roadmap.
Known Limitations:
Not all Flutter widgets are implemented yet (see compatibility matrix in README)
Method tear-offs need wrapping in lambdas for now
Complex animations aren't supported yet
This is best for content-heavy sites, not graphics-intensive apps
Why I built this: I kept running into clients who loved Flutter's DX but needed their sites to rank on Google. Flutter Web couldn't do that. I wanted the best of both worlds.
I'd love your feedback, especially:
Have you hit this SEO wall with Flutter Web?
What widgets would you need for your use case?
Any concerns about the approach?
Happy to answer questions about the architecture, performance claims, or roadmap!
by Arathorn | 2026-01-24 12:45:55+00:00
> Either the UI/UX sucks, like Matrix

It's ridiculous to say that the UI/UX of a protocol sucks.

Matrix has clients with good UX and ones with less good UX (especially in the past). I would challenge anyone to install Element X and say that it has a bad UI/UX - it's objectively at least as good as WhatsApp/Signal/iMessage. It's probably not as good as Telegram yet (but TG has it easy given it's not E2EE).
by alimbada | 2026-01-24 12:45:56+00:00
I'd rather use the 2.4Ghz adapter rather than Bluetooth as the connection is supposedly more reliable (and less prone to latency issues) from what I've read. Anyway, after jumping through all those hoops I did get it working so I'm happy with xone for now. I even managed to boot into the newer version of the kernel without the degraded display resolution issue after that.

I have a new issue though after updating 900+ packages using KDE Discover which is that the GUI login doesn't work. The screen goes blank after I enter credentials and nothing happens unless I switch to another TTY at which point I get thrown back to the login screen on TTY1. As a workaround, I can login on another TTY and then use startplasma in order to use KDE. I've learnt my lesson not to use KDE Discover for updates though because it doesn't get logged in dnf history so you can't use dnf rollback.
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-24 12:46:16+00:00
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/education/learning-from-switzer... ... maybe I should've qualified, as our idea of "formal" has many more tracks?

(I also may be the wrong person to talk with about this, as I have both a 4-year degree and a trade, thanks to Aristippus' advice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristippus#:~:text=It%20is%20r... )
by pickleRick243 | 2026-01-24 12:46:57+00:00
The actions of the current US administration seem to have provoked intense negative reactions, or perhaps caused long simmering resentment to boil over. I hope some of this energy goes towards cultivating a more entrepreneurial, less risk-averse culture in Europe.

As much as you may detest all the other great powers jostling for position with seemingly cursory attention paid to moral considerations, making your core identity the cultured "nice guy" is likely a trap. I'd love to see the resurgence of a strong Europe. I think this will require some introspection and more action than simply boycotting Google and Amazon.
by simoncion | 2026-01-24 12:48:37+00:00
> Wait, but you get 63MB/s down from steam?

I usually (but not always) saturate my downlink with Steam downloads... even back when I was a Comcast customer and paying for ~180MB/s (~1500mbit/s) asymmetric service.

I believe that I have noticed that smaller games (~a few hundred MB or maybe a GB or two) will download quite a bit slower than large games, but I'm not very confident in that observation.
by thunfischtoast | 2026-01-24 12:49:02+00:00
I've made a similar experience. Not having to focus on my exact speed all the time (using adaptive cruise control) enables me to watch the mirrors more. It also enables me to keep my attention over multiple hours.

On a kinda unrelated note: I lately see more and more people watching streams or Tik Tok while driving. If of course you use your newly acquired freedom for that it will lead to more accidents.
by mschae23 | 2026-01-24 12:49:58+00:00
That depends on your interpretation of what a “derivative work” constitutes, which the EUPL delegates to copyright law. For the GPL, it includes other programs linked to the work (which is how it affects other projects using the work as a library). If this definition held true for the EUPL as well, it would behave the same way. (By the way, I don't really like describing copyleft as “viral”, because that implies the GPL (and similar licenses) are like infectious diseases.)

However, the compatibility clause allows relicensing to other licenses that are explicitly weaker in their copyleft, which is what I meant with the quoted sentence.

Another comment just made me aware though that apparently, copyleft extending to other programs linking with the work is just not a thing in the EU? I'll have to read more into the details of that.
by g947o | 2026-01-24 12:50:38+00:00
I think you are confused.

The issue is about getting locked out of your own data, which can easily happen in a number of cases.

And you don't necessarily need to actually have your account banned.

Let's just say you signed up for a Microsoft account when setting up for a new PC (well, because you have to). You don't use that account anywhere else, and you forgot the password, even though you can log in via PIN or something else. Now you install Linux or just boot to a different system once. When you need to boot to Windows again, good luck.

And that's just one of the cases.

A real disaster happened to someone, although on a different platform, and the context is a bit different: https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
by tialaramex | 2026-01-24 12:50:46+00:00
Worth knowing in this context:

Telephones only want a twisted pair. Ethernet, popular with businesses for decades, also wants a twisted pair. Now, that pair must meet much stricter criteria to be suitable, such as Category 5 (for 100Mbit) or Category 5e (1000Mbit ie Gigabit) - but it really is just twisted pair cable, merely a tighter specification than your phone.

Suppose you are a sparky (electrician) and you have some jobs where you are to install telephone connections, some where you put in "Ethernet" (presumably 100baseT would be fine) and some they specifically want you to wire for Gigabit.

You could go to your wholesaler and buy a reel of Cat3 phone cable, a reel of Cat5 100baseT Ethernet, and a third reel of Cat 5e Gigabit cable, and take the right one for each job. So long as you do this flawlessly you can probably save a few pounds every year by using a slightly cheaper cable for some jobs.

Or, you can buy one reel of Cat5e and use that for all these jobs and since it's the same reel you can't have the wrong one and don't need to check paperwork to know you've put the correct cable in a duct etc. Thought that was a phone line but now the client insists it's data? No problem, they're the exact same cable, just smile and agree.

When I bought the place where I live now I wanted GigE to this desk, even though the DSL comes into a different room. I didn't love the idea of cutting holes in walls but I was resigned to maybe needing that, except there's a phone extension in this room (like the author says, we do love phone extensions) and so that room the DSL comes into has a twisted pair to here. I opened up the box, and I'm like huh, that's Cat5e, and sure enough this entire building was wired with Cat5e because like I said, why not, it's basically the same cable, why carry a separate reel?

So I changed the face plates from telephone to Ethernet, and I'm done.