MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ben_w | 2026-01-17 11:55:27+00:00
> They would say things like "wow, I can afford a much better life than in the 1700s with my weaving skills", "what just happened to me? What was that time portal?" and "maybe I should learn to code, they earn even more money than I do".

By Christ’s bones, where am I set now? This town’s all noise and hurrying. Aye, cloth fetches money, they say so; but meat costs dear, and a room dearer yet.

I weave as I ever did. My hands know the work. But the buyer stands far off, and sends his price by another man, and I must take it, for what choice have I? At home we knew who cheated us, and who’d answer for it. Here, a man shrugs and says, ‘That’s the market.’ I know not the fellow called Market, but he rules harder than any master I’ve known.

The loom is quick, I’ll grant it. Too quick. Three men’s work in one frame, and the rest turned loose. They’ll not thank thee for cheap cloth.

And thou say’st a man may earn bread by "code"? Is that writ-work then, like tallies and ledgers? If so, God help him when the ink runs dry. A loom at least makes cloth a body can wear.

Thou tell’st me I live better. Maybe. I eat white bread. But I sleep light, and when work stops, there’s naught beneath me.

--

The past makes for more interesting stories; the present, I find, has all the limits of setting a short story in Iain M Banks' The Culture, where too many solutions already exist to every drama, and we've not internalised how easy the solutions are.
by traceroute66 | 2026-01-17 11:56:55+00:00
> End users don't care, companies don't care

Look, I'm the last person in the world to defend Microsoft but ....

End users do care. But they also have a lifetime of Windows usage and a whole bunch of Windows software. Sure you could run your Windows software in an emulator but that's just another thing for Mom & Pop to learn.

Its fine for a techie to say "I switched to Linux and its fine", but for a complete non-techie who has spent their life on Windows its a big ask.

Companies also care but it also has to make hard-nose business sense.

So when Microsoft turns up your doorstep and says ... "hey, you can have email, MDM, cloud-based file server, conferencing, calling and your old favourites Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint all for $20 a month .... and all locked behind secure 2FA authentication" what the hell do you expect company management to say ? Its a bit of a no-brainer really.

In addition you are a company, you employ people. Its a productivity killer to tell all those people who have been using Word/Powerpoint/Excel/Outlook all their lives to go learn something else.
by watwut | 2026-01-17 11:58:51+00:00
> - Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.

I think that we do NOT want to promote this. We need less of that, not more in fact. In fact, we need to keep people like that far away from power.
by iLoveOncall | 2026-01-17 11:59:01+00:00
> At this point, what even would make people switch from MS?

Linux supporting all common end user applications and games, and working with all consumer hardware reliably, and having an intuitive and modern looking UI.

Also not having to wonder which distribution to install because MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckLinux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

I use Linux all the time, I have servers to host my websites and a NAS, and I install Debian on all of them and have no problem administering everything, but you have to be blind to not see how Linux is an extremely hostile environment for consumers.
by dvfjsdhgfv | 2026-01-17 11:59:39+00:00
It confused me as hell as my first thought was "oh great, astral.sh got bought by a large company, now we've eliminated the last obstacle to using uv in enterprise context" only to realize that it's another company with similar name.

I mean good for them, but it would be nice if the same happened to e.g. Astral (cf.).
by jaccola | 2026-01-17 11:59:46+00:00
In the UK I would say most people are proud of the BBC^; many people I speak to are smug when comparing it to e.g. Fox News, CNBC, etc... I think this is a big mistake, and that the USA system is actually better.

It's impossible for one news source to be unbiased, and the delusion that it is unbiased is dangerous. If you truly believe a source is "the truth" and unbiased it allows you to switch off any critical thinking; the information bypasses any protections you have.

Much better to have many news sources where the bias is evident and the individual has to synthesise an opinion themselves (not claiming this is perfect by any means, but a perfect system does not exist).

It is obviously the case that Wikipedia is biased, and I think competition is a great thing.

^though many are refusing to pay the (almost) legally mandatory "tv-license".
by Gunax | 2026-01-17 12:00:25+00:00
From the article comments:

> Add to this fatuous criminal charge the sad reality that the process is often the punishment. Even after Mr. Left's innocence gets determined by a jury, there's the strong possibility that he'll depart the courtroom to go home to the Poor House.

> See: Wall Street Journal 8 November 2015

> I Was an Oil Spill Scapegoat -- I helped cap the Deepwater Horizon well, The Justice Department then turned my life into a legal nightmare

> -- Kurt Mix, BP drilling engineer, who published a blistering commentary about the US Justice Department immediately following a major revision to the case. After two years of expensive, life-upending dealings, all of the felony charges got dropped, and, "I would plead guilty to a minor misdemeanor for deleting a set of text messages without BP’s permission—something I had acknowledged doing from the very beginning."

> Good luck Mr. Left...

I thought this was interesting on went down the BP prosecution rabbit hole.
by nephihaha | 2026-01-17 12:00:25+00:00
Microsoft and Google are ubiquitous which is the main reason most people use them. (Apple is out there but different) My office computer was swapped for a Chromebook... Which is awful but hey, Google endorses it, so it must be okay, right?

Microsoft's habit has been to rush things out and fix in post. Constant updates. The entire thing is a mess but there is little choice.
by bregma | 2026-01-17 12:01:24+00:00
Would that be possibly because while Venezuela and Iran have oil to extract and sell on the international market to enrich the coffers of the oligarchs in power, the only resources Czechoslovakia had was labour. The oligarchs could only enrich themselves by exporting manufactured goods like shoes and buses, mostly made from imported materials, extracting the excess wealth from the labour of others the way Venezuela and Iran extract oil from the ground?
by jonway | 2026-01-17 12:01:29+00:00
I find this so worthwhile though:

"Sometimes you are just sitting there, thinking of nothing in particular, and suddenly the thought of someone or a particular event or situation pops up in the mind, seemingly out of nowhere. From there, a whole chain of thoughts begins to unfold, and if you are not mindful, you can easily get lost in it."

Man, if only 18-year-old-me could have realized this!!
by graemep | 2026-01-17 12:02:25+00:00
> I have yet to find a cross-platform UI framework that really feels native on Gnome. The reality is that there is no shortcut for native UI on all platforms, you have to use the “official” framework (e.g. GTK for Gnome).

The alternative to cross platform frameworks that do not feel completely native on all platforms is to use browsers for desktop apps which do not feel native on any platform. They do not even have similar UIs to each other.

We would be better off using imperfect cross platform frameworks rather than sticking everything in the browser.

I think part of the reason this happens is that users accept it because they are used to web apps so do not expect consistency.
by SkiFire13 | 2026-01-17 12:04:05+00:00
Even then this seems much more promising to me compared to other areas. Writing theorem statements is much much easier than coming up with proofs so it's not a big deal if a human has to do that. And once that's done getting a correct proof out of an LLM/AI model can be done fully automatically (assuming you do get a proof out of it though!)
by chme | 2026-01-17 12:04:41+00:00
> The problem being discussed is that the user of the script needs to validate it. It's great if it's validated by the author, but that's already the situation we're in.

The user is free to use a LLM to 'validate' the `install.sh` file. Just asking it if the script does anything 'bad'. That should be similarly successful as the LLM generating the script based on a description. Maybe even more successful.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-17 12:05:01+00:00
> As discussed elsewhere, it is apparently possible to compile and run this particular project.

After a human stepped in to fix it, yes. You can see it yourself here: https://github.com/wilsonzlin/fastrender/issues/98

> Nevertheless, IMHO what’s interesting about this is not the browser itself but rather that AI companies (not just Cursor) are building systems where humans can be out of the loop for days or weeks.

But that's not what they demonstrated here. What they demonstrated, so far, is that you can let agents write millions of lines of code, and eventually if you actually need to run it, some human need to "merge the latest snapshot" or do some other management to actually put together the system into a workable state.

Very different from what their original claims were.
Do people still need websites, or just a public page?
by paravaib | 2026-01-17 12:06:22+00:00
Curious how people here think about this.

Building websites is easier than ever, but maintaining them still feels like overhead in many cases.

I’ve been exploring the idea of a “public page” — not a full website, not a CMS — just a clean, read-only place to share information that already lives somewhere structured (like a spreadsheet).

I put together a small experiment to understand this pattern:
https://www.sheet2notice.com

Not looking to promote it here — more interested in whether this problem resonates, and how others solve it today.

Do you still build a site anyway, or is there a lighter approach that works well?
by grepfru_it | 2026-01-17 12:06:51+00:00
I switched to Linux. It was great! Then I got some contract work with Redhat. It was great! I completed the contract and provided a summary of my work in a .odt file I wrote on Fedora using LibreOffice. Suddenly it was not great! The team at RedHat said they could not open my file. That’s odd, I’m using their OS. Ok I’ll send the file in LibreOffice’s conversion to Word 2003 format. They opened the file and they said the formatting was off. They said can you just save it in Word and send it to us? I informed them I was using their operating system. They didn’t respond. I sent another message and said I could move to a different computer. Suddenly it was great again! I got paid handsomely for that work, but I had to use Windows.

This is why I do not believe you can switch to Linux. Because the world still runs on Microsoft. It was not until office for Mac reached feature parity (with office for Windows) when companies seriously considered macOS. Currently office for the web has not reached that parity. So the world is still smiling at Linux the same way you would at your 9 year old nephew saying “aww how cute” and then going back to the real world
by casperb | 2026-01-17 12:07:46+00:00
I think we have enough anecdata that users don’t like a changing interface. They like keeping things the same, mostly.

So how can you keep generating disposable software on this layer?

And what you mostly want to change in software, is new features or handle more usage. If you do that, it needs in most cases changes to the data store and the “hand crafted core”.

So what part in practice will be disposable and how often will it be “generated again”?

Maybe for simple small stuff, like how fast Excel sheets are being made, changed and discarded? Maybe for embedded software?
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-17 12:08:15+00:00
Yes, if Cursor claimed "We let autonomous agents run for weeks, and they produced millions of lines of code, and it kind of looks like a browser, and it kind of runs", then I wouldn't have written and published TFA.

But their claim wasn't so nuanced, it was "hundreds of agents can work on a single codebase autonomously for weeks and build an entire browser from scratch that works (kinda)". Considering the hand-holding that seems to have been required to get it to compile, this claim doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.
by snorremd | 2026-01-17 12:08:50+00:00
I'm in the same boat as you. I've built a personal home page with Astro and hosted it on Cloudflare. It has been really cheap, only paying for worker subscription at 5 dollars per month. The site has been running non-stop essentially without downtime. And as you say the user experience of Astro's static HTML, css and minimal JS output on Cloudflare edge CDN network is really good.

But with the events of the world being what they are I have been considering moving my Astro page to BunnyCDN and thus Europe (where I live). The only Cloudflare specific feature I've used is D1 database so migrating now shouldn't be too difficult. I really hope Cloudflare does not make it difficult to use Astro on other providers, either intentionally or by accident. Next.js for a long time was essentially a framework that only ran great on Vercel, and using other providers was asking to become a second citizen. I believe it is somewhat better now with proper provider plugin system, but still.

Astro has been great and I understand they need to find a way to economically sustain their business. Joining a big company like Cloudflare is one way to do that. I can't complain too much never having opted to use Astro's commercial offerings. So I only hope they keep Astro open. I'm building a new product on top of Astro now and would hate to see it become a Cloudflare-only product.

Congratulations to the Astro team!
by sigmoid10 | 2026-01-17 12:09:19+00:00
They probably mean people like Robert Malone [1], who - despite being well accomplished in a related field - spread verifiably wrong information about vaccines on social media during the pandemic. There are many people like him who showed past accomplishments in a related field, but were totally out of their depth when interviewed about covid on the Joe Rogan podcast or similar.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
by beeflet | 2026-01-17 12:09:35+00:00
Just use any major distribution. Fedora, Debian, Mint, Gentoo, etc.

All linux distributions are essentially packaging the same software. The choice of distribution is just the choice of what organization packages the software.

> I do everything from programming, to gaming, video editing, browsing, basic stuff on Office, 3D modelling and printing, etc. from this computer.

I do all of that on a single linux installation. Your problem is probably that your first instinct is to emulate your old workflow instead of finding a new workflow.

> MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckNux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

There is no real compromise here. If you are running a distro that isn't capable of running everything, you are barking up the wrong tree and probably trying to use some random hannah montana linux maintained by 1 guy.
by kalleboo | 2026-01-17 12:09:56+00:00
We have a solar electric plan - the price per kWh is much higher during the duck curve in return for cheap rates during sunshine hours. The rates are something like 1x during night, 0.5x during sunshine, 4x during the morning and afternoon peaks.

We have our heat pump water heater running during the cheap hours, and also change our use of air conditioning/heating to accommodate.

It would probably not work in our favor if we didn't work from home and were out of the home all day.
by k__ | 2026-01-17 12:10:12+00:00
I found Dilbert in 2013, when I was working in a dead end dev job in a small software company. Felt nice to see others seem to have the same issues.

I quit that job and started freelancing. Not only because of those comics, but at least they didn't give me any doubts about that endeavour.

What I learned: engineering skills give you power, but it's not the only thing you can be nerdy at.

You can be nerdy about anything.

It just happens to be that software engineering is something that people with much money are willing to pay for.

Just imagine you're history nerd. Not much options to profit quickly from that.

Same goes the other direction. If you happen to really like financial markets and math, you might find ways to make even more money with less work than an engineer.
by agumonkey | 2026-01-17 12:10:42+00:00
it's one crucial topic imo

internet altered the way society communicates and why, a lot of discussions now end up by "show me your sources" aka "what is the truth" and it's often centralized into some accepted source like wikipedia

where there simple single point of 'truth' like that before ?

my 2cents is that humans are not meant to live in one global absolute truth and we all lived in relative fuzzy reality before, it was slow and imperfect but not as easy to tamper with
by 1313ed01 | 2026-01-17 12:10:55+00:00
The problem is building (operating) systems that are orders of magnitude more complex than what are possible to fully understand or reason about. I don't think the top developers in the world could avoid catastrophic errors to sometimes creep into systems of that size and complexity.

Not defending Microsoft specifically, as I moved on from their operating systems to Linux 30 years ago, but I just do not see what they could hope to do. Amount of interactions to worry about will grow at least quadratic with the size of a system and there is just no way to expect human (or LLM) developers to keep up with that beyond some (very small) upper limit of system size. No matter how good the developers are and what programming languages or tools they use the result will be a house of cards of flaky components interacting in ways no one can fully predict.
by o4c | 2026-01-17 12:11:19+00:00
3blue1brown,
Channels launched during summer of math exposition 1,2,3,pi,4
Veritasium, numberphile,computer phile, MITOCW, animagraphs, bps space, everyday astronaut, curious driod, anton petrov, adam savage, pbs, breaking taps, cylos garage, this old tony, robert ghrist, kentucky ballistics, smarter everyday, jeremy field, alex slocum,...so on I have big list,only dropped here right off my head here.
by falcor84 | 2026-01-17 12:11:36+00:00
There are agendas there, just like in every human endeavor, but it definitely hasn't been "hijacked", it's still by far the best single repository of human knowledge out there. If I had to choose one website to take with me to a desert island, it's an obvious choice.

We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater.
by watwut | 2026-01-17 12:11:54+00:00
> The apprenticeship was after this was painted. Prior to engaging in formal training he largely ignored school and spend his time painting and seeking out other painters to learn from:

He WAS in schooling and parents sent him to that city literally for education. And then he got into apprenticeship for a vocation that was well paid and supported back then.

He was very much dropped to school and squirmed there to the forced extend. And very much, boys of his age could slack on school work in variety of ways - they did not played videogames, but they did played games in little gangs of theirs, hanging around and generally wasting time to the extend adults allowed it.

Boys and girls who draw well, have talents and spend some freetime doing that exist. They usually learn from youtube (today equivalent of him meddling with artists). They may be put into extracurricular classes, but no one sane will put them into apprenticeship for art - because art is unlikely to feed you.
by dataviz1000 | 2026-01-17 12:12:07+00:00
When I was working in the heart of conservative online media in West Palm Beach—nestled between Rush Limbaugh’s studio, Mar-a-Lago, and Newsmax—targeting Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt, my salary (and the direction things eventually went) was being paid for by the Saudis. At the time, the propaganda was mostly “pro-oil” and “climate change is a hoax.” Around that same period, those same Saudis bought a 10% stake in Fox News and helped shape the narrative for millions of Christians who tune in and treat it like their main source of news.

So yeah, if you were ever curious where the profits go every time you fill up your car with gas… there.

I thought I was just building media websites. I didn’t even see the content until after six months. I put in my one month notice, finished what I was working on, and left. The amount of money they offered me to stay was ridiculous. I don’t blame people at Fox News for bending the knee and taking that Saudi money -- I just couldn’t make myself do it.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” A lot of people are going to spend eternity in hell for propaganda and lies.
by usui | 2026-01-17 12:12:39+00:00
This is a naive take that belies the reality of pages with a lot of traffic, and is the reason why there can be controversial discussions in the talk pages. I know nothing about the history of this page, which is why I said "if it's intentional" regarding any deliberate scrubbing.

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

EDIT: On further inspecting the page history, this definitely looks intentional, or at least is a controversial page.
by graemep | 2026-01-17 12:13:01+00:00
Its omitting information which seems antithetical to the whole point of Wikipedia. It makes it harder to find other sources of information on someone. it makes it harder to make connections between things you know.

Its really not very different from a Wikipedia article using an author's pseudonym mentioning their real name.

Should all Wikipedia articles on people omit information that the subject of the article does not want mentioned? Even if they find it distressing?
by akst | 2026-01-17 12:13:11+00:00
I think a lot people underestimate how arbitrary some editorial decisions on wikipedia can be. Yeah perfect is the enemy of the good but imperfect is still imperfect. Can’t say I’m a fan of jj mccullough‘s opinions on some stuff but his video on wikipedia is good https://youtu.be/-vmSFO1Zfo8?si=0mS24EVODwLrPJ3T

I don’t feel as strongly as he does but ever since watching I just don’t see much value in starting with Wikipedia when researching something. He also points out how a lot content creators default to referencing it. After realising how much of history or geography YouTube is just regurgitating Wikipedia articles, it kind of ruined those kinds of videos for me, and this was before AI. So now I try spend more time reading books or listening to audiobooks on a topics I’m interested instead.

Like I still use Wikipedia for unserious stuff or checking if a book I was recommended was widely criticised or something but that’s it really.

It’s also just not a good learning resource, like if you ever wanted to study a mathematics topic, wikipedia might be one of the worst resources. Like Wikipedia doesn’t profess to be a learning resource and more a overview resource but even the examples they use sometimes are just kind of unhelpful. Here’s an example on the Fourier Transform https://youtu.be/33y9FMIvcWY?si=ys8BwDu_4qa01jso