MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by shagie | 2026-01-17 02:05:08+00:00
I think the suggestion is more around people like Lowell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Cabot_Lowell

> Despite political independence, the United States remained dependent on imports for manufactured goods. The conflicts between the European Powers and the Embargo of 1807 severely disrupted trade between the United States, Great Britain, France and Asia. Lowell reached the conclusion that to be truly independent, the United States needed to manufacture goods at home. In June 1810, he went on a two-year visit with his family to Britain. ... Lowell developed an interest in the textile industries of Lancashire and Scotland, especially the spinning and weaving machines, which were operated by water power or steam power. He was not able to buy drawings or a model of a power loom. He secretly studied the machines. In Edinburgh he met fellow American Nathan Appleton who would later become a partner in the Lowell mills. As the War of 1812 began, Lowell and his family left Europe and on their way home, the boat and all their personal belongings were searched at the Halifax port to ensure that no contraband was being smuggled out of Great Britain. Lowell had memorized all the workings of British power looms without writing anything down.

Or Samuel Slater - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

> Samuel Slater (June 9, 1768 – April 21, 1835) was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution", a phrase coined by Andrew Jackson, and the "Father of the American Factory System". In the United Kingdom, he was called "Slater the Traitor" and "Sam the Slate" because he brought British textile technology to the United States, modifying it for American use. He memorized the textile factory machinery designs as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 21.

---

Industrial espionage and acts that would be considered patent infringement in today's timeframe were key parts of the early independence for the United States.
by tharkun__ | 2026-01-17 02:05:41+00:00
That's fair about the definition of a market.

But "the market" (i.e. consumers) did not "do it by itself". Regulations had to force car makers to care about fuel economy. And while once Tesla came around (or a bit earlier a Prius) some consumers did buy those vehicles, they were premium vehicles. Prius owners were laughed at not imitated by the general public to an extent where both Toyota and every other car maker suddenly only made Hybrids or started making EVs. Thus my apprehension for my parent's "the market did it!" ;)

Like, let's go back to what made me reply from my parent:

Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing

Yeah, exactly. That is exactly what car maker didn't bother with because buyers had no choice. All of the car makers made cars that didn't really care for fuel economy because (especially in the US) gas was super cheap.

Guess why in Europe smaller cars and cars with better fuel economy were and are more popular? Because gas is more expensive through regulation. "Regulation" there takes multiple forms. The earliest being simply taxes on gas, which are much higher in Europe. But also previously mentioned by me EV mandate, which is a Tesla+ era regulation. And before that the CO2 emission kind of regulations, which made me mention the "skirting". As in, manufacturer are skirting the CO2 emission rules, e.g. because some of those regulations only apply to a manufacturer entire assortment of offers. How is it the poor manufacturer's fault that people only buy their high emission models, when they have a "SMART" type choice on offer too? Essentially the market didn't work (again especially in the US with too cheap gas) with people buying SUVs and F150 type trucks over a Fiat Panda or SMART.
by nicoburns | 2026-01-17 02:05:55+00:00
It's using layout code from my library (Taffy) for Flexbox and CSS Grid. Servo uses Taffy for CSS Grid, and another open source engine that I work on (Blitz) uses it for Flexbox, CSS Grid, Block and float layout.

The older block/inline layout modes seem to be custom code that looks to me similar but not exactly the same as Servo code. But I haven't compared this closely.

I would note that the AI does not seem to have matched either Servo or Blitz in terms of layout: both can layout Google.com better than the posted screenshot.
by tonyhart7 | 2026-01-17 02:06:45+00:00
marketshare ???

like do you understand which company doing the same thing ????? Vercel is

now we talking, cloudflare want to extend their portofolio and product offering by integrate from top to bottom like vercel does

its doens't make sense/oblivious because we view it as standalone product rather than entire suite of product offering that well integrate vertically
by specialist | 2026-01-17 02:06:52+00:00
True. The situation for both off-gassing and plastic recycling is rather bleak.

Sorry for being vague; I was only referring to economically valuable minerals used in electric batteries.

Aqua Metals has previously said they'll be able to reuse battery quality graphite (from batteries) as well (vs releasing it as CO2). But my recent scan of their progress wasn't very encouraging.

Learning more about Redwood Recycling stack is on my to do list.
by komali2 | 2026-01-17 02:07:03+00:00
I remember when some lady called Obama "Muslim" (in the same tone of voice as she'd say "demon" or something) and Mitt Romney took the microphone from her and said "no, no, we disagree politically but he's a good man."

Shows how poorly those politicians understood the constituency they were fomenting. He was boo'd for it by people that had come to see him specifically, and about 15 years later, republican voters built a scaffold outside the Capital they were breaking into while chanting about hanging the Republican vice president.

I feel like American politicians often play with fire without understanding its nature as something that burns.
by lazyasciiart | 2026-01-17 02:08:21+00:00
Nothing, based on the existence of thousands of exactly such schools within the US alone.

On the other hand: a disagreement about the actual definition of gifted, based on the existence of thousands of such schools in the US alone. "Gifted" in some jurisdictions simply means something anodyne like "top 10%" which obviously doesn't get close to creating an actually targeted school environment for your Mozarts.
by quotemstr | 2026-01-17 02:08:53+00:00
In the limit, as pixel density increases, regular, unhinted floating-point-x text looks just like it would on a printed page. How can you get better than that? With enough resolution, you free yourself from all the hacks we've devised to make text on a computer halfway tolerable. Shouldn't doing so be the goal?

If you want that blocky-font retro look, you can use vector art to make squares.
by skeptrune | 2026-01-17 02:09:06+00:00
This is some really fantastic feedback, thank you!

I personally think that prose is significantly easier to read than complex bash and there are at least some benefits to it. They may not outweigh the cons, but it's interesting to at least consider.

That said, this is a proposal and something we plan to iterate on. Generating install.sh scripts instead of markdown is something we're at least thinking about.
by mhh__ | 2026-01-17 02:09:22+00:00
Fascinating. Always enjoyed the near-history one can feel in east germany.

Europe is obviously very old e.g. I go to a pub back home that's 500 years old, but you can still sort of feel the concrete setting in some parts of Germany. Although saying that it might be that they haven't changed much since and I don't like the future chosen much elsewhere.

Or it's just the light temperature... In places that have kept their old street lighting I find it interesting to find angles that look the same now as they did in 1981 (or '71, etc).
by antisthenes | 2026-01-17 02:10:51+00:00
The labor put in would be _at least_ as much as materials, so $20k total cost for this project to lower the bills from $450 to $225 on average.

That puts it roughly at 7.5 year ROI.

How many renters rent a single space for that long? There goes the answer to the article.

It's a great project if it's your forever home, though.
by m463 | 2026-01-17 02:11:34+00:00
Also all apple telemetry.

----

semi-unrelated tip - on ios, most telemetry options can be disabled under

Settings -> privacy & security -> Analytics & Improvements

However, there is a whole separate telemetry setting:

Settings -> search -> help apple improve search

note that this doesn't show up if you search for it in settings.
(try searching for "help apple" or "improve")

and of course the whole "learn from this app" and other siri settings that are all individual settings.
by alfiedotwtf | 2026-01-17 02:12:51+00:00
> Mandiant is Google's incident response consulting business

Consulting business? I was under the impression (from Google Reader) that if users aren’t in the millions, then they’ll kill the project. How could they also run a high-touch consultancy?!

> they're probably sick of going to the same old engagements

Hmm… consultancies love this type of recurring revenue - it’s easy money
by shagie | 2026-01-17 02:13:55+00:00
> Next 20 years is when PRC will really start cooking. In that period, PRC going to be doubling/tripling skilled workforce more than they have now

The population pyramid for 2045 for China is not favorable ( https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2045/ ). Currently the 30-39 bracket is 121 million, but by 2045 it will be about 83 million.

You could be arguing that the percent of skilled labor workforce in there will be going up over the next 20 years - but the size of the bracket is drastically decreasing while it becomes more and more weighted to the 65-85 age bracket.
by onethought | 2026-01-17 02:15:45+00:00
I think this is the only meaningful point being made in this thread.

The sound from a phone speaker is annoying, more so, than a typical in person talking. To me the solution lies somewhere in fixing that to make it sound more natural.

Everyone else claiming that some how having “loud” conversation is rude, feels like they’ve fallen into some anti-social hole… we are literally the only animal to have developed complex spoken language… it’s part of our humanity.
by geeky4qwerty | 2026-01-17 02:15:48+00:00
"The Telecommunications Act of 1996 fundamentally reshaped how wireless infrastructure is regulated in the U.S. by prioritizing rapid network expansion over local oversight.

The Section 704 Legal Shield
A key provision, Section 704, prohibits local governments from blocking cell towers based on the "environmental effects" of radio frequency (RF) emissions. As long as a tower meets federal standards, municipalities are legally barred from considering health concerns during the zoning process. This effectively shifted the power to determine safety from local communities to the federal government.

Shift from Health to Engineering
In the 1990s, the EPA's funding for radiation research was cut, leaving the FCC—an agency of engineers and economists—to set safety limits. These standards are based on thermal effects (the point at which tissue heats up). Critics argue this approach is outdated because it ignores non-thermal biological effects that modern research suggests may occur at much lower exposure levels.

Industry Influence and Litigation
The FCC’s refusal to update its 1996 guidelines has led to accusations of regulatory capture, often highlighted by the "revolving door" of officials moving between the FCC and major telecom lobby groups like the CTIA.

2021 Ruling: The U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that the FCC failed to provide a reasoned explanation for keeping its 1996 standards, calling the decision "arbitrarily and capriciously" handled.

The Result: The U.S. remains one of the few developed nations still operating under 30-year-old safety protocols despite the massive increase in device density."
by hilbert42 | 2026-01-17 02:15:59+00:00
Four generations? That many?

I grew up some 30 years later in the '50s and '60s and had all those freedoms. Walking to school by myself at age six, traveling by train a 100 km and changing connections midway without supervision at age ten, roaming down valleys and through rugged bushland with my only dog, and so on.

What's more, I had a mother who for the time was very overprotective compared with those of other kids yet she never would have restricted those activities or considered them things we kids should not do—it was just not done. It would have been considered very abnormal if she'd put restrictions on our movements, instead she warned us to be careful.

I can hardy imagine how much poorer my childhood would havd been without those freedoms. I feel terribly sorry for today's overly-protected kids.
by quatonion | 2026-01-17 02:16:09+00:00
I have been having a crack at it in my spare time. A kind of intentional LISP where functions get turned into WASM in the cloud.

The functions are optionally tested using formal verification. I plan to enable this by default soon, as time allows.

These functions that get written can then be composed, and enzymes that run in the cloud actively look for functions to fuse.

Also more people use it, the faster the compiler gets via network scaling laws.

It's very much research at the moment, but kinda works.

Jupyter Notebook style interface with the beginnings of some image and media support.

https://prometheus.entrained.ai

Can try looking at some of the examples or trying something yourself.

Would love some feedback.
by komali2 | 2026-01-17 02:17:18+00:00
> Our only hope for beating China, at this point, would be to recreate an "opium wars" situation where the whole population becomes dumb and stop caring. (A bit like what tiktok and X are doing to use at the moment, but with much more social control.)

Might be more accurate to say that the PRC has successfully done an opium wars situation to the USA with e.g. fentanyl precursors.
by bentley | 2026-01-17 02:17:57+00:00
> There were no fascists in the DDR.

That was certainly the party line of the DDR at the time. Do you honestly believe it?

It’s no coincidence that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man who served in East Germany, claims that his war in Ukraine is justified in the name of denazification. It’s an easy rhetorical trick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_...
by petekoomen | 2026-01-17 02:19:53+00:00
It does, and possibly this launch is a little window into the future!

Install scripts are a simple example that current generation LLMs are more than capable of executing correctly with a reasonably descriptive prompt.

More generally, though, there's something fascinating about the idea that the way you describe a program can _be_ the program that tbh I haven't fully wrapped my head around, but it's not crazy to think that in time more and more software will be exchanged by passing prompts around rather than compiled code.
by InMice | 2026-01-17 02:20:48+00:00
I get bonkers annoyed using just two monitors with macos or windows. multi monitor management... nothing behaves how i want it to, apps never open where they should etc etc. I havent tried it on desktop linux enough to know if it's any better - maybe at least id assume have the most configuration control on linux.

How do you do it? I always give up in frustration.
100% would keep the genelecs :)
by thatwasunusual | 2026-01-17 02:21:52+00:00
> the pricing seems phenomenal

I'm in Norway, and I wonder if I see different prices than people from elsewhere in the world? Here it says $1.7K, and I can get the LG UltraFine 6K 32" for $2K, with the benefit of being bought from a Norwegian retailer (think guarantees and shopping security).

To be clear; I have never tried either of these monitors, so I can't tell if either is any good. :D
by MrJohz | 2026-01-17 02:22:14+00:00
Note that it's not clear that any of the JustHTML ports were actually ports per se, as in the end they all ended up with very different implementations. Instead, it might just be that an LLM generated roughly the same library several different times.

See https://felix.dognebula.com/art/html-parsers-in-portland.htm...
by orbital-decay | 2026-01-17 02:23:26+00:00
You... don't. That's exactly what structured outputs are for! You're offloading any formally defined generation to a tool that better serves the case, leaving the ambiguous part of the task to the model.

Code is an example of a mixed case. Getting any mechanistically parsable output from a model is another. Sure, you can format it after the generation, but you still need the generation to be parsable for that. In many cases, using the required format right away will also provide the context for better replies.
by tpmoney | 2026-01-17 02:23:56+00:00
The purpose of an election would be to effect a change in "management". For 15 years, whenever I wanted a change in management for where I was living, I simply changed what property I was renting at the end of my lease. And every time I signed a new lease, I got to choose how long I wanted to have to wait before I could change again. Within any given area, I would have a choice of tens to hundreds of different managers. And if something is sufficiently important that voters feel it's necessary for all rentals to implement, we still have the option of voting for a legislative body to craft those laws.

By comparison, if I had lived in a world where all residential property was owned by the state, I would likely have to wait anywhere from 2-6 years before I could even begin to make a change in management. Then I would have to hope that the majority of voters in my area wanted the same things I wanted from my management. Then assuming that my preferences carried the day, I would have to hope that whatever changes I voted for were implemented before the next election or run the risk that they would be overturned by a subsequent election loss. And all of that for no additional upsides. The ability of the public to dictate rental law remains the same. The only difference is now every possible change, whether it would normally rise to the importance of a legislative debate or not, is now subject to that legislative debate process.
Show HN: Explain Yourself – An AI party game app built with SwiftUI
by sntedo | 2026-01-17 02:24:03+00:00
Hi HN,

I just released "Explain Yourself," a local multiplayer party game (Jackbox style) where players have to give excuses for absurd AI-generated scenarios. An AI Judge then ranks the answers, roasts the players, and determines a winner.

I built this because I wanted an AI-first party app game that was fun and made people use their brains. This is my first app, but I have spent months on it and it is pretty thoroughly thought out.

The Stack:

Frontend:
SwiftUI (using NavigationStack and EnvironmentObjects for state).

Backend:
Firebase (Firestore for real-time syncing, Cloud Functions for the game logic).
AI: Gemini API (via Cloud Functions) for both generating scenarios and the "Judge" persona.
The Technical Challenges:

Prompt Engineering:
Tuning the "Judge" to be fun and a bit savage was a fun part. I also expected Gemini (which I ended up choosing for simplicity over other AIs) to not respond to many of the players answers if completely inappropriate, but it always does... so far.

The judge analyzes the answers and decided which was the most logical with a bit of creativity. The game scores 90% of one and 10% on the other to determine the ranking.

Monetization:
It’s free to play with a daily limit/starter rounds. I hate ads, so I limited them strictly to "watch to earn" if you run out of credits, plus a standard IAP model for specific question packs. I wonder if starting out I should simply give out everything for free though, leaving only a couple of things like the custom categories as the locked IAP part. Would love some insight on that if you got any.

I’d love feedback on the latency of the app in general, the quality of the AI responses, and the IAP model most of all. Means the world. Thank you in advance.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6748743734
by pcthrowaway | 2026-01-17 02:24:32+00:00
Are you me?

> but it seemed like others didn't think much about society or politics, beyond how "great" everything could be made with tech

A wake-up call for me was when I requested fair trade coffee for the office due to potential human/child slavery issues with coffee, even sourced the roast from our supplier that was fair trade (which wasn't more expensive), then after getting one order of it, since one of the execs preferred the other coffee we stopped getting it.

> These days I only work in tech-related projects when it's about supporting social organizations get their (digital) shit together, moving to open source alternatives or understanding how to deal with things like LLM/AIs.

How do you find work that aligns with your values?
by trishulasoftwre | 2026-01-17 02:25:00+00:00
I just shipped the first public release of Bell Boy BB2 — a Windows “Operational Development Environment” focused on safe file operations: atomic writes, never-overwrite backups, dry-run parity, deny-lists for system paths, and receipts/logs as source-of-truth.
Looking for feedback from infra/devops folks: what would you expect from a tool like this, and what would make you trust it?
by WalterBright | 2026-01-17 02:25:49+00:00
WYSIWYG came about when displays became bit-mapped graphics with a sufficient amount of dots per inch.

Previously, displays used a character generator ROM chip which mapped ASCII onto one character. For a terminal I designed and built in those days, I used an off-the-shelf character generator chip which had a 5x7 font.

The original IBM PC used a character generator.
by jedwhite | 2026-01-17 02:26:01+00:00
Thanks for posting the original ideas that led to all this. "Runtime for prose" is the new "literate programming" - early days but a pointer to some pretty cool future things, I think.

It's already made a bunch of tasks that used to be time-consuming to automate much easier for me. I'm still learning where it does and doesn't work well. But it's early days.

You can tell something is a genuinely interesting new idea when someone posts about it on X and then:

1. There are multiple launches on HN based on the idea within a week, including this one.

2. It inspires a lot of discussion on X, here and elsewhere - including many polarized and negative takes.

Hats off for starting a (small but pretty interesting) movement.
by fhdkweig | 2026-01-17 02:26:03+00:00
I can't tell if you are talking about keeping the car in the US or Canada, but I can tell you in the US, you have to register the car. If you don't register the car, they don't just issue fines, they tow and charge daily storage until you register it. And if you don't pay the fines, you never the car back. The state will auction it off and keep the money, and if the auction price is less than the storage fines, they send you a bill for the rest.
by randycupertino | 2026-01-17 02:26:43+00:00
I've noticed coworkers starting to use them in communication (emails, Teams chats, meeting minutes) so now maybe I see others doing it I feel it is fun and acceptable and might throw some in too. I wouldn't put them in code or EDC or any source documentation but an email sure why not.

I did have a scientist recently write a list of lab best practices and before he wrote the list he had a note "Follow instructions below" and then he had a finger pointing DOWN emoji pointing to the list... my work bestie and I actually screenshotted that and sent it to each other and were giggling about it, because he generally is a serious, smart, straight-laced dude and him putting in a garish down facing bright yellow finger emoji just seemed very silly compared to his personality. But it caught our attention and ensured we both read his list!

I would say the uptick is also partly responsible from people using their phones more often during work communication, if he sent that email from his phone instead of his computer it was easier to throw in an emoji to emphasize his important list.