MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gf000 | 2026-01-28 01:42:50+00:00
> The overwhelming majority of applications belong in the same category as xeyes.

Well, I'm not sure you are using that many xmotif apps. Most of the GUI programs are gtk/qt (and let's be honest, electron) - and they are mostly bitmaps to X's eyes (pun not intended). They don't use draw commands with such a small granularity that network transparency would benefit.

And Arcan is so many things at once I'm not convinced it is a good alternative to Wayland. It has good ideas, but they sort of require the whole package. Meanwhile Wayland is just a minimal API over the Linux kernel API for managing display buffers, that can be extended with additional protocols.
by golem14 | 2026-01-28 01:43:36+00:00
My experience has been that the transcriptions are way more detailed and correct when doctors use these scribes.

You could argue that not writing down everything provides a greater signal-noise ratio. Fair enough, but if something seemingly inconsequential is not noted and something is missed, that could worsen medical care.

I'm not sure how this affects malpractice claims - It's now easier to prove (with notes) that the doc "knew" about some detail that would otherwise not have been note down.
by insane_dreamer | 2026-01-28 01:44:22+00:00
> How many of you software engineers want to sign up for high taxes?

it's not about taxes -- that is a false narrative. Trump did not reduce the budget, he just redirected money from science to "border security" (aka an unaccountable domestic paramilitary force aka ICE) and the military. Taxes were cut yes, but primarily on the very wealthy.

but yes, you are correct that Americans from both parties support high military spending instead of investing in the wellbeing of its citizens (education, healthcare, housing, etc.), and _that_ is a significant problem that I don't see us getting away from any time soon. very sad.
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-01-28 01:44:34+00:00
Also I never see anyone talking about code reviews, which is one of the primary ways that software engineering departments manage liability. We fired someone recently because they couldn’t explain any of the slop they were trying to get merged. Why tf would I accept the liability of managing code that someone else can’t even explain?

I guess this is fine when you don’t have customers or stakeholders that give a shit lol.
by simonw | 2026-01-28 01:44:37+00:00
That's the reason I called it the lethal trifecta: the only way to protect against it is to cut off one of the legs.

And like you observed, that greatly restricts the usefulness of what we can build!

The most credible path forward I've seen so far is the DeepMind CaMeL paper: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/11/camel/
by kelnos | 2026-01-28 01:44:38+00:00
(xfwl4 author here.)

That's a fair criticism sometimes, but, frankly, if you want things the way you want them, learn to code and dig in. Otherwise it's not really fair of you to complain about stuff that people have built for you for free, in their spare time.

In this particular case, it's not fully a "new and shiny, must play!" situation. I personally am not even a big fan of Wayland, and I'm generally highly critical of it. But Xorg is more or less unmaintained, and frankly, if we don't have a Wayland compositor, we'll become obsolete eventually. That's just the way the wind is blowing.
by Sulf1re | 2026-01-28 01:44:57+00:00
i'm 50+

I rarely capitalise, since i use punctuation and the need for capitals to break up the flow of barely legible cursive is not there.

what's the point? other than social compliance. these things need purpose to live.

london is still London, even without the capital. i am still me, even if I'm not overstating my own self-importance. this sentence still had a clear beginning, even if i didn't highlight it with a T.

capitals are a leftover of cursive.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-28 01:45:48+00:00
You're subtly misattributing me though. "Convincing someone" is a superset which contains intentional manipulation of the information someone is exposed to but also lots of other things.

As you said, how you do it matters a lot.

You've also gone and (IIUC) equated the general biases of an outlet with propaganda which I certainly wouldn't agree with. They're similar, and the former can certainly morph into the latter, but they aren't the same thing.
by card_zero | 2026-01-28 01:46:46+00:00
This stuff is still unclear to me. The addictive drugs, ones that punish a quitter chemically, are not mysterious, but gambling addiction certainly is. "Dopamine" won't work as an explanation - for instance I was once hooked on building a wooden table, which sucked up two months of my free time and lots of money, and damaged my thumbs, and no doubt I was driven by the dopamine rush of learning through the repetitive process of chiseling. But gambling is assumed to be a glitch, not a wholesome obsession. In what way does it differ? The addiction is very old, I'm sure there are accounts from the 1700s, and it doesn't even require a house to reel the gambler in - it could all be about informal games and wagers, still leading to huge debts. It's tempting to blame it on dumb ideas about luck and fate, but the dumb ideas involved could be varied and complex.

That's similar to dumb ideas involving social pressure. When people have a tendency to be dumb about a thing we use the law to restrict the thing, apparently. But this involves, in effect, an authoritative declaration of "that's dumb" by law. I feel personally threatened, then, in activities such as my woodwork, which might have been an equally dumb obsession! I know nobody's at all likely to regulate woodwork, but that's only because it's relatively unpopular. I could imagine a parallel universe where woodwork (portable somehow) becomes a trend that makes a young person feel socially relevant, and then it gets regulated. I think I disapprove of this interference with people's dumb notions.
by jasonm23 | 2026-01-28 01:46:59+00:00
Many advances have their slop version, look at any trend which began as broadly positive and became infested with a tacky parade of bandwagon pretenders.

AI is just the next example, and the internet is particularly troublesome at filtering up the most tacky.

Always remember the broadly positive aspects remain, they're simply obscured by dusty clouds from the bandwagon.

Use tools to expand your capability.
by Mistletoe | 2026-01-28 01:47:07+00:00
This plan is going to backfire so hard. A vibrant economy is one with maximum amount of participants. The right wants people to reproduce, but what insane person would reproduce under the current fascist regime? Immigration is the only hope for mature economies to avoid Japan and other graying countries’ fate.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20190196
by vesterde | 2026-01-28 01:47:09+00:00
Hah this is the 3rd fun app like this I've seen lately. I really like yours!

I also built one! In mine you can compose effects using a graph, I've gotten carried away and now I keep wanting to bring more TouchDesigner concepts into it. It's far off, but so much fun! The best feedback on these kinds of apps is if you put it in camera mode and on a TV, and let a kid dance around in front of it.

https://vester.si/motion/

I hope you don't mind if I steal some of you nice ideas for myself :)
by kelnos | 2026-01-28 01:47:36+00:00
(xfwl4 author here.)

I'm also not a big fan of Wayland, to be honest. But that's the way the winds are blowing. X11 has its problems, but even if they are fixable, no one seems to want to work on Xorg anymore. I'm certainly not prepared to maintain it and push it forward. Are you?

Depending on Xorg today is more or less ok, but I do expect distros will stop shipping it eventually.
by blas0 | 2026-01-28 01:48:22+00:00
Good evening!

Here is something pretty cool that I encountered during a personal project session...

https://github.com/blas0/deterministic-invocation-of-subagen...

---

Deterministically invoke subagents within the same Claude session (using the Claude Max plan) -- meaning no API or agent SDK!

--

Pretty cool find tbh, not sure if i'm late to the party or what - I havent found anything in regards to my findings/anything similar.

Let me know all yall's thoughts!
by graemep | 2026-01-28 01:48:52+00:00
> Why is taxing households together the correct thing

its fairer

> It presumably would improve your personal standard of living

I am divorced and remain single so it would make no difference to me

> could see if you want to encourage families having tax benefits based on children

I want people to enjoy family life. Its the same reason I want family friendly working hours, decent paternity leave, a right to home educate and better schools etc.

> And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people living together could not be abused, you must be very short sighted.

And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people living together could not be abused, you must be very short sighted.

Please do explain . Also please find evidence it is abused where tax does work like that. Its not a cut either. Its also more consistent as benefits are based on household income in the UK, as are things like student loans and educational bursaries
by mindslight | 2026-01-28 01:48:57+00:00
The President's power to command the Guard, when called into "actual service of the United States", by Congress. Being called up by a state governor would be in service of that state and would not qualify.

> if a governor used the national guard against federal agents, that’s open civil war

When state police arrest a fedgov employee for breaking state law, is that a "civil war" ? I would call that enforcing the rule of law under a system of shared sovereignty.

> The reform needed is that congress takes back constitutional powers they’ve delegated to the President

If wishes were horses... Congress failing to exercise their powers for the past several decades is a big part of how we got into this situation. And sure, at any point technically they could retake them. Except it seems that the Republican congresscritters are content with the plausible deniability, while they would be more hesitant to stick their own necks out and positively affirm what's going on.

But the context of reform I am talking about is if the Democrats regain control of the Presidency and Congress. What can be done to make it so that after 4 years of relative sanity regarding separation of powers, people won't just get frustrated and start craving the simplistic answers of fascism again?

A big part of this is the many broken and unjust things about our society, but trying to fix a sizeable number of those in 4 or even 2 years is a tall task. Hence why I'm trying to focus on a kernel of the least possible required to stop the hemorrhaging, so that it might have a chance of getting done before the buntings change again.

> That’s only useful in a situation where the President has effectively captured Congress

Look at the current state of things - Congress doesn't appear to be fully captured, just immobilized.
by abustamam | 2026-01-28 01:49:00+00:00
Yeah, I agree, but not knowing what you don't know applies to almost everyone in every skill, not just programming. I acknowledge I have gaps in my knowledge. But it's because of those gaps that I am always trying to supplement my knowledge by studying different data structures, different patterns for solving problems, different algorithms. I don't aim for complete mastery. I aim for basically "what can I add to my bag of problem solving tools." I concede that because the barrier to entry is low, stories similar to your anecdotes are probably quite common in most self-taught programmers. I think this just speaks to the necessity of rigor during the interview process. Like, does the candidate just know how to build features, or do they know how to design fail-proof systems?

Also, to clarify, I'm not arguing that self-taught vs CS grad is mutually exclusive to smart/not smart. There are plenty of not-smart self-taught engineers and plenty of smart grads.

> In limited domains

I'd argue that many, if not most, teams operate in limited domains.
by homerowilson | 2026-01-28 01:49:19+00:00
Adding

% !TEX program = lualatex

to the top of your document allows you to switch LaTeX engine. This is required for recent accessibility standards compliance (support for tagging and \DocumentMetadata). Compilation takes a bit longer though, but works fine, unlike with Overleaf where using the lualatex engine does not work in the free version.
by int_19h | 2026-01-28 01:49:25+00:00
Most immigration in 00-10s was economical, and yes, for that group of people it's often the case that they are very much still enmeshed in Russian imperial agitprop. It's common enough that there are memes about this: https://lurkmore.media/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%91%...

However there was a smallish wave of political immigration after the 2011 protests and 2014 conflict with Ukraine, and a much larger one since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And those people tend to be very anti-Russian-government for obvious reasons.
by clipsy | 2026-01-28 01:50:39+00:00
First, why are you talking about LiveKit? I see nothing in the article mentioning it, and with a bit of further digging I found another article elaborating on the new solution being developed in France: "The French government has announced the full rollout of Visio, a domestically developed video conferencing platform that will replace Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other non-European tools across all state administrations by 2027" with no mention of LiveKit: "On the technical side, Visio is hosted on the sovereign cloud infrastructure provided by Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, and certified under SecNumCloud by ANSSI, France’s national cybersecurity agency. The platform supports AI-powered meeting transcription using speaker diarization technology from the French startup pyannote, with real-time subtitle generation from AI research lab Kyutai expected to be added by summer 2026"[0].

Second, why do you use scare quotes on "open stack" when the entire stack does indeed appear to be open source?[1] If Visio is in some capacity using LiveKit, it seems not just plausible but very likely they are building their own infra using LiveKit's stack rather than paying LiveKit for SaaS.

Third, under the reasonable presumption that any use of LiveKit would be using LiveKit's stack on their own infra, why would it matter who else uses LiveKit?

In short: I try to assume the best, but it seems very much like your post is a shallow attempt at muckraking.

[0]: https://cyberinsider.com/france-to-replace-zoom-and-teams-wi...

[1]: https://github.com/livekit/livekit as noted in other comments
by gerdesj | 2026-01-28 01:50:52+00:00
OK so let's look at a second. I think I can get away with this analysis:

On take off f = 330 x 10 = 3300 (units etc)

On landing f = 160 x 10.7 = 1712

So, if you are gentle enough on landing and the aircraft is nearly half the weight it was on take off then the downward force on landing is very much less than that on take off.

That 160 tonnes empty also implies I've thrown the passengers, crew and luggage out too, which is a bit rough. Let's try total fuel at "about 180 to 213 tonnes" and allow that we need a factor of safety, so let's say 40 tonnes of fuel left over on landing.

On landing f = 200 x 10.7 = 2140

So, I'm still going to need some convincing about landing aircraft causing more damage than those taking off.

I was only waffling about rotation angles whilst trying to get to grips with what is going on. I now don't think the engines have anything to do with this analysis. Mind you I am just about old enough to remember watching Lightnings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning) taking off. Imagine a large silver firework ...
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-28 01:52:01+00:00
Shall it be backdoorable like systemd-enabled distro nearly had a backdoorable SSH? For non-systemd distro weren't affected.

Why should we trust microsofties to produce something secure and non-backdoored?

And, lastly, why should Linux's security be tied to a private company? Oooh, but it's of course not about security: it's about things like DRM.

I hope Linus doesn't get blinded here: systemd managed to get PID 1 on many distros but they thankfully didn't manage, yet, to control the kernel. I hope this project ain't the final straw to finally meddle into the kernel.

Currently I'm doing:

Proxmox / systemd-less VMs / containers

But Promox is Debian based and Debian really drank too much of the systemd koolaid.

So my plan is:

FreeBSD / bhyve hypervisor / systemd-less Linux VMs / containers

And then I'll be, at long last, systemd-free again.

This project is an attack on general-purpose computing.
by LoganDark | 2026-01-28 01:52:02+00:00
> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue McDonald's if they delivered you unlimited cheeseburgers for free, said nothing of the dangers, and even encouraged you to eat more, and then you became obese/sick from it? Sure, it may have been your choice to accept/eat them, but you did so uninformed, and based on false premises, and the risks were hidden from you, or even explicitly downplayed.

That's what social media is. It's free delivery of unlimited cheeseburgers, but for your brain.

In the above example, you were tempted with something that seemed good, but that carried great risks, to generate business for another who knew of the risks, but either didn't tell you, or even lied to you. When the risks backfire on you -- the risks they knew about from the very start -- or even have been backfiring on you for a while, I think it's absolutely fair to blame the business for knowingly tempting you into it, and it's also absolutely fair to seek damages. Proving those damages is another matter, but I think it's absolutely fair to try.
by tclancy | 2026-01-28 01:53:06+00:00
Henry Rollins too.

'“One day, I’m gonna write that novel.” Pal? You better start tomorrow morning because the right time never happens. It’s when you boldly determine it. It’s like running on a rainy day. You’re fine once you get out there. The only difficulty is getting off the couch when you lace your shoes up.'
by pickleRick243 | 2026-01-28 01:54:41+00:00
LLMs are tools. In the hands of adept, conscientious researchers, they can only be a boon, assisting in the crafting of the research manuscript. In the hands of less adept, less conscientious users, they accelerate the production of slop. The poster I'm responding to seems to be noting an asymmetry- those who find the most use from these tools could be inept researchers who have no business submitting their work. This is because experienced researchers find writing up their results relatively easy.

To me, this is directly relevant to the issue of democratization of science. There seems to be a tool that is inconveniently resulting in the "wrong" people accelerating their output. That is essentially the complaint here rather than any criticism inherent to LLMs (e.g. water/resource usage, environmental impact, psychological/societal harm, etc.). The post I'm responding to could have been written if LLMs were replaced by any technology that resulted in less experienced or capable researchers disproportionately being able to submit to journals.

To be concrete, let's just take one of prism's capabilities- the ability to "turn whiteboard equations or diagrams directly into LaTeX". What a monstrous thing to give to the masses! Before, those uneducated cranks would send word docs to journals with poorly typeset equations, making it a trivial matter to filter them into the trash bin. Now, they can polish everything up and pass off their chicken scratch as respectable work. Ideally, we'd put up enough obstacles so that only those who should publish will publish.
by Nevermark | 2026-01-28 01:55:29+00:00
If some task has a known step-by-step pattern, then doing it step by step makes perfect sense. That is doing the thing. Taking the known shortest/best path.

Doing the thing is going to involve both direct steps, and indirect steps necessary to do the direct steps.

Not doing the thing involves doing things other than the shortest/safest/effective path to getting the thing done.
by tempsaasexample | 2026-01-28 01:56:17+00:00
I honestly tempt fate for fun to see how good police surveillance tech is the last few years.

I let one of my cars expire the registration a few months Everytime, because I'm lazy and because I want to see if I get flagged by a popup system Everytime a police officer passes near me. My commute car is out of registration 3 months right now. And old cop friend told me they basically never tow unless it's 6 months. I pay the $50 late fee once a year and keep doing my experiment for the last 6-7 years. Still no real signs they care.

My fun car has out of state plates for 10 years now. Ive been pulled over once for speeding, and told the officer I just bought it. I've never registered it since I bought it from a friend a decade ago. They let me go. It makes me wonder if one day they'll say "sir, we have plate scanners of this vehicle driving around this state for a year straight.. pay a fine." Not yet.
by andreygrehov | 2026-01-28 01:57:27+00:00
18 U.S.C. § 111 - Assaulting, resisting, impeding officers (including federal agents)

18 U.S.C. § 1505 - Obstruction of Federal Officers (this includes ICE itself - obstructing or interfering with an ICE arrest is a crime)

18 U.S.C. § 118 - Obstructing, resisting, or interfering with federal protective functions
by techgnosis | 2026-01-28 01:57:43+00:00
IMO the code itself has become much less valuable. Most people in this thread are telling you to stay in the code but I would argue you need to stay current on how to architect a good project. What supporting infra do you need? Did you pick the right language? Did you break the project up into appropriate tasks? You need to become a really great PM.

Learn to wrangle your agent better than everyone else. Don't rely on the chat too much, break up your project into tasks, learn to use sub-agents.

Learn to use the new tools well.

This tool seems obvious but its message is really that what you prompt is profoundly important.

https://developers.googleblog.com/conductor-introducing-cont...
by interroboink | 2026-01-28 01:58:06+00:00
Django aside, I think this is a really important point:

Being able to abandon a project for months or years and then come back
to it is really important to me (that’s how all my projects work!) ...

It's perhaps especially true for a hobbyist situation, but even in a bigger environment, there is a cost to keeping people on hand who understand how XYZ works, getting new people up to speed, etc.

I, too, have found found that my interactions with past versions of myself across decades has been a nice way to learn good habits that also benefit me professionally.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-28 01:59:17+00:00
> this basically will remove or significantly encumber user control over their system, such that any modification will make you loose your "signed" status and ... boom! goodbye accessing the internet without an id

Yeah. I'm pretty sure it requires a very specific psychological profile to decide to work on such a user-hostile project while post-fact rationalizing that it's "for good".

All I can say is I'm not surprised that Poettering is involved in such a user-hostile attack on free computing.

P.S: I don't care about the downvotes, you shouldn't either.