MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wpm | 2026-01-05 19:24:32+00:00
The System Settings panel for TCC permissions has been fucked since Ventura. It never reflects reality properly and won't show managed settings either (like those granted or denyed outright by a configuration profile). So users have no idea that Firefox can't access their microphone because their device administrator explicitly denied that. The redesign of System Preferences should have raised far more alarm bells than it did, and it did raise a fuck ton of alarm bells that something utterly broken is happening in Cupertino. Along the same line as the another comment in here said, it's just that some amateur is following the "wrong rules". Like, oh, we have to have the macOS settings app look and work exactly like iOS', despite being a far more complex system with a lot more legacy components.

I am literally writing a bug report right now for 26.2, because on my Mac, for whatever reason, running tccutil reset All on com.apple.Terminal isn't removing Full Disk Access. It removes everything else (screen recording, specific folder domain access, but not FDA).
by ahazred8ta | 2026-01-05 19:25:30+00:00
Lucas got a lot of feedback from people over several years as he revised his initial concept.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Star_Wars_rough_draft The first version was not very Campbellian and did not have "Use the force." He also didn't come up with the "I am your father" story arc until after finishing the first movie.
by barbazoo | 2026-01-05 19:25:46+00:00
How does the first amendment apply here?

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This seems to be orthogonal to the issue of influencing someone to do something and being held partially responsible for the outcome.
by supermdguy | 2026-01-05 19:25:46+00:00
Looks like this would affect around 4.3% of chats (the "Self-Expression" category from this report[0]). Considering ChatGPT's userbase, that's an extremely large number of people, but less significant than I thought based on all the talk about AI companionship. That being said though, a similar crowd was pretty upset when OpenAI removed 4o, and the backlash was enough for them to bring it back.

[0]: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34255/w342...
by triceratops | 2026-01-05 19:26:07+00:00
> Can't use Canada as OHIP et. al. don't cover much and the same employer tied insurance scheme as in the US exists and is necessary

False. From what I know, only prescription drugs, dental, and vision are not covered. And since Americans frequently drive to Canada to buy prescription drugs, we can assume that's not as big a burden as in the US. But hospital stays, surgeries, lab testing, imaging, doctor visits, vaccines are all fully covered.
by DocTomoe | 2026-01-05 19:26:10+00:00
Alright, as someone who is currently suffering from burnout (which is classified as a form of depression in my country, making me swear the holy oath to my doctor once a month that I do not think, believe, or plan to end it): This is probably the worst possible conclusion you could make.

It will breed paranoia. "If I use the wrong words, will my laptop rat me out, and the police kick in my door to 'save me' and drag me into the psych ward against my will, ruining my life and making my problems just so much more difficult?"

Instead of a depressed person using cheap, but more importantly: available resources to manage their mood, you will take them into a state of helplessness and fear of some computer in Florida deciding to cause an intervention at 2am. What do you think will happen next? Is such a person less or more likely to make a decision you'd rather not have them make?
by delaminator | 2026-01-05 19:26:13+00:00
The summaries are a good idea.

Tbh I’m just seeing where it goes. I did the “dump the conversation” part as stage 1, added “ingest them centrally” … ok what next “ok, search them”.

I haven’t had to actually use it yet. But it is interesting to see which projects got the most prompts, which used the most tokens.

It was all prompted (no pun) because I wanted to show a non-programming colleague how the whole “build by prompting” thing works but more than just typing a couple of demo prompts.
Show HN: I Built an Email Marketing Tool for Founders Who Hate Email Marketing
by wscld | 2026-01-05 19:26:13+00:00
I’ve launched a few SaaS products before, but this time I built something I’m genuinely excited about. I kept seeing a real pain among SaaS founders and devs: email marketing.

If you run a SaaS and you’re not using email marketing, you’re honestly missing out. It’s still the best way to engage and retain your users.

That’s why I built Resletter, an email marketing platform made specifically for SaaS founders and developers. No bloated UI, no unnecessary complexity like Mailchimp, Brevo, or other traditional email marketing tools.

Don’t believe me? Try the free plan, connect your Resend account or SMTP, and test it yourself.

We offer JavaScript and Python SDKs, plus a full API if you want deeper integration with your SaaS, and everything comes with a clean, intuitive interface.

If you like it, you can upgrade. Paid plans give you higher limits and let you use our email infrastructure directly with your own domain.
Resletter is still in an early testing phase, so any feedback is more than welcome, it really helps shape the product.
by IgorPartola | 2026-01-05 19:26:33+00:00
Good point. It isn’t variable data as in it only changes on package updates. But it isn’t user data either, so it doesn’t belong in /usr. I guess that one should have been in /lib/share and /lib/man. Or it could be a brand new directory called /doc which contains the documentation type content.

/usr/lib contents belongs in /lib if the contents is installed by the package manager. That way /usr/lib is what the user installed.
by commandlinefan | 2026-01-05 19:26:43+00:00
> regular middle-class homeowners, who will see the enormous paper gains of their properties

As one of those homeowners, I keep hoping that housing values go down because I'm taxed on the value of my home every year, and that tax burden is crushing me. My property taxes are 2% of the (appraised) value of my house. The fact that its worth twice what I paid for it is meaningless to me when the tax bill comes - I can't really sell it and cash out the 'investment' because I need somewhere to live.
by solomonb | 2026-01-05 19:26:46+00:00
I'm very sympathetic to this view, and it would be a nice counter to claims of AI creativity, but I'm not convinced this is the only way creativity can express itself. There are examples of strokes of genius, hence the term.

I suppose you could say such strokes of genius are the outcomes of a lifetime of creative work but that seems different from your example of editing a poem.
by swashq | 2026-01-05 19:26:57+00:00
Cool idea. One thing that could differentiate this from "another budgeting app":

Add market context to the coaching. Right now most finance apps show spending in isolation. But "should I invest?" is different when:
- S&P is at ATH vs down 20%
- Fed just raised rates vs cutting
- Your industry is laying off vs hiring

A few data points that could make the coaching smarter:
- Historical market returns (so "invest in index funds" has numbers behind it)
- Inflation rate (to show why cash loses value)
- Average savings rate by age bracket (peer comparison)

The "memory" system you built could remember their risk tolerance AND market conditions when they made past decisions, then reference both.
by etyhhgfff | 2026-01-05 19:27:20+00:00
The buddihst and meditation community is very aware that chasing bliss is not the goal. Jhanas are a tool. A good teacher would advice you to develop enough concentration and use that for insight meditation (vipassana). Mindfulness based stress reduction MBSR has good scientific support, and further studies and meta studies confirm this more often than not.

From personal experience I agree 6 weeks are far too short for any meaningful long teem change, but meditating over the past two years, 45 min daily, had a noticeable impact in my case and there are similar reports all over the internet.
by 7777777phil | 2026-01-05 19:27:33+00:00
It reminds me of how we use measures like the VIX in finance; not because markets are actually log-normal, but because having a standardized way to compare "choppiness" across different periods is incredibly useful. I like your fractal dimension example too. Even if real coastlines aren't truly fractal, being able to say "this coastline has dimension 1.3 vs 1.7" gives you meaningful information about erosion patterns, wave energy, and rock composition. The cube metric could work similarly for forensic geology.
by nja | 2026-01-05 19:27:40+00:00
This makes me think of QGIS. I've recently been learning it for a couple different projects. It's an incredibly powerful and configurable tool, but its learning curve is incredibly steep. A big reason for this is that the UI is almost entirely toolbar+button based -- but the meaning of all of the button icons are completely opaque to a new user. And, making things worse, there's no way to change the UI to show text next to buttons. So every time a user wants to do something, even if following instructions that say "click the add feature button", they have to hunt around for it.

QGIS is free software, so it can be somewhat excused vs a billion dollar company. But they could really benefit from some UX expertise...
by guywithahat | 2026-01-05 19:27:44+00:00
From there data, it looks like you only regret college once you graduate and look for jobs. What I've heard from people is that there's still a lot of pressure to go to college, and students who've said they wanted to go into trades/plumbing/etc end up getting pushed into college by senior year. School is still set up to push students into college, and I'm not sure that's a good idea since so many people who attend seem to regret it.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-05 19:27:56+00:00
To use the video game analogy, I think it's more about PVP vs "bots" as opposed to PVP vs "humans". A lot of PVP games (especially battle royale style) struggle with the question of whether to include dumb AI characters as "fodder" for people to play against. The PVP purists, pro players, and streamers tend to be against bots because they think the game should be a pure test of human skill. Normie players, less skilled players, and players who just don't have the time to master the game tend to like to play against a mix of bots and humans. Some people just don't like PVP and would prefer to just play against bots only.

I'm not going to weigh in on which side I'm on, but I notice the discussion around AI "making creativity too easy" and "devaluing practiced skills" to be similar to the discussion around bots in PVP games.
by crumpled | 2026-01-05 19:28:05+00:00
Any imitation of humanity should be the line, IMO.

You know how Meta is involved in lawsuits regarding getting children addicted to its platforms while simultaneously asserting that "safety is important"...

It's all about the long game. Do as much harm as you can and set yourself up for control and influence during the periods where the technology is ahead of the regulation.

Our children are screwed now because they have parents that have put them onto social media without their consent from literally the day they were born. They are brought up into social media before they have a chance to decide to take a healthier path.

Apply that to AI, Now they can start talking to chat bots before they really understand that they bots aren't here for them. They aren't human, and they have intentions of their very own, created by their corporate owners and the ex CIA people on the "safety" teams.

You seem to be getting down-voted, but you are right. There's NO USE CASE for an AI not continuously reminding you that they are not human except for the creators wishing for you to be deceived (scammers, for example) or wishing for you to have a "human relationship" with the AI.
I'm sure "engagement" is still a KPI.

The lack of regulation is disturbing on a global scale.
by gaoshan | 2026-01-05 19:28:07+00:00
If maximizing profits is the primary thing that matters (and in the US, amongst other places, it is) then nothing will change about this. It's also why unions are so opposed by certain groups and it's why we have such an obscene wealth imbalance. Shareholders and profits matter more than people.

Martin Luther King Jr. expressed it well when he said, "when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered,"
by temp84858696945 | 2026-01-05 19:28:08+00:00
I'm fairly certain that would not work at all for media such as sci-fi/fantasy books, where a system like this would result in people just forever reading older books which are free and effectively kill the market.

There is a limited amount of time to read in a day and the amount of 10+ year old content that is still amazing is more then anyone could ever read, and it's hard to compete with free.

I think video games is actually kinda an anomaly when it comes to copyright because they have been, on average, getting better and better then games released even in the recent past, mostly due to hardware getting better and better. Also any multiplayer game has the community issue where older games tend to no longer have a playerbase to play with.

Same could be said about movies/tv shows that rely on CGI up until somewhat recently where the CGI has pretty much plateaued.
by w10-1 | 2026-01-05 19:28:21+00:00
This is a stunning catalog of UI hypocrisy, a call to action for fans and haters.

But what's interesting is why such hypocrisy persists - in particular, why so bad now?

Yes, designers might need to make work for themselves; yes, a new OS has to seem new, to justify upgrades and convince younglings that this isn't the oldsters' ride; but haventt these always been true?

What's different is Apple's slide into disorganization, as it spreads work around the globe in exchange for market access, and internal leaders coast in their mutual non-aggression pacts.

What remains of the center can issue global orders (adopt the liquid glass aesthetic; put icons on every action) and the periphery can comply - nominally, imperfectly, and inconsistently. Quality issues come to be tolerated like chronic inflammation, and even deployed in passive-aggressive turf battles.

"Back in the day" everyone would be pulled into a rock-tumbler room and grind it out. That's neither possible nor wanted today (as game theory effaced the requisite obliviousness).

What to do? Many YC companies have bonding time, where scattered teams join up for intense periods to restore alignment. Otherwise, the Apple might be ripe for a round of organizational consolidation.

Personally, I think internal competition with some misses and inconsistencies are a good thing long term. Inflammation is not cancer, and there are better ways to tamp it down.
by toraway | 2026-01-05 19:28:49+00:00
> Recently, the left has been far more authoritarian

I'm not sure how a reasonable comparison of authoritarian behavior seemingly assigns more weight to random Wikipedia contributors lumped together as "leftists" compared to the literal government currently controlled by the right that is routinely threatening to pull FCC licenses for critical speech among other intentionally speech chilling threats.

I'd say the pendulum has already swung the other way, while swinging much, much further and more openly than nebulous mob demands for "cancel culture", over zealous Twitter moderation of hate speech or whatever else the previous go-to examples for the left were. Before 2025 showed what a truly authoritarian anti-free speech policy looks like when wielded by those with actual legal power and zero shame.
by nicoburns | 2026-01-05 19:28:55+00:00
> IIRC this was actually the spec, and IE decided to ignore it and do something saner

That's actually a little unfair on IE. This behaviour predates there even being a spec. IE and Netscape did it differently, and as a general rule Netscape's behaviour tended to be what ended up in the spec. This was mostly a good thing, but not so much in this case.
by dpoloncsak | 2026-01-05 19:28:57+00:00
I see. You can remove 'Overwatch' from my original comment and the point still stands, but I do appreciate the fact check. I know Blizzard from HearthStone and Diablo....not great experiences with gacha there haha (Diablo Immortal, atleast), but those are far from the most popular Eastern games
by xvxvx | 2026-01-05 19:29:50+00:00
The UI for Apple Music is frustrating as hell since updating to 26.x. The search function alone needs a human sacrifice.

Want to delete a song? Open the menu then, even though there’s ample screen space, scroll down the truncated menu to find delete well below more useless options. Why.

Want to scroll to the middle of a song? Hold up! The ‘lossless’ info is right there and you always hit that instead. Again, plenty of space to move that down and out of the way.

If anyone at Apple used Apple Music they would know all of this already.

Then there’s the keyboard in general. I spend so much time fixing typos it’s crazy. Someone had a video on YouTube showing that, even though he was typing correctly, IOS was messing up. Horrible experience!
by JCattheATM | 2026-01-05 19:30:13+00:00
> All data are safe

This simply isn't the case. Any data in the VM is vulnerable if the VM has a vulnerability allowing exfiltration.

> Give me your actual threat model.

A vulnerability in the VM allowing exfiltration.

> 100% security never existed and never will.

Then why did you suggest Qubes as a 100% secure OS?

Are you now admitting you were wrong to do so?

> Security through correctness never worked and never will.

Security clearly isn't your area of expertise. Security through correctness is indeed a solution to many/most threats.

> Compartmentalization is the only viable approach.

Hardly. It can help, but at most it's a workaround.
by Izkata | 2026-01-05 19:30:19+00:00
> Well, to be precise, it does exactly what you want for the first week that you have designed it and have not started adding all sorts of other widgets to a site. Such that, inevitably, you just want to have large swaths of text that are at given sizes. You don't care how nested the thing is to get you there.

Shared library components is where this could work - each individual application would be able to scale the component's size to what it needs.
by MisterTea | 2026-01-05 19:30:34+00:00
> For the sake of our own society, we should be getting rid of these jobs, not adding them.

So let me get this strait. You think these dangerous, monotonous jobs are bad for "our own society" so the best thing for "our own society" is to export these dangerous jobs to another society "own own society" doesn't give a shit about. Wonderful.

I can't believe how ignorant and callous people can openly be.
by ZoneZealot | 2026-01-05 19:30:42+00:00
The funny thing about that is it's extremely simple to bypass. On old or new reddit, search 'author:example' to find posts by /u/example. Or to see both comments and posts, on new reddit go to the user profile and do blank search like a single space character.

That's using reddit's own site, of course there are other methods like Google dorks.
by anal_reactor | 2026-01-05 19:30:51+00:00
> Wives aren't a monolith

Usually they are. Most people are surprisingly similar and predictable, which is why basic manipulation tactics are so successful. Sure, you have 10% of people who truly are special, but the other 90% has a collective orgasm while listening to whatever is the hottest pop star.

> The reason it takes a human 4 hours to write the poem is because that is time spent exploring profoundly new structures and effects.

Most likely dude spent 4 hours doing exactly the same things that everyone else does when making their first song. It's not like within these 4 hours he discovered a truly new technique of writing lyrics. Each instance of human life that wants to write songs needs to go through exactly the same learning steps, while AI does it just once and then can endlessly apply the results.

> it's not "just the thought," it's also the effort that socially signals the profundity of the thought.

In close relationships yes. When dealing with those you less care about, it's the result that matters.
by oaiey | 2026-01-05 19:31:06+00:00
While I agree with WTH on branding and everything, I never understood the "Office App". Excel, Powerpoint, Word .... all fine. OneDrive/Sharepoint ... absolutely. But the Office App was for me always just the app for the total noobs who do not remember how Word was called. Why would I click office app, then open a word template there. It always found pointless.

Under that spirit ... this may even make sense to rename it to Copilot app whatever.
by mattmaroon | 2026-01-05 19:31:13+00:00
“ Some say YC is now big enough that it has a self-fulfilling distortion effect where the best founders in the world know they should all apply to YC first before they talk to any other startup accelerators or investors.”

That’s an interesting point but I have to imagine all the worst founders know it too so the filtering may not have gotten easier. I’d be curious to hear from them.
by jsheard | 2026-01-05 19:31:22+00:00
> Fortnite's initial success was based on solid gameplay before the monetization kicked in.

Fortnite is a bit of weird backwards example because the early PvE iteration had paid lootboxes, but they were scrapped in the Battle Royale spinoff which actually got popular, and eventually removed altogether. They still do things like engineering FOMO to drive sales but ironically the games monetization was the most exploitative when nobody was playing it.

But now the siren song of lootboxes is calling to them once again... https://kotaku.com/fortnite-loot-boxes-gambling-roblox-20006...
by chinathrow | 2026-01-05 19:31:23+00:00
Assholes all the way down.

"“We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary,” X Safety said. “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

How about not enabling generating such content, at all?
by anildash | 2026-01-05 19:31:23+00:00
Prince changed his name because a corporation had refused to give him control over the work he created, and wouldn't let him release work under the name that he was born with. (Sort of the template for "Taylor's Version" decades later.) And he then used a logo that became the most successful personal logo of all time, not a mishmash of design-by-committee.

So, basically the _opposite_ of an incoherent brand based around training on content that was gathered from creators without consent, being foisted onto employees who didn't ask for it, with an ugly logo that nobody will ever remember.
by seabrookmx | 2026-01-05 19:31:32+00:00
It's actually:

1. Generate slop music no _human_ will ever listen to

2. Use a botnet to "play" this music en masse

3. Profit

This is a whole arms race, with companies (such as Beatdapp) specializing in detecting fraudulent plays.

Source: I work for a niche music retailer that struggles with the same issues on a smaller scale.