MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ezst | 2026-01-25 22:17:15+00:00
> I just can't see this being a realistic concern for Microsoft

I think Microsoft strategy for Windows shifted a long time ago, from being their most precious engineering product, to a necessary component for their sales teams to bundle B2B services. The focus went from "pleasing users and enabling things" to "seeking rent in the gregarious corporate world by building a captive monopoly". I suppose that makes perfect shareholder-sense, but that leaves the door open to a competition that actually wants to make operating systems, in the traditional way.

Now that this model is being threatened, with a real geopolitical incentive to leave captivity and to reconsider past practices (like OEM installs), I think it'd be silly for Microsoft not to immediately course-correct. And that means doing something much more significant than suing Wine: without trade agreements, the US has no jurisdiction and no IP that's worth a dime outside of its borders. That means doing something that, for once, would put them so much ahead of the competition that choosing Microsoft would be a no-brainer. I don't believe Microsoft has it in itself to execute such a thing.
Show HN: BOX3D – Generate 3D-Printable Gridfinity Boxes in the Browser
by karanSF | 2026-01-25 22:17:19+00:00
I built this browser tool which lets you quickly generate 3D printable boxes in your browser. It's pretty useful when you are rapidly iterating a design and need a box with specific parameters for internal capacity or external size without the effort of opening up CAD software.

It uses Three.js for rendering, and runs entirely in the browser (no server necessary).

It works in inches, mm, and also Gridfinity, which is a standard for making 3D printable storage units which stack nicely and fit along a 42 mm grid. It uses internal units of 10 nm, so that 100,000 are exactly one mm, and 2,540,000 are exactly one inch.

I have validated the numbers against the Gridfinity spec, but I don't have access to a 3D printer right now. I would love to hear what people think of it so far, or if one of you has a 3D printer nearby, I would love to know if it actually works.
by apsec112 | 2026-01-25 22:17:21+00:00
The median American is, materially, much richer than the median person pretty much anywhere else. The US is a bad place, by rich-country standards, to be in the bottom 10%. But in terms of consumer wealth - how large your house is, how many cars your family has and how nice they are, if you have a dishwasher and home A/C, how often you eat at restaurants or travel long distances, can you afford a home repair or the latest gadget - typical American workers are second to essentially nobody. Having grown up in and left the US, I am deeply familiar with all of its downsides, but there's an abundance of data to support this.
by mystraline | 2026-01-25 22:17:23+00:00
A forced update or continual loop of "yes" or "later" is not consent. The fact that there is no "No" option shows that.

Fabricated or fake consent, or worse, forced automated updates, indicates that the company is the owner and exerting ownership-level control. Thus the sale was fraudulently conducted as a sale but is really an indefinite rental.
by AnotherGoodName | 2026-01-25 22:17:54+00:00
If you have 2+ groups with opposing views, each 3.5%+ it's pretty clear that at least one of the 3.5%+ groups will fail.

Others here note it's really "3.5% if there's no one seriously opposing their objectives" but in my opinion that's a meaningless rule. Of course in those cases non-conflict resolves the issue.
by mediaman | 2026-01-25 22:18:05+00:00
It is, in fact, not crazy, because none of this is predicated on using a specific vendor.

Many of these techniques can also work with Chinese LLMs like Qwen served by your inference provider of choice. It's about the harness that they work in, gated by a certain quality bar of LLM.

Taking a discussion about harnesses and stochastic token generators and forcing it into a discussion of American imperialism is making a topic political that is not inherently political, and is exactly the sort of aggressive, cussing tribalistic attitude the article is about.
by jjtheblunt | 2026-01-25 22:18:55+00:00
> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.

I'm just a datapoint, but in Chicago suburbia i had all that the author laments as unavailable to American kids. Mom made sister and me take skating classes, though we already could (ice hockey on ponds with friends, figure skating classes for variety, though i didn't like that as much as hockey), no student debt (top 5 US engineering universities included one in my state), kick ass library bike ride away, awesome park district in a tree covered suburbia, and so on.

I mention this because I'm in no way unique among american kids (a couple decades or so later), and, with the author, we agree these things are great.
by tjohnell | 2026-01-25 22:19:08+00:00
My first prompt was:

"Help me develop a MacOS app that blurs my screen the closer my mouse is to the top of the monitor"

That was my PoC to see if there's APIs Claude could find that would make this easy to do. Once I proved that worked, I asked it to instead help me devise a way to adjust that blur based on my posture. It suggested the vision framework and measuring head height.

Just kept iterating, one step at a time. Any toil I experienced, I asked it to remove or automate.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2026-01-25 22:19:17+00:00
One, you are entirely moving the goal post. Nothing was said of winning. The discussion was about catching up and catching up they did. As I said, the market is competitive.

Two, because the actual power consumption is not 65% higher - that's peak - and high end Chinese phones have batteries significantly bigger than the iPhone so you still get better screen time between charges in the end.
by dantino19 | 2026-01-25 22:19:31+00:00
I moved to Canada almost two decades ago after spending two years in Europe. Many of my university colleagues ended up in the USA and a few others in Europe. Every country is indeed diversely multifaceted and multitiered but Canada indeed has a way more balanced social fabric. It offers generous social programs (within its means) and has a society that is highly welcoming and inclusive. I do agree that things were rosier when I first arrived, but in crazy times like this it remains a great place to call home. So, thank you Canada and fellow Canadians for making this such a special place.
by kwanbix | 2026-01-25 22:20:01+00:00
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.

Better on what? Versus what?

> Apple has higher consumer trust.

Not from me and my peers. All nerds/devs/sysadmins.

> Apple has better app selection (for most people).

Again, based on what?

> Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.

Only when forced.

> Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
What are you even talking about?

Don't get me wrong, iPhones are great devices, but I prefer the Android ecosystem time and time again.
by throw0101c | 2026-01-25 22:20:14+00:00
> The point is, when tense situations happen, you need to have everyone keep their cool. If someone flinches, people die. Repeat this situation many many times over a day, and tragedies will happen.

Except that "flinching" is not happening. An earlier comment of mine:

---

On the most recent event, a reduced-speed video showing one agent (centre, bent over at beginning) removing the victim's firearm from his waistband, then a second agent (left) waiting for the first to get clear, and then pulling his pistol (video stops before any shooting):

* https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015272806636736647

* https://xcancel.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015272806636736647

The actual shooting of the victim; view discretion advised:

* https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015335743443378660

* https://xcancel.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015335743443378660

---

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754974

The second waited for the first guy to be clear, then drew, then started shooting. He was waiting for his opportunity.
by mkozlows | 2026-01-25 22:20:19+00:00
I'm not too worried about startups: We used to have startups when they had to buy expensive physical servers and pay for business-class T1 connections and rent offices and all that. The idea that you can start a company with $20 and a dream is relatively new, and honestly a little bit of friction might be good.

But yeah, I share your concern about open source and hobby projects. My hope would be that you get free tiers that are aimed at hobby/non-profit/etc stuff, but who knows.
by nozzlegear | 2026-01-25 22:20:21+00:00
> But in the US, when I step outside the walled gardens of my community, I notice the brittleness underneath the shining streets, the way the wealth is not load-bearing. I notice the medical self-serve kiosks in grocery stores, the necessities behind locked shelves at CVS. Parents there are not given five hundred dollars a month to buy infant formula for their babies, even with a GDP per capita twice ours. To the extent that feeding our infants preclude Canada from investing more in The Next Big Technology, the regret I can muster up about it is half-hearted at best.

> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.

I wonder if the author would have a better outlook on their counterfactual American self if that person had grown up in a smaller town like myself. I can walk to the library, grocery store, school, park and coffee shop; nothing is locked behind shelves in our pharmacies or stores; my nephews are in skating classes and play in a little league Hockey team, in rural Iowa of all places.

Yes, infant formula, and yes, student debt. Canada has the US beat for sure in social safety nets.

As a tangent: I wonder how writing a piece on appreciating my own upbringing in rural America might be received.
by virtualritz | 2026-01-25 22:20:21+00:00
Japanese high speed tracks get checked (and repaired/replaced, if required) every night. During the midnight-to-6am window.

That's why something like a fractured high speed rail track would never go undetected in Japan.

https://www.plassertheurer.com/en/today/stories/japanese-pre...

https://global.jr-central.co.jp/en/company/data-book/_pdf/20...

https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr61/16_21.html

https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/...
by abernard1 | 2026-01-25 22:20:28+00:00
Whatever the epithets, the truth of the matter is those urban areas are closer to what Canada aspires to be (and currently is). Whereas the parts of Canada she cares about are alive and well in the US (and used to be more like what Canada was).

The question becomes: if you're traveling on a line, and you see the destination looks dark ahead of you, do you turn around or keep going?

Canada's notoriously polite deference led them to align with those powerful tech, marketing, and financial hubs in the US. A cheerleader on the sidelines. But everyone gets to pick. There's a lack of acknowledgement that there's even a choice; the dog that didn't bark one could say. But it's part and parcel of why modern Canada is the way it is.
by heresie-dabord | 2026-01-25 22:21:11+00:00
> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.

If you live even just comfortably, you are the 1%. Such has been and continues to be the prevailing squalor of the world as a whole.

In the US, the polarisation between the poor (and working poor) and the wealthy is stark. But let's be clear that this is (sadly) nothing new in the history of human society. When the poor have had a chance, they have occasionally risen in starving, ragged fury against plutocrats.

But the US is still one nation under its current federal government. This government has consolidated its power over its own citizens. People are being seized without warrants; people are being killed by armed, masked government agents who appear to murder with impunity. The rule of law has vanished. Previously independent (or arm's length) government entities are now run by toadies and cronies of a brazen regime.

In perhaps the most tragic _self-own_ in modern history, the US has fallen to insidious elements from within. Other countries are watching not just a former ally -- but a former leading light -- extinguish itself and collapse into destructive dementia.
by noitpmeder | 2026-01-25 22:21:15+00:00
I wish it were easier to have ephemeral interactions with companies. Why do I need a tracked and maintained user profile for things like Uber? Shouldnt it be possible to only interact for the single transaction, ending as soon as I leave the car.

I imagine trying to continuously cycle accounts will run into various blocks, e.g. you can't sign up using your email/phone/credit-card because it is already linked to an existing account.

I hate the way the world is going. As the article states, Uber can probably classify my exact spending habits to maximize a price I'm willing to pay for. But id much rather them have to treat me as a new soul every time, and hopefully along those lines have to fight a bit harder to get my business.
by jaredsohn | 2026-01-25 22:21:22+00:00
To respond to everyone at once -

I have experience and teachers so I'm not solely relying on these videos. I use the short videos as a fast discovery of what's out there and I'll sometimes watch long videos afterward. LLM sites also work well for this discovery and I use that sometimes but it is a bit more work from me (which sounds strange to write re: AI) because I have to type out what I want instead of relying on algorithms that use data collected about me.

I use Facebook Reels (rather thank TikTok) which show me stuff anyway after I click on a link shared by friends so having it show me things relevant to learning seems like the best option here in case I click on next video.
by Muromec | 2026-01-25 22:21:35+00:00
This kind of thing is generally used to disallow downgrading the bootloader once there is a bug in chain of trust handling of the bootloader. Otherwise once broken is forever broken. It makes sense from the trusted computing perspective to have this. It's not even new, it was still there on p2k motorollas 25 years ago.

You may not want trusted computing and root/jailbreak everything as a consumer, but building one is not inherently evil.
by MegaDeKay | 2026-01-25 22:22:16+00:00
> If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.

Canada might be known for many things, but you're the first I've heard refer to an "air of superiority" that we carry around. "Nice" and "polite" maybe. Sorry you feel this way. Have a good day.
by jjk166 | 2026-01-25 22:22:42+00:00
> Let's say 1 kWh = 50 gallons. UN estimates talk about at least 50 gallons/day per person.

The energy cost of desalination is to convert sea water into freshwater. A person utilizes lots of water per day, but that water doesn't magically disappear, nor get turned back into sea water. Treating wastewater takes about 1 kwh per 1000 gallons, or about .05 kwh per person per day which is 13% of the per capita electricity consumption of Burkina Faso.

Desalination and long range transport are necessary only for what little is irrecoverably lost due to for example evaporation, and for offsetting the deficit from normal freshwater sources due to over-consumption.
by gdevenyi | 2026-01-25 22:22:52+00:00
Every province except Alberta is in dire financial states(Venezuela events will finish them off) . We have no gold reserves. In the next 5 years there will be a mortgage cliff for those who bought at the peak. Major Universities are about to be bankrupt.

Canada is going to get very poor soon. These social goods will be gone, and we will be worse for it.
by AstroBen | 2026-01-25 22:22:54+00:00
Today we have open source projects that can compete with proprietary ones just because people without initial funding had the ability to make it competitive

You can bootstrap something with yourself and a friend with some hard work and intelligence

This is available to people all over the world, even those in countries where $1000 is a months salary

Microsoft and their employees will be fine, yeah. That's not who I'm thinking about
by aisecurityguy | 2026-01-25 22:23:02+00:00
I wholeheartedly agree. It's the people that are the problem, not the technology. In the hands of people who understand it's utility and limitations, AI becomes an assistant you can't imagine life without. In the hands of people who aren't so intellectually curious, it helps them run into a brick wall much faster.

My former boss often shared the words of his father: "A fool with a tool...is still a fool!"

Even more true with AI.
by ogig | 2026-01-25 22:24:11+00:00
I decided to really learn what is going on, started with: https://karpathy.ai/zero-to-hero.html
That give a useful background into understanding what the tool can do, what context is, and how models are post trained. Context management is an important concept.
Then I gave a shot to several tools, including copilot and gemini, but followed the general advice to use Claude Code. It's way better that the rest at the moment.
And then I dive deep into Claude Code documentation and different youtube videos, there is plenty of good content out there. There are some ways to customize and increase the determinism of the process by using the tools properly.

Overall my process is, define a broad spec, including architecture. Heavy usage of standard libraries and frameworks is very helpful, also typed languages. Create skills according to your needs, and use MCP to give CC a feedback mechanism, playwright is a must for web development.

After the environment and initial seed is in place in the form of a clear spec, it's process of iteration via conversation. My session tend to go "Lets implement X, plan it", CC offers a few route, I pick what makes most sense, or on occasions I need to explain the route I want to take. After the feature is implemented we go into a cleanup phase, we check if anything might be going out of hand, recheck security stuff, and create testing. Repeat. Pick small battles, instead of huge features. I'm doing quite a lot of hand handling at the moment, saying a lots of "no", but the process is on another level with what I was doing before, and the speed I can get features out is insane.
by KaoruAK | 2026-01-25 22:24:30+00:00
Hello, this is a project that goes beyond Bitcoin’s level of decentralization.
In the GitHub repository there is a .zip file. Once you extract it, there will be a folder. Inside that folder, you need to go to the distil directory.
There you will find an .exe file — this is the program you need to run.
It is 100% decentralized and does not have a single seed server.
by AngryData | 2026-01-25 22:24:45+00:00
This is how oil pipeline owners get away with leaking millions of petroleum products all over our natural landscape. They legislated to be able to keep using their 60 year old pipeline leak detection methods, which are a false alarm hell, despite better methods existing and being cheaper to maintain. Hire a guy whos job is to stand around and press a button if things go wrong, give them 99 false signals out of 100, then fire anybody who presses the button too often. And pretty soon, nobody ever sounds the alarm when bad shit happens, because ignoring the problem and letting people die is more profitable.
by anigbrowl | 2026-01-25 22:25:21+00:00
(2019)

Chenoweth has backed off her previous conclusions in recent years, observing that nonviolent protest strategies have dramatically declined in effectiveness as governments have adjusted their tactics of repression and messaging. See eg https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-demo...

One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'. Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign, any crowd protesting government policy is described as either a rioting or alleged to be financed by George Soros or some other boogeyman of the right. This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.
by danaris | 2026-01-25 22:25:30+00:00
Git had obvious benefits over svn.

Docker has obvious benefits over bare metal.

Etc.

My own experiences with LLMs have shown them to be entertaining, and often entertainingly wrong. I haven't been working on a project I've felt comfortable handing over to Microsoft for them to train Copilot on, and the testimonials I've seen from people who've used it are mixed enough that I don't feel like it's worth the drawbacks to take that risk.

And...sure, some people have to be pushed into using new things. Some people still like using vim to write C code, and that's fine for them. But I never saw this level of resistance to git, Docker, unit tests, or CSS.
by alephnerd | 2026-01-25 22:25:37+00:00
> This rule didn't hold in Israel [...]

It did (ie. Revolutionary thresholds) until 10/7 and Hezbollah's shelling of the north changed the calculus.

There was increased pressure from senior IDF careerists, industry titans, and intelligence alums (oftentimes the 3 were the same) against the government's judicial reforms which was about to reach the tip over point (eg. threats of capital outflows, leaks, corporate shutdowns/wildcat strikes, and resignations of extremely senior careerists), but then 10/7 happened along with the mass evacuation of the North, which led everyone to set aside their differences.

Israel is a small country (same population and size as the Bay Area) so everyone either knows someone or was personally affected by the southern massacre or the northern evacuation.
by lateforwork | 2026-01-25 22:25:39+00:00
Most importantly—and this is not mentioned in the blog—Canadians take comfort in the fact that someone like Trump will never come to power in Canada. The Prime Minister is not chosen by direct popular vote. Rather, the leader of the party that wins control of the House becomes Prime Minister.

As to who becomes a party leader: Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races, not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" swayed by short-term issues like egg prices (as in the US), but by people who have gone through a qualification filter.

Post-election, the PM must sustain the House's confidence, with no-confidence votes possible anytime. So it is not necessary to watch helplessly for 4 years while your PM destroys the country.