MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rickcarlino | 2026-01-13 05:38:15+00:00
> Text-based browsers and modern HTML, no success story in sight. Given the progress we see in web technologies, the gap will only widen, so much so that w3m and its friends might fall into oblivion.

This is a fun article and the conclusion is very real.

People shit on Gemini:// because “The web can support text documents”. They say this as if they are actually proposing a real solution. It’s true that the web _can_ support lightweight content (IE5 on Windows 3.1- I was there man), but the problem is that it _won’t_ because it consistently chooses not to. If you’ve ever tried to actually perform this experiment of running the web in text mode you will quickly realize how futile it truly is. Every step you take on a well meaning site like lite.cnn.com is just one click away from transferring you to a bloated SPA app that renders a blank screen on a text-based browser. You can disable JavaScript, or disable images or whatever hoops you want to jump through (increasingly hidden with every FireFox release that goes by) but that’s not going to actually work long term. The web is too extensible and feature hungry to support text based content. It’s better to just use the web for the usual cool shit like WASM and WebRTC or whatever and admit that no one can help themselves and no amount of awareness is going to make the cookie consent banners go away.

Let’s take Gemini more seriously because it already has adoption and it works and it’s not perfect but it sure as fuck isn’t substack.
by andsoitis | 2026-01-13 05:39:30+00:00
”on Dec. 3, 1967, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, MD, surprised not only Shumway, but also the entire world, by giving Louis Washkansky, a grocer dying of heart disease, a new heart. Using Shumway’s simple surgical technique, Barnard forever cemented himself into the annals of history as the first to transplant an adult human heart.”

Performed in Cape Town, South Africa.
by Nextgrid | 2026-01-13 05:39:49+00:00
Bonus point is that with such a simple stack you don't need to phone them often because the thing just works.

Most cloud outages are self-inflicted with the endless churn trying to reinvent things, not actual hardware failure. Just not touching the working system would boost their reliability and uptime, but then a lot of people would lose justification for their salaries so it can't happen.
by lutusp | 2026-01-13 05:40:03+00:00
> The kind of rug-pulling you describe only works if the software implements an online licensing check/DRM, and either way has nothing to do with security against malicious behavior.

My point was that an open-source program cannot rug-pull its users without the obvious remedy of forking the project and removing the offending code. Open-source: commonly seen. Closed-source: not possible and often illegal.

For both options, you have to trust the source, which makes that a non-issue. You can checksum the Linux kernel to satisfy yourself that it came from a trusted source. You can checksum the Windows kernel to satisfy yourself that you're about to be screwed.

> But that's my point - open-source doesn't really change the equation there unless you are actually auditing the source and building & running said source.

In the open-source world, knowing how computers work is essential. In the closed-source world, knowing how computers work is somewhere between pointless and illegal. This is how open-source "changes the equation."

Modifying open-source code is welcome and accepted. Modifying closed-source code breaks the law. Take your pick.
by bsder | 2026-01-13 05:40:03+00:00
> They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more.

Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines.

The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself.

People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward.

I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.
by throwaway17_17 | 2026-01-13 05:40:11+00:00
Seriously, in the discussion happening in this thread C is clearly not a high-level language in context.

I get your statement and even agree with it in certain contexts. But in a discussion where high-level languages are presumed (in context) to not have memory management, looping constructs are defined over a semantics inferred range of some given types, overloading of functions (maybe even operators), algebraic datatypes, and other functional language mixins: C most certainly IS NOT a high level language.

This is pedantic to the point of being derailing and in some ways seemed geared to end the discussion occurring by sticking a bar in the conversations spokes.
by OnjaMadagascar | 2026-01-13 05:40:38+00:00
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by RHSeeger | 2026-01-13 05:41:26+00:00
I'm a bit confused by this because a given set of inputs can produce a different output, and different behaviors, each time it is run through the AI.

> By regenerable, I mean: if you delete a component, you can recreate it from stored intent (requirements, constraints, and decisions) with the same behavior and integration guarantees.

That statement just isn't true. And, as such, you need to keep track of the end result... _what_ was generated. The why is also important, but not sufficient.

Also, and unrelated, the "reject whitespace" part bothered me. It's perfectly acceptable to have whitespace in an email address.
by JellyBeanThief | 2026-01-13 05:42:03+00:00
This was the very first thing I thought when I was taught about requirement traceability matrices in uni. I was like "Ew, why is this happening in an Excel silo?" I had already known about ways of adding metadata to code in Java and C#, so I expected everything to be done in plain text formats so that tooling could provide information like "If you touch this function, you may impact these requirements and these user stories." or "If you change this function's signature, you will break contracts with these other team members (here's their email)."
by Nextgrid | 2026-01-13 05:43:28+00:00
I've had an RDS instance fail in an equally-weird way that required manual AWS operator intervention 24 hours later, until which we were effectively locked out of our data and had to restore from a recent backup & rebuild the missing data from logs to bring the service back up in the meantime.

All the supposed "savings" of using managed services to save on staff costs evaporated immediately. No refund from the provider obviously despite it being an edge-case in their implementation.
by latency-guy2 | 2026-01-13 05:43:57+00:00
There's a number of people who try and influence elections, money is not nearly as effective as you think it is. Or else a few people that have a few billion in their coffers would run and have won elections in places and other things far more than what they currently do/have done.

The wealthiest entity in the USA is the government itself. It's not even close.

Further, if currency was not able to influence things then that eliminates the main purpose of fiat currency, there is obviously a place for it in any case. Just because you don't like the direction it's being used doesn't mean you have a reasonable position either. Fiat is a benefit to the government in all ways and its in it's best interest to uphold the strength of their currency, not just for the locals to the land in the borders, but if they want to influence the rest of the world.

You should go down the path of "fair elections" because you otherwise lose all points for being vague and imprecise that no one can contest you on because you don't think we are worth the argument.
by antonvs | 2026-01-13 05:44:08+00:00
“Immutable” and “variable” generally refers to two different aspects of a variable’s lifetime, and they’re compatible with each other.

In a function f(x), x is a variable because each time f is invoked, a different value can be provided for x. But that variable can be immutable within the body of the function. That’s what’s usually being referred to by “immutable variable”.

This terminology is used across many different languages, and has nothing to do with Javascript specifically. For example, it’s common to describe pure functional languages by saying something like “all variables are immutable” (https://wiki.haskell.org/A_brief_introduction_to_Haskell).
Unpopular Opinion: Bootstrap is a better front-end framework than Tailwind
by pyeri | 2026-01-13 05:44:27+00:00
Tailwind is the hot topic these days, and 9 out of 10 developers will probably suggest (or even force!) you to use Tailwind over Bootstrap. However, here are some logical and rational reasons why Bootstrap is actually the better framework:

1. Easier learning curve. Bootstrap 5 doesn't assume deep expertise in frontend design. The fact that backend developers can implement it easily without learning arcane concepts like state management or virtual DOM is highly underestimated.

2. Highly Utilitarian. While tailwind markets itself as a "utility first" framework, Bootstrap offers real utility without all the extra fuss. Navbars, modal popups, utility classes for colors and accents like `bg-primary`, `bg-secondary`, etc.— are all built-in and ready to use. How much more utilitarian could you get?

3. Creativity within Uniformity. This point is more about psychology than technology. One of the biggest criticisms of Bootstrap is that "most Bootstrap-built sites look similar". But this is a subjective opinion and ignores the fact that creativity doesn't always equate to reinventing the entire wheel. You can still be creative with configuring a wheel's spokes, tyre colors, tube pressure, etc. on an assembly line - In fact, such creativity is ideal when it helps increase productivity while delivering a standardized, user-friendly experience.

PS: Which one feels simpler and more utilitarian to you?

- Tailwind: `<button class="bg-sky-500 hover:bg-sky-600 active:bg-sky-700 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded-lg">Click me</button>`
- Bootstrap: `<button class="btn-primary">Click me</button>`
by tzs | 2026-01-13 05:46:22+00:00
> Same with rice and beans, unless you're buying instant packs you have to plan and cook them, and be around to eat the leftovers.

You can freeze cooked rice for months with very little loss of quality, and reheating frozen rice is quick and easy. Just put the frozen rice in a bowl, add a little bit of water, cover, and microwave for 3 minutes.

I make 12 servings in my rice cooker, then fill 12 one serving containers and freeze them.
by gaygum102 | 2026-01-13 05:46:23+00:00
In my view, for early-stage indie hackers, focusing on product development brings a much higher return.

Marketing is a tedious and highly repetitive job, and early-stage indie hackers are often busy building tools and writing code, making it very difficult to balance both.

On top of that, marketing and coding require very different skill sets. Trying to handle both usually means neither is done well.

Therefore, I believe that for early-stage projects, marketing should be outsourced as much as possible.

Of course, outsourcing marketing does not mean replacing the CEO’s thinking or decision-making around marketing. The real role of outsourced marketing is to help founders reach their target users faster, promote the product, and gather more user feedback.

Founders only need to focus on two things: how to build a good product, and how to make it even better.

That’s why I built a one-click AI marketing tool to address this problem.

Here's how to use it:
1.Click the link below and log in.
2.Enter your product’s website URL.
3.Get a complete marketing plan (just like one created by a marketing partner).
4.Choose to execute the plan or modify it.
5.Monitor the results in the dashboard and see how many people start visiting your website.

https://amplift.ai/?utm_source=ycombinator&utm_campaign=post...

You can use it for free now by logging in.

Of course, since the tool is still in its early stages of development, I've assembled a team with extensive marketing experience and we also offer early-stage growth services. Simply provide us with the product you want to grow and the growth services you need, and we can give you a quote.

Starting at just $20 per month!

If you're feeling lost about how to grow your product and don't know where to start, you can tell me about your product type, its current stage, and your growth budget. My team will provide you with a satisfactory solution.

If you are interested in this, please send an email to nora@amplift.ai. We look forward to hearing from you!

Finally, I think this is a valuable topic, and I welcome comments and discussion.
by gyulai | 2026-01-13 05:47:34+00:00
I recently discovered Tonies when I remembered the Fisher Price cassette player which was my favourite toy when I was a kid and wanted to get something similar for my son. What I ended up getting: A used Fisher Price cassette player on e-bay plus a cassette deck to record with.

Tonies just seem like such a horribly bad deal: The actual content is content that the family already pays for twice because my wife pays for Spotify and I pay for YouTube Premium, and the content on those Tonies is actually on the streaming services as well. So, we'd end up paying for the same content a third time.

Moreover, we'd lock ourselves into a closed cloud. If the Tonie company goes out of business, Tonies will no longer work.

One of the nice things about a cassette player is that it seamlessly transitions the kid into enjoying the culture of the grown-ups. I can remember how exciting it felt as a kid when I started borrowing my dad's music and enjoying that on my Fisher Price. -- With the Tonies, you're locked into whatever content the content-mafia deems appropriate for toddlers.

There are also all the arguments pertaining to streaming vs. physical media in general that play into this, which I won't repeat here. I'll just say that children's literature is consistently a target for political influence on culture, and cloud-based centralisation makes it more vulnerable to that sort of influence -- “Vote for me, and there will be no more Taka-Tuka Land for Pippi Longstocking! That's so offensive to ... uhm ... whoever (Polynesians, I guess? Africans?) And what about that shy lion that needs to learn to roar, so the other animals will take him seriously? Toxic masculinity!”

I don't know the particulars of what the Tonie system looks like from a content creator perspective, but I certainly find it peculiar that Tonies lean heavily in the direction of Disney content. The German language is not exactly the best market for content creators. So, I think we should support our own content creators as well as we can to avoid a situation where the only kind of culture we have is translations of whatever Disney cooks up in the Anglosphere.

And the blank/creative Tonies are not a counterargument to the above because I'd expect there to be upload filters for copyrighted content and the like (or there soon will be if there isn't already).
by nebula8804 | 2026-01-13 05:47:55+00:00
Yeah I didn't say that Chinese people didn't want to go down the same route, infact lifestyle influencers have a better shot there (probably 0.1% better).

There is so much overproduction of engineers that you are possibly working a customer support role with that degree.

Another reason SASS supposedly never took off there, why pay some company when you can just hire from the batch of overproduced STEM graduates and make any software you need.

When I can have an experienced engineer correct my garbage designs for free as part of a manufacturing service you know I am benefiting off of a lucky circumstance that will go away one day: https://youtu.be/ljOoGyCso8s?t=98
by Nextgrid | 2026-01-13 05:48:03+00:00
> I can run several distinct apps running different frameworks and versions
> don't have to muck about with pm2 or supervisord or cronjobs, that's built in. I don't have to muck about with SSL certs/certbot

But doesn't literally any PaaS and provider with a "run a container" feature (AWS Fargate/ECS, etc) fit the bill without the complexity, moving parts and failure modes of K8s.

K8s makes sense when you need a control plane to orchestrate workloads on physical machines - its complexity and moving parts are somewhat justified there because that task is actually complex.

But to orchestrate VMs from a cloud provider - where the hypervisor and control plane already offers all of the above? Why take on the extra overhead by layering yet another orchestration layer on top?
by nawgz | 2026-01-13 05:48:44+00:00
Highly hit or miss strategy, my cat didn't care at all about foil, he even rolled around on it.

I personally recommend motion-detecting air spray cans, I didn't want the cat to feel punished by me, he just needs to be redirected. Therefore I opt for these as a deterrent, since it is both effective and an action I undertake from the cat's view. I think he hates it because of the hiss, but the air spray itself might play a role.
by hexbin010 | 2026-01-13 05:49:35+00:00
I try to think about food less but...

- Every large/medium train station is rammed full of food. Everyone on the train is constantly shoving food and alcohol in their mouths

- Every high street is full of fast food

- Every service station is full of fast food

- Every coffee shop has pastries etc all on display staring at you

- Even at the gym the other day I had to listen to two women talking about their favourite steak and chicken etc for 15 minutes (it's a small gym)

- People's homes are full of snacks and temptations and friends/family can't comprehend the concept of my wanting to lose weight.

- Grocery shops place unhealthy food at the entrance and the staples are often placed in a way to make you walk past the unhealthy foods. Online grocery shops force you to look at unhealthy food during your shop

- People just walking around town are eating in the street

We have a massive snack culture generally in the UK and it's become so normalised. Another thing you notice taking public transport is it's the default mechanism to entertain and keep children quiet, so kids are being taught to have a snack constantly.

Food is everywhere all the time here!
by smeeagain2 | 2026-01-13 05:50:23+00:00
No one cares? Then why is there a giant astroturfing campaign designed to make me out to be an antiquated old fuddy duddy?

Ever looked at the X11 source? It's pretty high quality. There is various ancient compatibility code that could easily be removed if desired, but who cares? It works fine. Wayland on the other hand has been a fucking disaster. Just like all the other crap RedHat pushes.

I was reading an old Phoronix thread the other day (from 2014) where someone said X11 is obsolete and everyone should switch to Wayland soon. LOL
by onion2k | 2026-01-13 05:51:12+00:00
I'm a bit confused by this because a given set of inputs can produce a different output, and different behaviors, each time it is run through the AI.

How different the output is each time you generate something from an LLM is a property called 'prompt adherence'. It's not really a big deal in coding LLMs, but in image generation some of the newer models (Z Image Turbo for example) give virtually the same output every time if the prompt doesn't change. To the point where some users claim it's actually a problem because most of the time you want some variety in image gen. It should be possible to tune a coding LLM to give the same response every time.
by johnmwilkinson | 2026-01-13 05:52:20+00:00
A peak of 4k/s does not mean they get that for the entire hour. The point I was trying to make is that simply computing the mean over a 24hr period will almost certainly ensure you size things incorrectly.

If a stretch of road was used by an average of 10 cars per minute over a 24 hour period, is it congested?

In both cases, you need more specific traffic data to size things properly.
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-13 05:52:55+00:00
I wonder how representative this is of life in those days. Most written communication was official back then. Books, newspapers. Plays. All very formal and staged. There's not much real life interaction between common people in that. In fact I would imagine a lot of people were illiterate.

With the internet and pervasive text communication and audio video recording we have the unique ability to make an LLM mimic daily life but I doubt that would be possible for those days.
by gnabgib | 2026-01-13 05:53:07+00:00
Still at it @gaygum102?

Yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46584915

3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550622

5 days ago from @our79511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46523264

6 days ago from @icetearun https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46509354

32 days ago from @dora_wu https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46236991
Show HN: A script that turns 365 photos into a square year poster
by 0plus1 | 2026-01-13 05:53:32+00:00
Hi Hacker News,

First post, hope it's all a-ok!

My partner and I had a baby this year. For their first birthday my partner wanted to print a big (a0) sized square of 365 photos one photo per day, in order.
All existing solutions (including Canva) either crashed or outputted a very small, non-print friendly file.

So I made her one.

* You give it a folder of photos.
* It sorts them by EXIF date.
* It lays them out in a square grid.
* It reserves a center space for a title.
* It outputs a print-ready file.
* No uploads, no accounts, no tracking.
* Works fully offline.

It’s intentionally opinionated, you don't really design, you feed it photos and enjoy the output.
I might add intelligent cropping at one point, the way we did it:
* Crop photos, transfer to PC, run script -> print

I’m open-sourcing it because heaps of people at the party wanted to do something similar, so maybe some of you will find it useful.
This has been tested in the real world and indeed produced an a0 poster in 500dpi.

Thanks for reading.
by UltraSane | 2026-01-13 05:53:35+00:00
It is really despicable the way people like you completely dismiss Hamas atrocities like what they did on Oct 7 2023 when 1,219 people were killed by the attacks: at least 810 civilians (including 38 children and 71 foreign nationals) and at least 379 members of the security forces. 364 civilians were killed while they were attending the Nova music festival and many more wounded. Israel exists and the Palestinians will never be able to defeat it and they are very stupid for trying and failing for 76 years.