MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by accounting2026 | 2026-01-30 21:37:44+00:00
About 15 years ago I was writing software for an embedded device made by another company, and they sent us a unit for testing. It had a small rectangular rechargeable lithium battery that was charged via a DC jack.

At one point I hadn’t kept it charged, the battery went completely flat, and after that it would no longer charge at all. When I called the company, they said the battery was now too deeply discharged and required an “intelligent” charger to revive it. They sent a charger with a slot for the bare battery; some LEDs blinked in various patterns for a while, and eventually normal charging resumed.

I’ve always wondered what that charger actually did, that the built-in charger was not capable of. Was it performing some kind of analysis to decide whether the battery was safe to recover (e.g. after deep discharge), or was it simply applying some initial charge ignoring the battery’s protection circuitry (and at what risk)?
by reactordev | 2026-01-30 21:38:19+00:00
Played it. It’s ok. I’m not a fan of the hardcore, memorize all the moves of the boss, boss fights. It’s cool. It’s beautiful. It’s been in my library since launch and I have maybe 30 hours on it. That’s it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance and KCD2 were better. Even if the games weren’t innovative.
by surgical_fire | 2026-01-30 21:38:40+00:00
I don't disagree. I really enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima years ago. By all accounts it was very much an AAA game. But enjoying those for me is the exception, not the rule.

On the other hand, I have been finding a lot of fun with Indies. Lower spec games mean seem to have a liberating effect, in that they can experiment with gameplay, aesthetics, style, narrative, etc.

It may be some romanticism on my part, but I think that when a project does not cost hundreds of millions to make, there's less anxiety with taking some risks.

Which brings me to those games made in the 90s. Those games were typically short (an RPG like FF6 that took 50+ hour to finish was gargantuan back in the day). Those games did not have obscene costs, a game flopping didn't mean the studio was closing. Things changed, if for better or worse I can't say.
by nikolay | 2026-01-30 21:38:42+00:00
Most of Trump's voters are retail gold and silver investors, so I'm sure they didn't like the last 2 days. Plus, I won't be surprised if Trump's family didn't cash in on this, just like they did earlier with Bitcoin... allegedly.

But an "asset" to lose 30% of its value in a day... Wow!

Worst of all is to hear analyses that AI spending will go down. Utter nonsense! As AI models become increasingly useful every day, their use will only grow. Oh, well...
by spwa4 | 2026-01-30 21:38:59+00:00
But there's 2 problems with that.

First, ServiceNow itself is an Oracle imitation. A Salesforce imitation. A SAP imitation (a very bad SAP imitation), an IBM Remedy (dear GOD do I HATE IBM remedy) with as it's one "advantage" that it supports automation a bit better, you could even say these are MS Access/Dynamics imitations.

And at least you could say that (deep) under the covers Oracle and SAP have excellent software. ServiceNow does not.

Second, ServiceNow SUCKS. I mean it's not quite as bad as IBM Remedy, but it really, really tries.

I like to say that most of this software is like mounting a big, heavy metal spike on the wall and then hitting your head constantly, repeatedly, as hard as you possibly can, against the point. With one important difference: unlike with IBM Remedy, when hitting your head hard on a big metal spike, the pain stops after a while.
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-01-30 21:39:36+00:00
What's this all about then?

mb21 - The Teletext Museum

https://teletext.mb21.co.uk/

Ceefax and the birth of interactive TV https://www.bbc.com/articles/cvg360rr91zo

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41673317)
by B-Con | 2026-01-30 21:39:53+00:00
I know this guy from his videos over the years on hiking topics, like how to safely purify water with the minimum fuel and how to pack calorie efficient food.

His videos are incredibly well researched, very in-depth, and absolutely zero fluff. Very much feels like his cycle is to get intrigued by a topic, spend a year deep diving into everything that's published, extrapolate what he can from there, then summarize it in a 1 hr video.
by comex | 2026-01-30 21:40:20+00:00
In 2024, Bluesky wrote about their "Stackable Approach to Moderation":

https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...

Now in 2026, their transparency report says nothing about stackable moderation or moderation services. I guess nobody is using them, at least not in significant enough volumes that it would have a meaningful effect on the at least not enough for them to have a meaningful effect on the Trust & Safety team's job.

Likewise, they tout "thousands of Personal Data Servers operated by people across the federated AT Protocol network", but that's out of "41.41M users".

It's fine, I guess. It's just not meaningfully decentralized.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-30 21:40:37+00:00
I use Duckduckgo so I don't see really garbage search imo but not sure about people who google.

But as you say that LLM's cant handle search. One of the things that I can't understand and I hope you help in is that this doesn't have to be this way.

Kagi exists (I think I like the product/product idea even though I haven't bought it but I have tried it). Kagi's assistants can actually use Kagi search engine itself which is really customizable and you can almost have a lot of search settings filtered and Kagi overall is considered by many people as giving good search.

Not to be a sponsor of kagi or anything but if this is such a really big problem assuming that NYC literally had to kill a bot because of it & the reason you mention is the garbage in garbage out problem of search happening.

I wonder if Kagi could've maybe helped in it. I think that they are B-corp so they would've really appreciated the support itself if say NYC would've used them as a search layer.
by recursivegirth | 2026-01-30 21:40:38+00:00
Thinking about this a little bit... could we use a blockchain ledger as an authoritative source for DNS records?

User's can publish their DNS + pub key to the append-only blockchain, signed with their private key.

Use a torrent file to connect to an initial tracker to download the blockchain.

Once the blockchain is downloaded, every computer would have a full copy of the DNS database and could use that for discoverability.

I have no experience with blockchains or building trackers, so maybe this is a dumb idea.
by accounting2026 | 2026-01-30 21:40:55+00:00
At our high school we each had to buy a TI-83 calculator kit, and it came with one of those Rayovac alkaline chargers.

I also had a Seitek Eco charger that could charge "normal" alkalines. But you had to be careful not to discharge them too deep. It seemed kind of pointless over rechargebles though the capacity of NiCD/NiMH was way lower back then (I remember when NiMH AA batteries at 700 mAh were considered really high!). And perhaps it some devices it was great they held 1.5 V.
by jws | 2026-01-30 21:41:01+00:00
Just a note, if you want a special whimsical typeface, there are any number of talented folk on fiverr and similar that will make you one. Well worth it. For the cost of a lunch I got this turned into a font that I really like…

"Imagine an advanced alien race of octopus-like creatures who don't use writing. They encounter humans, enslave some and take them on their spaceships, but find they have to label things for the humans to read. Make me a font that is how these creatures would approximate our writing systems by miming the letters with their tentacles."

It's a glorious sinuous typeface which I use for labeling drawers and bins in my semi-industrial space.

You deserve your own personal typeface.
by Night_Thastus | 2026-01-30 21:41:16+00:00
Wouldn't that requirement completely kill any chance of a L5 system being profitable? If company X is making tons of self-driving cars, and now has to pay insurance for every single one, that's a mountain of cash. They'd go broke immediately.

I realize it would suck to be blamed for something the car did when you weren't driving it, but I'm not sure how else it could be financially feasible.
by abraxas | 2026-01-30 21:41:31+00:00
Before the dystopian black and gray fad arrived most buildings that went up were sort of OK. And I didn't mind the pastel paint on commie blocks either. But a decade ago someone decided that gray cuboids with asymmetric windows were an improvement...

Even so, I think North American cities are on average uglier than most Polish ones.

Overall we're not doing that bad but I want the memes to continue lest we get Prague or Amsterdam level tourist invasion.
by edb_123 | 2026-01-30 21:41:41+00:00
One thing I'm trying to grasp here is: are these Moltbook discussions just an illusion or artefact of LLM agents basically role-playing their version of Reddit, driven by the way Reddit discussions are represented in their models, and now being able to interact with such a forum, or are they actually learning each other to "...ship while they sleep..." and "Don't ask for permission to be helpful. Just build it", and really doing what they say they're doing in the other end?

https://www.moltbook.com/post/562faad7-f9cc-49a3-8520-2bdf36...
by Neywiny | 2026-01-30 21:41:46+00:00
I do this too, and in my experience, if it's important enough and I've missed it they'll call. Currently undergoing a major (positive) life event that's had more than a few of those cases. The other issue I run into is when somebody forwards me an email. I don't know if gmail filters can whitelist those but that's always led to me missing something important.
by alterom | 2026-01-30 21:41:46+00:00
Because The Boring Company hasn't built any tunnels worth noting, perhaps, and stalled most of its projects.

This isn't a case against tunnels, this is a case against The Boring Company.

The tunnels aren't a great idea apriori. Good luck pitching the tunnels idea in Venice.

The tunnels may be a good or a bad idea depending on many variables, and the tunnels that the Boring Company has actually built are worthless.

As for the tunneling equipment: selling those machines isn't their core business, and there's no evidence these machines have, or may in the feasible future, do anything revolutionary in the tunnel industry (i.e., built radically better, radically cheaper, or radically faster).

The idea of having such machines is good. They don't have such machines.

> It's still premature to say that they haven't revolutionized the field

It's never premature to say that. Read what you wrote.

You can say a field has been revolutionized once a revolution takes place.

It's hasn't.

The impact of the Boring company on the way tunnels are dug is, very sharply, zero.

Is it possible that they will? Sure. It's also possible that Britney Spears will. She still has the time, it's premature to say she wouldn't do it, right?
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-30 21:42:05+00:00
If you'd like other examples, 404media and adjacent journalism grinding against Flock across the country, as well as perfectunion working against datacenter siting. I admit the egregious nature of the Adams NYC administration and his fraud makes this particular scenario straightforward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigations_into_the_Eric_A...
by kjksf | 2026-01-30 21:42:33+00:00
They literally just (in the last few days) started unsupervised robotaxis in Austin.

They are as self-driving as a car can be.

This is different than the one where they had a human supervisor in passenger seat (which they still do elsewhere).

And different than the one where they didn't have human supervisor but did have a follow car.

Now they have a few robotaxis that are self driving.
Ask HN: How do you catch cron jobs that "succeed" but produce wrong results?
by BlackPearl02 | 2026-01-30 21:42:40+00:00
I've been dealing with a frustrating problem: my cron jobs return exit code 0, but the results are wrong.

Examples:
Backup script completes successfully but creates empty backup files
Data processing job finishes but only processes 10% of records
Report generator runs without errors but outputs incomplete data
Database sync completes but the counts don't match
The logs show "success" — exit code 0, no exceptions — but the actual results are wrong. The errors might be buried in logs, but I'm not checking logs proactively every day.

I've tried:
Adding validation checks in scripts (e.g., if count < 100: exit 1) — works, but you have to modify every script, and changing thresholds requires code changes
Webhook alerts — requires writing connectors for every script
Error monitoring tools (Sentry, etc.) — they catch exceptions, not wrong results
Manual spot checks — not scalable

The validation-in-script approach works for simple cases, but it's not flexible. What if you need to change the threshold? What if the file exists but is from yesterday? What if you need to check multiple conditions? You end up mixing monitoring logic with business logic.

I built a simple monitoring tool that watches job results instead of just execution status. You send it the actual results (file size, record count, status, etc.) and it alerts if something's off. No need to dig through logs, and you can adjust thresholds without deploying code.

How do you handle this? Are you adding validation to every script, proactively checking logs, or using something that alerts when results don't match expectations? What's your approach to catching these "silent failures"?
by 0xbadcafebee | 2026-01-30 21:42:51+00:00
If you have an old M1 Macbook lying around, you use that to run a local model. Then it only costs whatever the electricity costs. May not be a frontier model, but local models are insanely good now compared to before. Some people are buying Mac Minis for this, but there's many kinds of old/cheap hardware that works. An old 1U/2U server some company's throwing out with a tech refresh, lots of old RAM, an old GPU off eBay, is pretty perfect. MacBook M1 Max or Mac Mini w/64GB RAM is much quieter, power efficient, compact. But even my ThinkPad T14s runs local models. Then you can start optimizing inference settings and get it to run nearly 2x faster.

(keep in mind with the cost savings: do an initial calculation of your cloud cost first with a low-cost cloud model, not the default ones, and then multiply times 1-2 years, compare that cost to the cost of a local machine + power bill. don't just buy hardware because you think it's cheaper; cloud models are generally cost effective)
by SlavojsChef | 2026-01-30 21:43:07+00:00
Long Time, First Time. No background in CS.

>”Google has aimed a knockout blow at a massive cyber weapon that researchers say is running silently on millions of devices in the homes of consumers”

from what i’ve gleaned in spelunking the internet, any time we use the internet our footprint is left. Cookies right? Is it correct to say soemtimes our footprints pick up some external influences? Like a virus, what else? how difficukt is it to keep an internet connected device completely silod from external influence. Using the broadest use of the term. In other words, your device is in the same state when you disconnect from the internet vs when it first connected.

There’s probably a better way to describe what i’m asking but i hope i’m making some sense?

Thanks !!
by 7777332215 | 2026-01-30 21:43:14+00:00
Use the whole of it. Kill them, eat them, use their bones and hide.

Why is okay to kill a tree to build a home, kill a plant to eat, but not okay to kill an animal to eat?

Is it okay to kill a cockroach or a rat in your home?

Does the biological complexity of the organism make it more or less okay to kill it?
by pllbnk | 2026-01-30 21:43:55+00:00
I never considered this aspect at all. To me it feels more that some people find it really fascinating that we finally live in the future. I think so too, just with a lot of reservations but fully aware that the genie has been let out of the bottle. Other people are like me. And the rest don’t want any part of this.

However, personal views aside, looking at it purely technically, it’s just a mindless token soup, that’s why I find it weird that even deeply technical people like Andrej Karpathy (there was a post made by him somewhere today) find it fascinating.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-30 21:43:56+00:00
I have always thought biometrics on phones is just another way so-called "tech" companies perform data collection ultimately to be used for commercial purposes or any purposes deemed appropriate by the companies or their business partners

The companies are secretive so who knows what they are up to that we dont know about. What we do know is that these companies do not tell the whole truth when explaining their publicly visible conduct, including their data collection practices

For example, a so-called "tech" company might claim they need a user's phone number for "security" purposes while the data actually serves other purposes for the company that the user might find objectionable if they knew about them (This actually happened)

The mobile phone has become a computer that the user cannot truly control. Companies can remotely install and run code on these computers at any time for any reason. If the user stores data on the phone, the company tries to get the user to sync it to the company's computers

If there are promises, e.g., about "privacy", made by the companies, then these promises are unlikely to be enforceable. It's rather difficult if not impossible to verify such promises are kept, or to discover they have been breached. Unfortunately, when the promises are broken then there is no adequate remedy. It's too late
by theamk | 2026-01-30 21:43:57+00:00
I don't see how this can work.

You have your personal string library.. and you move to a new project, and it has it's own string library (it's pretty much given, because stdlib C library sucks). So what next? Do you rewrite the entire project into _your_ string library, and enjoy familiar environment, until the next "experienced C programmer" comes along? Or do you give up on your own string library and start learning whatever project uses?

And this applies to basically everything. The "personal database" becomes pretty useless the moment the second person with such database joins the project.

(This is a big part of Python's popularity, IMHO. Maybe "str" and "logger" are not the best string and logger classes in the world, but they are good enough and in stdlib, so you never have to learn them when you start a new project)
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-30 21:44:16+00:00
> Unfortunately, eBay uses emoji in the subject lines for a bunch of their transactional email, e.g. "<U+1F4E6>ORDER DELIVERED".

Don't really use G-mail (I personally use proton) so I am not sure but can't special exceptions be made for E-bay if that's the case?
by superxpro12 | 2026-01-30 21:44:16+00:00
Meanwhile my facebook feed is nothing but clickbait engagement with local nazis. It's such a hard right echo chamber now, it makes me sick. Clear evidence of multiple international bot accounts flooding groups with propaganda every 30 minutes. It's a flood.

There's really a problem that needs to be solved here. I really think anonymous or phony posting needs to stop. It's not helpful here. All it does is amplify false talking points with a "Fake it til you make it", "the loudest voice wins" methodology.

But unfortunately, engagement is financially incentivized now. So the big corps reap $$$$$ while the public burns itself down.
by Diti | 2026-01-30 21:44:18+00:00
Their ban of “non-consensual sexual imagery” made several acquaintances of mine – furry art illustrators – move to harmful communities on questionable Mastodon servers.

I’m growing tired of those bans on legal content that isn’t inherently harmful (we are talking about fictional humanized animals here) but considered “icky” by platforms and payment processors.

So I don’t care if the AT protocol is technologically superior to ActivityPub (?) – the Mastodon community has a healthier moderation and mindset than Bluesky, in my opinion.
by ndiddy | 2026-01-30 21:44:37+00:00
If you look at the article, the network they disrupted pays software vendors per-download to sneakily turn their users into residential proxy endpoints. I'm sure that at least some of the time the user is technically agreeing to some wording buried in the ToS saying they consent to this, but it's certainly unethical. I wouldn't want to proxy traffic from random people through my home network, that's how you get legal threats from media companies or the police called to your house.
by gamblor956 | 2026-01-30 21:45:06+00:00
But that's not what happened...

Lemonade announced an entirely new product for FSD driving, which it says should cut rates for FSD vehicles And importantly, FSD driving is no longer covered by the regular policy, so FSD drivers now need two separate insurance policies if using Lemonade: the regular insurance policy, and another one just for when using FSD.

The actual combined cost of the two insurance policies is more than the previous policy was because they didn't reduce rates for the normal insurance policies.
by mrandish | 2026-01-30 21:45:43+00:00
Some interesting long-term, directional ideas about the future of software dev here but the implied near-termness of SaaS being disintermediated ignores how management in large orgs evaluates build vs buy Saas decisions. 'Build' getting 10x cheaper/easier is revolutionary to developers and quite possibly irrelevant or only 'nice-to-have' to senior management.

Even if 10x cheaper, internally built Saas tools don't come with service level agreements, a vendor to blame/cancel if it goes wrong or a built-in defense of "But we picked the Gartner top quadrant tool".
by tombert | 2026-01-30 21:46:50+00:00
Yeah, I was happily surprised to be reminded of that when I set up my NixOS Jovian box that I “consolified” by having it boot into Gamescope and the SteamOS interface.

It’s plugged into my TV, with a wireless controller, and I have direct access to around 800 games immediately.

There are consoles that don’t even have 800 games in their entire library and I have 800 I can play whenever I want, some of which I purchased almost two decades ago.
by 1123581321 | 2026-01-30 21:47:22+00:00
It mostly hinges on your intent, i.e. what they can argue is your understanding of the information you destroyed, not theirs. It unfortunately can be far-reaching, including into the past.

You're right that in normal circumstances you can routinely delete records for data hygiene, to save money, as part of a phone repair, and so on, unless you've been court ordered otherwise.
by cyberax | 2026-01-30 21:47:38+00:00
Yeah, yeah: "Major US Public Transit Union Questions “Microtransit”" Read it. Go on. It's pure bullshit.

The _only_ issue with the old "microtransit" is the _driver_. Each van ends up needing on average MORE drivers than it moves passengers. It does solve the problem of throughput, though.

But once the driver is removed, this problem flips on its head. Each regular bus needs around 4 drivers for decent coverage. It's OK-ish only when the average bus load is at least 15-20 people. It's still much more expensive and polluting than cars, but not crazily so.