MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gabrielsroka | 2026-01-24 23:32:40+00:00
1. JS, Python

2. [i know u said 1, but there's so many] a->b: Looser type handling, nicer syntax for dicts. b->a: Less punctuation, comprehensions

3. I created a hybrid called Pith (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32681150). JS with some nice Python features.

Appendix (Nov 2021)

A version of Python (call it "Pith" [0]) that fixes the annoying things, eg:

no colons

if bool:
# should be
if bool

for thing in things:
# should be
for thing in things

nicer dicts

a_dict['prop']
# should be
a_dict.prop

shorter dicts

a_dict = {'name': 'value'}
# should be
a_dict = {name: 'value'} # like in js
# even
a_dict = {content-type: 'json'} # ooh, ahh !

auto main function

if __blah_blah_blah__ == '__main__' # dunder-struck ?
main()
# should be
# nothing -- it just calls main() if it's there

dict.get(prop) by default

# instead of
a_dict.get('prop')
# it should be like JS that returns undefined or None or something nullish or falsey
a_dict.prop

ternary

v = a if this else b # barf
# should be
v = this ? a : b
# or (to steal from VB)
v = iif(this, a, b)

# maybe fix list/dict-compros, too, while i'm at it

elif? elf? what the helf ?

elif x:
# should be
else if x # like any decent language

W T F-string?

f'{huh}'
# should be
`{huh}` # like JS

len (like it's BASIC)

len(a_string)
# sb
a_string.length

a longer example

# Regular Python | # Pith uses less punctuation
|
def main(): | def main
a_dict = { | a_dict =
'name': 'value' | name: 'value' # maybe use = instead of :
} |
if True: | if true
print(a_dict['name']) | print a_dict.name
elif 1 > 2: | else if 1 > 2
print('ooh') | print 'ooh'
|
main() | # no need to call main()

i also like how JS allows you to call a function before it's defined (but Python doesn't -- why !!!)

maybe add a do/while loop, multi-line comments ###, JS-style regex /reg/ instead of r"regex" blah blah blah

etc, etc, etc

it could be a preprocessor (like the C Preprocessor) that takes Pith and converts it to Python

for JS, take out parens, curly braces, semicolons, etc (make it "look" more like Pith)

i know these changes are fraught with peril, but i don't care (do i?). there's no reason (is there?) that i should be stuck with Guido's or Brendan's design choices [1] (i can make my own :) )

i even had an idea that you could write a program in Pith and it could output either Python or JS (or anything else). that might need a little more thought

[0] "Pith" is prolly already in use by something else, just humour me

[1] that's the bigger idea here -- take a language you like, fix all the things you don't like about it. maybe lisp with fewer parens
by outofpaper | 2026-01-24 23:33:08+00:00
Seek? In the grand scheme of things asking forgiveness only applies if you're going to not be that transformative and something like YouTube's automated copyright strikes might affect you. "Ask Forgiveness" is often a better option.

Fair use is a defense, not a requirement - You don't need permission to claim fair use; it's a legal defense if you're sued
Seeking permission can backfire - Copyright holders may deny permission even when fair use would apply, creating unnecessary barriers.

This is especially true for parody and commentary.
by tzs | 2026-01-24 23:33:33+00:00
You are missing a factor of 24, which comes in because they said "0.155 miles per day on battery power".

The easiest way to do the calculation would be, assuming a Prius Prime can do M mi/kWh on battery power, is to calculate 0.155 mi/day x 1/M kWh/mi x 1 day/24h = 0.0065 kW = 6.5/M W. That gives us W which can directly be compared with the 2 W he gave.

Also, 1.42 mi/kWh seems way low for battery power operation. I'm pretty sure that is for mixed gas/electric operation, expressed in MPG-e (47.9) and mi/kWh for convenient comparison to pure EVs. (You can convert between MPG-e and mi/kWh used the conversion factor for 33.7 kWh/gal.

It has a 13.6 kWh battery and a 39 mile all electric range, which suggests M = 2.9 mi/kWh. Plugging that into 6.5/M W gives 2.2 W.

M is probably actually a little higher because the car probably doesn't let the battery actually use 100% of its capacity. Most sites I see seem to say 3.1-3.5 mi/kWh.

On the other hand there are some losses when charging. On my EV during times I've the year when I do not need to use the heating or AC the car is reporting 4.1 or higher mi/kWh, but it is measuring what is coming out of the battery.

When calculated based on what is coming out of my charger it works out to 3.9 mi/kWh. This is with level 2 charging (240 V, 48 A). Level 1 charging is not as efficient as level 2.

If we go with 3.1-3.5 mi/kWh, and assume that is measured on the battery output side and that the loses during charging are about 8%, we get 2.9-3.2 mi/kWh on the "this is what I've getting billed for" side. If we use the average of that and plug into 6.5/M W we get 2.1 W.
by loeg | 2026-01-24 23:34:05+00:00
Looks like a lot of recruiting and SW Eng I/II for Amazon (approximately a L3-4 at Google or Meta). Does Amazon do up-or-out?

The Meta layoff is 100% Reality Labs (they published team names, in addition to locations and roles).

Edit: parent comment removed the link, but it was https://esd.wa.gov/employer-requirements/layoffs-and-employe... .
by artyom | 2026-01-24 23:34:08+00:00
1. they don't understand their own job, why they're even there, let alone AI.

2. yes, if you're talking about basic reading skills at best.

3. correct. except "autopilot" doesn't even mean solving the basic problems they're supposed to solve as part of the role.

4. which is exactly what Amazon asked them to do.

> for the company to move forwards, they need a massive purge.

Absolutely. Starting at the C-suite, VP, and director levels (L8 and above).

Source: I was there.
by dmitrygr | 2026-01-24 23:34:16+00:00
old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number. whataspp discloses name, picture, status

As for your second comment, updated first comment with:

I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app is European. They do not have my permission to have my private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...
by eigen | 2026-01-24 23:35:02+00:00
> 1000Base-T uses two pairs per direction, actually. It's full duplex. Each port sees two TX and two RX pair.

you may be thinking of 1000Base-TX (TIA‐854) which uses 2 pairs in each direction, similar to 100Base-TX (IEEE 802.3u). whereas 1000Base-T (IEEE 802.3ab) uses all 4 pairs in both directions.

basically, the -TX are dual simplex with a set of wires for each direction and -T are full-duplex with the same wires used in both directions at the same time.
by mothballed | 2026-01-24 23:35:13+00:00
I do agree, however it was the parent of my comment that chose to make a point about them having a permit, bringing up the "hair splitting" point of legal possession. Apparently hair splitting is allowed up until the point someone's interest is piqued about the very topic they brought up. I do find it gross when I can't even ponder about the same damn thing the parent brings up but somehow I'm the bad guy for trying to understand it further.
by zmmmmm | 2026-01-24 23:35:41+00:00
Yes this is one of my concerns.

Usually about 50% of my understanding of the domain comes from the process of building the code. I can see a scenario where large scale automated code works for a while but then quickly becomes unsupportable because the domain expertise isn't there to drive it. People are currently working off their pre-existing domain knowledge which is what allows them to rapidly and accurately express in a few sentences what an AI should do and then give decisive feedback to it.

The best counter argument is that AIs can explain the existing code and domain almost as well as they can code it to begin with. So there is a reasonable prospect that the whole system can sustain itself. However there is no arguing to me that isn't a huge experiment. Any company that is producing enormous amounts of code that nobody understands is well out over their skis and could easily find themselves a year or two down the track with huge issues.
by krapp | 2026-01-24 23:35:49+00:00
>Mastodon looks to have around 800k active users. For comparison IRC has (according to netsplit.de) around 280k users. Is that successful?

Yes.

Bear in mind many people here would consider geminispace to be a success and I seriously doubt that it even has 100k users.

"Success" has valid definitions beyond market capture and revenue. Mastodon is a success because it hosts a community and because it represents a validation of the model of decentralized federated social media.

And it isn't a zero-sum game, either. The entire point is that there doesn't have to be one "Twitter" one "Facebook" one "Youtube," or even one protocol to rule them all.
by nlawalker | 2026-01-24 23:35:50+00:00
"While WARN requires only 60 days’ advance notice, Amazon is providing at least 90 days’ notice to all affected employees before their separations are scheduled to occur. Affected employees who accept internal transfer opportunities at Amazon prior to their separation date will not be separated as a result of this action."

These people were told they were being laid off in October but remain on payroll. What Amazon is "bracing" for is another one of these announcements, much larger, announcing people who will actually separate from the company 90 days later. They will find out on or around the same day the WARN notice is posted.
by commandersaki | 2026-01-24 23:35:57+00:00
I worked on a project integrating capnproto under the directive we wanted something highly performant. I was then told to scrap it for protobuf because the wider company had better knowledge in that area and it was used elsewhere. I was just contracting by giving a helping hand so I wasn't fully aware of this. But in doing all of this, I had the chance to benchmark both capnproto and protobuf, and I had gotten slightly better performance results from PB. This was all in C++.
by throwaway150 | 2026-01-24 23:36:02+00:00
I don't know man. I'm not very good with whataboutism. I don't trust myself answering such profound questions. I can answer X but the next moment I can poke holes at my answer X. Then I answer NOT X and then two minutes later I can poke holes at NOT X too.

I just shared the relevant threads I could find in my previous comment. Hoping it would throw more light on the situation. If you have an opinion about what Namecheap should do in these cases, do enlighten us!
by ninkendo | 2026-01-24 23:36:18+00:00
I have a strong emotional investment in what’s happening to my country. That’s why I’m getting upset. It has fuck all to do with HN. I’m getting upset about what’s happening with my country and predictably taking it out on other HN commenters, and other HN commenters are upset about what’s happening and are clearly taking it out on me. (I basically painted a big target on my forehead saying “I flagged this post” and people are talking to me as if I’m one of the ICE supporters or something.)

I’m not against politics on HN. I’m against anger-driven discussions on the internet in general. It’s not only bad discussion by this site’s standards, it’s bad for the world. As in, the internet causes us to hate each other more than we otherwise would, and those divisions are (I believe) directly responsible for the shape of the political landscape today. This is not a game… people talk online, they develop hatred for other people they wouldn’t otherwise have, and take that hatred to the voting booth.

And I don’t count myself as better than average here either: I’m just as likely to post flippant one-line hot take responses to someone else’s flippant one-line hot take responses. I’m just as angry as all of you. I’m not trying to ignore anything, I’m not trying to silence anyone. I’m only saying that arguing angrily at strangers on the internet is the opposite of constructive towards actually fixing any real problems, and we would be better off with “normal” journalism where we hear the news from experts and discuss it with people we generally trust.
by Gooblebrai | 2026-01-24 23:36:26+00:00
"estimation is in points, not days" doesn't tell me anything. Is not like tasks have an intrinsic attribute that everyone can agree on (e.g. the sky is blue)

How are you estimating the points if not thinking about how hard the task is for you and how long is it going to take you?

And then another matter is that points do not correlate to who later takes that work. If you are 5 seniors and 3 juniors and average on a task being a 3, but the task falls to a junior, they will take longer as is expected for his experience.
by 1718627440 | 2026-01-24 23:36:39+00:00
> You can do anything with it, literally anything, from reflection to JSON and YAML de/serialization to ad hoc generics.

Wow. Do you have any pointers? I always thought random computation with it is hard, because it doesn't really wants to do recursion by design. Or are you talking about using another program as the preprocessor?
by andsoitis | 2026-01-24 23:36:50+00:00
I would urge perspective.

Seeing an individual brutally killed for no reason is heartbreaking and wrong. Even scary. Any reasonable person would agree.

Is this something to worry about that there is a coming tsunami of random thousands or 10s of thousands of people getting mowed down by federal agents? No, would be my answer. There’s no evidence of that risk. Believing it is unrealistic.

On the other hand, things that don’t make the news headlines but are more concerning in my opinion are things like unlawful killing by law enforcement. Did you know that every year in America there’s an estimated 1200 - 1400 people unlawfully killed by policies officers?

In 2024 alone (an Biden year), about 1365 people were killed unlawfully by police. Which, by the way, was a record. Thats tragic and terrible. There are these systemic problem that need to be addressed.

A couple of people being killed by ICE, however brutal, obscures other structural problems of government brutality that transcends Trump 2.0. Do you know how may people died in ICE custody during Biden? 23. In 2025, about 20-25, a 20 year record. So yes, more but if you believe the Biden ICE was kind and empathetic and nice to people, you are ill informed.

Be outraged, fine. But being reductionist doesn’t solve the underlying problems.
by futuraperdita | 2026-01-24 23:37:00+00:00
> but the time to organize was back when we still had the upper hand

This is learned helplessness. It's not going to get better for software engineers anytime soon, I'm afraid.

The time to organize is like planting a tree: the best time is 20 years ago, and the second best time is now. Especially if you're an early-career SWE, you seem to have little to lose anyhow.
by mvdtnz | 2026-01-24 23:37:12+00:00
> Also, I'm inclined to believe the "arrest" was an illegal arrest to begin with.

I agree he was unarmed at the moment he was shot. But he was actively assaulting another person at the moment of the arrest (the woman with the red/orange backpack[0]).

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlww2j/pink_lady_free...
by tsoukase | 2026-01-24 23:38:38+00:00
Never in the past an irreversible decline of a hundred long empire has started in one year. Abrupt crisis end abruptly. Never any political party has impeached it's winning leader. Nowadays the country needs a Dem President, whoever they are. The new billionaires will have different priorities, again not friendly but more peaceful. You just have to wait, as we do in my country every now and then.
by JumpinJack_Cash | 2026-01-24 23:40:01+00:00
> > That’s what you will get by not talking politics. US is on the fast track to be like Turkey.

On the contrary, if everybody is so focused on the National Politics contests as we've been ever since 2015 , it's only natural that the winner of that popularity contest becomes a demi God with unlimited powers (on top of what were already granted him by the very generous Constitution).

It's only logic, the more followed the contest, the more popular will the winner of the contest be.

It's true for beauty paegents, boxing matches, movie and music prizes and yes even Presidential elections.

The answer is in local politics , attention there because that's where stuff has to be applied on the territory.
Show HN: I built a Mac OS App to upload your screenshots to S3
by RCM7 | 2026-01-24 23:40:14+00:00
I've been building a bitly alternative in public and built a free side tool to upload screenshots to S3. I always thought screenshot apps charged way too much for this so I was pretty happy to get around to build it.

It automatically generates short links and uploads to any S3-compatible storage you own.

Here is the link:
https://gofwd.to/screenfwd

Try it out, all feedback is welcome :)
by elsjaako | 2026-01-24 23:40:27+00:00
It is a more complex system than having a single central organization. Not every interest is well represented, so there may not be a lot of content for everyone.

I've never had a mastodon.social account, but I can understand the frustration of having technical issues. If you really wanted to join, like you said, you can just try joining on a different server or even software - with other social networks you generally don't get that choice.

But it looks like you gave it a try and made the rational choice that, for you, it's not worth that effort.

But just because it's not your thing, and it's not the biggest one out there, doesn't mean it failed or missed it's shot. Personally I think it's pretty amazing that an open source project, with no VC money or marketing department or big corporate tie in, has about a million active users, and has for a long time now.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-24 23:40:35+00:00
>But these are profitable companies

Q: You know what investors and shareholders love more than having 1 billion dollars?

A: Having 2 billion dollars. And with all the money being burned on AI, having 2 billion is better than 1.

If mass layoffs causes the stock to go from 1 to 2, then guess what's gonna happen?

In the ZIRP era companies would hire needlessly to get the stock up because that signaled growth to investors. Now it's the opposite, you trim because that gets the stock up, not because they conspire together to lay off people.
by 15155 | 2026-01-24 23:41:19+00:00
> Apple refused to use its own private key to sign a tool that would have unlocked any iPhone.

This is a misrepresentation of what actually happened: the FBI even argued that they would accept a tool locked to the specific device in question so as to alleviate this concern.

This is still forced labor/creative work/engineering work/speech and not okay, but it was not a "master key."
by zmmmmm | 2026-01-24 23:41:48+00:00
At a higher level, it goes beyond that. It's my job to take responsibility for code. At some fundamental level that puts a limit on how productive AI can be. Because we can only produce code as fast as responsibility takers can execute whatever processes they need to do to ensure sufficient due diligence is executed. In a lot of jurisdictions, human-in-loop line by line review is being mandated for code developed in regulatory settings. That pretty much caps the output at the rate of human review, which is to be honest, not drastically higher than coding itself anyway (Often I might invest 30% of the time to review a change as the developer took to do it).

It means there is no value in producing more code. Only value in producing better, clearer, safer code that can be reasoned about by humans. Which in turn makes me very sceptical about agents other than as a useful parallelisation mechanism akin to multiple developers working on separate features. But in terms of ramping up the level of automation - it's frankly kind of boring to me because if anything it make the review part harder which actually slows us down.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-24 23:42:17+00:00
Here, you might want to read about it:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/estimatio...

Points are not intrinstic or objective attributes, like the sky being blue. The scale is arbitrarily chosen by any given team, and relative to past work. But a common reference point is that 1 point is the "smallest" feature worth tracking (sometimes 1/2), and 20 points is usually the largest individual feature a team can deliver in a sprint. So it's common for teams to be delivering something between e.g. 50 and 200 points per sprint. Teams very quickly develop a "feel" for points.

> And then another matter is that points do not correlate to who later takes that work.

Yes, this is by design. Points represent complexity, not time. An experienced senior dev might tend to deliver 30 points per sprint, while a junior dev might usually deliver 10. If a team swaps out some junior devs for senior devs, you will expect the team to deliver more points per sprint.
by gucci-on-fleek | 2026-01-24 23:42:22+00:00
> now I will only register an LLC if I can make at least $20k/month

That can be fairly risky depending on the type of business though, because an LLC gives you liability protection. Your strategy is probably fine for a B2C SAAS software business since there isn't much potential for liability there, but it would be really risky for any sort of business that operates in the "physical" world.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-01-24 23:42:44+00:00
Nah. I was taught by the actions of neighbors. I was taught by my school becoming less segregated in California and becoming majority latino and no one caring. I was taught by my grandfather, what he did in his life, and how he lived.

I was 'taught' through experiencing something good becoming more good. Get out of here with your doomerism toxicity. You talk like the non-political Russians talk about their country. The USA is not irredeemable.
by cobolcomesback | 2026-01-24 23:42:53+00:00
That list of movies is just the movies that Amazon Studios has been the distributor for via Prime Video. Amazon didn’t necessarily produce or fund all of the movies in that list. It’s a bunch of cheap movies that are likely meant to be loss leaders for Prime Video subscriptions, which is something that very much does fit the style of Amazon. Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV all have a similar list of D-tier garbage just to fill their catalogs.

On the contrary to your points, Amazon has put out some pretty solid and well received original series. The Boys, Gen V, Fallout, Reacher, Mr and Mrs Smith, Invincible, have all done really well if not been hits.

Games is pretty trash though. I think they’re also going for a loss leader strategy there, but the platform they’re trying to promote (Luna) just isn’t there.
by Alasater | 2026-01-24 23:43:08+00:00
I'm AyJay, Topher's co-founder and Albedo's CTO. We'll actually be publishing a paper here in a few weeks detailing how we got 3-axis torque rod control so you can get the real nitty gritty details then.

We got here after stacking quite a few capabilities we'd developed on top of one another and realizing we were beginning to see behavior we should be able to wrap up into a viable control strategy.

Traditional approaches to torque rod control rely on convergence over long time horizons spanning many orbits, but this artificially restricts the control objectives that can be accomplished. Our momentum control method reduced convergence time by incorporating both current and future magnetic field estimates into a special built Lyapunov-based control law we'd be perfecting for VLEO. By the time the issue popped up, we already had a lot of the ingredients needed and were able to get our algorithms to control within an orbit or two of initialization and then were able to stay coarsely stable for most inertial ECI attitudes albeit with wide pointing error bars as stated in the article. For what we needed though, it was perfect.