MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lotsofpulp | 2026-01-26 14:57:43+00:00
There certainly are idiot MBAs (and non MBAs), and perhaps the ratio is too high in the USA, but based on the pre-eminent businesses in the USA, I wouldn't say it's "the" culture.

One of the reasons Intel failed and TSMC succeeded is because Intel was unwilling to pay what the other big tech companies were paying (and part of that pay is with RSUs which stock buybacks help offset). However, for workers in Taiwan, TSMC was the best option, so TSMC could pay less.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-26 14:58:00+00:00
Web Mercator does not preserve angles.

We're currently forced to use a projection that is strictly worse than what it was based on, the Mercator projection, created in 1569.

Everyone on this thread needs to read this presentation entitled "Use Literally Anything But Web Mercator":

https://www.esri.com/content/dam/esrisites/en-us/events/conf...

Let's say that a bit louder shall we:

USE LITERALLY ANYTHING BUT WEB MERCATOR.
by bell-cot | 2026-01-26 14:58:01+00:00
Even the Economist and FT are underwhelmed by the performance of many of England's privatized water utilities:

https://www.ft.com/content/bda390bc-8cc4-4fa4-9a90-36af08651...

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/05/the-real-proble...
by PaulHoule | 2026-01-26 14:58:29+00:00
I'd like to see some talk about alternatives.

I do crafting with an inkjet printer and something like the Cricut would be an interesting addition but I had two problems with it:

(i) the quality of work it does is not terrible but not great -- it's better than somebody who's bad with scissors but worse than somebody who's good with scissors.

(ii) when I was looking at it in 2021 they'd announced they were going to put limits on how many unique designs you could upload in a month, but the abandoned this after outcry: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/18/22338801/cricut-crafting-...
by prodigycorp | 2026-01-26 14:58:32+00:00
I have ADD – which is hardly uncommon in this economy – and the improvements to finding AirPods Pro with Find My have been a godsend. I use it almost every day. I've lost so many airpods in the past. I hope we see the same improvements to air tags.

ps, Apple is driving me nuts with their branding. With is AirPods one word and Find My two words?
by ChicagoDave | 2026-01-26 14:58:44+00:00
Everything the OP says can be true, but there’s a tipping point where you learn to break through the cruft and generate good code at scale.

It requires refactoring at scale, but GenAI is fast so hitting the same code 25 times isn’t a dealbreaker.

Eventually the refactoring is targeted at smaller and smaller bits until the entire project is in excellent shape.

I’m still working on Sharpee, an interactive fiction authoring platform, but it’s fairly well-baked at this point and 99% coded by Claude and 100% managed by me.

Sharpee is a complex system and a lot of the inner-workings (stdlib) were like coats of paint. It didn’t shine until it was refactored at least a dozen times.

It has over a thousand unit tests, which I’ve read through and refactored by hand in some cases.

The results speak for themselves.

https://sharpee.net/
https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee/

It’s still in beta, but not far from release status.
by accrual | 2026-01-26 14:58:51+00:00
I think it's fascinating work even if LLMs aren't the ideal tool for this job right now.

There were some experiments with embodied LLMs on the front page recently (e.g. basic robot body + task) and SOTA models struggled with that too. And of course they would - what training data is there for embodying a random device with arbitrary controls and feedback? They have to lean on the "general" aspects of their intelligence which is still improving.

It's impressive even 1 model can do it and over time I'm sure the scores will only go up, especially with dedicated embodiment training.

With dedicated training and an even tighter/faster feedback loop, I don't see why an LLM couldn't successfully pilot a drone. I'm sure some will still fall of the rails and crash but software guardrails could help.
by mrtesthah | 2026-01-26 14:59:22+00:00
I wrote this a day ago but I find it even more relevant to your observation:

—

I would never use, let alone pay for, a fully vibe-coded app whose implementation no human understands.

Whether you’re reading a book or using an app, you’re communicating with the author by way of your shared humanity in how they anticipate what you’re thinking as you explore the work. The author incorporates and plans for those predicted reactions and thoughts where it makes sense. Ultimately the author is conveying an implicit mental model (or even evoking emotional states or sensations) to the reader.

The first problem is that many of these pathways and edge cases aren’t apparent until the actual implementation, and sometimes in the process the author realizes that the overall app would work better if it were re-specified from the start. This opportunity is lost without a hands on approach.

The second problem is that, the less human touch is there, the less consistent the mental model conveyed to the user is going to be, because a specification and collection of prompts does not constitute a mental model. This can create subconscious confusion and cognitive friction when interacting with the work.
by mossTechnician | 2026-01-26 15:00:27+00:00
Can you elaborate on "the most stalkable users?" In the context of surreptitiously tracking people with beacons, I haven't seen Android enter the discussion.

(I'm familiar with Google's poor reputation compared to Apple, and I'm sure it's probably easier to install Stalkerware on Android vs iOS, but I haven't really seen any comparisons.)
by skerit | 2026-01-26 15:01:31+00:00
The article said:

> So I’m back to writing by hand for most things. Amazingly, I’m faster, more accurate, more creative, more productive, and more efficient than AI, when you price everything in, and not just code tokens per hour

At least he said "most things". I also did "most things" by hand, until Opus 4.5 came out. Now it's doing things in hours I would have worked an entire week on. But it's not a prompt-and-forget kind of thing, it needs hand holding.

Also, I have no idea _what_ agent he was using. OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, something local? And with a subscription, or paying by the token?

Because the way I'm using it, this only pays off because it's the 200$ Claude Max subscription. If I had to pay for the token (which once again: are hugely marked up), I would have been bankrupt.
by unicorn_cowboy | 2026-01-26 15:01:39+00:00
Overview:

Music has transitioned from a primary cultural pillar to a fragmented background commodity. Despite unprecedented access, the frictionless nature of modern consumption has fundamentally changed the social and economic value of the art form.

Key Points:

• The Collapse of the Monoculture: Universal social anchors have been replaced by isolated, algorithm-driven bubbles.

• The Price of Abundance: Unlimited streaming has swapped the investment of the physical era for a model where music is treated as a background utility.

• Economic Devaluation: There is a staggering gap between the ~$2-per-CD artist profit of the 1990s and the massive volume of streams required to reach that same value today.

• Erosion of Discovery: The ritual of focused listening and the "will to dig" have been lost to a constant stream of non-stop novelty.

• The Paradox of Choice: Having every song ever recorded at our fingertips has often led to shallower engagement rather than deeper connection.

(This is a 40,000-ft view, the post tackles each topic in depth.)
by beeforpork | 2026-01-26 15:01:42+00:00
Did anyone else find it wrong that trends like fat-free, lots-of-fat, keto, proteins, sugar-free, low-carb are put in the same category as trends like GMO-free, organic, natural, clean? Lack of differentiation in this regard unmasks the article as opinionated and over-generalizing in a way that I have to ignore it, I think.

Sure, some market dynamics may be similar, and all are probably luxury topics, but the underlying intent and motivation of customers is completely different. The article's main point is to criticise blindly following bogus and unscientific health trends. But this is not really justified for decisions to avoid dirt, food additives, and optimised and exploitive farming methods.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-26 15:01:51+00:00
Honestly I am really interested in trying to port the rust code to multiple languages like golang,zig, even niche languages like V-lang/Odin/nim etc.

It would be interesting if we use this as a benchmark similar to https://benjdd.com/languages/ or https://benjdd.com/languages2/

I used gitingest on the repository that they provided and its around ~150k tokens

Currently pasted it into the free gemini web and asked it to write it in golang and it said that line by line feels impossible but I have asked it to specifically write line by line so it would be interesting what the project becomes (I don't have many hopes with the free tier of gemini 3 pro but yeah, if someone has budget, then sure they should probably do it)
by Brajeshwar | 2026-01-26 15:01:57+00:00
Apple AirTag is one of those interesting products that you don’t think you need until you use it. An Apple thing that just works as advertised and is cheap enough that you can keep picking them up at Airports, without the guilty feeling that usually comes with buying high-priced Apple products, such as the Polishing Cloth. And when you order it online, the nice engravings are fun for my daughters. They like it when it is pinged, finding their toys and bags, and it is worth the price tag.

I had to put in a few of my daughter’s pencil pouches and some toys; they are cheaper than the AirTags and, financially, make no sense to lose an AirTag that costs more than the items being tracked. But hey, daughter is happy, and that covers up for the cost.
by evilduck | 2026-01-26 15:02:05+00:00
For that one item, no not really. But an AirTag has a battery life of about a year and there's really no reason to frequently remove it. AirPods have a substantially shorter battery life and are not guaranteed to be in that bag all the time no matter what. Also AirTags are many times cheaper and smaller than your listed items and are moderately water and impact resistant. If there's something you want to track in addition to your backpack you likely don't want to buy spare AirPods (your cheapest item) just for that purpose.
by softwaredoug | 2026-01-26 15:02:17+00:00
Sounds a lot like model training and I’ve treated this sort of programming with AI exactly like that importantly making sure I have a test/train split

Make sure there’s a holdout the agent can’t see that it’s measured against. (And make sure it doesn’t cheat)

https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/01/17/ai-coding-needs-tes...
by techblueberry | 2026-01-26 15:02:18+00:00
> The point of this analogy: compilers are important tools. It's more important to understand how they work than it is to be able to build one in assembler. You'll probably never do that. Most people never work on compilers. Nor do they build their own operating systems, databases, etc. But it helps to understand how they work. The point of teaching how compilers work is understanding how programming languages are created and what their limitations are.

I don't know that it's all these things at once, but most people I know that are good have done a bunch of spikes / side projects that go a level lower than they have to. Intense curiosity is good, and to the point your making, most people don't really learn this stuff just by reading or doing flash cards. If you want to really learn how a compiler works, you probably do have to write a compiler. Not a full-on production ready compiler, but hands on keyboard typing and interacting with and troubleshooting code.

Or maybe to put another way, it's probably the "easiest" way, even though it's the "hardest" way. Or maybe it's the only way. Everything I know how to do well, I know how to do well from practice and repitition.
by ofalkaed | 2026-01-26 15:02:30+00:00
What is dying when it comes to text is entertainment and some areas of non-fiction, things which really are not the strength of written language; it is capable of these thing but other mediums are far better at it, but even in those areas it has some strengths and ability which other mediums lack. The primary strength of written language is communication, it removes the abstraction and all those things which hinder communication like the look of frustration on my face being taken as frustration with the person I am speaking to when it is really frustration with my own difficulties in expressing what I want to express and find those right words which will not be taken any other way than as I meant them.

Writing is not dying and is not going to die anytime soon, people use it more than they ever have for communication in this texting and emailing world and writing will be continued to be used for those areas where it is undeniable king. What can explore the inner world of people better than the written word? what can develop and explore idea to the extent and depth of the written word? All those unfilmable books that keep being read are works which exploit the strengths of the written word to express things which no other medium can without a great deal of abstraction and becoming so experimental that only a tiny niche can appreciate them and a much smaller niche than the niche that is literature.
by SV_BubbleTime | 2026-01-26 15:02:47+00:00
>I googled PZEV, and apparently all it means is that it isn't releasing gasoline vapours - other emissions don't matter.

No.

PZEV means partial zero-emotions vehicle… it is just STAR-STOP.

When you stop, the car shuts off and when it’s off it isn’t emitting anything. That is what it means.

It’s a total scam. Subaru was the first to put a logo on a US government mandated requirement (that made no sense).
by tomaytotomato | 2026-01-26 15:03:05+00:00
I agree to an extent

My project is quite well documented and I created a Prompt a while back along with some mermaid diagrams

https://github.com/tomaytotomato/location4j/tree/master/docs

I can't remember the exact prompt I gave to the LLM but I gave it a Github issue ticket and description.

After several iterations it fixed the issue, but my unit tests failed in other areas. I decided to abort it because I think my opinionated code was clashing with the LLM's solution.

The LLM's solution would probably be more technically correct, but because I don't do l33tcode or memorise how to implement Trie or BST my code does it my way. Maybe I just need to force the LLM to do it my way and ignore the other solutions?
by GeorgeOldfield | 2026-01-26 15:03:26+00:00
what are you people talking about? Cook is the best thing that happened to apple. Look at their sales. They are killing the laptop market - likely a complete dominance in the next years. same with the iphone - first year to be the biggest phone seller in a long time.

the switch to ARM and their M silicon was one of the best moves in computing in years.
by lucideer | 2026-01-26 15:03:34+00:00
I'd be a little wary of these numbers as regulation around advertising these kinds of figures normally permits mass balance systems[0] (which imo is tantamount to straight-up lying).

Mass balance is better than nothing I guess, & I understand the practical challenges with going further, but ultimately it's not what's implied by the marketing.

[0] https://www.iscc-system.org/news/mass-balance-explained/
by pipo234 | 2026-01-26 15:04:08+00:00
Simplicity makes sense, of course. I just hadn't considered a grpc-only world. But I guess that makes sense in today's Kubernetes/node/python/llm world where grpc is the glue that once was SOAP (or even CORBA).

Still, stateful protocols have a tendency to bite when you scale up. And HTTP is specifically designed to be stateless and you get scalability for free as long as you stick with plain GET requests...
by pardon_me | 2026-01-26 15:04:30+00:00
The company should be responsible for providing options to block all or part of the content, and warn users of the content type, depending on their place in the pipeline.

For example, Apple and Google should provide tools for the parents to set up a device appropriately for a child, much like the shop should not sell alcohol to underage customers. Similarly, content producers should specifically need to label content targeted for children or specially 18+, like the producer of alcohol must warn customers on the label and inform the retailers.

Parents and caretakers need information to make an informed decisions before being able to consume the media themselves. They also need some granular tools on the device to avoid banning them entirely. The burden is shared between creator, distributor and consumer.

We already had laws for this and it makes sense for some type of access control to the open internet. The shocking part is the requirement for everyone to verify ID to multiple public and private institutions, more than once per.

An analogy for the UK now would be needing ID to enter the supermarket (access the internet), ID to look at anything aimed at adults and potentially harmful such as alcohol, chemicals, sugary food, medicine etc. (know "potentially harmful" subjects exist), ID to look at anything lawfully 18+ such as alcohol and cigarettes (view the content), then ID again to make the 18+ purchase from an account needing ID to open.
by em-bee | 2026-01-26 15:04:59+00:00
exactly this. FOSS was always driven by those who could code and did so driven by their own intrinsic motivation. those people won't disappear. there may be less people because some are more driven by quick results and while in the past they had to code to get there, now they don't, which means they won't discover the joy of coding.

but for others coding will become an art and craft like woodworking or other hobbies that require mastery.
by testing22321 | 2026-01-26 15:05:06+00:00
You’re right Dan that it is an aggressive statement.

The much more important and concerning observation is that it’s real. It’s not hypothetical. That is happing to real people in the US right now. Today.
I wasn’t exaggerating, I wasn’t being aggressive for effect or to intimidate.

I was asking how you would feel when what it’s happening to your fellow countrymen happens to you.

I’m very aware it’s a hard hitting statement and question, and that’s because reality in your country is currently hard hitting. It’s life right now, like it or not.

To close the loop on your example above, if your question was asked to a twice convicted wife-beater it would be a perfectly reasonable question.
The same applies here.

Those things in my question are real, and it’s important for you to think about them and plan for them and think of the future through that lens.

You have an enormous responsibility in this because you, an individual, have the power to stop discussions by educated people that may lead to all this being prevented.

Of course it’s easy to say “there are plenty of other places to discuss this stuff, which is true. But people are here and they want to talk about it. People have a community here, and people are reaching out to that community in desperate times.

It seems you’re so focused on keeping “low value” comments and discussions off HN you’ve forgotten how important it is for people to be able to discuss such important topics before it’s too late.

So I ask again - do you think you’ll be proud of shutting down discussions around the collapse of society for millions of people if and when the consequences are in your house?
by peddling-brink | 2026-01-26 15:05:09+00:00
Are you trying to say that the AirTag is so strictly utilitarian, that they couldn’t have found a spot for a lanyard hole?

I disagree, they could have, they didn’t want to. Beyond the look, this sure panders to their accessory partners.

How big of an industry is the phone case? Should it even exist? The audacity.
by couchdb_ouchdb | 2026-01-26 15:05:14+00:00
Good luck finding an employer that lets you do this moving forward. The new reality is that no one can give the estimates they previously gave for tasks. \

"Amazingly, I’m faster, more accurate, more creative, more productive, and more efficient than AI, when you price everything in, and not just code tokens per hour."

For 99.99% of developers this just won't be true.
by Quarrelsome | 2026-01-26 15:05:23+00:00
It appears that you have not yet learned the lesson that perfect is the enemy of good. Just because a system doesn't meet your high expectations, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

I'm also having trouble squaring your keen interest in the economic woes of inflation combined with your desire to have a stock market crash. Perhaps you are unaware of your bias given your portfolio, wishing to enact misery upon millions for your own personal gain. The last big crash was a major contributer the second world war, so be careful for the "meaningful change" you wish for.

> Which tells me that you just looked this all up about 10 minutes ago.

you should learn the etiquette round here, cos that ain't it. Either treat fellow commenters and their perspectives with a modicum of respect or go back to facebook. BTW, that was a swing and a miss, I lived through that period.

Don't misunderstand when I don't reply or even read your next response. Its because I don't want to talk to you anymore, because you're not interesting.
by arghwhat | 2026-01-26 15:05:38+00:00
There are third-party tags out there compatible with both Google and Apple's network that is roughly the same size and use the same battery, yet have a giant lanyard opening in the design to fit anything.

Apple could trivially have fit a usable hole if they wanted to. They just don't want to because they get to sell accessories with that now. Also, looking cleaner on its own helps sell even if that is an entirely useless quality for a tag tha tneeds to go into a bloody case.
by korenmiklos | 2026-01-26 15:06:10+00:00
Author here. By "returns" we mean any reward the developer is aiming for, whether money, recognition, world fame, future jobs, helping fellow developers. Sorry, econ jargon.

AI agents can select and load the appropriate packages and libraries without the user even knowing the name of the library, let alone that of the developer. This reduces the visibility of developers among users, who are now less likely to give a star, sponsor, offer a job, recommend the library to others etc.

Even as a business user, say an agency building websites, I could have been a fedn of certain js frameworks, hosting meetups, buying swags, sponsoring development. I am less likely to do that if I have no idea what framework is powering the websites I build.

Our argument is that rewards fall faster with vibe coding than productivity increases. OSS developers lose motivation, they stop maintaining existing libraries, don't bother sharing new ones (even if they keep writing a lot of code for themselves).