MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rulelet | 2026-01-24 10:55:11+00:00
We have a different take than Gastown. If AI behaves unreliably and unpredictably, maybe the problem is the ask. So we looked at backend code and decided it was time to bring in more declarative programming. We are already halfway there with declarative frontend (React) and declarative database (SQL). Functional programming is an answer, but functional programming didnt replace object oriented programming because of practical reasons.

So even if the super serious engineers are serious, they should watch their back. Eventually enough guardrails will be created or even the ask will change enough for a lot of automation to happen. And make no mistake, it is automation no different than having automated testing replace armies of manual testing or code generation or procedural generation or any other machine method. And who is going to be left with jobs? People who embrace the change, not people who lament for the good old days or who can't adapt.

Sucks but just how the world works. Sit on the bleeding edge or be burned. Yes there is an "enough" but I suspect enough is around people willing to look at Gastown or even make their own Gastown, not the other side.
by 1dom | 2026-01-24 10:55:32+00:00
I understand your view, I just disagree with the value you're putting on it, and I feel you're straying into accidentally insulting people to justify yourself:

You called yourself a philosopher and then proclaimed philosophers are the only ones who read security as an integral part of system architecture, whilst veterans are essentially vibe coding and surviving on the lucky mess they create.

I find your position that misconfiguration is a red herring in security as completely unjustifiable and untenable.

It's probably that I'm just a puny brained veteran seeing your big complex philosopher smarts as incoherent though.

Anyway, I digress from the key point I've been trying to make in this entire thread:

I'm not arguing that IPv6 is not secure because it lacks NAT. My point was that this entire discussion is silly engagement bait: there's no clear right answer, but it's an easy topic for dogma and engagement. A holywars topic like NAT, IPv6 and security is prime for that. The author and submitter muddies the waters further by - probably not intentionally - choosing a strawman submission title.
by eqvinox | 2026-01-24 10:55:50+00:00
> It gives you a cheap way to preflight what will happen when you make a globally impacting config change.

Your "1-minute flap" can propagate and trigger load on every single DFZ BGP router on the planet. That's not cheap.

And 1 minute is too short to even propagate across carriers. There are all kinds of timers working to reduce previous point; your update can still be propagating half an hour later. It can also change state for when you do it for real. And worst of all, BGP routes can get stuck. It's rare, but a real problem.
by micw | 2026-01-24 10:55:54+00:00
The workflow here is:

1. 3D Model code generation

- generate the model via AI, using plain text
- review the result (using FreeCad for visual feedback)
- iterate until the model is fine
- tell the AI which parameters shall be customizable

(see my tablet holder example, there I have parametes for a Huawei MediaPad and also for an old Samsung Galaxy Tab, both using the same model)

2. 3D Model export

This can be done entirely headless and it's very robust. No AI involved, only the python code previously generated by AI.

Currently a generic 3mf file is exported, so It needs to go though a slicer and you need to apply your printer's settings (printer type, nozzle type, all that stuff).

But the generated 3mf is just a ZIP with 3d model and the settings within. So this could also easily be automated.
by pzmarzly | 2026-01-24 10:56:15+00:00
The apartment block I live in in Ireland has converted phone sockets into Ethernet using similar converters, except (a) it was in 2004, so 10Mbit base, (b) they ordered whole socket replacements, eliminating the need for separate box outside the walls, (c) the goal was to buy 1 business high speed line, and split it across all apartments, which became obsolete when ADSL, DOCSIS, and later FTTH became affordable options.

I heard the state of the wiring also wasn't great, sometimes apartments had twisted pair wires, while some straight wires, some only have 2 or 3 out of 4 wires connected, etc.

Good to know this technology still exists.
by Quarrel | 2026-01-24 10:56:28+00:00
He claims:

> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet.

Which might well be true where he is (ie he's limited to the equivalent of shared HFC or xDSL), but certainly isn't true everywhere.

I've had gigabit fibre (full duplex) in London since 2016, and the building had it before I arrived. It also has incredibly low latency to the major data centres of London, and not a lot more to most of western Europe.
by jfengel | 2026-01-24 10:56:52+00:00
The US will keep issuing debt as long as people are willing to buy its debt at a reasonably low price. Which people keep doing.

For a long time that was because people were justifiably convinced that the US would honor those debts, which it could do because it kept producing even more stuff every year, and would never even think about threatening to default. Here in 2026 I cannot imagine why they are continuing to, except inertia.
by DonHopkins | 2026-01-24 10:58:45+00:00
Hi mediaman! I'm totally there with you and Steve on the whimsy and experimentation! And your welcoming attitude gives me the courage to post this.

I've been reading Yegge since the "Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants™" days -- his rantings on Lisp, Emacs, and the Eval Empire shaped how I approach programming. His pro-LLM-coding rants were direct inspiration for my own work on MOOLLM. The guy has my deep respect.

Gas Town and MOOLLM are siblings from that same Eval Empire -- both oriented along the Axis of Eval, both transgressively treating LLMs as universal interpreters. MOOLLM takes this further with Eval Incarnate (https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/designs/eval/E...): skills are programs, the LLM is eval(), play is methodology (https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills/play-le...).

The difference is resource constraints. Yegge has token abundance; I'm paying out of pocket. So where Gas Town explores "what if tokens were free?" (20-30 Claude instances overnight), MOOLLM explores "what if every token mattered?" Many agents, many turns, one LLM call.

To address wordswords2's concern about "no metrics or statistics" -- I agree that's a gap in Gas Town. MOOLLM makes falsifiable claims with receipts. Last night I ran an Amsterdam Fluxx Marathon stress test: 116+ turns, 4 characters (120+ character-turns per LLM call), complex social dynamics on top of dynamic rule-changing game mechanics. Rubric-scored 94/100. The run files exist. Anyone can audit.

qcnguy's critique ("same thing multiplied by ten thousand") is exactly the kind of specific feedback that helps systems improve. I wrote a detailed analysis comparing the two approaches -- intellectual lineage (Self, Minsky's K-lines, The Sims, LambdaMOO), the "vibecoded" problem (MOOLLM is LLM-generated but rigorously iterated, not ship-and-hope), and why "carrier pigeon" IPC architecture is a dark pattern when LLMs can simulate many agents at the speed of light.

an0malous raises a real fear about bosses thinking "throw agents at it" replaces engineering. Both systems agree: design becomes the bottleneck. Gas Town says "keep the engine fed with more plans." MOOLLM says "design IS the point -- make it richer." Different answers, same problem.

lowbloodsugar mentions building a "proper, robust, engineering version" -- I'd love to compare notes. csallen is right that "future" doesn't mean "production-grade today."

Analysis: https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/designs/GASTOW...

MOOLLM repo: https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm

Happy to discuss tradeoffs or hear where my claims don't hold up. Falsifiable criticism welcome -- that's how systems improve.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-24 10:58:57+00:00
simonw, I find it almost shocking how you had the chance to talk directly with the engineer who built this, and even when he directly says things that contradict what Cursor's own CEO said, you didn't push back a single iota.

Is the takeaway here that it's fine for a CEO to claim "it even has a custom JS VM!" on Twitter/X, then afterwards the engineer explains: "The JavaScript engine isn’t working yet" and "the agents decided to pause it", and this is all OK? Not a single pushback about this very obvious contradiction? This is just one example of many, and again, since it seems to be repeated: no, no one thinks this was supposed to rival Chrome, what a trite way of trying to change the narrative.

I understand you don't want to spook future potential interviewees, but damn if that didn't feel like you suddenly are trying to defend Cursor here, instead of being curious about what actually happened. It doesn't feel curious, it feels like we're all giving up the fight against unneeded hype, exaggeration and degradation of quality.
by widforss | 2026-01-24 11:00:05+00:00
Nice job!

It's interesting to see how little effect the orbit and rotation had on the straight line. A proposal is to alignt the numbers for the different movement magnitudes so that it's easier to see the magnitudes of them.

It took me a couple of seconds to understand the concept, from the title I though it was going to be a planner to show gravity assists etc.
by palata | 2026-01-24 11:01:17+00:00
> Quality of life in places like San Francisco and New York is very high

Quality of life is also a cultural thing. I know it's hard to understand for US people (I truly believe it is the case for cultural reasons), but many people really don't want the lifestyle of the US for all sorts of reasons. For some people, quality of life means easy access to healthy food, or to nature, seeing trees instead of giant concrete parking lots or 6-lanes highways, etc.
by vanderZwan | 2026-01-24 11:02:39+00:00
> I don't get the widespread hatred of Gas Town. If you read Steve's writeup, it's clear that this is a big fun experiment. It pushes and crosses boundaries, it is a mixture of technology and art, it is provocative.

Because I actually have an arts degree and I know the equivalent of a con artist in a rich people arts gallery bullshitting their way into money when I see one.

And the "pushing and crossing boundaries" argument has been abused as a pathetic defense to hide behind shallowness in the art world for longer than anyone in this discussion board has been alive. It's not provocative when it's utterly predictable, and in this case the "art" is "take the most absurd parody of AI culture and play it straight". Gee whiz how "creative" and "provocative".
by caminante | 2026-01-24 11:03:17+00:00
?

Did you mean to reply to someone else? I don't know where this is coming from as I didn't make these claims.

That said, your comment is disturbing.

It's a obnoxious to "strongly dislike" (read: hate) people who don't have resilient self-esteem. It lacks compassion. And if someone's bullying you, getting platitudes about "responsible for your feelings" and "boundaries" is useless.
by captainnemo729 | 2026-01-24 11:03:27+00:00
Yeah the scale difference is crazy. Once you add the Galaxy/CMB velocity, the earth's rotation basically becomes a rounding error.

Good call on the number alignment. I'm using a variable-width font which makes comparing them messy. I'll switch to monospace or tabular-nums in the next push so the magnitudes scan better.

And fair point on the title-'calculator' implies mission planning. Maybe 'travel visualizer' would have been safer!
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-24 11:03:37+00:00
It goes to show how pointless it is to chase 'soft power' by appealing to global public opinion. Even in democratic countries, most leaders have sub-50% approval. So even if the US was run by a politician chosen by a global electorate, we would most likely still be hated.

And of course good intentions are no guarantee of good results, e.g. I believe Bush had good intentions with Iraq, he was just incompetent.

China is very smart to simply not get involved in much of anything. As soon as you do something, it gives people the opportunity to blame you, if even a single person thinks the result is even a little bit less than perfect.

Switzerland is the smartest.
by nezhar | 2026-01-24 11:04:22+00:00
I also had the same idea when I built https://github.com/nezhar/claude-container.

What I was also curious about is what is actually sent and received by the agent, so I included this feature and created a CLI to make integration easier in a developer workflow.

Since I started doing this for other agents as well, I considered the idea of using a VM with Vagrant. However, I want the setup to remain minimal, so I still believe there is room for improvement.
by gucci-on-fleek | 2026-01-24 11:04:29+00:00
Agreed, but I'd argue that there's a big difference between the US making it difficult to access gold reserves stored there and invading/blockading Canada to the point where gold reserves stored there are unusable. The first seems unlikely but possible, while the second seems almost unimaginable, and even if the second does happen, I'd be more concerned about access to food/medicine than access to gold reserves.

(Although I'm Canadian, so this may perhaps just be wishful thinking on my part)
by user5994461 | 2026-01-24 11:04:52+00:00
Full quote. The problem is the price.

> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. They have a range of deals like 30 Mbps – 75 Mbps – 150 Mbps – 300 Mbps – 500 Mbps – 900 Mbps, each one costing a few more pounds per month than the last.

Gigabit is so much more expensive (obviously it's gone down a lot). In London 2016, I had ADSL broadband at 16 Mbps for £12/month. That building didn't have fiber. The next building some time later had fiber... but it started as 30 Mbps fiber for so much more money.
by bullonabender | 2026-01-24 11:05:08+00:00
Same here. The rug pull was not received well by our teams. The messaging was terrible. Some still joke it was a like a stick up. "Pulling a docker" has now become internal slang for firms that let you use/build for years and then ransom you later. We pivoted just after too. They also tagged my personal accounts which had nothing to do with my day job.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-24 11:06:22+00:00
Use our new open source (modification and redistribution not permitted) app to exchange end-to-end encrypted (from your client to our server) messages with your friends! Having all your data on our service protects your data sovereignty (we do not provide for export or interop) by guaranteeing that you always have access to your full history! Usage also protects your privacy (we analyze your data for marketing purposes) by preventing unscrupulous third parties from analyzing your data for marketing purposes.

If we had competent regulators this sort of blatant willful negligence would constitute false advertising.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-01-24 11:06:49+00:00
Sorry!! I should have been much more careful with this potentially incendiary stuff.. I'm not saying all gen-Z are hipsters that's dumb. But that the ("anti-elitist") middle middle class is where we might look for the new breed of "hipsters" to replace those Bernie Bros/guys who started 4chan..

Where we are: intellectual polarization is nowhere as marked as in suburban America.. (Remember Tocqueville!!)

>I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America

I wouldn't listen to Koerner on this. He might have had a great time pre-college? My examples above didn't even make it to college..

(Geohot tried long after he got famous, --on the prodding of kith+kin AIUI--, straight into gradschool(!!) but then dropped out again.. Poole had a similar path. I personally know dozens of technically brilliant boys who struggled K-12)
by nottorp | 2026-01-24 11:08:00+00:00
> and abuse H1B and other programs to ensure you suppress US wages

Heh. Most HNers that seem to have little moral restraints when it comes to making money in their posts seem to be in the US.

Do you even notice how many "solo saas founder" and "faang employee" types defend the right of those large companies that you're complaining about to increase their profits ad infinitum?

Or how many consider "free to play" IAP fests as regular honest video games?

Hint:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729368

Is that the fault of outsourcing and H1-Bs?
by adrian_b | 2026-01-24 11:08:25+00:00
For a few hundred TiB, LTO-9 magnetic tapes (18 TB per cartridge) become cheaper than hard disks, despite the huge cost of the tape drive (between $4500 and $5000, but in many places greater prices are shamelessly requested, which should not be accepted; besides a tape drive you need a SAS HBA card and appropriate cables; thus you need to amortize about $5000 through the price difference between HDDs and tapes, to reach the threshold where using tapes becomes cheaper), and they become cheaper and cheaper the greater is your total amount of data, when the cost of the tape drive is amortized over more tapes. One may choose tapes for better reliability even for amounts of data that are insufficient to amortize the initial cost for tape drive + SAS HBA card + SAS cables.

This is especially true when you take into account that regardless whether you use HDDs or tapes, you should better duplicate them and preferably not keep the copies in the same place.

The difference in cost between tapes and HDDs becomes significantly greater when you take into account that data stored on HDDs must be copied on new HDDs after a few years, due to the short lifetime of HDDs. The time after which you may need to move data on new tapes is not determined by the lifetime of tapes (guaranteed to be at least 30 years) but by the obsolescence of the tape drives for a given standard, and it should be after at least 10 to 15 years.

If you keep on a SSD/HDD a database of the content of the tapes, containing the metadata of the stored files and their location on tapes, the access time to archived data is composed of whatever time you need for taking the tape from a cabinet and inserting it into the drive, plus a seeking time of around 1 minute, on average.

Once the archived data is reached, the sequential transfer speed of tapes is greater than that of HDDs.

LTO-9 cartridges have a significantly lower volume and weight than 24-TB HDDs (for storing the same amount of data), which simplifies storage and transport.
by antonvs | 2026-01-24 11:08:33+00:00
Both Rust and Go are good examples of modern languages with no exceptions.

Not coincidentally, both provide a panic mechanism, which is intended for failures that are either unrecoverable or at least not locally recoverable. Both languages allow you to "catch" panics, but this mechanism is constrained and impractical to use for normal error handling. Instead, it's used to e.g. prevent a service from crashing if individual requests fail unrecoverably.

The point is that these languages both demonstrate a simple design for exception-free languages.

(Although Rust's approach is better in several ways, partly because it has a better type system.)
by reddalo | 2026-01-24 11:08:44+00:00
Am I the only one who thinks that the Coinbase [1] picture has been AI generated, or at least heavily AI-altered?

The movie posters behind look like garbage, and what's wrong with that Return of the Jedi poster? Why is there a random blob and a broken face at the top instead of Darth Vader?

And why is there a random Google+ logo on the left?

And why does Fred Ehrsam have a huge thumb and silky smooth legs?

[1] https://bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/beforevs...
by EnPissant | 2026-01-24 11:09:15+00:00
I'm guessing that's ~26 decode tokens/s for 2-bit or 3-bit quantized Minimax-m2.1 at 0 context, and it only gets worse as the context grows.

I'm also sure your prefill is slow enough to make the model mostly unusable, even at smallish context windows, but entirely at mid to large context.
by JonChesterfield | 2026-01-24 11:10:29+00:00
Lots of sympathy with this plight. Great to hear that someone has done the needful and rendered MoCA style modems over pairs of copper. I'm probably a customer for that.

I'm currently running MoCA over spliced coax as part of the local connection and not amused by the 5ms latency on it. Also running 100mbit over cat3 I found in a wall which does work, but cat3 in another wall can't hold 10mbit. That link actually can hold 70mbit of vdsl but after a nearby lightning strike slagged various hardware I've moved the vdsl modem back to the BT wires entry point and run the output through some fibre.

And there's a wifi bridge between two other points. And some ethernet running outside the building. Previously also ethernet-over-mains that I might bring back now that I've learned what spanning tree protocols are so the periodic reboots they inexplicably require can be tolerated transparently.

Also the connection to the internet itself is crap so bonding vdsl, starlink and 5g through the openmptcprouter project. Just lots of redundancy and self healing hacks all over the place to give an observably solid connection.

Which is a rambling way to say that if you're in Britain and your network connection brings you sorrow, it can be forced to be acceptable with application of more time and money than other countries require.
by jedilance | 2026-01-24 11:11:08+00:00
I am curious if you have some tricks for attaching pull-wire and CAT cable. Also, did you use any lubricant for the CAT?

I tried the same approach to replace COAX cable with CAT but the tie just broke off like 10cm before the socket exit [1], and CAT is stuck there now.

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/myW6IIq.jpeg
by snowmobile | 2026-01-24 11:11:30+00:00
Actually, the linked university page [1] does claim that the "cash rent equivalent" is $274 per acre. Surprising, but I suppose farmland isn't that expensive. But unfortunately their total budget per acre is $960, 90% higher than in the AI's "budget". Assuming that it can do everything as efficiently and cheaply as an experienced human farmer, such as harvesting all 5 acres in 14 hours of labor.

[1] https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/html/a1-20.html
by user5994461 | 2026-01-24 11:11:45+00:00
> most of the people technical enough to set this up are also going to be technical enough to pull new cables.

It's really not that simple when you realize that the average UK flat has 3+ sockets and the average house has 5+ sockets (speaking from my own experience). Some daisy chained and some direct.

Besides, a lot of people are renting and cannot touch their wire.
by yodsanklai | 2026-01-24 11:14:20+00:00
> At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases.

Same in France, it can take a while to get an appointment to see some specialists nowadays. There's a clear decline there.

But if you have something bad, they'll treat you in time. Actually, a relative of mine has been diagnosed with cancer a not long ago. She got several surgeries and all the treatments with no wait, and at not cost.

There's no reason why it shouldn't be sustainable.
by eqvinox | 2026-01-24 11:14:28+00:00
> I don't think multiple owners share the same hostnames.

That's exactly what I mean, this approach wouldn't be able to handle unconstrained sharing of systems among multiple users. If you're, say, a freelancer who has access to a bunch of people's systems… and another freelancer has access to half of those, and then a bunch of others… these combinations create exclusions that can make the whole thing unsolvable if they're large enough.