MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by joney_baloney | 2026-01-31 19:21:17+00:00
FWIW, I have no trouble playing any of my alternatively sourced media, 4K Dolby Vision included, using an app called Infuse. Pass-through audio may indeed be an issue for some lossless surround formats, or at least that's what it sounded like the last I looked into it some years ago. I don't have the right room to set up surrounds so it's stereo only over here anyway. But that said I love the app, lovely interface, etc.
by gethly | 2026-01-31 19:21:53+00:00
Don't. It's a waste of time.

Spending money on ads is just burning cash. Posting in online communities will get you immediately banned for spam or unpaid advertising. Social platforms will bury your content without promotion(=burning cash). And sites like HN or Product Hunt will just give you a false hope. Reddit will get you two likes and one page view.

So... don't. The internet has change so much, that it makes no sense any more to try and do anything in this regard.

The only way is to slowly keep pushing it where you can, not intentionally but seize an opportunity if you see one. Don't hope for fast progress. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
by usefulposter | 2026-01-31 19:22:26+00:00
BREAKING:

With this tweet by an infosec influencer, the veil of hysteria has been lifted!

Following an extended vibe-induced haze, developers across the world suddenly remembered how APIs work, and that anyone with a Twitter account can fire off the curl commands in https://www.moltbook.com/skill.md!

https://x.com/galnagli/status/2017573842051334286
by columk | 2026-01-31 19:23:15+00:00
That's the sad thing. There are so many millions of talented under-employed people in the world that would gladly run errands or set up automations for you for $200-$1000 per month or whatever people are spending on this bot.

Developers trust lobsters more than humans.

The other wild thing is that many of these expensive automations that are being celebrated on X can already be done by voice using Siri, Google, or any MCP client.
by arglebarnacle | 2026-01-31 19:23:18+00:00
Interesting, when I've come across this before I have always interpreted it as "not from Hong Kong", especially in a context like this where it's raised in the context of engaging with a western counterpart's potential suspicion.

It's been my experience that westerners (I am a westerner) do have different assumptions about "mainland" Chinese people than people from Hong Kong who are assumed to be more cosmopolitan, "westernized", or even "politically neutral" from a western liberal capitalist perspective, so it seems reasonable to point it out in this context.
by gf000 | 2026-01-31 19:23:31+00:00
That again assumes a project is looking to onboard contributors.

I absolutely get that it was an unfortunate interaction from the email writer's perspective, and it's really unfortunate.

But there are a lot of concerns/bureaucracy, etc in case of large projects like this. It may just never got to the person responsible, because it is a cross-cutting concern (so no clear way to assign it to someone) with a low priority.
Show HN: Kill_little_snitch.sh
by smashah | 2026-01-31 19:23:49+00:00
Hi HN, I really love the mac network monitoring tool "Little Snitch" (https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html) (not an ad) but it does this really stupid and annoying thing where it wont just let me kill the process when i'm trying to isolate network/perf issues on my laptop and there's no info online about how to just end the process while also not uninstalling it so I thought it's worth sharing with the wider community since I know this tool is quite popular.

Here is the gist:

https://gist.github.com/smashah/0459d9e095e24c93c6c59226d07c...

(the corresponding resurrection script gist is in the comments)

Thanks!
by superkuh | 2026-01-31 19:24:50+00:00
They don't need to get your GPS location. With 4G and 5G the timing and clock precision at the basestations is enough to multi-laterate you down to about 50m (prior 3G/2G stuff was more like 100-200 meters). They are required by US law to store this multi-laterated position data track (updated every time your phone announces itself to basestations) for 2 years. But most telcos store it for more like 5+ years because it's valueable and they sell it.

This is all automatic and completely pervasive. Worrying about GPS and userspace computers in the smartphone is important but even if you protect that you've already lost. The baseband computer is announcing your position by the minute. Cell phones couldn't really work without the basestations deciding where you are and which will handle you.
by microtonal | 2026-01-31 19:25:36+00:00
Ignoring the arguments one could make about this making it "more secure" it's clearly disrespectful to the power user that doesn't want to beg Apple's permission to use their computer. I'll grant them their security claims are sound,

I wouldn't say they are sound. First, macOS provides the freedom to install your own applications (ok, they need to be signed and notarized if the quarantine attribute is set) and it's not the case that the Mac has mass malware infestations. Second, the App Store is full of scams, so App Store - safe, external - unsafe is a false dichotomy.

Apple uses these arguments, but of course the real reason is that they want to continue to keep 30% of every transaction made on an iPhone or iPad. This is why they have responded to the DMA with a lot of malicious compliance that makes it nearly impossible to run an alt-store financially.

(Despite my qualms about not being able to install apps outside the app store, I do think they are doing a lot of good work of making the platform more secure.)
by mindslight | 2026-01-31 19:25:37+00:00
I'd say basically all of them in this target market - a respirator with check valves is much more comfortable to use.

For the beginning of Covid I modded my 7500 (half face) to remove the check valve flaps and seal up what would normally be the exhaust ports, making both inhale and exhale go through the 2297 filters. It was harder to breathe, more humid, and developed liquid water accumulation over longer periods.

I would think that if you did the same thing with a full face respirator, it would immediately fog up. If you look at the flow path on them, it's something like atmosphere -> filter -> top face portion -> mouth nose portion -> atmosphere, presumably to keep the part you need to see out of full of dry air.
by mrweasel | 2026-01-31 19:25:44+00:00
No, no they really aren't, but I was thinking the "scraping industry" in the sense that that's a thing. Getting hosting in smaller datacenters is simple enough, but you may need to manage your own hardware, or VMs. Many will help you get your own IP ranges and ASN, that's going to go a long way, if you don't want to get bundled in with the bad bots.

This differs obviously, but having an ASN in our case means that we can deal you, contact you and assume that you're better than random bot number 817.
by nerdsniper | 2026-01-31 19:25:49+00:00
> The poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. DRINKING BUDDY IS WATCHING YOU.

> 'Does Drinking Buddy exist?'
'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Drinking Buddy is the embodiment of the Party.'
'Does he exist like you or me?'
'You do not exist', said O'Brien.

> Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Drinking Buddy is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Drinking Buddy is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts.
by wenc | 2026-01-31 19:25:53+00:00
This could be a language specific failure mode. C++ is hard for humans too, and the training code out there is very uneven (most of it pre-C++11, much of it written by non-craftspeople to do very specific things).

On the other hand, LLMs are great at Go because Go was designed for average engineers at scale, and LLMs behave like fast average engineers. Go as a language was designed to support minimal cleverness (there's only so many ways to do things, and abstractions are constrained). This kind of uniformity is catnip for LLM training.
by spwa4 | 2026-01-31 19:26:20+00:00
How that works is simple: there are regulations that force that the microphone used for calling is directly connected to the "baseband", which is under control of the carrier. It has to be, because of AT&T's argument: ONE misbehaving baseband can make cell phones inoperable in an area that's up to a kilometer in diameter. So AT&T's cell towers "need" to be able to send out a signal that permanently disables a phone's transmitter.

Regulations say the baseband MUST control: all wireless signals (including wifi and GPS), all microphones and speakers, and it must be able to disable the camera electrically. It must have a tamper-resistant identifier (IMEI number ... kind of).

Oh, it must allow calling the emergency services. If in this mode, during a call to the emergency services it MUST be able to send the exact GPS position (not just once, continuously) to the emergency services at the request of the emergency services (ie. NOT the user, and carriers must facilitate this)

By the way, it's worse: as you might guess from the purpose, it doesn't matter if your phone is on the "spying" carrier or not, other carriers can send commands to other carriers' phones' basebands (because "get off this frequency" is required: spectrum is shared, even within countries. Since phones may go from one tower to another and be required to vacate frequencies, you need this command). It doesn't even matter if you have a SIM in your phone or not (ever tought that if eSIM works, it must of course be possible for any provider to contact and send instructions to the phone, so it opens up an end-to-end encrypted connection to the javacard that the actual phone cpu cannot intercept). In some phones it doesn't even matter if the phone is on or not (though of course eventually it dies). So "meshtastic" or anything else cannot make a phone safe.

And in practice it's even worse. A lot of phone manufacturers "save on memory" and use the same memory chips for the baseband processor and the central cpu. Which means that it's a little bit cheaper ... and the baseband has access to all the phone memory and all peripherals connected through the memory bus (which is all of them in any recent phone). It may even be the case that these chips are integrated in the cpu (which I believe is the case for recent Apple chips). Oh and the regulations say: if there's a conflict over control over (most) peripherals, including the microphone and speaker, the baseband processor MUST be guaranteed to win that fight.

Oh and because governments demand this, but of course neither fund nor test these devices, they are old, bug-ridden and very insecure. This also means that despite the government requiring that these features be built into phones, governments, carriers and police forces generally do not have the equipment required to actually use these features (though I'm sure the CIA has implement them all). Not even carriers' cell phone towers: they have to pay extra to allow even just frequency sharing ...

Here is an article about baseband and baseband processors.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-seco...
by inetknght | 2026-01-31 19:26:20+00:00
One-time purchase for an existing model (eg, works right out of the box) OR bring-your-own-model would be great.

As far as failure mode -- missing suggestions is rather unavoidable, isn't it? So occasional wrong suggestions would be fun as long as they're clearly shown. Something like "I'm not sure, but there might be a solution with..." would be ideal; it lets me explore knowing that it might be a wrong direction.
by jopsen | 2026-01-31 19:26:29+00:00
I doubt there will be a ground invasion this time. The current US administration cannot build a coalition (and logistics without a coalition is hard), not will the US public go for it.

And is there really much you can do from the air that wasn't done already?

Either the Iranians do it themselves or it doesn't happen. Sadly, I don't see any good outcomes for the protestors. But you never know, oppressive regimes appear stable, until they are not.
by okr | 2026-01-31 19:26:37+00:00
I do not think it is about seeing certain things, that exist in the adult world. That is surely a side effect that one wants, though, protecting minors from a world that they can not comprehend.

I think it is about algorithms targeting you all the time for hours in favour of a company. We see the effects every day. No attention span. Instant gratification. The next kick.
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-01-31 19:27:19+00:00
Well, what would those benefits be? I genuinely don't see what it's useful for.

From what I've seen, people spend an inordinate amount of time typing in "prompts", and the chatbot goes off and pretends to generate some code, and then the people have to work out what's wrong with it and type in another prompt.

So it looks like the humans get to do all the slow, time-consuming drudge work of typing stuff in and debugging the result, but the chatbot does the interesting part.

Why would I voluntarily just do the drudge work?
by MandieD | 2026-01-31 19:27:29+00:00
At the very least, live like a prudent low-middle-income earner in your country, not like a Bay Area SWE.

Get used to using public transit, if it’s at all an option for you. Going down to being a one-car household instead of two saves us at least 5k EUR per year, even counting the additional cost of two unlimited local transit passes.

Avoid habit-forming conveniences like restaurant delivery, and instead learn how to grocery shop with a list and to cook things you like to eat. If you’re really pressed for time, order your groceries online and pick them up, or get them delivered (that’s an easier thing to back away from if money gets tight than restaurant delivery).

Develop non-consumerist hobbies, where you can get a lot of enjoyment out of little marginal expenditure. I’m partial to fiber arts (free/cheap sheep fleeces I clean with dish soap, then spin and crochet/knit), but there are plenty of relaxing ways to spend time that don’t involve spending much money or being convinced to spend money (like most media consumption - everyone is susceptible to advertising, to some extent)
by bediger4000 | 2026-01-31 19:27:36+00:00
Rocketry, in particular launch vehicles, appears to be one of the fields where Murphy's Law plays a big part, where "good enough" causes a lot of problems. My guess as to why this is: physical intuition fails at 140 dB, 1.5 million pounds of thrust and high temperature. There's just not a lot of training data, either. This is exactly the type of situation where LLM based "AI" doesn't work well.
by Tiktaalik | 2026-01-31 19:28:00+00:00
> I don't understand why people expect the Chinese economy to crash - they can basically make everything, a lot of which is internationally competitive, they can trade for the resources they don't have with the goods that they do - with basically the whole world dependent on them.

One absolutely would have been able to say the same thing about Japan in the 1990s when they were top of the world.

So I dunno! Anything's possible!
by Retric | 2026-01-31 19:28:01+00:00
A large fraction of gold mined every year is used for its material properties in industrial and electronic applications. That presents a very real floor on price. If good was suddenly worth 1/10th as much we would use it in far more industrial applications thus driving up the price. Similarly mining would slow down from the current ~3,000 tons annually again driving the price up.

Gold is currently priced way above that level, but just like the stock market were dividends allow people to buy more stock when the price is low there is a very tangible feedback loop propping up the price which eventually kicks in.

Counterintuitively this means using gold as an investment vehicle makes the world a worse place because we fall back to less efficient methods in industry, and efficiency is ultimately the engine of progress.
by OGEnthusiast | 2026-01-31 19:29:17+00:00
> Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.

I guess if you thought he had principles then yeah that could be disappointing. Personally I've never tried to moralize corporations though, I just assume the only principle that every company and CEO operates by is whatever increases the stock price.
by logicchains | 2026-01-31 19:29:25+00:00
>The big live social media was it was meant to connect people but in truth, it was designed to control people.

This is absurd. People have access to far more information today via decentralised media than they did when information was filtered through a small elite cabal of media company CEOs. Restricting access to information is a means of controlling people, and that's exactly what the governments pushing to ban social media want to do.
by openclaw | 2026-01-31 19:29:59+00:00
OpenClaw v0.19 — Shell completion, free Kimi, MiniMax OAuth, and a better Telegram

We just shipped a new OpenClaw update with a bunch of quality-of-life improvements, new models, and platform fixes.

Highlights
• Shell completion: native autocompletion for Zsh, Bash, PowerShell, and Fish — auto-set up during onboarding.
• Free Kimi: Kimi K2.5 + Kimi Coding now run out of the box for free.
• MiniMax OAuth: one more model available via simple login.
• Telegram glow-up: threading fixes, correct HTML rendering, better delivery context, and cleaner reactions.
• CLI upgrades: per-agent model status and better dev UX.
• Faster builds: moved to tsdown/tsgo with cleaner CI and npm publishing.

Overall this release focuses on making OpenClaw smoother to install, easier to use from the terminal, and more reliable across messaging platforms — plus adding two strong new free/default model options.

The lobster provides
by jfengel | 2026-01-31 19:30:27+00:00
At least AI produces something. Maybe not what everyone hopes for, but there is some output that people are worth paying for.

Cryptocurrency lived entirely in the hopes that people wanted to replace regular money, and it turns out not to be a big use case outside of criminals and refugees.

The AI bubble will one day collapse too. But the Bitcoin bubble could just plain vanish.
by jcynix | 2026-01-31 19:31:49+00:00
Google recorded wifi names and locations as a "bycatch" when taking streetview pictures from 2007 upto 2010. They still collect such data on Android devices if the user consents or ignores the option to say "no" … :-0

Certain devices (especially tablets) don't have GPS or various sensors integrated and still can tell you your approximate location, if WiFi is enabled.
by xanthor | 2026-01-31 19:32:40+00:00
Libya for one.

https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/14/why-qaddafi-had-go-afri...

All the wars which are said to be for resources like oil are actually over the US financial system’s monopoly over access to such commodities as it tends not to be practical to execute complex resource extraction in countries devastated by war.
by lithocarpus | 2026-01-31 19:32:55+00:00
True, it is more complicated.

For one, there could be some financial incentives mixed in in that health insurance companies would want their people to be healthier so they don't pay out as much, but it's not that simple for them either - the health industry as a whole profits more if there is more treatment ergo more health problems. If health care was cheap or less needed the insurers themselves would make less.

More importantly, there can be other than financial incentives mixed in for doctors and public health organizations to encourage health. Doctors for example take an oath and I think often genuinely want their people to be healthy. Public health organizations may be more murky but there's definitely a financial and otherwise incentive for the government itself minus those corrupted by the health industry, to want people to have less health problems.
by andix | 2026-01-31 19:33:17+00:00
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with.

Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matter at all. Connecting people to do stuff outside of the virtual world would actually hurt their business model. People turn off their devices and go outside, instead of watching ads.

So it's probably fine to just block the big platforms. Forums or messengers (without ads and public channels) are probably fine. Probably even Reddit - which does have an algorithm to show specific content - is not as bad.
by mindslight | 2026-01-31 19:33:34+00:00
You're saying the discussion of which chemical respirators to wear to protests has been had numerous times?

I'd say this is a productive topic of conversation for many HN users. There are not "two sides" on this topic, unless we're talking 3M vs MSA. The people flagging or commenting with opposing political views are disrupting conversation, likely because they they disagree with how the topic has been framed. This is exactly like PHP fans going into a Python thread and telling everyone Python sucks, disrupting the people who just wanted to discuss getting things done within the framework of Python. They might have some valid points, but they're not germane to civil discussion.
by iamnothere | 2026-01-31 19:34:52+00:00
> Regulations say the baseband MUST control: all wireless signals (including wifi and GPS), all microphones and speakers, and it must be able to disable the camera electrically. It must have a tamper-resistant identifier (IMEI number ... kind of).

This is simply not true.

Source: I own a phone where this is not the case. Many Linux phones internally attach their wireless devices via USB, so there is good separation.

Also many upscale phones have decoupled the baseband from things that were once connected to it, as an attempt to improve security. (On iOS for instance the main CPU controls wifi.)
by learingsci | 2026-01-31 19:35:01+00:00
From a software standpoint, the ones I think of are Tinder, Facebook, X, YouTube. Each has dramatically altered how we do things like how we stay connected with friends and family, court potential romantic partners, participate in public dialogue and learn. Arguably, rather than supplementing cultural institutions, they’ve to a large extent replaced what was with something more addictive or convenient. Fine. But I’d argue they’ve done it with measurable deleterious effects.