MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Windchaser | 2026-01-21 20:02:21+00:00
> Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid.

Hard no.

In the real world, when I emotionally validate my friends or partners it looks like slowing down and being there, with them, with their emotions. Being present with their emotions then often addresses the underlying emotional need: for example, to feel heard, or to acknowledge their feelings to themselves, to feel cared for and accepted, to feel like someone has their back, etc.

None of this requires that I accept their interpretation of events. And almost always, there will be space at some point for me to disagree with their interpretation. It is much much much more effective to tease apart that interpretation once their emotions have calmed down.

TL;DR: addressing someone's emotional needs (aka "validating") doesn't imply that you agree with them about their interpretation of what happened
Show HN: Consensus for Side Effects
by yousef06 | 2026-01-21 20:02:33+00:00
Hi, creator here.

Most Raft/Paxos libraries treat the state machine as a black box. That’s fine until the state machine does real-world things like charging a card, sending an email or firing a webhook.

Then the leader crashes after the side effect but before commit, and you get duplicates. Every time. All the “exactly once” hand-waving collapses the moment a process dies mid-flight.

This repo is my attempt to fix that by design: side effects live in the replicated log, not behind it.

how it works, roughly:

Side effects are written as pending entries in replicated state. Only the current leader executes them, under a fencing token.

Leadership is fenced durably so a zombie leader can’t wake up and re-run old effects.

The state machine runs with a deterministic RNG seed + block time from the log, so replay is bit-for-bit or it halts.

The WAL is strict: CRC + hash-chained. Corruption stops the system instead of guessing.

Trade-offs are explicit:

Effects are at-least-once. Exactly-once requires stable IDs and sink-side dedup.

CP over AP. Safety over availability.

If you’ve ever been paged because a leader died at exactly the wrong microsecond, you know why I built this.

Repo: https://github.com/abokhalill/chr2

Happy to answer any questions about chr2 architectural internals or design trade offs.
by notatoad | 2026-01-21 20:02:42+00:00
What makes jpeg compression bad isn’t low bandwidth. It’s really good at compressing an image for that.

What makes jpeg bad is that the compression artifacts multiply when a jpeg gets screen captured and then re-encoded as a jpeg, or automatically resized and recompressed by a social media platform. And that definitely isn’t a problem that has gone away since dialup, people do that more than ever.
by CyberDildonics | 2026-01-21 20:03:13+00:00
It sounds like like you're conflating pure and impure functions.

No I'm not, this applies to both in different ways.

If we're talking about pure functions, then due to referential transparency, arrays are in fact equivalent to functions

Never ever. You're talking about a function that generates data from an index, which is trivial to make. Just because it is possible to disguise it as an array in haskell, C++ or anything else doesn't mean it is a good idea. An array will have vastly different properties fundamentally and can be examined at any time because the data already exists.

Confusing the two is again conflating two things for no reason. Making a function that takes an index and returns something is a trivial interface, there is no value in trying to mix up the two.

Evidence of this can be found in the fact that you haven't tried to explain why this is a good idea, only that it works under haskell's semantics. Being clever with semantics is always possible, that doesn't mean conflating two things and hiding how things actually work is a good idea.
by jasonjayr | 2026-01-21 20:03:19+00:00
We ended up here because certain people realised that there is oppertunity in exploiting the window of time between "I trust that you are selling this in good faith" and "This is a scam and I will drag your name, and any of your associates in mud". The internet enabled people to just 'make up names', and keep exploiting this.

So rather than investing time and effort into investigating, we just built faceless tools to punish anything that looks even remotely suspicious, and ignore any appeals, and if a few (or a lot) of folks just trying to make an honest living get caught up, then oh well.

Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.
by Alupis | 2026-01-21 20:03:27+00:00
I completed my Cross-Linux From Scratch distro in 2014, targeting the original Raspberry Pi since I was frustrated with the lack of (at the time) minimalist distros.

It was extra-hard, due to the cross-compiling nature of targeting the ARMv6 cpu family - but I learned a massive amount along the way.

Even though CentOS-minimal was released for Raspberry Pi by time I completed the project, I had so much fun it didn't matter. I ended up making a custom build system, consisting of a hodgepodge of bash scripts all wrapped together with a Makefile. My self-hosted Jenkins build server (old mini computer shoved on my book case) would run builds and produce the image artifact - those were the days...

The final distro image was ~40MB, which was impressive to me on it's own.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-21 20:03:39+00:00
If I remember correctly, they might be fined a lot.

But when the only punishment for crime is fine, then crime becomes legal (and even preferred if doing the crime actually makes more than the fine)

Amazon also does malicious compliance. Yes they are following the law but they are trying to stoop as evil foolishly low as possible while still following the law and sometimes they don't even follow the law but get out of free jail card by paying some fines and oh did I mention, lobbying?

I completely agree with your message. We might need a better alternative to Amazon but one of the reasons why I sort of prefer Amazon sometimes is that you can get a 5% discount on all products if you have a decent credit card and pay bills on time on all products in my country, there are special cards just for amazon and also some cards which pay 5% on all online payments.

On small businesses this is not really possible.

Theoretically if one keeps money in a short term market fund or somewhere safe and uses this or other apps, they can probably safe upto 5% on all expenses, (uses credit cards and then pays the bills on time)

Combine this with the bloody fact that Amazon's tos's requires you to sell the cheapest on amazon, there just ends up being no competition.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-21 20:03:54+00:00
I don't read "we'll never accept here" as "it's be impossible", more like "we won't base our entire economy on that, it's not what the average person wants", because obviously Europe has various staffing companies already, and if you add a tiny bit of nuance into what they said, I'd agree with it too.

> Europe seems to be 20-40 years behind the US in various economic and social developments

That's one perspective, another is that US is 20-40 years behind Europe because the average person can barely afford to stay alive in the US right now, which is much less of a problem in Europe. But it all depends on what you value, I'm not gonna say one is more "correct" than the other, we all have our preferences and so on.
by 9rx | 2026-01-21 20:03:59+00:00
> 25% of a decked out developer Macbook for something that sets the look and feel of an app and forestalls an entire designer hire is an unseriously low price.

Potential value bounds the price upper end, but alternatives set what the customer will actually pay. There are much more comprehensive tools of similar nature that are offered for free.

The (somewhat) unique value proposition it offers is in how it integrates into Rails, saving an hour of a developer's time — or a couple of minutes of an LLM's time, if the slot machine happens to work in your favour on that particular spin — required to manually do it themselves. That's worth something, but if you go too high it soon becomes more cost effective to just pay someone to put in that hour.
by einr | 2026-01-21 20:04:02+00:00
- In 98% of cases it is a .dmg with .app ... so drag and drop or App Store install.
- 1% of cases it is a standard installer and that is mostly because the developer is old-school and too lazy to make a .app (e.g. here's looking at you Microsoft)

Part of my job is automating macOS software deployment. I do this all day. I can confidently tell you that your percentages are way off. I wish you were right because dragging an app bundle into Applications is obviously the correct way to do it. But alas, that is very far from the world we live in.

For example I have never used Homebrew/Macports because my 1% power-user software has been available through the developer's Github (e.g. `bazel` etc. all publish mac release binaries )

This is "a tar.gz with random crap". Convenient perhaps, but it doesn't help your argument that macOS is less of a hellscape.

But `apt install foo` is a synonym for "custom installer that does who knows what" and/or "tar.gz with random crap in it"

No, it's really not. It knows what files it puts where and can cleanly upgrade and uninstall with a predictable and standardized method. It's not that I usually care where the files are strewn exactly, it's that I want consistent installations done in a systematic and coherent way; I don't want to rely on an UNINSTALL.EXE that, like the installer, I have no idea what it does.
by volkercraig | 2026-01-21 20:04:03+00:00
> I kept hitting the same wall: charting libraries that claim to be "fast" but choke past 100K data points

Haha, Highcharts is a running joke around my office because of this. Every few years the business will bring in consultants to build some interface for us, and every time we will have to explain to them that highcharts, even with it's turbo mode enabled chokes on our data streams almost immediately.
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-01-21 20:04:23+00:00
What you say sounds like we ought have suffocated and starved the web. I feel like "vague" and "subjective" is actually just pretty fucking obvious, didn't need a ton of support for it: the web is the go-to platform for app development because its featureful and works everywhere and is connected by default and nothing else comes close.

The web is where it is (literally everywhere) because it is capable and powerful, and it's because we didn't listen to retrogressive gate keepers insisting the web shouldnt really be for those uses cases.

The alternative to this is nothing. Is to not have had connected software. But we aspired to make great systems. That made some people very mad.
by Nextgrid | 2026-01-21 20:04:27+00:00
Hourly rates are inherently risky for clients - you're asking them to part with money with no guaranteed outcome, so there's a natural ceiling where the financial risk becomes untenable regardless of your expertise and reputation.

Clients don't buy hours though, they buy solutions. They have problems costing them money or preventing revenue and they'll pay a percentage of that value to solve it. When you price based on solution value rather than time, your effective hourly rate merely becomes a function of your efficiency and expertise delivering said solution.

They key to achieving such a rate comes down to your sales and business skills: understanding what to sell, how to structure it to maximize your earnings and make it palatable for the client.

For example I generally avoid hourly billing except as a filter for time-wasters. Instead, consultancy becomes a loss leader for the real business: deeply understanding client problems and delivering high-value solutions. Clients happily pay premium rates when they see the price as a fraction of the solution's worth to them.

I only resort to quoting (quite high) hourly rates where it's clear the client just wants consultancy/advice (basically a glorified IT/business support) as a way to make it worth my time and gently encouraging them to bounce (I openly suggest more cost-effective options and refer them there).
by starkeeper | 2026-01-21 20:04:46+00:00
What they have done with 25H2 should be ILLEGAL.
- Forcing AI
- Reversing Anti-Adware settings by default

RemoveWindowsAI
https://github.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI

ProtonDB
The list of AI crap is jaw gobbin massive.

ProtonDB checks known linux game compatibility && login
with Steam to check your library!
https://www.protondb.com/dashboard

RemoveWindowsAI shows a massive amount of AI crap they are trying to force on us. It removes EVERYTHING and is updated regularly.

I DO HATE Windows 11 and don't trust Microsoft with my data one bit. Every prompt you make lives in their logs no matter what they say - they flat out lie about it. "Oh we made it anonyomous". Sure. Yeah. RIGHT. With AI any data can be made Not-Anonymous.

Hopefully the EU will smash!

I'm trying bazzite (https://bazzite.gg) which is made for gaming.

My official reasons to hate Windows 11 go on and on. Here are a few

Windows 11 REMOVED vertical task bars - the most screen space efficient way to Task!
Windows 11 ARBITRARILY limits the number of Apps you can have pinned to your task bar,
Windows 11 WASTES a massive number of pixels and forces you to have a blank task bar.

Just typing this is letting the rage flow and I'm embracing the DARK SIDE.

I love AI when it's my choice to give them my data, and I love developing with it, and I love building it into Apps for users who need it as a tool.

Plus 1000% NSA scooping up everything including with moles on site at every major tech company.
by shiomiru | 2026-01-21 20:04:50+00:00
> as we know it today

An important nuance you seem to be missing is that SUSv3 is equivalent to "IEEE Std 1003.1-2001" (that is, POSIX 2001).

In practice, I've had to work around more POSIX compatibility issues in macOS than in all other actively developed (Free) Unix-likes, combined.
by f33d5173 | 2026-01-21 20:04:53+00:00
The businesses they acquire are ones whose revenue has not appreciably grown in many years. They are being sold because the prior owner does not believe they can improve the business any more.

Any profit bending spoons earns they can run off and invest in another business if they like. They don't bother investing in the businesses they purchase because they believe, like the previous owner believed, that there is no more juice to squeeze from that particular lemon.
by KerrAvon | 2026-01-21 20:05:01+00:00
It is ridiculous. I skimmed through it and I'm not convinced he's trying to make the point you think he is. But if he is, he's missing that we do understand at a fundamental level how today's LLMs work. There isn't a consciousness there. They're not actually complex enough. They don't actually think. It's a text input/output machine. A powerful one with a lot of resources. But it is fundamentally spicy autocomplete, no matter how magical the results seem to a philosophy professor.

The hypothetical AI you and he are talking about would need to be an order of magnitude more complex before we can even begin asking that question. Treating today's AIs like people is delusional; whether self-delusion, or outright grift, YMMV.
by iknowstuff | 2026-01-21 20:05:04+00:00
Fun fact, the Bundestag is one of the most representative parliaments in the world thanks to MMP. Is the executive dysfunctional? Is it the federal split into 16 tiny states causing this?

If it was just a matter of size, similar/larger countries would be in the same state, and at least one of your smaller states would get ahead right?
by jack_pp | 2026-01-21 20:05:10+00:00
The problem with linux hasn't been the GUI for a long time, even 20 years ago you had flashier GUI than win / mac. Personally I don't care about GUI and just run i3 with shitty looking dialogs.

The problem with linux has been either hardware compatibility or when things don't work it's a pain to figure it out however I have good news on that front! For the life of me I've never managed to send audio to my monitor / TV speakers when running linux but now with Gemini I've managed to finally fix it. So if you're scared about things breaking and spending hours inside man pages.. just copy paste your console into an LLM and it'll probably help you out.
by jmathai | 2026-01-21 20:05:49+00:00
The most useful automation for me has been a few simple commands. Here are some examples I use for repos in GitHub to resolve issues and PRs.

/gh-issue [issue number]

/gh-pr [pr number]

Edit: replaced links to private github repo to pastebin.

https://pastebin.com/5Spg4jGu

https://pastebin.com/hubWMqGa
by WorldMaker | 2026-01-21 20:05:50+00:00
Discord supports formatting [1]. It's closer to many Markdown implementations like "CommonMark" than Slack's formatting.

Discord also has several ways to jump to specific messages. Navigating from the Inbox/Notifications will jump directly to a message with a "red badge" no matter where it is in the channel.

[1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/210298617-Mark...
by 7402 | 2026-01-21 20:05:59+00:00
I pasted this article into ChatGPT, then challenged it to choose a topic and write a paragraph that carefully takes note of the criticisms. I think ChatGPT failed; the result sounds like LLM writing to me:

I keep a paper notebook not because it is efficient, but because it wastes my time in a very particular way. The pen skips when I write too fast, the margin fills with crossed-out sentences I decide not to rescue, and every page records how sure or unsure I was when I showed up that day. None of this scales, and none of it generalizes into advice, which is precisely the point: the notebook proves to me that I was there, thinking something that cost a little effort to hold. A clean, fluent summary of my week would be more legible and more shareable, but it would also launder away the hesitation, the bad ideas, the lopsided emphasis that marks the difference between having an experience and reporting one. What I get from the notebook isn’t polish; it’s the quiet assurance that I didn’t outsource the thinking.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-21 20:06:07+00:00
> Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.

I agree but I hate payment processors sometimes as well and they feel very rent seeking in nature (akin to amazon) to me as well, I definitely wonder if stablecoins with good on/offramps or proper VISA support might actually help the end citizen but I am a bit worried because Stablecoin's on crypto and most crypto's really scummy so I also don't want to give things like this way too much attention.

Time will tell perhaps
by jacquesm | 2026-01-21 20:07:35+00:00
Eurobonds. It may actually happen if this continues. But given the speed of the usual EU decision process I would not be surprised if it takes them longer than the current US administration to finally agree on the various terms. And that's good for Europe in multiple ways.

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/e...

In the meantime: German, Dutch, UK (technically not EU), Swiss, Nordic paper is also a good substitute and regardless all you really want to do here is not to hold an asset that may well become a liability so in that sense almost anything is better.
by hombre_fatal | 2026-01-21 20:08:19+00:00
Same. If the only computing happened on desktop PCs and laptops didn't exist, I'd use Linux.

But as it stands, going from a Macbook to Linux on a laptop is a downgrade. And you have to pay more for the pleasure of a worse experience.

And macOS is "Linux" since it's BSD-based and has a native Unix shell. If macOS were as different from "Linux" as Windows was, then I probably wouldn't put up with it either.
by everfrustrated | 2026-01-21 20:08:23+00:00
All those AI datacenters in space will need a way to get data to them.

Bezos can't even build his first constellation and already planning his second... Possibly the real play here is snapping up more frequency licenses on earth (we need them because we're launching any day now promise). They are the real constraining resource and could be used to keep others out of the market for a while.
by marcprux | 2026-01-21 20:08:38+00:00
See my response below on the KMP question: the comparison with CMP mostly applies to Flutter as well.

> near-native mobile apps (the difference is almost negligible)

Not as of the advent of Liquid Glass on iOS (and, to a lesser extent, Material Expressive on Android). Flutter isn't going to be implementing these new interface conventions[1], and so the UI for these apps are stuck on the last generation and are already starting to feel outdated.

Flutter's grim outlook has resulted in a surge of interest in Skip, and it was one of the drivers for us to open up the platform and catch the wave. If you love Dart, or if your apps don't need to look native (e.g., games or very bespoke interfaces), then Flutter might continue to be acceptable. But everyone else is starting to look elsewhere, especially in cases where their business depends on their apps feeling premium and native.

[1] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/170310
by anonymous908213 | 2026-01-21 20:08:45+00:00
At the second sentence of the first chapter in the book we already have a weasel-worded sentence that, if you were to remove the weaselly-ness of it and stand behind it as an assertion you mean, is pretty clearly factually incorrect.

> At a broad, functional level, AI architectures are beginning to resemble the architectures many
consciousness scientists associate with conscious systems.

If you can find even a single published scientist who associates "next-token prediction", which is the full extent of what LLM architecture is programmed to do, with "consciousness", be my guest. Bonus points if they aren't already well-known as a quack or sponsored by an LLM lab.

The reality is that we can confidently assert there is no consciousness because we know exactly how LLMs are programmed, and nothing in that programming is more sophisticated than token prediction. That is literally the beginning and the end of it. There is some extremely impressive math and engineering going on to do a very good job of it, but there is absolutely zero reason to believe that consciousness is merely token prediction. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of machine consciousness categorically, but LLMs are not it and are architecturally not even in the correct direction towards achieving it.
by cogman10 | 2026-01-21 20:08:59+00:00
I've completed it along with BLFS and I just don't really agree.

Like, yes you get pretty familiar with autotools, sed, and patch. However, a lot of LFS is in fact just managing disk partitions and moving files around.

LFS also glosses over a lot of pretty important parts like kernel configuration.

The docs from both Gentoo and Arch, on the other hand, are much more complete and practical in explaining things and also troubleshooting problems. And at the end of the process you're left with a system that can be easily maintained.

LFS is harder, but that doesn't really mean you end up learning more. Especially since it's pretty easy to lose focus and just rely on copy/pasting the next command to run.

Edit: Just an example of what I mean.

Here is the LFS discussion of filesystems.

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter02/c...

And here is the same Gentoo discussion.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Dis...
by brettsheppard | 2026-01-21 20:09:12+00:00
Bazel 9.0 is Here! Live webinar Jan 26th by Alex Eagle at Aspect Build. We'll look through the Bazel 9 changelog, highlighting the most interesting features and fixes. We'll show how Aspect's Bazel 100-series training courses are already updated for Bazel 9, including all of the codelab repos under Bazel starters.