MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nmr521521 | 2026-01-07 02:11:46+00:00
That's a great suggestion—gotta admit, doing more reading and practice can really beef up our knowledge base and spark way more inspiration.

But I'm still curious if there are any external tools or hacks I can lean on, 'cause finishing a whole book or wrapping up a practice session takes forever.

Sorry, but I have to say, it's probably from bingeing too many short videos that's tanking my patience these days.
by DBarryS | 2026-01-07 02:11:57+00:00
The framing of "may not have time" assumes the risks are primarily future-facing. But AI systems are already making consequential decisions about insurance claims, job applications, and creditworthiness with limited oversight and minimal accountability when they're wrong.

The question isn't just whether we'll be ready for future risks. It's whether we're addressing the accountability gaps that already exist. We're debating preparation timelines while millions of high-stakes decisions are being made by systems whose operators face limited liability for errors.

The future risk is real. But so is the present one.
by fladrif | 2026-01-07 02:12:21+00:00
I found a path from Piano to Volcano with 107 generated topics!
Piano → Piano City (places)
Piano City → Music festivals (broader)
Music festivals → Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (deeper)
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival → Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
Indio (deeper)
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
Indio → Coachella Valley (places)
Coachella Valley → Heatwave (evil)
Heatwave → Climatology (broader)
Climatology → Climate science (similar)
Climate science → Meteorology (broader)
Meteorology → Atmospheric sciences (similar)
Atmospheric sciences → Meteorology (similar)
Meteorology → Geomorphology (opposite)
Geomorphology → Geomorphic processes (similar)
Geomorphic processes → Earth science (broader)
Earth science → Geology (deeper)
Geology → Tectonics (deeper)
Tectonics → Subduction Zone (similar)
Subduction Zone → Mantle convection (similar)
Mantle convection → Mantle plume (evil)
Mantle plume → Plate tectonics (broader)
Plate tectonics → Mantle Plume (deeper)
Mantle Plume → Hawaii hotspot (deeper)
Hawaii hotspot → Volcano hotspot (similar).

Try it yourself at www.llmgame.ai
by aleph_minus_one | 2026-01-07 02:12:46+00:00
> Being exceptional in cybersecurity is a pretty good indicator that someone will be successful in other fields.

I am not so certain about this. In particular being exceptional in cybersecurity does not make you good at playing political games or having the traits that a lot of bosses want from employees (I will attempt to avoid starting a discussion whether I consider such traits to be good or bad).
by westurner | 2026-01-07 02:13:33+00:00
"Extraordinary Improvement of Gas-Sensing Performances in SnO2 Nanofibers Due to Creation of Local p–n Heterojunctions by Loading Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanosheets" (2015)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/am5071656

"Highly Sensitive and Selective SnO2-Gr Sensor Photoactivated for Detection of Low NO2 Concentrations at Room Temperature" (2024)
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/14/24/1994 ; UV photo activation of SnO2-Gr sensors

"Engineering of SnO2–Graphene Oxide Nanoheterojunctions for Selective Room-Temperature Chemical Sensing and Optoelectronic Devices" (2020)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.0c09178

"Humidity-sensing Performance of Graphene/SnO 2 Nanocomposites" (2025)
https://sensors.myu-group.co.jp/sm_pdf/SM4049.pdf ; 28s recovery time instead of minutes
by Dylan16807 | 2026-01-07 02:14:33+00:00
> Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.

If I go buy a Google or Meta ad with the same negligible budget, I can get my product shown to 50 people and then the money runs out.

That's completely different from getting onto a phonebook-like list where everyone that visits can see my company's offer.
by AndrewKemendo | 2026-01-07 02:15:49+00:00
> The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily understood way, in a way that's easily extensible.

The number of production applications that achieve this rounds to zero

I’ve probably managed 300 brownfield web, mobile, edge, datacenter, data processing and ML applications/products across DoD, B2B, consumer and literally zero of them were built in this way
by z2 | 2026-01-07 02:15:54+00:00
I've had success using my nose and a cheap $15 moisture meter against walls and ceilings. In my case I was already pretty sure the moisture came from the roof when it rained so went looking right after rainstorms. This was after also running a dehumidifier in a formerly damp basement.

If a home has an active mold problem, it probably has an active water or moisture problem. What mold remediation people sometimes do as well is use an IR camera to try to find unusually cold (thus damp areas).
by LeanOnSheena | 2026-01-07 02:16:22+00:00
Yeah CPA here. On the day you take out the loan you're not in debt 110, you are in debt 100; you would accrue interest expense over the term of the loan. What if the lender called the loan day 2 for some reason? You wouldn't pay 110, probably just 100 plus one day of interest. Goes back to fundamental definitions of financial statement elements. Liabilities are present obligations.

Anyways, recognizing the interest over time would debit an expense account and credit some liability account... Could be the same account as the loan or could be an interest payable account, doesn't really matter in the context of the example.

Also you would not be "in debit"; the liability is on the credit side of your balance sheet.
by refulgentis | 2026-01-07 02:16:45+00:00
This may be a bit overwrought, I’m on my 3rd watch and can’t identify the moment where breakdancing could be expected, my best guess is when it does a tai chi position at 3m20s, which seems unlikely but perhaps on the nose if you’re western, young, not a dancer, and don’t know breakdancing well, i.e. as a series of static positions moved through slowly.
by blibble | 2026-01-07 02:17:07+00:00
> One of the most profound pieces of advice I ever read as a PhD student came from Prof. Manuel Blum, a Turing Award winner. In his essay "Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student", he wrote: "Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton. With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine."

only if you have an unlimited amount of paper!

otherwise you're still a finite state machine (technically)
by cdrnsf | 2026-01-07 02:17:28+00:00
In a word, yes. I have many fond memories of forums and chats that have been abandoned in favor of platforms like Reddit and Discord (which I find to be bloated and grating).

I do participate in small iMessage and Signal chats. Email remains nice as well.

Large social platforms hold no appeal given the algorithmic curation that favors the platform owners and the pervasive advertising. I’ve never seen the appeal of TikTok short form video either, though I’ll willingly acknowledge I’m in the minority there.

I’ve never abandoned RSS and love the slow pace and small scale of Mastodon.
by dang | 2026-01-07 02:17:49+00:00
It will make more sense if you consider the context in which you're posting: a large, anonymous internet forum which is prone to bursting into flames when provoked on divisive topics.

Even if we take the most charitable interpretation of what you posted—say, something like: honest exploration of racial prejudice within ourselves—the tiny text blobs that we have to communicate with here are not a genre that can handle casual detonations like "I just don't like black people very much". That would require a much stronger and more secure container than this sort of internet forum can provide, not to mention safety and confidentiality that don't exist here. Comments like what you posted are simply going to blow up a thread like this into an even more violent conflict than it already is, and that's not something we're ok with.

As I said, that's under the most charitable interpretation, which I don't personally find to be the likeliest. Your GP comment included plenty of other things that support a less savory reading.

Also, this pseudo-debate about who should or should not be "executed" is puerile and obviously off-topic on this site, but I'm not singling you out for that, since plenty of other users were contributing to it.
by AtlasBarfed | 2026-01-07 02:17:51+00:00
You are making things harder for newer hires than the environment you came into. It is a sink over swim strategy that introduces stress without any apparent compensation in training. It creates new bases for evaluation you were not subject to.

Hazing us a cycle of abuse that expresses in a magnification of the abuse inflicted in the hazing than was suffered in the previous cycle.

Maybe you are optimizing your personnel.
by koito17 | 2026-01-07 02:18:03+00:00
> there is already a swastika unicode glyph

It's a Chinese character and there are two variants. The left-hand variant (卍) represents 和 (peace) in religious contexts, whereas the right-hand variant represents 力 (power). The specific glyph the Nazis co-opted is the right-hand variant, and it is considered inappropriate to use in the West (for this reason, I am not reproducing the character here).

The glyph appears in texts predating the existence of Nazi Germany, and I assume that is the reason the Unicode Consortium has not removed the glyph yet.

Note that I am not defending this decision (nor the usage of the glyph today). One could argue that historians should use a special font that can render these two glyphs, but the problem is likely a lot more subtle than I am thinking.

As an aside: the left-hand variant is used in Japanese maps to mark the location of Buddhist temples.
by garciasn | 2026-01-07 02:19:24+00:00
Many outlets are quoting Morgan Stanley analysts suggesting they’ll start at $150K. Here is a non-paywalled article that has some info about the MS claim: https://www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/automation/...

From the article:

Hyundai aims not only to use humanoid robotics but also to scale it industrially. The company plans to build a production system with a capacity of up to 30,000 robots per year. Analysts at Morgan Stanley Research predict the market for humanoid robotics to reach a volume of around five trillion US dollars by the year 2050. For the period around 2028, when Hyundai plans to start scalable production, a unit price of about 150,000 US dollars is expected.
by jongjong | 2026-01-07 02:19:39+00:00
It does help A LOT in the case of security research. Particularly.

For example, I tended to avoid pen testing freelance work before AI because I didn't enjoy the tedious work of reading tons of documentation about random platforms to try to understand how they worked and searching all over StackOverflow.

Now with LLMs, I can give it some random-looking error message and it can clearly and instantly tell me what the error means at a deep tech level, what engine was used, what version, what library/module... I can pen test platforms I have 0 familiarity with.

I just know a few platforms, engines, programming languages really well and I can use this existing knowledge to try to find parallels in other platforms I've never explored before.

The other day, on HackerOne, I found a pretty bad DoS vulnerability in a platform I'd never looked into before, using an engine and programming language I never used professionally; I found the issue within 1 hour of starting my search.
by tavavex | 2026-01-07 02:20:10+00:00
If an LLM wrote the whole project last week and it already requires a full rewrite, what makes you think that the quality of that rewrite will be significantly higher, and that it will address all of the issues? Sure, it's all probabilistic so there's probably a nonzero chance for it to stumble into something where all the moving parts are moving correctly, but to me it feels like with our current tech, these odds continue shrinking as you toss on more requirements and features, like any mature project. It's like really early LLMs where if they just couldn't parse what you wanted, past a certain point you could've regenerated the output a million times and nothing would change.
by falloutx | 2026-01-07 02:20:22+00:00
At this point it doesn't matter that much whether we use AI or not, the apps are not selling and they are being produced at an alarming rate.

The projects being submitted to product hunt is 4x the year before.

The market is shrinking rapidly because now more people make their own apps.

Even making a typo and landing on a website, there is good chance its selling more ai snake oil, yet none of these apps are feature complete and easily beaten by apps made by guys in 2010s. (tldr & sketchbook for the drawing space).

Only way to excite the investors is to fake the ARR by giving free trials and sell before the recurring event occurs.
by arjie | 2026-01-07 02:20:57+00:00
I think it's more that the US can still build fast so long as it presents some pressing need for someone: economic, military, or social. As an example, infrastructure projects take forever, but then when there is a piece of infrastructure that actually needs building, governments choose appropriate incentives.

When the MacArthur Maze fell down because of a tank truck fire, the contract paid out $200k per day ahead of schedule the fix was delivered. The winning company bid way under everyone else and just produced quality to inspectors' desire way ahead of schedule to win most of it on early completion bonuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Maze#Rebuilding

And not everything in America is slow to build. Once the F-35 program got going it got going. There are 1100 such jets or something in the world now. 150 F-35 every year or so.

The reality is that for the things that most yuppies want built (housing and transit infrastructure) there are many domestic opponents and a regulatory regime that affords those opponents control over production.

For instance, we wouldn't really have Starlink if it weren't for the fact that SpaceX is using DoD clearance to fly its rockets. The California Coastal Commission would stall all such flight attempts otherwise.
by DrewADesign | 2026-01-07 02:21:19+00:00
Appealing isn’t the goal. Catching someone’s attention is the goal. (Nobody thinks the balloons on the cars at the car dealership look good but statistics prove that balloons sell cars.) Then, triggering someone’s curiosity, which is more where the copy comes in. (You can increase your click count with this one weird trick!)

You’re subject to it every bit as much as me or anybody else, but for whatever reason, we have different triggers than the Mr. Beast crowd. People that think they’re immune to it after having it pointed out to them are likely just less aware than most how their emotions are being manipulated by things they don’t even consciously perceive. Sales guys love people like that.
by etruong42 | 2026-01-07 02:22:26+00:00
As a Google engineer, I believe it is largely accurate to say that we "don't care", or at least "not caring" is the emergent behavior at Google. There are many things we don't care about at Google that I think would shock many engineers who have a healthy amount of pride in craftsmanship. It's hard for me to precisely describe why we "don't care", but I will try anyways.

As the parent commenter has pointed out, pulling in client code can be very large. If the backend team owns the client code, they may not be properly incentivized to improve the product of the clients, sadly. And calling it the backend "team" might be overly simplistic. There may be additional layers to the the client code owned by other teams, such as different protocol implementation and definitions of those protocols, etc. Pushing for change can be viewed negatively, since it could leave a poor impression. E.g. if you improve someone else's code, that could make them look bad, and that would have negative consequences for you as you have violated (a variation of) Greene's first law of power: never outshine the master.

Since the code and the organization are so convoluted and complicated, it's a lose-lose proposition. If you mess up your optimization, you will get blamed. Even if you succeed, you may have reduced someone's reputation of someone you can't even identify in the bureaucracy, and thus have made an enemy of someone you can't even identify.
by tpmoney | 2026-01-07 02:22:38+00:00
> Suppose you keep this up for 15 years; how will you grapple with all the cruft you have generated?

I can't speak for the OP but the worst software developer I ever worked with was myself from 1 year ago. Provided what "cruft" I'm generating meets my current code standards, it's unlikely to be any worse than anything else past me has done.
by buzer | 2026-01-07 02:24:26+00:00
"You DON’T need consent for: First-party cookies used just for your own analytics (in most cases)"

They claim that, but the page they link to as the source says "You must...Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.". So what exactly makes them think that first-party analytics cookies are "strictly necessary"? The Mastodon link in the at the start of page doesn't seem to work.
by sho_hn | 2026-01-07 02:26:26+00:00
Agreed, this is some proper nice tinkering writeup that we get far too rarely now.

Lovely project! I'm a software guy who in recent years does lots of CAD for hobby projects (mainly robotics) and orders custom machined parts (lots of sheet metal construction, occasionally milled parts) along with 3D printing.

I find parametric modelling very zen. Stacking operations is very Lego-like, like stringing up pure functions. Plus I can listen to podcasts while I model, but not while I write code - it engages the brain differently.

Now that LLMs are sapping some of the joy out of programming (I use the tools, they're productive, achieving goals and delivering user value is still satisfying, etc. - but the act of writing code is just more enjoyable than prompting, so it's a tad dispiriting that it's getting harder to jusitify) I also find that I get a lot of satisfaction from doing something with my hands. In some ways it's a safer space for technical creativity.

Can highly recommend hobbies like this.
by PNewling | 2026-01-07 02:28:43+00:00
I did this, and yeah google maps is all but unusable without color, that and the camera takes some getting used to.

I'm on an iPhone, but what ended up doing was creating a shortcut that toggles the phone to grayscale and back, and then having two automations, one for when I open any of the apps I actually want color in (maps, camera, photos, etc) that toggles grayscale off and then another automation to toggle grayscale back on when I close any of those same apps.

The option is located in Settings > Accessibility >Display & Text Size > Color Filters

It isn't perfect, but it works most of the time (I also added the shortcut to the back of the home screen so if it is off or I need one-off color I can just toggle it manually).
by kiji-seo | 2026-01-07 02:29:28+00:00
Good article! The shift to AI-based intent search is something that small business are not ready for. I think that the structural/technical SEO design will become more competitive as companies work harder to define their 'brand' and try to align themselves with concepts that address common user search intent and try to anticipate common questions. I'm not sure how outdated popular website models, like WordPress, will manage to compete with such radical structural change. But, I'm sure they will find another band-aid solution that won't quite cut it.
by aetherson | 2026-01-07 02:31:13+00:00
I was chatting about this with a friend. It feels like there's a real opportunity for a relatively-poor-but-democratic country to say, "Look, for real, we will pass the strongest data protection laws in the world, and we will let you build as many solar panels as you want + use as much water as you want, just sink a couple hundred billion into OUR economy."
by dang | 2026-01-07 02:31:19+00:00
My thoughts are just the usual ones about this: flags of stories like this on HN are a kind of coalition between some flaggers who are agenda-motivated (which is an abuse of flagging) and other flaggers who simply don't want to see repetitive and/or flamebaity material on the site (which is a correct use of flagging, and is not agenda driven because this sort of material comes at us from all angles). When we see flaggers who are consistently doing the first kind of flagging, we take away their flagging privileges.
Show HN: Vy, a cross platform AI agent that automates apps without APIs
by kianae | 2026-01-07 02:32:48+00:00
Hi HN, I am Kiana, I was an AI researcher for 10 years, and since last November I have been working on Vy.
Vy is a desktop app for Mac and Windows. It sees your screen and controls mouse and keyboard to automate workflows across apps, including ones without APIs.
I know there is a lot of skepticism about AI agents, and I share some of it. A lot of things in this space look impressive in demos and then fall apart on real, boring work. So here are a few concrete things that Vy does today that we and early users actually rely on:
Where it works best
Tasks that you could explain in a paragraph and that take a human a few minutes, not hours.

Workflows that mostly involve clicking, typing, scrolling, and copying between a few known tools.

Where it does not work well
Very long, unsupervised runs. It is better to keep tasks bounded and keep an eye on it.

Pixel precise work like detailed design or brush based editing.

Some custom web editors or highly dynamic UIs still confuse it.

How it is different from most browser agents
It runs as a desktop app, so it can automate native apps, browser, and mixed workflows across multiple windows.

It does not depend on app specific APIs or DOM selectors, it operates on what is actually on screen.

You can watch each step, pause, or take over at any time, and you can turn successful runs into reusable workflows.

I am happy to answer detailed questions about failure modes, technical choices, and where this approach breaks. I am also very interested in concrete tasks where you think a UI level agent would either clearly help or clearly not be trustworthy.
by MohskiBroskiAI | 2026-01-07 02:32:56+00:00
The "creepiness" isn't a bug; it's a conflict of expectations.

We are looking at a machine that mimics the human form (bipedal, two arms) but completely ignores Biological Constraints (tendons, ligaments, joint limits).

When it rotates 180 degrees at the waist, our brains trigger a "Body Horror" response because we subconsciously map our own anatomy onto it. We see a broken spine. The robot just sees a shorter path.

This is purely Unconstrained Kinematics. Hyundai isn't trying to build a "Better Human." They are building a "Bipedal Forklift" that just happens to fit through our doorframes.

It’s a tool. Let’s stop judging it like it’s supposed to be one of us.
by tpmoney | 2026-01-07 02:33:22+00:00
Does a director make a movie? Serious question. Can we say that Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park? Can we say the George Lucas made Star Wars? Directors rarely act in their own movies, write their own scripts, operate the cameras, operate the lights, operate the mics, edit the final cuts, write the scores, play the scores, create the VFX, do the film printing or the marketing. They prompt Biological Thought Models to do those things and cobble the results together. Really nothing a director traditionally does is actually physically making a film.

And yet, I don't see a problem with saying directors made their movies. Sure, it was the work of a lot of talented individuals contributing collectively to produce the final product, and most of those individuals probably contributed more physical "creation" to the film than the director did. But the director is a film maker. So I wouldn't be so confident asserting that someone who coordinates and architects an application by way of various automation tools isn't still a programmer or "writing software"