MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ourmandave | 2026-01-05 20:42:32+00:00
The Patient is Running the Asylum. RFK is an idiot who is actively killing children and the current administration that installed him to collect his anti-vaxxer votes knows it.

A whole host of diseases were Solved Problems so that people have forgotten how bad they are. Maybe we should make parents watch videos of children suffering from whooping cough and the rest before they get to opt out.
by Forgeties79 | 2026-01-05 20:42:37+00:00
> You are only liable if you know - or should know - that you possess it.

Which he does and responded with “I will blame and punish users.” Which yeah, you should, but you also need to fix your bot. He’s certainly has no issue doing that when Grok outputs claims/arguments that make him look bad or otherwise engages in what he considers “wrongthink,” but suddenly when there are real, serious consequences he gets to hide behind “it’s just a user problem”?

This is the same thing YouTube and social media companies have been getting away with for so long. They claim their algorithms will take care of content problems, then when they demonstrably fail they throw their hands up and go “whoops! Sorry we are just too big for real people to handle all of it but we’ll get it right this time.” Rinse repeat.
by tonymet | 2026-01-05 20:42:41+00:00
I’ve participated and appealed to promotions committees at a few big tech companies and the principle for achieving the promotion is sustained performance for a half or 2 at the next level, judged by a number of dimensions. A couple drivers are revenue impact, business direction, or how well you are enabling others to succeed.

If the staff is large enough, calibrations are done to find template team members at the higher level, to make it very clear that the candidates performance is meeting that higher bar.

I think most ICs think “I’ve been working hard, I deserve a promotion”. A better barometer is whether your peers assume you are already at that higher level without knowing your rank.
by tehjoker | 2026-01-05 20:42:45+00:00
Yes, I was writing a piece on LLMs and asked one about some of the ideas in my piece and it contributed something new, which was pretty interesting. I asked if it had seen that in the literature before, and it gave some references that are tangentially related. I'll need to dig into them to see if it was just repeating something (and also do a broader search). Still it was interesting to see it able to remix ideas so well in a way I would credit to a contributor.

This kind of thing I can see as dangerous if you are unsure of yourself and the limitations of these things... if the LLM is insightful a few times, it can start you down a path very easily if you are credulous.

One of my favorite podcasts called this "computer madness"
by rand846633 | 2026-01-05 20:42:50+00:00
Recently had to reinstall my Linux (btw, Arch). Normally I’d just dd/mirror the NVMe, but this time I decided to stop putting off the switch to Wayland and just do it — moved from i3 to sway, etc. I’d been avoiding this for years.

Turns out: absolutely no problem. The tooling around Wayland and adjacent programs is way more modern and functional. Great experience. Can recommend switching in 2026.

For me, the unintuitive truth with Linux is: once you’re on a rolling release, most problems just vanish. I still love Debian for prod, but for experimenting and development, rolling release any day.
by staticassertion | 2026-01-05 20:43:17+00:00
I don't know. Does it matter what I think about that? Let's say I answer "yes, they should". Then what? Or what if I say "no, I see a difference". Then what?

Who cares about Adobe? I'm talking about Grok. I can consistently say "I believe platforms should moderate content in accordance with Section 230" while also saying "And I think that the moderation of content with regards to CSAM, for major platforms with XYZ capabilities should be stricter".

The answer to "what about Adobe?" is then either that it falls into one of those two categories, in which case you have your answer, or it doesn't, in which case it isn't relevant to what I've said.
by array_key_first | 2026-01-05 20:43:29+00:00
Again, that's trivial if you use up and down servers. No downtime, and to your users, instant deployment across the entire application.

If you have a bajillion services and they're all doing their own thing with their own DB and you have to reconcile version across all of them and you don't have active/passive deployments, yes that will be a huge pain in the ass.

So just don't do that. There, problem solved. People need to stop doing micro services or even medium sized services. Make it one big ole monolith, maybe 2 monoliths for long running tasks.
by 8note | 2026-01-05 20:43:33+00:00
you can get a few more anchors in with a builder:

aerodynamicDrag(DragInput.builder()
.dragCoefficient(quadConfig.dragCoefficient),
.speed(v3.length(quadVel))
.referenceArea(quadConfig.frontalArea)
.build()
)

which i think points at a possible bug where there drag coefficient isnt measured for the frontal area and needs to be rescaled?
by mothballed | 2026-01-05 20:43:34+00:00
Family court is even worse. You can't even know what's illegal for your kid to do because the civil standards on things like 'neglect' are incredibly nebulous and left for agencies like CPS and family law judges to review, so to find out how they're actually interpreted you would need to see cases and how they played out. Those are ~all wrapped up in secret court hearings.

So basically you have no fucking idea what the law actually is, how it's being enforced, what will happen to you if you don't follow their interpretation, and god forbid you wind up there they can use a lot of methods to keep you from talking about it.
by solomonb | 2026-01-05 20:45:02+00:00
We are operating deep in the grey area here so I suppose that case could be made. Personally, I see creativity as more of a life long process which can express itself in a multitude of ways including strokes of genius and the daily iterative grind. I don't think any creative act occurs in a vacuum but I also think that there are moments where big things occur.

AI, as it stands, does not have a lifespan over which for creativity to occur.
by gbnwl | 2026-01-05 20:45:38+00:00
Friend, you are putting too much effort to debate a topic that is implicitly banned on this website. This post has already been hidden from the front page. Hacker News is openly hostile to anything that even mildly paints a handful of billionaires in a poor light. But let's continue to deify Dang as the country descneds openly into madness.
by frio | 2026-01-05 20:45:51+00:00
The use case is making them work on distinct tasks in parallel — just like an organisations developers each have (traditionally) their own laptop with its own isolated environment. So that I can say to agent 1 “clean up the unit tests in the payments module” and I can say to agent 2 “implement a simple client for Mailchip so that we can migrate off Sendgrid” and the two can work independently.

Note that I don’t work like this personally — I quickly get overwhelmed by the volume of context switching — but I can absolutely see the appeal; particularly for smaller shops.
by Terr_ | 2026-01-05 20:45:58+00:00
[Recycled from a dupe submission]

> This is why I pro­pose uni­lat­eral dec­la­ra­tion as a strategic countermove [... tearing] away the veil of any-minute-now mil­lenar­i­anism to reveal deployed tech­nology

I think that in an ideal world, this would thoroughly embarrass the over-promisers by forcing them to put-up-or-shut-up, and it's fun to imagine... however I worry that it won't work out that way. Instead of deflating the nonsense in its tracks, it'll just give it more momentum and worsen the eventual mess.

> What do I mean by AGI ?

Can we fight it with a better term? Something like... Oh, I dunno, maybe "Artificial Narrative Intelligence", in the same sense that we could say A* is a kind of pathfinding intelligence.

I say "narrative" because we've got these machines that grow "fitting" documents, and are often used with stories to "decide" what happens next. For example, the story setting is a Support Page, the Customer Character says X, and the Very Helpful Robot Character then does Y and says Z in response, etc.

However just because these stories fit surprisingly well doesn't mean it's doing the kind of "thinking" we really dreamed of.

> You some­times read about employees of AI com­pa­nies absorbed by their own products. Nobody on Earth has spent more hours talking to YakGPT than Katie Echo! Nobody can pump more code out of Shan­non­Soft than Johnny Narcissus! Recalling my Twitter expe­ri­ence, I think boasts (and posts) of this kind should inspire caution.

To me a lot of that feels like just the thing-of-the-day LinkedIn Lunacy, albeit running at an unusual intensity.
by w10-1 | 2026-01-05 20:46:21+00:00
dead simple: (AI) automation gains can't be modeled via linear task-savings due to "the structure of bottlenecks and how automation reshapes worker time around them"

Nothing in the article about targeting the rate-limiting factors.

And on the first line of the first page, this gem of gratitude: "We thank Refine.ink, ChatGPT 5.2 Pro, and Claude Opus 4.5 for research assistance"

And on this government-sponsored paper, a warning that copying ANY portion of the text REQUIRES I accompany it with full credit, including the copyright notice, so that quote above puts me into noncompliance.
by GoatInGrey | 2026-01-05 20:46:25+00:00
I find it hard to believe that you fail to understand that vulnerable people can be influenced and manipulated into acting against their own welfare. Domestic sexual abuse of children is the simpler-to-understand form of this dynamic. Where emotional needs are exploited to direct the person's behavior to your personal benefit.

It is in these situations where the human performing the manipulation is the one responsible and not the victim.

Put another way, if you discovered that you were incidentally killing children each time you drove down a particular road, would you choose an alternative road or drive faster in an attempt to avoid detection?
by rchaud | 2026-01-05 20:46:54+00:00
This is the same kind of spam that overwhelmed blog comment sections and sent everyone scurrying to Reddit and Facebook 15 years ago. The spam was always had a generic comment praising the post and a line below shilling dick pills and Prada bags, but spelled like v_1_@_g_r_@ and the URL was simiarly obfuscated so they didn't trip a spam filter.
by coldtea | 2026-01-05 20:46:57+00:00
>While watching him I learned the lesson that being an "idea guy" is worthless. It is all about execution.

It's even trickier: execution is irrelevant too (if that means great execution, a polished well executed product). What matters is a works-well-enough for adoption product, plus luck, connections, funding (to continue existing and undercutting), marketing, and things like that.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2026-01-05 20:47:27+00:00
I'm talking of the Biden-era IRA here. BMW had to invest 1.7 billions in 2022 to manufacture most of its EV directly from there as you can compete in the US market without the IRA subsidies and the conditions severely limit even which parts you can import.

That's a significant shift moving from final assembly to forcing most of the supply chain to be relocated.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-05 20:47:44+00:00
The wild thing is that this article isn't even a political issue!

"Major Silicon Valley Company's Product Creates and Publishes Child Porn" has nothing to do with politics. It's not "political content." It is relevant tech news when someone investigates and points out wrongdoing that tech companies are up to. If another tech company's product was doing this, it would be all over HN and there would be pretty much no flagging.

When these stories get flagged, it's because people don't want bad news to get out about the company--it's not about avoiding politics out of principle.
by mbessette | 2026-01-05 20:47:46+00:00
Location: Southern California, United States
Remote: Yes or On-site (Inland Empire, San Diego, LA)
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Go, Python, Javascript, willing to learn anything.
CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iv8__2RWea-Wk8cksVvokcUpK5Gl0evc/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116987744531739977020&rtpof=true&sd=true
email: (michael)+(bessette)+0@gmail.com

Hi everyone, I am a recent graduate (BS in CS) excited to enter the field for my first computer science job. Please see my resume for my github and some example code projects. I am interested in most aspects of programming but have the most experience with backend for the web. I am willing to work for just about any industry except defense/intelligence. If you have room on your team for a junior engineer, please reach out. Thanks, Michael
by SilverElfin | 2026-01-05 20:48:35+00:00
Fair point. But America is so powerful that it may not feel pain intensely for a very long time. Too much capital, military strength, and momentum. For now and for years to come, if our country is controlled by the wrong people, it can continue to damage the world.

As for the news and social media - agree. I was surprised that even the Washington post (if I recall) wrote in support of the raid. But it’s also bizarre seeing X listed in app stores as a “news” app, where it had climbed to the top spot in most countries. Considering it is overrun by far right types, I am not comfortable with where it is leading the world.
by michaelt | 2026-01-05 20:48:37+00:00
The second secret to getting promoted is working at a company that's growing.

If you're at a 50 employee company that grows to 250 employees there will be many empty team leader positions. And what you lack in hands-on management experience you make up for in knowledge of the business, its products/processes, and being a reliable known quantity. That extra responsibility will turn into more money fast.

On the other hand, if the company's headcount is largely stable and the employee turnover low? Well, there might not be an empty position until someone a level above you resigns, retires or gets fired. And when that happens - you're probably not the only ambitious person at your level. In this case, the payoff from extra effort is much less certain.
by array_key_first | 2026-01-05 20:49:04+00:00
I don't think slave labor is good or desirable, but I do think that, obviously, that's not exploitative for the slaver. The slaver is not the one being exploited in that relationship.

I just don't see how they're a strain on us, like, at all. And I actually live in Texas. Yes there's a lot of theories and conjecture, but I think most of it is, frankly, made up.

It's trivial, truly trivial, to eradicate illegal immigration for good. Just make a law where if you hire an illegal immigrant, your executives go to jail. The problem would solve itself expiditiously.

But the GOP would never propose anything close to that, because they don't want to reduce illegal immigrantation. They don't. It's one of their greatest vectors of exploitation and one of the few factors that makes some red states economically viable.

So, if you're operating under the assumption ANY of this is for the purpose of reducing illegal immigration, you've been conned.
by neilv | 2026-01-05 20:49:19+00:00
Besides that, is YC building new trust?

One recent concern I have is (anecdotally) how poor a deal YC startups I've seen are offering for founding engineers.

Before YC started, early hires who helped make a startup successful could get rich on stock.

YC may have changed the investment scene for the better in some ways, such that founders are less likely to screwed by investors. But today, early hires are the ones who seem to be getting screwed.

In cases I've seen recently, even if the startup has a nice exit for founders and investors, employees would have been better off as a worker drone at a FAANG-like.

Do we need PG to write an essay (or the richest managing partners to make a video), about the value of incentivizing early hires?

Or, don't even talk about the value of it (since some aspiring founders are aggressively confident now, that they know how all the ducks are lined up), but talk about new criteria: YC looks for a respectable pool to incentivize early hires as positive signal, when determining who to fund.
by dpark | 2026-01-05 20:49:31+00:00
This is a doubly dishonest question.

It’s dishonest firstly for intending to invoke moral outrage rather than actual discussion. This is like someone chiming into a conversation about swimming pool safety by saying “How many children drowning is acceptable?” This is not a real question. It’s a rhetorical device to mute discussion because the emotional answer is zero. No one wants any children drowning. But in reality we do accept some children drowning in exchange for general availability of swimming pools and we all know it.

This is secondly dishonest because the person you are replying to was specifically talking about murder-suicides associated with LLM chatbots and you reframed it as a question about all murder-suicides. Obviously there is no number of murder-suicides that anyone wants, but that has nothing to do with whether ChatGPT actually causes murder-suicides.
by wyre | 2026-01-05 20:49:45+00:00
Wages for doctors and staff are not the cause of high medical bills.

The US spends something like $4.9 trillion dollars on medical care, and employs around 1 million physicians, 4.5 million nurses, or 9.8 million health care workers in total [1].

If this was paid out in wages the average health care worker would be make almost $500k/year. Compare that to the wage of the average doctor at $335k/year [2] or average nurse at under $100k/year. There is a lot of money in medical care that is not going to wages.

[1]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/who-are-our-h...

[2]https://www1.salary.com/Doctor-Salary.html
by foresto | 2026-01-05 20:49:47+00:00
That doesn't align with their choice of $HOME/.cache (to which users need to navigate much less frequently than $HOME/.local/share), nor with how few items $HOME/.local typically saves from landing in $HOME, nor with the normally hidden state of everything starting with a dot.

So if that was their reasoning, it reinforces my view that they didn't think their design through very well.
by tjr | 2026-01-05 20:50:20+00:00
As a semi-professional musician, sounds fair to me.

You wrote the lyrics. There are professional songwriters with many hit songs who only write lyrics. Some can't even play an instrument, much less compose music. So what do they do? They work with a music composer. They hire a music arranger. They hire a band.

So in this case, you still did the foundational songwriting part yourself, but instead of hiring humans to help you finish it, you hired AI.
by bell-cot | 2026-01-05 20:50:23+00:00
Not a word about America's existing drone-manufacturing capabilities, nor names of manufacturers the gov't hopes will move/expand in domestic drone production, nor mention of the lead times/tooling/workforce training that might be needed to do so, nor...

Well...there's a reason it's called the Financial Times. Probably doesn't help that the FT is based in the once-great manufacturing graveyard known as the UK.
by lacoolj | 2026-01-05 20:50:46+00:00
It sort of feels like GPT models could loop the chats into thinking/reasoning that has a quick check for "is this a minor trying to talk to me" and "is this person in need of mental help", etc.

Dangerous precedent to set (when does it end, what qualifies as "necessary", who pays for the extra processing, etc) but with stories like this, worth consideration at the very least.
by stevenwoo | 2026-01-05 20:50:47+00:00
To put it simply - restricting a woman's right to birth control or abortion is restricting a woman's freedom. They can couch it in religious terms but that is the simplest way to demonstrate it.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5494710/trump-birth-con...
In states with the GOP controls both houses of legislature and governor, the restrictions against abortion in cases of incest or rape or the obscene combination of the two show exactly where the United States is headed federally.
by marcosdumay | 2026-01-05 20:50:54+00:00
> And there are so many cases in both where scale beats unit quality

In human economics, scale and quality usually come together, not in competition.

But of course, you follow into military examples. Those are really not as clear cut as you put.

Stalin's quantity soon stopped being plentiful because of neglect. Roman military was strong because of advanced techniques and the willingness to throw the status-quo away if it stopped working, often winning even when outnumbered. German WWII tanks were a joke, incapable of working in any real situation.

And the economical one, on Chinese solar panels, I recommend you reevaluate their quality and manufacturing conditions.
by mikepurvis | 2026-01-05 20:50:56+00:00
I guess so, yeah, though that sounds like that's a whole separate ecosystem, and positions itself as a direct competitor:

https://goteleport.com/compare/tailscale-alternative/

OTOH, a lot of people who think they need a VPN really just need tunneling and authenticated access, so I can see the pitch for why Teleport's offering is a fit for many users who would otherwise consider tailscale.
by ux266478 | 2026-01-05 20:50:56+00:00
I'm not sure I agree with this specific reasoning. Consider this, any given image viewer can display CSAM. Is it a CSAM viewer? Do you have a moral responsibility to make it refuse to display CSAM? We can extend it to anything from graphics APIs, to data storage, etc.

There's a line we have to define that I don't think really exists yet, nor is it supported by our current mental frameworks. To that end, I think it's just more sensible to simply forbid it in this context without attempting to ground it. I don't think there's any reason to rationalize it at all.
by huhkerrf | 2026-01-05 20:51:10+00:00
Is this the same publication that reported on the post without any hedge whatsoever?

Yes, it was: https://www.theverge.com/transportation/853018/a-developer-f...

"A developer for a ‘major food delivery app’ says the ‘algorithms are rigged against you."

"There’s some debate as to whether the claims are as bad as the OP makes them seem, but it seems like there’s general agreement that the gist of the post is legit."

And, yet, they don't even mention it in their original post. They haven't issued a correction. Isn't this journalism 101?
by ryandrake | 2026-01-05 20:51:11+00:00
Accounts are free to make, so bad actors will just create and "season/age" accounts until they have the ability to flag, then rinse and repeat.

I think the biggest thing HN could do to stop this problem is to not make flagging affect an article's ranking until after a human mod reviews the flags and determines them to be appropriate. Right now, all bad actors apparently have to do is be quick on the draw, and get their flagging ring in action ASAP. I'm sure any company's PR team (or motivated Elon worshiper) can buy "100 HN flags on an article" on the dark web right now if they wanted to.
by Bjartr | 2026-01-05 20:51:13+00:00
> The fundamental thing in question here is what makes Beauty beautiful

GUIs are tools first and art second.

Any GUI that looks good, but gets in the way, or fails to make the task at hand easy is not a good GUI.

The books and research are about making GUIs functional in an effective way. No one is claiming that a GUI that follows all the principles will look good. However it will make the task at hand easier to perform than it otherwise would be.

The problem is when people in charge of GUIs focus exclusively on Graphic Design instead of UI design. They are different fields, with different goals that only sometimes overlap.