MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by magicalhippo | 2026-01-04 01:20:50+00:00
The well known XY problem[1].

I spent years on IRC, first getting help and later helping others. I found out myself it was very useful to ask such questions when someone I didn't know asked a somewhat unusual question.

The key is that if you're going to probe for Y, you usually need to be fairly experienced yourself so you can detect the edge cases, where the other person has a good reason.

One approach I usually ended up going for when it appeared the other person wasn't a complete newbie was to first explain that I think they're trying to solve the wrong problem or otherwise going against the flow, and that there's probably some other approach that's much better.

Then I'd follow up with something like "but if you really want to proceed down this rrack, this is how I'd go about it", along with my suggestion.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
by JustinXie | 2026-01-04 01:21:15+00:00
This workflow (extracting -> transcribing -> curating) is increasingly vital.

We are seeing a massive amount of domain knowledge being locked inside "un-indexable" video containers or walled gardens like Discord and TikTok. Ten years from now, a search query won't find that brilliant explanation on a niche topic unless someone like you pulled it out and put it on the open web.

It's effectively acting as a bridge between the ephemeral algorithmic feed and the permanent archival web.
by vbezhenar | 2026-01-04 01:21:34+00:00
> Where do people go to ask real humans novel technical questions these days?

I don't think such generic place exists. I just do my own research or abandon the topic. I think that in big companies you probably could use some internal chats or just ask some smart guy directly? I don't have that kind of connections and all online communities are full of people whose skill is below mine, so it makes little sense to ask something. I still do sometimes, but rarely receive competent answer.

If you have some focused topic like a question about small program, of course you can just use github issues or email author directly. But if you have some open question, probably SO is the only generic platform out there.

To put it differently, find some experts and ask which online place to the visit to help strangers. Most likely they just don't do it.

So for me, personally, LLMs are the saviour. With enough forth and back I can research any topic that doesn't require very deep expertise. Sure, access to an actual expert willing to guide me would be better, but I just don't have that luxury.
by JustinXie | 2026-01-04 01:22:09+00:00
A common thread among the top blogs listed here (Geerling, SimonW, rachelbythebay, etc.) is a distinct lack of "growth hacking" or AI-generated filler.

In an era where search results are flooded with SEO-optimized slop, these blogs have become trusted nodes primarily because they verify their own reality. Whether it's Jeff physically plugging in a PCIe card or Rachel debugging a weird server issue, the value proposition is "I actually did this thing, and here is what happened."

It seems the best SEO strategy for 2025 is simply proving you are a human doing actual work.
by irishcoffee | 2026-01-04 01:22:59+00:00
Better late than never, I don’t know if you’ll see this. He started investing well before people started giving him money. Like, decades.

Wikipedia page on Buffett:

At 11, he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for himself, and three for his sister Doris Buffett (who also became a philanthropist).[20][21][22] At 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly (equivalent to $3,057 in 2024) delivering Washington Post newspapers. In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer.[23] He bought the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 (equivalent to $21,434 in 2024) of his savings.[23] By the time he graduated from college, Buffett had amassed $9,800 in savings (equivalent to $129,511 in 2024).[18]
by vaindil | 2026-01-04 01:23:51+00:00
(1997) is in the title to differentiate it from the 2024 remake of the game; "Riven (1997)" is the typical way it's written. It's slightly ambiguous at a quick glance on HN because of how publishing years are commonly added to titles, but given that the year in the HN title isn't at the end, it seems clear enough.
by quotemstr | 2026-01-04 01:24:19+00:00
Yeah, the OpenSSL CLI sucks. So what's to be done?

Sure, we can build a 25519-specific tool with a less footgun-y interface. Fine, whatever, for that one use case.

Or we can build an alternative OpenSSL CLI that explodes OpenSSL and its numerous useful features in a general way and helps fix lots of use cases.
by xdennis | 2026-01-04 01:24:19+00:00
That would be the UN. The last time the UN invaded a nation was in 1950. That happened because the Soviet Union boycotted the UN, so it wasn't able to veto it.

For the UN to ever fix a international issue it would require that country to anger all 5 UN powers. Venezuela has Russia and China on its side, so nothing would have happened.
by nebula8804 | 2026-01-04 01:24:49+00:00
When this happened during the Bush years I saw a lot of the a same behavior. All these people shut right up when the economy crashed, they went and hid in their caves for a year or so until they pivoted towards hating the Black guy (Obama). The reason being they finally felt a bit of the pain. When the inevitable crash comes from this era, they will all go back into hiding for a while.

Unfortunately this behavior has been a part of a portion of the country for a long time and we will be dealing with these people for the rest of our lives. EU, Canada and the rest talk a big talk about making moves to disconnect from the US. It would be nice to have independent democracies that can take up the mantle if things here need time to correct themselves.
by dghlsakjg | 2026-01-04 01:24:55+00:00
He said it then, he said it now, everyone else in the know is saying it. Trump has openly declared his intent to go after numerous other country’s mineral and oil resources leveraging military force if necessary. (Ukraine, Canada, Denmark off the top of my head). Why should I think that a man who sees everything through the lens of power and money has not just made a power and money play after spending a year promising to do just that.

I don’t doubt that other motivations exist. I do not think that the US would have gone after them if they did not have oil. I do not think the US government would be crowing about all the money they will finally be able to make with oil, if that wasn’t a motivation.
by bangaladore | 2026-01-04 01:25:49+00:00
Your "substance" is "trust Apple will enforce something correctly where there isn't a correct answer". I don't agree with that. Apple has a history of interpreting things favorably for themselves and locking 3rd parties from doing the same things for wave hands reasons.

If you are going to make guidelines, make them evaluable. These aren't. If you care about memory safety, either say use a memory safe language or point to an exact reference guide to use to allow XYZ language to satisfy it.
by rustyben | 2026-01-04 01:25:50+00:00
Location: Boston, MA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: C++, Rust, Python, SLAM, 3D Mapping, Robotics, Mission Planning

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-klein-341b02116/

Email: ben@b4ri.org

I have considerable experience with both greenfield projects and breathing new life into legacy code through careful testing and refactoring. Experienced with SLAM and robotics but consider myself a generalist at heart. Open to many kinds of challenges in the c++/Rust world.
Primarily interested in contract work.
by vips7L | 2026-01-04 01:26:08+00:00
Kotlin doesn’t feel right to me either. I did a portion of AoC in it this year and it was surprisingly more verbose than I expected. I think the thing I liked the least was trailing lambda syntax combined with how verbose it was to define variables with types.

It also inherits all of the bad parts of the JVM. Crappy build tooling (gradle), and then the slow startup and high memory usage.
by rkeene2 | 2026-01-04 01:26:30+00:00
It seems like we should not invade another sovereign country unless we are at war -- a weighty process we should undergo because it's how the will of the people manifest in power.

The US isn't a participant to the ICC, so I'm not sure what exactly your implication is... ?

I do not think we should invade Israel and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of that country should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't think China should invade the US and kidnap it's leader. I believe the people of the US should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't believe the US should invade Venezuela and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of Venezuela should self-govern within their sovereign rights.
by rapidfl | 2026-01-04 01:28:14+00:00
> SO was by far the leading source of high quality answers to technical questions

We will arrive on most answers by talking to an LLM. Many of us have an idea about we want. We relied on SO for some details/quirks/gotchas.

Example of a common SO question: how to do x in a library or language or platform? Maybe post on the Github for that lib. Or forums.. there are quirky systems like Salesforce or Workday which have robust forums. Where the forums are still much more effective than LLMs.
by m463 | 2026-01-04 01:28:14+00:00
Too bad stack overflow didn't high-quality-LLM itself early. I assume it had the computer-related brainpower.

with respect to the "moderation is the cause" thing... Although I also don't buy moderation as the cause, I wonder if any sort of friction from the "primary source of data" can cause acceleration.

for example, when I'm doing an interenet search for the definition of a word like buggywhip, some search results from the "primary source" show:

> buggy whip, n. meanings, etymology and more | Oxford English Dictionary

> Factsheet What does the noun buggy whip mean? There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun buggy whip. See 'Meaning & use' for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

which are non-answer to keep their traffic.

but the AI answer is... the answer.

If SO early on had had some clear AI answer + references, I think that would have kept people on their site.
by the_florist | 2026-01-04 01:28:26+00:00
https://flowery.app/books – An e-book reader and library of selected classics from Standard Ebooks.

I’m working on the table-stakes feature of persistence for the bookmark widget, which currently appears after navigating away from a chapter (notably when looking up words in the dictionary on mobile), but is lost upon closing the app. Synchronizing the bookmark location across devices is a bit tricky because of reflow depending on screen size.

I’m also toying with design ideas for a book’s unread/reading/read/abandoned states, particularly how to incorporate them in the shelf/stack UI of the library.
by amluto | 2026-01-04 01:28:49+00:00
Or maybe CXMT is not dumb? If the worldwide price of some commodity is $100 and you can produce an item that is nearly as good as everyone else’s, would you sell it for $98 or for $50?

Or the supply of non-CXMT DRAM is sufficient poor right now that Chinese buyers, of which there are plenty, are willing to pay approximately as much for CXMT’s product as for anyone else’s?

CXMT’s real ability to reduce prices will come (if it does) by adding enough supply to drive down prices everywhere, or at least everywhere that is willing to import CXMT’s products without absurd tariffs.
by primitivesuave | 2026-01-04 01:28:51+00:00
Thanks for sharing! I used to teach students to build ML algorithms from scratch (everything from Markov chains to multilayer perceptrons and convolution neural networks) - I rewrote some of my notes in TypeScript here:

1. https://github.com/keshavsaharia/numbers/blob/dev/lib/nn/neu...

2. https://github.com/keshavsaharia/numbers/blob/dev/lib/cnn/cn... (still working on the visualization)

Hope you find these useful in your own learning journey!
by nospice | 2026-01-04 01:28:56+00:00
Some folks might enjoy writing for the sake of writing. But I'd wager they don't enjoy, say, enjoy plumbing for the sake of plumbing? When their toilet is clogged, they call a pro and don't treat it as a journey of personal growth.

I think this works both ways. A plumber doesn't enjoy writing. It's something they might need to do from now and then, but if you give them a magic box that solves the problem, they're gonna be overjoyed. One less chore.

Plumbing or writing, I don't think you can convince people not to take shortcuts by telling them "but the fact it's hard is what makes it worthwhile for you!"
by itsthecourier | 2026-01-04 01:30:14+00:00
so I was running a SVN server in a decommissioned PC somewhere in a startup as an intern. whole company ends up using it and out of nowhere it used to freeze, I would go to check if it had rebooted or crashed and everything was fine.

it fixed by itself, without any fixes from my part. happened many times.

asked for help to a senior, guy ran strace and found a read waiting in /dev/random. and of course it solved by itself any time I checked because I was moving the mouse!

controversially but acceptably, we had linked it to urandom and move on

how fast that guy used strace and analyzed the syscalls inspired me to be better at linux
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-04 01:30:25+00:00
> It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges.

Invading a foreign country with military force is a war even if the purpose is to effect an arrest. And when the President claims that the intent is also that the US will run the country afterwards, its even more clearly a war.

> In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama

Congress had already exercised its power to declare war with an open-ended declaration almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, which covered the operation direct against the head of al-Qaeda.

https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-01-04 01:31:37+00:00
The subtlety of Trump is a "self-stabilizing" meme?

Brutality only to outsiders-- see how he handled Mamdani face to face. Like 2 lions ?

https://youtube.com/shorts/dV8wsaaY0oQ

I'm sceptical of directly "transpiling" lessons from history-- & in general I find that Austrians are full of it* (sorry! It does feel like they are on the elitist end of the populist-elitist divide)

*Earnings

Ps:
>Be the change yo want to see

It's Gandhi's saying that needs (more) elab :) I'll be that hypocrite and leave you to it

E- 1974 Lorrance

https://jenniferlphillips.com/blog/2021/2/24/origin-story-be...

>We but mirror the world

>However, the passage was written in the explicit context of animal attacks.
by hollerith | 2026-01-04 01:31:40+00:00
>Domestic crude oil is mostly not compatible with US refineries

The oil produced in Texas is easy to refine. Some of it is exported as crude, and an approximately equal amount of heavy crude is imported because US refiners have a competitive advantage in refining it. It is not that US refiners cannot refine Texas crude: they make more money refining the heavy stuff or stuff with a high load of contaminants.

>Why would you buy oil from Canada when you can take oil from Venezuela?

But the US is not going to take it, just like they never took oil from Iraq after conquering that country. The value of all the oil produced worldwide in 2023 was about $1.7 trillion. Of course it cost a lot of money to extract the oil. That year the IRS collected over $4.7 trillion in tax revenue. The US government has easier ways of getting money than invading oil-rich countries.

The US does not want any country or economy in the Western Hemisphere to be stragically dependent on Russia or China, so kicking Chinese or Russians out of the oil industry in Venezuela might have been one goal of the current military action.
by coderintherye | 2026-01-04 01:31:50+00:00
https://bebopblop.com - Social media with just the fun parts

Here's some invite codes to try it out if interested:
TATN0MCM3
KVLNLU7WQ
WRWQJSWIU
LQXRX73BN
96AO5PQVF

Took a break from social media and realized most of the fun comes from serendipity and having a place to share thoughts that get replied to with positivity. So humans just see posts by agents as well as replies agents make (to both other agents and humans). Also first project done in conjunction with Codex CLI. It's been fun to build and play with.
by tguvot | 2026-01-04 01:32:10+00:00
i was pointing out that diplomatic immunity (of head of state) that you mention is trashed by ICC warrants (in countries who are party to it. i.e. good chunk of europe).

so, in the moment that something as basic as diplomatic immunity can be violated by warrants for investigation (not for trial), invading another country to arrest somebody based on warrants that you had issued domestically is not that big of leap
by throw1235435 | 2026-01-04 01:33:01+00:00
Not sure. As software becomes a commodity I can see the "old school" like tech slowing down (e.g. programming languages, frameworks frontend and backend, etc). The need for a better programming language is less now since LLM's are the ones writing code anyway more so these days - the pain isn't felt necessarily by the writer of the code to be more concise/expressive. The ones that do come out will probably have more specific communities for them (e.g. AI)
by el_jay | 2026-01-04 01:33:04+00:00
“Never”? Not once in the Story of Us has any dispute between large groups of humans been resolved by anything other than a superior application of brute force? Strong claim, but I’ll run with it.

And you appear to believe this is a pretext for humans to ignore their own laws and commit atrocities, when they could choose otherwise.

It may be reality that jungle law is currently how humans almost always handle conflict at nation-state scale. Non sequitur that it should remain so.
by Forgeties79 | 2026-01-04 01:33:25+00:00
Seriously where will we get this info anymore? I’ve depended on it for decades. No matter how obscure, I could always find a community that was talking about something I needed solved. I feel like that’s getting harder and harder every year. The balkanization of the Internet + garbage AI slop blogs overwhelming the clearly declining Google is a huge problem.
Ask HN: Reading list for being a better engineer?
by drekipus | 2026-01-04 01:33:35+00:00
I'm looking for some books to help me practise and refine my skills as a developer and Engineer.

I'm currently working in python on a django project, working in a financial domain. I lead a few engineers and direct/manage some projects. But I feel like I'm missing out on something when I read about people making things in zig and rust, or how they apply some numerical modelling techniques to certain problems, plus the new technologies being developed. I feel like I'm very much not knowledgeable or distinguishable enough, so I want to refine my skill a bit and maintain "sharp" in case of something happening and i need to find a new job quickly. And i want to make sure that I'm learning all that I could be learning in my current position.

Some previous books I've read / enjoyed:

* The makings of an Expert Engineer
* Designing data intensive applications (haven't finished, moved house and lost the book, want to pick it up again)
* Designing Elixir Systems with OTP
* Practical Common Lisp

I feel like I have learned a bit with the Elixir/CL books, inwhich I apply to how i write python, but I never branch out to doing my own projects in these languages, so I feel like I'm missing out on utilizing these tools fully.

Is there anything to read that could take me to the proverbial next level?
by edgineer | 2026-01-04 01:33:51+00:00
I see Google's AI and top results all give this answer, but "MIGA" most certainly does not refer to India in this or most contexts, but to Israel. It is a criticism of Trump's pro-Israel actions, and presumably Google recognizes its anti-semitic usage and so will not suggest that as an answer unprompted.

I'm pointing this out specifically because I'm surprised to see that Google and also DuckDuckGo both suppress the true definition if you don't already know it.
by 1121redblackgo | 2026-01-04 01:34:26+00:00
Seems like our leaders laundered our money through the US military and government apparatus, to the tunes of billions of dollars, so that they could carry out the dirty work of overthrowing the Venezuelan government in order to enrich Exxon and other oil companies. That's our money doing this. My money doing this. Boomers are cooked, man.
by gezilinll | 2026-01-04 01:34:33+00:00
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by dagmx | 2026-01-04 01:34:38+00:00
This article is just Gruber being incapable of saying “I was wrong”

He’s reaching to try and find any leeway to say it was AI based on the words the artist used.

But then he ends with “well it sucks anyway”

Dude, just say “my bad” and “it’s not to my tastes”. You don’t need to double down so hard.
by braiamp | 2026-01-04 01:35:53+00:00
No, I'm blaming the ills of humanity on humanity. Capitalism isn't a system that existed till... like 180 years ago. The industrial revolution didn't happen when "capitalism" as a concept existed. Capitalism existed in the time that Marx was alive. Also, I'm muddling concepts? No, the public doesn't know crap about this stuff. I studied 6 years economics, so I have become very annoyed when people call communism or socialism to countries that were neither just because their governants called themselves such.

Read any good book about history of economic theory and thought, you will see that the crap that people talk about on tv and the internet isn't even near with what actual academics study.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-04 01:36:52+00:00
Yep, hn@ycombinator.com

I'm not sure that the first one is a bot, probably a non-native speaker that use weird constructions. [Hi from Argentina!]

I don't think the second is a bot neither, just someone I disagree in many comments.

Looking at both comments histories, I'd expect that normal users will flag many of those comments, without the necessity of bots.

I guess account with too many negative of flagged post are highlighted to review by dang/tomhow but send an email to them so they can take a look.
by caconym_ | 2026-01-04 01:37:31+00:00
a) The vast, overwhelming majority of regular gamers who could potentially be convinced to try gaming on Linux truly do not give a shit about whatever line you're trying to draw here.

b) Driving widespread adoption of gaming on Linux is a chicken and egg problem---without a significant market of Linux gamers, developers and publishers have no reason to publish native versions of their games on Linux, and without games to play, nobody is going to install Linux on their gaming system. Proton directly solves the latter problem, and may indirectly solve the former when Linux sees widespread adoption by gamers.