MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by arpinum | 2026-01-29 09:52:50+00:00
TUV inspection failures are not a good indication of reliability. The lack of Tesla dealers and no need for yearly servicing means issues get caught at the inspection step for Tesla where for others they are caught at the pre-inspection step.

Also, you need a breakdown of the failures as wear and consumables (washer fluid low, splits in wipers, headlight alignment, mobile phone holder in wrong location) can be a failure but would not be a good indicator for lack of quality.
by user34283 | 2026-01-29 09:53:23+00:00
It's not so much that I love giving 30% to Apple, and more that there is no way to move your business elsewhere because Apple monopolizes mobile app distribution.

And the other half of the mobile app market is monopolized by Google who copies the pricing model while delivering even worse (if any) service to developers.

It's either getting out of mobile apps or paying up.

This is not going to change without drastic steps by regulators, which both Apple and Google fight tooth and nail.
by dmos62 | 2026-01-29 09:54:05+00:00
Really cool. Alexander Grooff (this is based on his go library [0]) did a great job.

[0]: https://github.com/AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii

I think I ran into a bug, the "start" edge is not rendered. This is from https://agents.craft.do/mermaid:

stateDiagram-v2
[*] --> Idle
Idle --> Active : start
Active --> Idle : cancel
Active --> Done : complete
Done --> [*]

┌──────────┐
│ │
│ │
│ │
└─────┬────┘
│
│
│
│
▼
┌──────────┐
│ │
│ Idle │
│ │
└─────┬────┘
▲
│
cancel
│
▼
┌─────┴────┐
│ │
│ Active │
│ │
└─────┬────┘
│
│
complete
│
▼
┌──────────┐
│ │
│ Done │
│ │
└─────┬────┘
│
│
│
│
▼
┌──────────┐
│ │
│ │
│ │
└──────────┘
Show HN: ButterflAI – turn 1 product photo into optimized ecommerce listing
by enric1296 | 2026-01-29 09:54:20+00:00
Hi HN, I’m Enric. I built ButterflAI to help e-commerce teams keep product pages fresh without doing constant shoots or manual copy updates.

What it does?

- Upload 1 product photo (or connect a Shopify store).
- Generates a small set of product visuals (clean + lifestyle-style) and a short product video.
- Updates product listing content (title/description/metafields) to improve SEO and conversion.

Why I built it?

I kept seeing teams stuck between "expensive shoots" and "stale pages". I wanted a workflow that’s fast, consistent with brand guidelines, and usable for real stores (not mockups).

Why its different?
Because it’s not a general-purpose image generator. It’s built specifically for e-commerce product assets.

It produces the exact formats stores need (clean PDP shots, detail/angle views, before/after sets, and product infographics), with consistency across a whole catalog.

I’d love feedback on:
1. Are the generated visuals actually usable for PDPs/ads?
2. What would make you trust the output (brand controls, review flow, provenance)?
3. What’s the minimum "control surface" you need (style presets, negative prompts, rules)?

If you prefer the Shopify app listing: https://apps.shopify.com/butterflai

Thanks!
by cookiengineer | 2026-01-29 09:54:23+00:00
Within the EU, there is a law that mandates accessibility without a smartphone. The banks will sell you some proprietary dotcode scanners then which are all manufactured by the same crappy UK company (as a sidenote).

But the upside is: they work offline, and makes your 2FA app unhackable because it's not an app and instead a physically separate device.

If you're as serious about your opsec as I am, I heavily recommend to not use apps on smartphones for banking.
by TuringNYC | 2026-01-29 09:54:45+00:00
I cant speak to all this, but as an American doing a lot of work in London, wow transportation is incredibly great. Shockingly impressive. Traveling to London, and getting around London, and doing a lot of meetings in a small trip, is easier than anywhere in the US now because of how beautifully their transit system works (despite occasional delays which can be expected.)

The rollout of the Elizabeth Line from Heathrow airport is also eye-opening. In NYC we speak about new subways lines with hundred-year plans (recall the 2nd ave subway extension) but in London the smoothly operating Elizabeth Line seemed to be introduced out of thin air.
by djeastm | 2026-01-29 09:55:14+00:00
For me it's a general feel of the style, but something about this stands out:

>We're not against AI tools. We use them constantly. What we're against is the idea that using them well is a strategy. It's a baseline.

The short, staccato sentences seem to be overused by AI. Real people tend to ramble a bit more often.
by pjmlp | 2026-01-29 09:55:22+00:00
It made sense in the early days, phone operators were charging up to 90% for the infrastucture to send an SMS, and get a download link to a J2ME/Windows CE/Pocket PC/Symbian/Palm/Blackberry download link to install the app.

So everyone raced to the iOS app store, it was only 30%, what a great deal!

The problem is that two decades later it is no longer that great deal in mobile duopoly world.
by pipo234 | 2026-01-29 09:56:00+00:00
Very good point, though I believe it's both market push and consumer expectation.

Because we have such limited control over our devices, they effectively provide the security of a jail locking down what users can do. That is appealing from a healthcare or banking perspective because it obfuscates the client-server API and gives exact control over the UI. As a bonus, the coffee chain gets to glean lots of details from your phone that would be unavailable in a browser.

As individuals we can do little more that push back: don't let yourself be trapped by coffee chains (go to a different one) and bother your bank's service line about having to use their app. The rest is up to government intervention, I fear.
by pmontra | 2026-01-29 09:56:31+00:00
Companies with an IT department, maybe. Companies without IT, not much. People, nope.

I can't see my neighbors opening ports on their switch. What's a switch, to start with. And what happens when they change provider and switch next month?

It's much easier to tell them: I install two boxes. One is the camera (or whatever), the other one is necessary to make the camera work properly, keep it online, don't switch it off.
by danny0z | 2026-01-29 09:57:19+00:00
It can generate a Visual Studio project, then use the xmake CLI to integrate and compile the project, and supports debugging and IntelliSense.

https://xmake.io/guide/extensions/builtin-plugins.html#gener...

C++ Modules examples:

https://xmake.io/examples/cpp/cxx-modules.html

https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake/tree/dev/tests/projects/c%...
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-01-29 09:57:25+00:00
Ah oops public salaryman (maybe even from recent samurai lineages)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanbetsu#:~:text=Sanbetsu%20wa...

(reminded from the Greek poli-cleavage)

While you work out your endpoints, I'd like to make use of another (contrived) contranym to troll "SV"

For a (compassionate) mensch to specialise in sharp-bigotry, all it takes is the temptation of upper-mid joy

(After Steve Weinberg)

Does that a model of a Linebarger steamroller by it's very schleppiness make?
by roryirvine | 2026-01-29 09:58:35+00:00
It's actually the role of Police and Crime Commissioner that prevents them from being an MP simultaneously. In Greater Manchester (and London) the PCC role is combined with that of Mayor, but it isn't in most other city regions.

There's not much actual difference in the mayoral aspect of the roles - Jarvis was the Mayor of the South Yorkshire Combined Authority, not simply the mayor of Sheffield City Council.
by cyxxon | 2026-01-29 09:58:54+00:00
Is it cheating, though? I find it is more like bringing the games difficulty down to an acceptable level. I enjoy puzzle games, but often the puzzles boil down to combining everything in your inventory with everything in the game world (in LucasArts terms). That can simply be unfun for some of us in a game we otherwise enjoy. A variant of this is that I would e.g. enjoy open world-ish action combat fantasy games, but I really do not find the Souls like loop of git gud compelling at all, so I... basically don't play these games. But AA or AAA fantasy action games with this kind of presentation are (at the moment) basically only Souls like, so... yeah, great. At least for puzzle games I can "cheat" if one of the puzzles is simply illogical for my way of thinking, so I can skip over that part and go back to enjoying the rest of the game...
by pjerem | 2026-01-29 09:59:09+00:00
Interesting read.

Actually I also think that email mailbox interfaces are shitty in general, including for emails.

For me, IM apps solved the problem correctly : one thread per contact. The thread goes up when something new happens. You can easily block contacts.

My mailbox sorted by date is a total mess. Having everything grouped by sender email would automatically make it tidy.
by theGeatZhopa | 2026-01-29 09:59:52+00:00
It's not only get them out of the office, it's also about law and order and punishment for everything unlawful done.

But there's still a question: is they allowed to do so or does they allow it to do so themselves? I think it's the first one. The whole country did nothing about taxing, about threatening other countries, and everything what is happening.. if it were not allowed to do so, they surely would have full blown sails, but against the direction of travel.

A protest is allowed. All others seem to also allow them to do exactly what they do. The grands and bigs do nothing. Large part of society even supports it. I don know. But I call 'democracy'! It can be good, it can be bad. May be it's ending right now. It's the way of the demos to cracy their own ways, now.
by pm90 | 2026-01-29 10:00:37+00:00
What do you mean “hiding it”? Are you suggesting Chinas manufacturing capacity is entirely fraudulent or cooking the books? Or that the state is providing subsidies? Because if its the latter… have you seen the brouhaha over Amazon HQ2? Or seen the number of tax credits/incentives doled out by US cities to companies that “promise” jobs but don’t even deliver them? (but keep their subsidies).
Show HN: Small demo of AI for finding common ground on divisive topics
by danv_vdx | 2026-01-29 10:01:42+00:00
Hey HN,

The AI that's becoming ubiquitous (and a bit forced) could be used to help people and communities - things like countering polarized media, helping people get involved in civic life, and coordinating collective action.

I built an app that's a small step/experiment in that direction; it uses Ai to help people find common ground on divisive topics.
It's not sticky at all, just a demo of using this thing as a personal lite-mediator.

The origin: My partner and I were stuck debating corrupt countries at an airport. Turns out we were using different definitions of corruption - we were both right actually, but couldn't see it. That began the first clear 'app idea'. (That's where the name came from: b'right = both right)

What the app does:

- Two people enter their perspectives on a topic (or use "Listen In" to speak it)
- AI searches the web for context
- Returns common ground + nuanced additions to each view, with sources
- Use when needed (maybe once a month... maybe extended family gatherings), not daily

You can try it free: I cover 100 uses per day globally (one per device), so there's always free access. After your free use, 20c per topic (no subscription).

Technical details:

- No login, no tracking, no conversation storage (unless you flag a response)
- Stripe payments (Revolut Pay available)
- 25% of revenue → carbon offsets (carbon negative)
- Export as PDF (no app-install spam)
- Live on EU Play Store, global expansion soon

EU Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vadix.beri...

The broader context on why I was interested to make this app, is the social service angle above.

What could AI as public infrastructure look like, and how might it work?
That's the kind of discussion/feedback I'd love to get. The app is a nice idea, but it's a proof of that concept more than anything.

Looking for feedback:
- Does this idea resonate?
- Any other use cases for this concept?
- How would you increase impact in this scenario?

Thanks for reading.
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-29 10:02:23+00:00
I do the opposite (eg, I read HN via RSS), and definitely don't want to see all of the content.

My reader (newsboat) is good at showing items at-most-once, and (at least the way I use it) punts to a browser to display content on the rare occasions I have further interest. Does this count as sufficiently-non-email-clienty for TFA's purposes?
by roysting | 2026-01-29 10:02:31+00:00
This may just be more of a design and communications challenge for you, than your users. I have seen several design templates that use various forms of visuals to assist the user through the “add to Home Screen” process, which is just three steps; Share—-> More —-> Add to Home Screen. It Is arguably even a faster process than going through the App Store, even if users may be more familiar with it.

You could accompany it with some copy explaining how it keeps the service efficient and affordable, i.e., possible stating if you were to offer an app you would have to increase the price by 75% to pay Apple their fee and for the extra costs.

I suspect other arguments for PWAs would not really matter, like that you have no need to track them or use other abilities an app affords, etc. Most people only care about very few things engineers actually care, let alone know about.

I’ve always been an advocate of PWAs whenever it makes sense and will even design and architect to that objective. But even when I would deal with clients, I think the real “up hill battle” is that apps allow for higher fees and charges because they’re more work and come with greater expenses for for-profit apps, so there has been very little incentive to spread general user awareness about the “add to Home Screen”/PWA.

It’s a bit of a paradox, but I guess that seems to be an under-appreciated driver in something like “advanced consumer capitalist economies”, where the “rational actor” simply does not exist anymore.
by numpad0 | 2026-01-29 10:02:58+00:00
Painted metallic chassis of a car is always dipped in car sized acid baths and primer baths. Dipping the whole cars held on a carriage is the only way it's done, anywhere, for any brands, using any metals, even many Ferrari, as well as with many classic car restoration projects. Your cars will be competing with brand new 1960s Fords and Mazdas if you were not doing it in terms of corrosion resistance - unless, I'm guessing, you're making DeLoreans and Cybertrucks.
by duskdozer | 2026-01-29 10:03:57+00:00
The writing style just has several AI-isms; at this point, I don't want to point them out because people are trying to conceal their usage. It's maybe not as blatant as some examples, but it's off-putting by the first couple paragraphs. Anymore, I lose all interest in reading when I notice it.

I would much, much, much rather read an article with imperfect English and mistakes than an LLM-edited article. At least I can get an idea of your thinking style and true meaning. Just as an example - if you were to use a false friend [1], an LLM may not deal with this well and conceal it, whereas if I notice the mistake, I can follow the thought process back to look up what was originally intended.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend
by willtemperley | 2026-01-29 10:04:05+00:00
> It’s reductio ad absurdum

It's not, it's just factually wrong.

If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.

That's reductio ad absurdum.

Lol.
by Perseus_ | 2026-01-29 10:04:45+00:00
Thanks for spending the time with it — I really appreciate that.

You’re right about the difficulty curve. It’s intentionally uneven right now, partly because I wanted to see where people get stuck versus where things feel obvious in hindsight. That “this is actually the easiest level” feeling is especially interesting to me, because it usually means the puzzle relies on a mental shift rather than complexity.

If you’re up for sharing later (even vaguely), I’d love to hear which transition felt the most jarring. Feedback like this is exactly what I was hoping for.
by azornathogron | 2026-01-29 10:04:46+00:00
If you scroll down slightly you get a low contrast button "○
PREFER STILLNESS? READ AS PLAIN TEXT
→", which takes you to a plain text version with a rather patronising introduction that says "You chose the quiet version. No animations. No counters ticking up.
Just words. That's a valid choice."

Edit: to be just slightly nicer about it: having a plain text version is great, that's a really good thing. But the "that's a valid choice" paragraph is unnecessary and just distracts from your actual article. If I pick the plain-text version it's because I want to just get straight to the point (other people may have other reasons), and I certainly don't need your validation.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-29 10:05:14+00:00
The movement wasn't too big an issue for me, but that's probably because I've played Kerbal Space Program, in which moving around in space is a pretty steep learning curve.

Anyway, that aside, it's a great game, you get a board where you can see everything you've discovered, whether you missed anything important, and links to other things you can pursue still. Or just go to a random planet / place of interest.
by ben_w | 2026-01-29 10:05:33+00:00
> Europeans weren't drowning in poverty

How come the US has a higher rate of struggling with groceries (12.2% US vs 8.5% EU), healthcare (44% US vs. 18.6% for costs) EU, education costs, etc.?

> they would also buy more expensive cars.

Price != quality. European cars have better safety standards, as well as being cheaper to own and run. American cars… the vibe I got from them on trips was the expectation for them to serve as an additional air-conditioned entertainment room that just happened to be on wheels, whereas the European ones are mostly a mode of transport unless you're specifically into luxury brands.
by panick21_ | 2026-01-29 10:05:54+00:00
Cybertruck was supposed to be for the masses. The just weren't able to hit the price point required because of overly optimistic engineering assessments. I think the whole stainless steel construction concept didn't work as first designed.

And of course, Cybertruck design might not have been mass compatible buy being ugly. But that is subjective, if it was cheap and functional and without the political connotations it might have been different.

But it was certainty a risky bet.
by panda-giddiness | 2026-01-29 10:06:11+00:00
It's satire. It's supposed to be absurd. Why else do students still read A Modest Proposal nearly three hundred years after its publication?

Regardless, LLMs are already being abused to mass produce spam, and some of that spam has almost certainly been employed to separate the elderly from their savings, so there's nothing particularly implausible about the satirical product, either.
by serf | 2026-01-29 10:06:45+00:00
the compile loop still slows down an LLM, so like always it's mostly project dependent.

What you want are the errors a compiler provides for guidance to the LLM, and ideally no compile loop; so if your project supports it python + a linter that is hook'd into the LLM for deterministic firing is a very solid choice for lots of LLM projects.

as to the Electron application : I sort of disagree as far as LLMs are concerned.

Once your program takes care of as many things as Electron does under-the-hood your LOC is going to be fairly large and that metric itself is going to be the main thing that makes the codebase less and less compatible with LLM usage. Generally speaking it's best to stick to really modular non-monolithic codebases and make a best attempt at keeping each modular small and well documented.

Once you get some huge monolith somewhere in the codebase LLMs will start losing themselves in unpacking it and the quality of work will drop elsewhere as context is eaten.
by beAbU | 2026-01-29 10:08:03+00:00
Mistborn left me breathless at the end. During the last couple of chapters of the third book I uttered many a "holy shit" and "no way" under my breath. Much to my wife's pleasure, who bought the books for me on a whim.

The whole earring thing blew my mind, and it was so obvious from book 3 onwards.

The ending of the Mistborn series is indeed, incredibly tight. The whole series had a roundedness to it that I have not encountered before, every word, theme, event and character has a place in the Bigger Scheme. I think this is because he wrote all 3 books together, so he would regularly go back to book one to make edits based on new things he thought of in book 3.
by roysting | 2026-01-29 10:08:13+00:00
It’s about convenience in most cases; an “app” to tap on, not a URL to remember and enter or a bookmark to save, name, file, and locate.

Just like apps in general, PWAs are mostly a mobile heavy modality. Bookmarks and the browser is largely still fine on laptop/desktop, but even there you see the app design language start prevailing with things like bookmarks and “recent sites” being presented like app icons.
by eru | 2026-01-29 10:08:18+00:00
'Tax evasion' is when you are breaking the law. There are various other names, like 'tax optimisation' or 'tax avoidance' is when you do it legal. And the boundaries of what you can call 'tax avoidance' are fuzzy: when in Singapore, I eat out a lot more and pay someone else to clean my home. When in Germany, taxes on labour are too high, so I cook and clean myself. Is that 'tax avoidance' and refusing to 'pay my share'?

It's definitely a change in behaviour induced by taxation.

Another example in Germany both capital gains and dividends are taxed. Capital gains are (mostly) only taxed when you sell, dividends are taxed straight away. But each year you can get a small amount of dividends tax free. So it's tax efficient to structure your capital returns to first max out that tax free allowance, and take the rest as capital gains.

That's annoying and complicated.

Singapore is simpler and has lower taxes, so I don't bother optimising anything, and just let my decision be guided by whatever makes financial sense, without worrying about taxes. (In my case, I'm investing in accumulating funds that just never pay any dividends, but instead re-invest them straight away. That way I don't have to worry about re-investing dividends manually.)

Another example: when you have a carbon tax one of the intended consequences is for companies and people to change their affairs such that they emit less CO2, thus optimising their tax bill. The system only works when people 'avoid paying their share'.
by sgjohnson | 2026-01-29 10:10:08+00:00
Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

For many people, the very term EV itself is still ubiquitous to Tesla.

And somehow Tesla is still worth more than every other non-Chinese automaker combined. $1.5T.

GM? $80B. Stellantis? $40B. Toyota? $280B. Mercedes-Benz? $60B. BMW? $55B. Volkswagen Group? Also $55B.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of others, but I could miss some 18 $50B automakers, and Tesla would still be worth more than all of them combined.

If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B. But I’ll never bet against it, because the markets can remain irrational for longer than I can remain solvent. And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.