MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by komali2 | 2026-01-31 07:38:23+00:00
I think it's a bit weird that our society is designed such that Palworld can be sued for making a game depicting Pokemon.

For about ten thousand years, humans invented and traded stories that often contained characters and environments they didn't invent. You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus, Persophone, Hades, all recurring characters in stories, mosaics, paintings, statues, carvings. Nobody got sued for it, these characters just functioned as analogues for emotions and elements and conditions, universally recognizable figures that didn't need introduction, they could just be used when you needed e.g. a horny character that liked to change people into animals and then have sex with them.

Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore. Despite the fact that Pokemon are a shared cultural experience for millions of people from different countries and languages, an opportunity to have a universal symbolic story telling language across borders of nations and languages, we can't do it because that would harm the ability of a single corporate entity to extract value from it as it sees fit. Never mind that we have our own stories we might want to tell from this shared cultural heritage.

And do we ever have stories to tell! Look at any fan fiction site. Among all the smut you get gems like book 4 of the three body problem, written by a different author than the original. Look at the incredible art created from out of copyright works, like Lies of P for pinnochio or House MD for Sherlock Holmes. I want more of these, for things that were invented in my time!
by jcgl | 2026-01-31 07:38:33+00:00
I think you’re misattrubuting causation here. There are numerous factors that distinguish those two places. Chiefly, they are among the densest places in the world.

Generally speaking, cars are at odds with such extreme density, simply due to geometry (i.e. how much space driving requires); it’s super easy to saturate driving supply in such places.

Think of mass transit and driving as being in an equilibrium with each other. Depending on where the bottleneck is in driving supply, shifting driving demand to transit demand (via improved transit infrastructure) should most often improve driving.

Extreme density like the places you mentioned is challenging just because space is at such an extreme premium. I would argue (and I’m not alone here) that it’s especially challenging because driving is consistently underpriced; the fair value of driving there is likely far higher than the cost that drivers pay. In such circumstances, oversubscribed car infrastructure is the natural outcome.
by Braxton1980 | 2026-01-31 07:38:44+00:00
I think the issue in this thread is that you replied to a person asking a question by quoting the article.

It's implied that it's your position because you argued using the article. Otherwise you're just helping the other by showing them the relevant part the article.

Imagine there was a discussion about a 911 conspiracy article and a person comments
"Yeah but wouldn't the fuel burning collapse the building"

If I replied with a quote from the article

"..jet fuel doesn't burn at a high enough temperature to melt steel"

Wouldn't you think that's my view as well since the point of the comments are to express opinions about the article and situation?
by theturtlemoves | 2026-01-31 07:39:10+00:00
> My own feeling is that many of his strongest works were before 2000

Interestingly he hired Rob Wilkins in the year 2000. So, did Rob's presence affect the books? Or did Terry hire Rob because he subconsciously knew he needed to compensate for a decline that started to become apparent, by offloading some tasks?
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-31 07:40:46+00:00
>growth since the 40s

The US growth trend has been fairly constant since the late 1800s. There's no real discontinuity in the trend around the time the US become hegemon.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/GDP_per_...

Part of why Switzerland is so stable is because of its neutrality. Switzerland doesn't have to deal with Russia interfering in its elections the way the US does.
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:40:58+00:00
Thank you — this is super helpful.

Student + “retrieval” + “projects in my head” + “no interruptions” is a very clear profile. My understanding the right shape is a push notifications of “daily priority digest" rather than a pull-based task warehouse.

What’s the one source of truth you’d be willing to use as the input for “today’s important work” — your calendar, a task list, or your school LMS/deadlines?

Details in my HN profile/bio if you want to see the idea I’m validating.
by waon | 2026-01-31 07:42:33+00:00
The person you're replying to doesn't abide by their own stated principles. It's a mistake to think that they're merely reminding you of the rules. No, it's an order.

Just look at how many political comments they made. Especially the downvoted and/or flagged ones. They are horrendous. So many words spent justifying ICE murders and lying about how the victims were violent terrorists. They spend all day thinking about how best to downplay the egregious actions of the current regime, at one point writing how ICE agent's masks are just merely "face/neck warmers."

This isn't a person who should be taken seriously.
by gilleain | 2026-01-31 07:43:16+00:00
Oh! I really liked the essay - the idea that French 'analysis' was seen as a dangerous modern invention and contrasted with 'synthetic' geometric understanding of the world had political implications is fascinating. There could be parallels with the present day use of computer modelling (and now AI) being seen as a risky way to organise and run societies.

I agree that there is a lot of vague language around the practice of mathematics as a social and philosophical construct ('analysts' vs 'synthetics') but I'm not sure how that indicates the author does not understand what truth is. My understanding of the history of mathematics and science is that these areas of knowledge were much more intertwined with philosophy and religion than they are considered to be today.

So Newton saw no issue with working on the calculus at the same time as being an alchemist and a non-trinitarian. Understanding the world was often a religious activity - by understanding Nature, you understood God's creation - and in Naples it seems that understanding analysis was tied to certain political and nationalist ideas.
by awesome_dude | 2026-01-31 07:44:20+00:00
No.

I clearly state

> analogy (sorry about the initial misspell) when it comes to eventual consistency because 1: We use banking almost universally the same ways, and 2: we understand fully the eventual consistency employed (even though we don't think about it)

The point is, you understand that your bank account is eventually consistent, and I have given an explanation of instances of eventual consistency that you already usually know and understand.

You make the mistake of thinking about something else (the back end storage, the double entry bookeeping).
by ifwinterco | 2026-01-31 07:45:09+00:00
Yep the various -path adjectives get overused but in this case he's the real deal, something is really really off about him.

You can see it when he talks, he's clearly trying (very unconvincingly) to emulate normal human emotions like concern and empathy. He doesn't feel them.

People like that are capable of great evil and there's a part of our lizard brains that can sense it
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:45:58+00:00
That sounds like a really healthy, low-maintenance setup: Kanban for what must move, journal for everything else.

Out of curiosity, when you look at the journal later, what do you want it to do for you most: help you remember context, help you spot patterns, or help you extract a few actionable follow-ups back into the Kanban?

Details in my HN profile/bio if you’re curious what I’m exploring around that handoff.
by awesome_dude | 2026-01-31 07:46:40+00:00
The point is to give people who don't realise that they have been dealing with eventual consistency all along, that it's right there, in their lives, and they already understand it.

You're right I go into too much detail (maybe I got carried away with the HN audience :-) and you are right that multiple accounts is something else that people generally already understand and demonstrate further eventual consistency principles.
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:47:06+00:00
That’s a really clear split: “actions are fine, reference organization is the pain” — and Joplin/text files is a very real workflow.

If the goal is later reference (not task generation), the most useful thing to validate for me is: what “organized” means in practice for you. Is the biggest failure mode:

1. you can’t find it because you don’t remember the right keywords, or

2. you remember it exists but it’s scattered across too many places/notebooks, or

3. you find it but it’s missing the surrounding context?

Details in my HN profile/bio if you want to see the angle I’m exploring (it’s not only Obsidian-specific).
by card_zero | 2026-01-31 07:48:35+00:00
> statements about how people conceptualize math in terms of "is" and "are"

What do you mean? I searched the page for "are", it doesn't appear much at all, I'm ruling that one out. So do you mean for instance this statement - ?

"This zealous quest for universal problem-solving algorithms is precisely what made the synthetics uneasy."

What's wrong with that?
by yunusabd | 2026-01-31 07:48:56+00:00
Super nice, thanks for sharing!

There's one thing that gave me pause:
In the phrase 我想学中文 it identified "wén" as "guó". While my pronunciation isn't perfect, there's no way that what I said is closer to "guó" than to "wén".

This indicates to me that the model learned word structures instead of tones here. "Zhōng guó" probably appears in the training data a lot, so the model has a bias towards recognizing that.
by burnt-resistor | 2026-01-31 07:49:00+00:00
Also, increasing billionaire wealth and burgeoning (but somewhat circular) market capitalizations of companies will seem like a good economy while real income and wealth for the bottom half of Americans keeps falling. The mainstream business media is a gaslight factory completely ignoring the ever-widening K-shaped economic reality that there's a very good economy for the highest income people and a rapidly declining/terrible economy for everyone else.
by danaris | 2026-01-31 07:49:12+00:00
Biden was by far the most effective and most progressive Democratic president of the post-WWII era.

What "hammered home" the disillusionment was not Biden's actions*, but rather the media narrative built around him, particularly by the newspaper most identified with the Democratic Party: the New York Times. They were angry that he didn't give them deference early on, and that, combined with the desire of their wealthy Republican owner to push his politics, led to the constant drumbeat of stories about Biden's supposed "cognitive decline", when he's still much sharper than Trump.

* His inaction, particularly on prosecuting Trump, was a separate matter.
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:51:06+00:00
Thanks — this is extremely helpful, especially the constraints: you want semantic search + “where/when to execute”, calendar as a key context source, and migration cost as a hard friction point.

YAML/JSON as a local knowledge store is a nice wedge too: it keeps things portable and makes “AI suggestions” easier to reason about.

Re the waitlist: the landing page is up now (https://concerns.vercel.app), and you can leave an email there. I’ll make sure you get an update when there’s something testable.

One quick follow-up: if you could get only one capability first, would you pick

a) semantic recall (find related knowledge without exact keywords), or

b) a daily “top 3” plan generated from calendar + your knowledge store (pulled on demand, no interruptions)?

Details are in my HN profile/bio if you want more context.
by ri-vai | 2026-01-31 07:51:13+00:00
Normally when I start a project, it feels serious and heavy, like I need everything figured out before I even begin. This felt different. It’s more like you drop into a space, pick a direction, and just start moving. No pressure to be perfect, no long setup.

It reminds me of how games work. You don’t see the whole map at once. You just get the next objective and go from there. That’s kind of the vibe here. One step leads to another, and suddenly you’re actually doing something instead of overthinking.

I tried it with a random idea I had and also a school project, and both times it helped me stop freezing at the start. It didn’t magically do the work for me, but it made the process feel lighter and more doable.

Not saying it’s for everyone, but if projects usually feel intimidating or boring to you, this somehow makes it feel more like playing than working. Curious if anyone else gets that same feeling.
by dtkav | 2026-01-31 07:51:13+00:00
I think mostly social accountability.

My cofounder actually has a bunch of skills with claude code that surface context into our daily notes (from our meeting notes, transcripts, crm, gmail, etc), but it's sort of on him to show that it is useful... so while he is still "hoarding" outside of the shared context it is with an eye toward delivering actual value inside of it.

Feels pretty different from the fauxductivity traps of solo second brain stuff.
by carlmr | 2026-01-31 07:51:49+00:00
他是 is tāshì which doesn't transform I think. Did you mean to write 你是 nǐshì? I think that transforms differently though. With the half 3rd tone only dropping.

The classical example is 4/4 不是. Which goes bùshì -> búshì.

Or 3/3 that becomes 2/3. E.g. 你好 nǐhǎo becoming níhǎo.

The 1/4 -> 2/4 transformation I think is specific to one. 一个 yīgè becomes yígè.
Show HN: Oyster Bot – AI assistant for your phone, powered by Claude Code
by timfinnigan | 2026-01-31 07:52:17+00:00
I wanted Claude Code on my phone without running extra infrastructure. Existing solutions felt heavy..gateway servers, native apps, etc.

This is a Telegram bot that spawns the Claude CLI and pipes responses back to you. Clone, npm install, add your bot token, run it.

Works with Claude Pro/Max (no API key required). You can whitelist users, restrict which tools Claude can access, and add custom commands via plugins.

Only ~400 lines of JS.
by watwut | 2026-01-31 07:52:30+00:00
If they tried to merely immigration law, they would had no issue.

They were successful at creating fear and making conflict avoidant people stay home. Despite large amount of protesters, that is real effect.

And it would create real vote suppression. You would had people not voting out of fear. And the opposing side having less votes (even if they win, they win less)
by Braxton1980 | 2026-01-31 07:52:38+00:00
Since there's a big difference between fake numbers (intentional) and inaccurate (unintentional) numbers we should state they are inaccurate unless evidence states overwise. The reason is that it's practically impossible to get a 100% correct count, probably not even 90% accurate.

1. This means every population count is inaccurate
2. It's not realistically possible to determine how inaccurate the amount is

>If the numbers are approximations to the nearest ten million (or worse), it's a form of scientific fraud to provide a number like "94.9 million"

Doesn't this simply mean if their count is 94.9 the population's true amount is anywhere from 90 to 100 million?
by hnfong | 2026-01-31 07:52:57+00:00
Cantonese is "hard" mainly for two reasons-

1. tones, and generally the gatekeeping of some Cantonese communities towards people who haven't gotten the tones completely right

2. the lack of learning materials relative to the number of speakers, the confusion between written Chinese and written Cantonese (and also the general lack of the latter)

As they say, "a language is a dialect with an army and navy"... I'll leave it at that.
by Lutger | 2026-01-31 07:53:30+00:00
The source of truth in fascism is not popular support or inquiry, thus they always need to channel some privileged connection to reality, or claim to voice the true will of the people and authentically represents the pure will of the nation.

Its a farce, of course, but one that can sometimes muster enough support to keep the signs in the shop with just a bit of intimidation and violence to back it up.
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:53:48+00:00
Nice reference — Ideaverse is a good reminder that capture should create lift, not just storage.

My only nuance is: “sparks ideas” is one slice. A lot of what we stash isn’t inspirational at all — it’s obligations, decisions, constraints, receipts, meeting notes, “I’ll need this later” references. So the goal (for what I’m exploring) isn’t only to spark, but to make the right thing reappear at the right moment: sometimes that’s an idea, sometimes it’s a decision you already made, sometimes it’s the one constraint that prevents rework.

Curious: in your own system, what kind of captured info most often pays off later — inspiration/ideas, or concrete reference (decisions, specs, links, context)?
by hoangnnguyen | 2026-01-31 07:53:59+00:00
I agree with this.

Right now, models are good at solving small, local problems, but much weaker at keeping large systems aligned over time. So having humans own the overall design, break work into small tasks, and integrate the results is a very pragmatic approach.

I see this less as a permanent limitation and more as a workflow gap. When AI is used purely as a conversational tool, humans end up doing all the convergence manually.

Concepts like rules, skills, scoped agents, and verification feel like early attempts to move some of that convergence into the system itself, not to replace human judgment, but to reduce how much needs to be constantly reapplied.
by 9dev | 2026-01-31 07:54:00+00:00
All this drama is mostly irrelevant outside a very narrow and very online community.

The demise of OpenAI is rooted in the bad product market fit, since many people like using ChatGPT for free, but fewer are ready to pay for it. And that’s pretty much all there is to it. OpenAI bet on consumers, made a slopstagram that unsurprisingly didn’t revolutionise content, and doesn’t sell as many licenses as they would like.
by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe | 2026-01-31 07:54:00+00:00
> most would be doing very different work, and working for different organizations (or none at all) if money weren't the driver.

With UBI I wouldn't be surprised if those would be even more productive doing something else they want. And others who couldn't do the CS curiculum even though they would have loved to because they had to find a job quickly would plausibly be at their place instead.

I really view UBI as something that puts oil in the society: people have less friction to be at the spot they're better at. People who want to do nothing will not slow us down anymore. And jobs that nobody wants to do would finally be paid by how much they suck instead of how much money your parents had to educate you.

> Ok, but the dev might still want to monetize, and we're back to the original question

I don't really see the issue. We're far from having shortage of ways to make people pay: ads, paywall, soft paywall, begging, rate limits. What's the issue with those? I certainly don't like them as a user and as a member of society but am fine with people doing that.

Especially with UBI in place: if the dev is putting a paywall, they have to compete with people that have plausibly much more freedom of time and mind to allocate to another free foss project.
by Mentlo | 2026-01-31 07:54:08+00:00
I think the debate around this is the perfect example of why the ai debate is dysfunctional. People who treat this as interesting / worrying are observing it at a higher layer of abstraction (namely, agents with unbounded execution ability, who have above-amateur coding ability, networked into a large scale network with shared memory - is a worrisome thing) and people who are downplaying it are focusing on the fact that human readable narratives on moltbook are obviously sci fi trope slop, not consciousness.

The first group doesn’t care about the narratives, the second group is too focused on the narratives to see the real threat.

Regardless of what you think about the current state of ai intelligence, networking autonomous agents that have evolution ability (due to them being dynamic and able to absorb new skills) and giving them scale that potentially ranges into millions is not a good idea. In the same way that releasing volatile pathogens into dense populations of animals wouldn’t be a good idea, even if the first order effects are not harmful to humans. And even if probability of a mutation that results in a human killing pathogen is miniscule.

Basically the only thing preventing this to become a consistent cybersecurity threat is the intelligence ceiling , of which we are unsure of, and the fact that moltbook can be ddos’d which limits the scale explosion

And when I say intelligence, I don’t mean human intelligence. An amoeba intelligence is dangerous if you supercharge its evolution.

Some people should be more aware that we already have superintelligence on this planet. Humanity is an order of magnitude more intelligent than any individual human (which is why humans today can build quantum computers although no biologically different from apes that were the first homo sapiens who couldn’t use tools.)

EDIT: I was pretty comfortable in the “doom scenarios are years if not decades away” camp before I saw this. I failed to account for human recklesness and stupidity.
by danaris | 2026-01-31 07:54:22+00:00
Trump ran on an explicit promise to bring down grocery prices on day 1.

Grocery prices have continued to climb.

Absolutely nothing he has done could remotely be said to be aimed at bringing them down.

He has also instituted massive attacks on the power of labor, and on the offices that report on things like the unemployment rate.

"The economy" is not just the stock market; unemployment numbers literally cannot be trusted coming from Trump's BLS; and an inflation of 2.7% is, in fact, fairly high (it's 35% higher than the "target" rate of 2%).
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:54:23+00:00
Totally feel that — “LLM chat hoarding” is becoming its own category of second brain, and it’s easy for it to turn into a pile of half-finished plans.

One thing I’m exploring is treating chats/projects as an inbox that only becomes useful when you force a tiny extraction step: turn each chat into either (a) one concrete next action, or (b) one reusable artifact (template/checklist/snippet), and ignore the rest until you explicitly pull it.

What’s the biggest blocker for you: picking the single next step, or remembering which chat had the good idea when the moment comes? Details in my HN profile/bio if you want the angle I’m validating.
by drtgh | 2026-01-31 07:55:52+00:00
Not a case, society call them sociopaths. Witch includes power struggle, manipulation and physiological abuse of the people around them.

Example, Sam Altman and OpenAI hoarding 40% of the RAM supply as unprocessed wafers stored in warehouses bought with magical bubble investors money in GPUs that don't exist yet and that they will not be able to install because there's not enough electricity to feed such botched tech, in data centers that are still to be built, with intention to punch the competence supply, and all the people of the planet in the process along two years (at least).
by item007 | 2026-01-31 07:55:59+00:00
AI summaries are useful, but I agree: summaries only reduce the “reading/organizing” effort — they don’t solve “what should I do next” or “why does this matter to my current goals”.

What I’m exploring is the step after summarization: take the summary and explicitly link it to an active goal/project, then force a small decision:

1. ignore it

2. save as reference for Project X

3. extract 1 concrete next action (with a reason and a link back)

If you don’t use Obsidian, what would make this actually work for you: a daily “priority digest” that you pull on your own time, or a lightweight way to attach summaries to your current projects (calendar/tasks) so they resurface later?

Details in my HN profile/bio if you’re curious.