MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by exceptione | 2026-01-04 10:02:19+00:00
> Some people don't enjoy certain parts of the creative process,

Sure

> and let an LLM handle them.

This is probably the disputed part. It is not a different way of development, and as such it should not be presented like that. In software, we can use ready-made components, choose between different strategies, build everything in a low-level language etc. The trade-offs coming with each choice is in principle knowable; the developer is still in control.

LLMs are nothing like that. Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development. On the surface, it might look like you get ready-made components by outsourcing it to them, but there is no contract about any standard, so you have to check everything.

Now if people would present it like "I rather manage an outsourcing process than doing the creative thing" we would have no discussion. But hammers and nails aren't the right analogies.
Show HN: Lock In – A command-line style productivity HUD (now on Windows)
by TedOS | 2026-01-04 10:03:05+00:00
Hey HN, you may have seen me post about Lock In recently—it's a minimalist task management HUD that sits silently on your desktop.

It gained some traction for its Mac version, and as of today, it's finally available for Windows.

The idea remains the same: productivity apps are often click-heavy databases that feel like administrative work. Lock In is designed as an "execution engine"—a small, transparent window that forces you to focus on doing.

It works entirely via slash commands. E.g., /d 100 pushups, /lockin 1h.

What's new in this release:

Windows Support: Fully native builds (installer + portable).
Cross-Platform Hotkeys: Ctrl+/ (Win) or Cmd+/ (Mac) summons it instantly.

Rollover Review: when a day resets, you get a modal to Keep, Defer, or Drop unfinished tasks.

Undo System: Fearless editing with 20 levels of undo.

I built this because I wanted something that felt more like a terminal utility and less like project management software. Would love to hear your feedback on the Windows build or the workflow philosophy.
by scirob | 2026-01-04 10:03:41+00:00
Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers?
The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context.
But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "This breaks with X" or "verified in production" becomes the valuable contribution.
Keep federation in mind from day one (did:web, did:plc) so it's not another closed platform.
Stack Overflow's magic was making experts feel needed. They still do—just differently now.
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-04 10:06:00+00:00
> The American mainstream left has changed quite a bit in the last decade.

The only thing the American "mainstream left" did in the last decade is grow from a completely insignificant size, on a national scale, to a slightly less insignificant size, through a subset of the political disaffected becoming engaged (a big catalyst for that being Bernie Sanders 2016 primary campaign; DSA membership shot up, IIRC, more than 10-fold directly after that.)

The set of viewpoints in that group didn't really change all that much, nor did the set of viewpoints in the actually mainstream groups left of the GOP (which themselves are not actually left, but center-right pro-capitalist.)
by monerozcash | 2026-01-04 10:06:48+00:00
> Yes it's a fact and not merely a commonly held view that Trump's campaign had Russian actors, but reasonable people still consider him President

Yes, because that in no way invalidates the election results.

I really don't see how this is in any way comparable or relevant.

> and not a puppet placed by Putin.

Trump being a puppet placed by Putin would not invalidate his presidency.
by sidrag22 | 2026-01-04 10:07:28+00:00
i've been dabbling in writing for the past few weeks, and like anything im working on this past year, i feel the need to somehow route ai into the process...

Writing however, is perhaps the area it really is quite literally nothing but a rubber duck for me. I think this past week I have likely written ~10k words, and suggestions from ai that ive taken straight up is at maybe like 10 words and even those were likely modified.

I straight up hate all its suggestions for how to word stuff, maybe it has something to do with the amount of prompt responses that Ive read the past year. I imagine if i could generate a nice display of physical eyerolls ive done this past year, topping that list would be when a chatbot responds starting with "your touching on something" or some other output thats painfully common.

Also i wouldn't say its worthless for my writing, it helps me kinda really pinpoint my weak portions, i just don't take any of their suggestions to strengthen it and find my own.
by fabianholzer | 2026-01-04 10:07:35+00:00
> It’s disappointing when you see leaders and so-called stewards of taste farming out that part of their voice.

The bland platitudes of corporate management were mindbogglingly boring drivel already in the era before LLMs went mainstream. What we get nowadays is just more of it. That stuff should be skipped anyways. What was not worth writing is not worth reading.
by gmac | 2026-01-04 10:08:02+00:00
This is essentially why I didn’t do English Lit at uni (which had been my initial thought).

Up to age 18 I did well at English Lit by discovering that the more outlandish and fabricated the things I wrote, as long as I could find some tenuous hook for them, the more ‘sensitive’ I was praised for being for detecting them in the work.

In other words, everything was true and nothing was true.

I worry that the same is roughly true at university level, but with added social layers of what’s currently fashionable or unfashionable to say, how much clout you have to push unusual interpretations (as an undergrad: none), and so on. But perhaps I’m wrong?
by BrandoElFollito | 2026-01-04 10:08:09+00:00
> even if he's proud of being such, as you seem to be

Of course on Internet nobody knows you are a dog. But hey, I may be someone who wrote a part of the Linux kernel in 1994, ran IT operations for a company that was big (big!) and then almost vanished (not my fault :)) and produces open source that you may have even used if you are "technical" as you say.

And set up WG in so many places, including a frontend that unfortunately did not get the worldwide success it should have :)

With this modest introduction - tailscale works where wireguard does not. I am not sure why my example was not obvious. You can reach the machine at my friend's with tailscale, not with plain wireguard.
Of course if you open ports in the right places then yes! And check a few more things.

Now - how would you set up plain Wireguard in a place without the possibility of exposing a port, or even that does not have a public IP - and initiate the connection from outside that place? I would love to learn something. Without rebuilding tailscale (or whatever other solutions with STUN or whatnot).
by rubberpoliceman | 2026-01-04 10:08:10+00:00
This isn’t hard to understand. “Burgher” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” as in “bürgerlicher Mittagstisch”, “Der Bürger duldet nichts Unverständliches im Haus”. “Citizen” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” when it comes to “Bürgeramt” or “Weltbürger”.
by cube2222 | 2026-01-04 10:09:18+00:00
I’ve gone through this series of videos earlier this year.

In the past I’ve gone through many “educational resources” about deep neural networks - books, coursera courses (yeah, that one), a university class, the fastai course - but I don’t work with them at all in my day to day.

This series of videos was by far the best, most “intuition building”, highest signal-to-noise ratio, and least “annoying” content to get through. Could of course be that his way of teaching just clicks with me, but in general - very strong recommend. It’s the primary resource I now recommend when someone wants to get into lower level details of DNNs.
by maartin0 | 2026-01-04 10:09:31+00:00
OP here: I had the same thought, but noticed a very similar trend in both [0]; I think this graph is more interesting because you'd expect the number of new users to be growing [1], but this seems to have very little effect on deleted questions or even answers

[0]: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1927371#g...

[1]: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1927375#g...

The second graph here ([1]) is especially interesting because the total montly number of new users seems completely unrelated to number of posts, until you filter for a rep > 1 which has a close to identical trend
by omnicognate | 2026-01-04 10:09:38+00:00
> coding line by line

This phrase betrays a profoundly different view of coding to that of most people I know who actively enjoy doing it. Even when it comes to the typing it's debatable whether I do that "line by line", but typing out the code is a very small part of the process. The majority of my programming work, even on small personal projects, is coming up with ideas and solving problems rather than writing lines of code. In my case, I prefer to do most of it away from the keyboard.

If AI were a thing that could reliably pluck the abstract ideas from my head and turn them into the corresponding lines of code, i.e. automate the "line by line" part, I would use it enthusiastically. It is not.
by microtonal | 2026-01-04 10:10:05+00:00
Why would Trump allow a peaceful transfer of power? Jan 6 happened and it failed because the first Trump administration still had people who cared about the rule of law (e.g. Pence).

I think the only hope is that the guy is old and unhealthy, in contrast to e.g. when Putin or Orban grabbed power. And it is possible that the GOP will fracture over fights between who see themselves as his successor. If this doesn't happen, I don't have much hope for the US as a democracy.
by forgotpwd16 | 2026-01-04 10:11:40+00:00
Heh, interesting seeing we use pretty much the same things, i3+NixOS+urxvt+zsh+Emacs+rofi+maim+xdotool, only differentiating in browser choice (it's Firefox for me) and (me) not using any term multiplexer.

>So from my perspective, switching from this existing, flawlessly working stack (for me) to Sway only brings downsides.

Kudos to Michael for even attempting it. Personally nowadays unless my working stack stops, well, working, or there're significant benefits to be found, don't really feel even putting the effort to try the shiny new things out.
by ofalkaed | 2026-01-04 10:13:07+00:00
Is it possible (practical) to reverse engineer a synth that uses a custom and undocumented DSP? The Alesis Micron is probably my favorite synth and I have always wanted it in a little laptop groovebox type of package, considered just repackaging mine but the main PCB is not very suited to what I would want. I also tried to just redesign it from the ground up but it has some tricks for avoiding aliasing and are a major part of its overall sound which I can not figure out.

Assuming this is possible, any resources for learning how to go about it? What little I have found has relied heavily on the DSP being well documented.

Apologies if OP video goes into this, internet is not cooperating right now and steaming is not going to happen. Looking forward to watching it, never pass on anything that might offer even a tiny glimpse into reverse engineering the Micron.
by noduerme | 2026-01-04 10:13:22+00:00
You're not crazy at all. I engineer pretty-big full stack systems for a living, as a lone coder. I relish when I actually sit down and write the code. To turn a customer concept into animated UI functionality. To write a cron task that auto-generates a weekly prize contest. To hand-craft SQL and add a new feature that lets people see 10 years of data in a new way, on an old codebase.

I've let Claude run around my code and asked it for help, etc. Once in awhile it's able to diagnose some weird issues - like last month, it actually helped me figure out why PixiJS was creating undefined behavior after textures were destroyed on the GPU, in a very specific case. But the truth is, I wouldn't hire an intern or an employee to write my code because they won't be able to execute exactly what I have in mind.

Ironically, in my line of work, I spend 5x as many hours thinking about what to build and how to build it as I do coding it. The fun part is coding it. And, that's the only time I charge for. I may spend 10 hours thinking about how to do something, drawing diagrams, making phone calls to managers and CEOs, and I won't charge any of that time. When I'm ready to sit down and write the code:

I go to a bar.

I turn my phone off.

I work for 6 hours, have 4 drinks, and bill $300 per hour.

I don't suspect that the kind of coding I'm doing, which includes all the preparation and thought that went into it, and having considered all edge cases in advance, is going to be replaced by LLMs. Or by the children who use LLMs. They didn't have much of a purchase on taking my job before, anyway... but sadly the ones who are using this technology now have almost no hope of ever becoming proficient at their profession.
by benrutter | 2026-01-04 10:14:23+00:00
Not sure that's fair- claiming you prefer reading texts in full to summaries doesn't seem the same as saying you don't ever want to read a summary in any context?

Aside from that, it seems more valuable to think about the odeas in the blog on their own merit, rather than attacking the writer for not having been true to those ideas in every past action.
by gettingoverit | 2026-01-04 10:15:18+00:00
How long would it take for someone to put that pizzeria on a map right inside of the pentagon?

Literally any adversary can put the place (call it "Pentagon Pizza" if they don't give it a name) on a map, and every time clueless DoD employees google it, there'll be a peak on a graph.

Out of 30k people working there, there has to be a bunch of new hires that don't understand how OSINT works, and they just weren't fired yet. I believe solving this problem without reducing staff is extremely hard.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-04 10:15:32+00:00
I still don't know why I would want to use it. The benefits don't seem to outweigh the costs yet, and xorg is tried and true. So many Linux articles and forum posts about fixing problems with your desktop graphics start with "If you're using Wayland, go back to xorg, it'll probably fix the problem you're seeing."

You don't always have to replace something that works with something that doesn't but is "modern."

My guess is that we'll only start seeing Wayland adoption when distributions start forcing it or making it a strong default, like what happened with systemd.
by etiennebausson | 2026-01-04 10:15:52+00:00
France has its own agency, the CNES (though most research go through ESA nowaday), and had it for a long time.

Its launchers are still the best when it comes to reliability I believe, though not competitive on cost anymore since the advent of spaceX (Ariane6's first flight was in 2024 and its price per kilogram is just an order of magnitude worse than spaceX). Definitely missed a step.

Still, France has an active and ongoing space program since about 1970.
by benrutter | 2026-01-04 10:16:40+00:00
I think then big part is maintenance, xorg doesn't look likely to be maintained long into the future in the way Wayland will be. And a lot of the Xorg maintainers are now working in Wayland.

So good or bad idea, Wayland is slowly shifting to being the default in virtue of being the most maintained up to date compositor.
by lanternfish | 2026-01-04 10:17:04+00:00
In Iraq, JSOC operational doctrine was literally to target assassination campaigns based on 'nodal analysis' from contacts lifted from cellphones; if telegram had existed, they certainly would have used it too.

Famously, they didn't have enough Arabic translators, so Delta Force was often taking targets entirely based on reported association. They couldn't target based on language because they couldn't even tell what language locals were speaking most of the time.
by ffuxlpff | 2026-01-04 10:18:36+00:00
True. It's bad that these books are usually read by only young people. I remember reading Steppenwolf for the first time since teens and only then I realized how funny it was all around. Dostoevsky's The Devils is hilarious too, being very dark at the same time.

The same goes for basically all higher culture. Popular culture is usually unfunny because humor is considered a commercial risk.
by solenoid0937 | 2026-01-04 10:18:42+00:00
Any argument along the lines of "Venezuelans aren't happy with this" out of touch with Venezuelan culture. They do not have to die by the millions to oust a dictator that killed thousands and caused 20% to emigrate. They are happy with this.

That is what OP is saying: HN users, in order to promote their personal politics, are being concerned for a people that don't want and actively reject your concern because they are happy with the outcome.

HN is doing the equivalent of (a) denying Venezuelans appreciate this, and when that fails (b) claiming they know better than Venezuelans wrt whether this is good or bad for them.
by PunchyHamster | 2026-01-04 10:19:00+00:00
X.org picked the right level of abstraction (even if implementation could use a rewrite). No WM should care about handling raw inputs or forced to be proxy between driver and the app for the output (it could be, if it needed/wanted, but there is no reason to add another layer of abstraction and cycle-wasting for most use cases). And it shows in complexity and even in power use. Wayland basically failed to learn the lessons from X11
by pembrook | 2026-01-04 10:19:04+00:00
Duh, yes obviously that means invasion.

I was just quoting the actual speech. The point is, for anyone claiming the US attempting regime change in Venezuela is going to factor into China's long standing plans to invade Taiwan is delusional.

The US has been involved in regime change operations spanning like 40+ different countries, and almost continuously for a century. This is not a unique event in even recent US history, even though folks with orange-man syndrome would like you to believe otherwise.

As if Xi is thinking "gee, I'd really like to invade Taiwan, but people might get upset! If only Trump would conduct the US's 5th regime change operation this decade...then people would...not care anymore about Taiwan or something?? Wait, this fantasy may have logical flaws..."

The bending over backwards that Americans do to convince themselves the US is responsible for everything that happens is always amusing.
by pavlov | 2026-01-04 10:19:25+00:00
> “In my opinion, the traditional charm of the Mac isn’t just the desktop; it’s the entire ecosystem of applications that conform to the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines”

Sadly this barely exists anymore.

Cross-platform Electron apps have replaced native AppKit. Cloud-based apps like Linear, Slack and Figma cater to the lowest common denominator of desktops by shipping their web client in a wrapper.

The last real native Mac app that was truly successful was probably Sketch ten years ago, and Figma ate their lunch.

Meanwhile Apple themselves have given up on the HIG. In the Alan Dye era, it’s been form over function across all the Apple operating systems. Their own apps don’t follow any guidelines and the latest macOS 26 is a UI disaster – probably the most inconsistent Mac release since OS X early betas.
Csoai Limited: The FAA for AI – Official Launch
by CSOAI_Official | 2026-01-04 10:20:56+00:00
We are excited to announce the official launch of CSOAI Limited, the world's first unified standard body for AI safety and governance.

Our Three Core Initiatives:

1. Global AI Safety Watchdog Platform - A public, transparent system where anyone can report AI safety concerns, ethical violations, and system failures. This creates accountability and a critical feedback loop for safe AI deployment.

2. £20 Million Scholarship Program - We are committing £20 million to train 10,000 qualified AI Safety Analysts in Q1 2026. Each participant receives our comprehensive £1,999 training module at no cost, creating a highly-skilled workforce ready to implement the CEASAI standard globally.

3. The CEASAI Standard - The industry's first cross-company consensus on AI safety, governance, and ethical deployment. This unified framework accelerates AI adoption while mitigating risks.

Why This Matters:

Every major industry has a central authority for safety—aviation has the FAA, finance has the SEC, medicine has the FDA. AI needs the same. We are building that infrastructure now.

Get Involved Today:

- Explore the Global AI Safety Watchdog: www.csoai.org
- Apply for the Scholarship Program: www.csoai.org
- Learn about the CEASAI Standard: www.csoai.org

Join us in building a safe, ethical, and compliant AI future.

CSOAI Limited | The FAA for AI | www.csoai.org
by edent | 2026-01-04 10:21:26+00:00
I've been running Wayland on a Framework laptop and it just works. Droves my 4K external monitor, quickly switches to single screen, does fractional scaling well, runs all my apps without complaint.

I had an old Chromebook which had Lubuntu on it - screen tearing was driving me crazy so I switched to Wayland and it is buttery smooth. No mean feat given the decrepit hardware.

I'm sure someone will be along to tell me that I'm wrong - but I've yet to experience any downsides, other than people telling me I'm wrong.
by aboardRat4 | 2026-01-04 10:21:35+00:00
Hostnames are either in a static hosts file, which you need to distribute to your machines somehow (probably using older names or raw addresses, which you do not know, because need the names in the first place), or a DNS, and for most people the DNS is under ISP's control.

Even if you have your own DNS server out there somewhere, you still need to allow a bit of DNS hijacking from your ISP in order to receive that verification SMS and enter the code into the ISP's log-in page.

DNS is a great thing, but just too much of a pain to configure.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-04 10:21:41+00:00
Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai were all there dining with Trump.

Weird how Tim Cook gets so much hate, when the rest of them didn't. He didn't say anything notable except a bit of ring-kissing: "I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we can make a major investment ..."

Then Sergey Brin starts talking about how he's happy about Trump pressuring Maduro:

You're applying a lot of pressure to Maduro and I think that's phenomenal for an
American president to actually be applying pressure there uh in Venezuela and then hopefully in Cuba and so forth. So there's a lot of um civil rights work that you're leading. we didn't get a chance to mention. Um I also just wanted to mention um we don't have to get into all the uh details talked about in the Oval Office, but uh I think it's a real incredible inflection point right now in AI and the fact that your administration uh is uh supporting our companies instead of fighting with them."

So, reading between the lines a little, i.e. Google looking depose dictators and burn lots of oil to keep their AI slop churning is totally fine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvbKA-Te8QE
by zonghao | 2026-01-04 10:21:45+00:00
I grew up in China, lived here for more than twenty years. I've never heard of such a thing: unemployment means a high probability of being homeless, and then losing one's life within three to five years. It's truly shocking.

I have some people in my neighborhood who have been Full-time preparation for the exam to work as civil servants for many years, and some people have simply been living at home without working, relying on their parents' support. However, I have never heard of anyone being frozen or starved to death, nor have I ever seen anyone who has been addicted to drugs.