MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bionsystem | 2026-01-26 05:16:51+00:00
Most devs can't do SRE, in fact the best devs I've met know they can't do SRE (and vice versa). If I may get a bit philosophical, SRE must be conservative by nature and I feel that devs are often innovative by nature. Another argument is that they simply focus on different problems. One sets up an IDE and clicks play, has some ephemeral devcontainer environment that "just works", and the hard part is to craft the software. The other has the software ready and sometimes very few instructions on how to run it, + your typical production issues, security, scaling, etc. The brain of each gets wired differently over time to solve those very different issues effectively.
by netbioserror | 2026-01-26 05:17:05+00:00
Nim has a similar, strong preference for value semantics. However, its dynamic heap types (strings, seqs, tables) are all implemented as wrappers that hide the internal references and behave with value semantics by default, unless explicitly escape hatched. It makes it incredibly easy to manipulate almost any data in a functional, expression-oriented manner, while preserving the speed and efficiency of being backed by a doubling array-list.
by vlovich123 | 2026-01-26 05:17:48+00:00
You’re proposing a world wide agreement even by their allies? Like they can just tunnel their traffic through Russia or China.

You could try to bifurcate into allied and non allied, but even that would be flawed, especially in countries like the USA where it becomes a first amendment right to try to ban such connectivity. It’s very hard to kill the Internet in terms of connecting peers - that’s kind of the point of its design.
by rich_sasha | 2026-01-26 05:18:09+00:00
I think about optimising between investment and consumption a lot recently. It's like GDP per capita vs. quality of life.

Canada, and much of Europe, optimise for QoL. But in Europe at least, this impinges on people's mental ability to invest in growth, to have a risk taker mentality and "ownership of your own life" kind of thing.

US is the opposite. Screw QoL, screw inequality, go for growth and the rest will come. The poor will get more crumbs if the country grows more quickly, and over time will be better off than those in generous but stagnant European countries. Maybe.

Is Canada somehow finding a happy path? I'm getting mixed opinions. But would be great to know what Europe could learn from our friendly North American cousins.

From my side I can say, I visited Canada twice in my life, a very long time ago, and absolutely loved it. So I'm always rooting for the Maple Leaf people vs Team Orange (headed by Agent Orange..?).
Show HN: System design interview practice with AI
by ralfcheung | 2026-01-26 05:18:56+00:00
While interviewing for different companies and find Leetcode-like platforms to practice system design, there really isn't any good tools to practice that grill me like an interviewer. I built Scrimm.ai to solve a personal pain point: practicing System Design interviews alone is impossible and expensive (if you want to find a real person). You can read books, but you can’t simulate the pressure of an engineer poking holes in your architecture.

It’s in private beta. I’d love for you to try any of the questions and let me know if the AI is too harsh or too lenient.
by vivzkestrel | 2026-01-26 05:19:34+00:00
thank you for the response,

- how would you go about deploying this on an aws ecosystem? ec2 server? lambda? fargate?

- basically i want to run untrusted user code for many programming languages inside a sandbox and i am looking for solutions to do so

- need to be able to install libraries from pip, npm, cargo , just about any programming language's package manager
by benreesman | 2026-01-26 05:20:26+00:00
I compile nix derivations to well-posed effect/coeffect/graded monad algebra so I can do real bill of materials and build on an action cache engine maintained by professionals, but that's mostly for long-tail stuff.

These days with a la carte access to all of the container ecosystem primitives as nice, ergonomic, orthogonal operations I don't really see the value in nixpkgs. Don't really see the value in a container registry either: a correctly attested content addressable store with some DNS abbreviations is 100 lines of code because mostly it's git and an S3 shim.

The category error at the heart of nixpkgs is that the environment in which software is compiled need resemble the environment in which it executes. Silly stuff. So whether you're a patchelf --rpath ... Person or an unshare --bind-mount Enjoyer (isomorphic), just remember, in 2026 the guy with the daemon that runs as root does not want you to have nice things.
by cdrini | 2026-01-26 05:21:53+00:00
While observing the benefits of his position, I also empathize with the struggles that must come with unexpected widespread fame. And I never said he is/should succumb to the pressure, but again I empathize that navigating that pressure is an added stress of his position. A stress which I'm grateful isn't part of my life, and not one I would trade any of my average Joe problems for. I'm personally not convinced by your argument, and still struggle to see how the word dystopian made it into the conversation.

And although of course you do not owe an explanation for your opinion, I do find it a bit ironic that you were the one asking of others to defend/expand on theirs, but are yourself unwilling to do the same. But I understand it, it can be difficult and time consuming to reflect on one's opinions and come up with a clear and concise write-up of those thoughts that others can enjoy and benefit from. That's why I respect it when people are able to do that -- people like Jack Edwards, perhaps? ;)
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-26 05:23:19+00:00
> Same if you don't trust the processor.

Well I don't entirely, but in that case there's even less of a choice and also (it seems to me) less risk. The OEM software stack on the phone is expected to phone home. On the other hand there is a strong expectation that a CPU or southbridge or whatever other chip will not do that on its own. Not only would it be much more technically complex to pull off, it should also be easy to confirm once suspected by going around and auditing other identical hardware.

As you progress down the stack from userspace to OS to firmware to hardware there is progressively less opportunity to interact directly with the network in a non-surreptitious manner, more expectation of isolation, and it becomes increasingly difficult to hide something after the fact. On the extreme end a hardware backdoor is permanently built into the chip as a sort of physical artifact. It's literally impossible to cover it up after the fact. That's incredibly high risk for the manufacturer.

The above is why the Intel ME and AMD PSP solutions are so nefarious. They normalize the expectation that the hardware vendor maintains unauditable, network capable, remotely patchable black box software that sits at the bottom of the stack at the root of trust. It's literally something out of a dystopian sci-fi flick.
by ranger207 | 2026-01-26 05:23:29+00:00
I think that video games can be art, but relatively few are, and most of those that do reach the bar of being considered art aren't particularly avant-garde. Like, taking a couple of artsy-ish games, how much does Return of the Obra Dinn or Outer Wilds really change the player as a person (even if the end of the latter is particularly emotionally poignant)? Or to put it another way, there's a good number of games that are Discworlds but none that reach the level of the Lord of the Rings: a lot that have a good, concise moral that will stick with you, but none that can change an entire culture. Of course, it could just be that my definition of "art" is too narrow and too high a bar, and there's something to be said about the interactivity of games that gives them greater impact than other media
by kbmckenna | 2026-01-26 05:24:42+00:00
Don’t act like the current policy is the only possible alternative to open borders.
In spring of ’24, a bipartisan bill negotiated with Republicans included the following:

* Personnel surge: 1,500+ new Border Patrol agents, 4,300 asylum officers, and 100 immigration judges with staff to address 5-7 year case backlogs

* Emergency shutdown authority: Presidential power to close the border and suspend asylum processing when daily encounters exceeded capacity thresholds

* Fentanyl enforcement: 100 cutting-edge inspection machines at Southwest ports of entry, plus sanctions authority against foreign nationals involved in transnational drug trafficking

* Detention and support: Funding to address overcrowded ICE facilities, $1.4B for cities/states providing migrant services, and expedited work permits for eligible applicants

* Asylum system overhaul: Faster and fairer asylum process with massively expanded officer capacity to reduce years-long delays in adjudication

This bill had flaws and reasonable people disagreed on details, but it represented serious bipartisan compromise. Republicans walked away from it after Trump opposed it and it was blocked in congress.
If you think that specific bill was bad, show me the Republican legislation introduced to solve the immigration crisis. They don’t want to solve the problem because it fires up their base.
by Jach | 2026-01-26 05:25:08+00:00
It's good of you to beware immature judgment lest you so be judged.

I didn't have a particular letter in mind but the topic comes up at various places in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially in his remarks about sub-creation. I decided to ctrl-f my digital copy and I'll point you to Letter 213 for a direct remark. It's 3 paragraphs, here's the first:

> I do not like giving 'facts' about myself other than 'dry' ones (which anyway are quite as relevant to my books as any other more Juicy details). Not simply for personal reasons; but also because I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract attention from an author's works (if the works are in fact worthy of attention), and end, as one now often sees, in becoming the main interest. But only one's guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author's works. Not the author himself (though he knows more than any investigator), and certainly not so-called 'psychologists'.

I'm in agreement with Tolkien here.

I wonder if you've ever read A Modest Proposal? If not: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm But if so I still wonder if you can put yourself in the frame of mind of not having read it and not knowing anything about it, and thus recreating an approximation for how you would read such a piece for the first time. What do you make of it? What do you make of Dr. Jonathan Swift? Do you have enough historical knowledge to put yourself in 1729 and interpret it as a person from that era, instead of our modern cynical and irony-poisoned one?
by smsm42 | 2026-01-26 05:27:18+00:00
> EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid

Actually they don't. They say "Some states, using their own funds, allow enrollment by non-citizens" - but they never say if it's legal residents or illegal immigrants. I am not sure whether it's part of the ongoing attempt to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants, or all the states that allow that genuinely do not distinguish between legal residents and illegal immigrants, but we can not assume it by default.

But I am not sure if the states use their own money for this - why would they send this information to HHS?
by sovietswag | 2026-01-26 05:28:13+00:00
You can also find a lot of this information on NOAA's nautical charts. https://devgis.charttools.noaa.gov/pod. These charts (along with radar) are what ships actually use to navigate. Here's a captain demonstrating the charts on the New York Harbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Si_kdo6MUE
by ajsnigrutin | 2026-01-26 05:29:04+00:00
But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives.

But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn)

With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that.

Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
by fragmede | 2026-01-26 05:29:36+00:00
"Disbursement" is what you're looking for. Stripe can do it, but as you mentioned, you're now responsible for the code. Either you write the code and you're responsible, or you pay someone else and they're responsible. Unless you have a business justification that it absolutely must be done by code, just hire a human accountant who does it by hand each month.

But if you do want to hand roll it with your own code:

https://docs.stripe.com/connect/separate-charges-and-transfe...
by JaggerFoo | 2026-01-26 05:30:48+00:00
You mean the one I just downloaded and updated my laptop with? It installed OK.

I usually use MacOS and Linux, it's just that some software is Windows only, and I run MacOS on Apple Silicon - the windows program I needed only uses x86-64 architecture, so I can't use parallels (AFAIK).

I'm kind of hoping I get an update that bricks my laptop so I can install Debian over this MS Windows hellscape and run windows on a VM when needed. I may do it anyways after I get fed up with nagging MS messages and workarounds.
by xvxvx | 2026-01-26 05:31:05+00:00
The internet has long been used as a weapon against Iran. It’s the largest espionage machine in human history, backed by the military since day 0.

We already see HN being filled with propaganda posts claiming an ever growing number of Iranians were killed by their own government, all completely unconfirmed. The goal is to get that misinfo to the Iranian people and promote an overthrow of leadership, one which will be favorable to the west and Israel.

I’m no fan of dictatorships but acting like the enemies of Iran aren’t genocidal monsters themselves is beyond the pale. When the Israeli government claims that Iran needs to be toppled to protect the Iranian people, while they simultaneously commit genocide in Palestine, I have to stop and think about their real motives. Trumo wants to bring democracy to Iran, meanwhile his goons are executing Americans who disagree with them, amongst many other things.

Pass.
by tavavex | 2026-01-26 05:31:47+00:00
> Don’t fall for the americanism of being blind to the rest of the world and thinking we’re the best.

That's not what the person was saying, though. They never implied that Canada is the best, they only said that Canada is a good place to live in, and that people who try to say otherwise (like the parent of this thread) lack perspective. Any Canadian that lived in other first-world countries (except maybe the US) will probably say that in many ways, the other countries can be better than us. We've got plenty of issues, but Canada's still up there. There's some things that are good here, some that need a lot of work - but on average, it's still really good by world standards. There's nothing wrong with saying that we need to improve in many critical areas, but there is in posting ragebait talking about 'true Canada' being long gone, Canada being a failed state and so on, like what you see above and across many parts of the internet.
by augusteo | 2026-01-26 05:32:55+00:00
Building on ranger207's point about transformative impact: I think the challenge is that game transformations are often invisible to outside observers.

When someone reads Lord of the Rings, they can talk about it with others who haven't. The shared cultural vocabulary emerges from discussion. But when a game fundamentally changes how you perceive systems or choices, that shift happens inside your head. You can't really show someone else.

I played Factorio for a LOT of hours many years back. For months afterward, I genuinely couldn't stop seeing bottlenecks and throughput problems everywhere. Traffic, grocery stores, my own work. It sounds silly describing it, but the perceptual shift was real. Nobody around me noticed because there was nothing external to notice.

Maybe games won't produce the next Lord of the Rings because their transformations are too personal and too hard to share?
by snapplebobapple | 2026-01-26 05:33:50+00:00
Guys, a discussion of which big tech company is better is equivalent to talking about which cancer is the best to have.... Can we all agree that each operating system has good features but they share a terrible feature of being strapped to a giant vampire squid exfiltrating your data and selling your secrets to the highest bidder? Instead of wasting bandwidth on these two companies can we go and figure out how to force cell phones (and consoles and numerous other things) open like the PC was/ mostly still is?
by cortanas | 2026-01-26 05:34:16+00:00
Think you are the best of the best? If you aren't mercor will humble you. Mercor is hiring experienced software engineers for short term paid research collaborations with leading AI labs.

This is hands on technical work helping evaluate and improve AI systems through code review, prompt refinement, algorithm validation, and benchmarking.

Details
Remote contract
50 to 150 USD per hour
Part time 15 to 25 hours per week with flexibility up to 40
Initial duration 1 to 2 months with possible extension
Weekly payments via Stripe or Wise

What you will do
Review and improve AI generated code and technical responses
Validate algorithms and software concepts for correctness
Provide structured feedback on clarity and quality
Help benchmark model capabilities across languages and difficulty levels

Who we are looking for
2 plus years software engineering experience
Strong in Python JavaScript Java C++ or similar
Comfortable debugging and reviewing unfamiliar code
Enjoys technical writing and precision

Process
Resume submission
15 minute conversational AI interview
Fast follow up and onboarding
by wvenable | 2026-01-26 05:35:14+00:00
> That costs significantly more and involves the creation of jobs. I see this as a great outcome.

I don't see it that way. If whatever you're doing can now be automated then it's become a bullshit job. It no longer a benefit to humanity to have a human sit on their ass, stand on their feet, or break their back to do a job that can be automated. As a software developer, it's my job to take the dumb repetitive stuff that humans do and make it so that humans never have to do that job again.

If that's a problem for society, it's because society is messed up.

> It's been known for years. They don't seem interested in doing that or they simply aren't capable.

I don't find that to be particularly big problem. Fundamentally an AI isn't just compressing all human knowledge and decompressing it on demand; it's tweaking parameters in a giant matrix. I can reproduce the lyrics of songs that I've heard but that doesn't mean there is a literal copy of that song in my brain that you could extract out with a well placed scalpel. It just means I've heard it a bunch of times and the giant matrix in my brain is tuned to be able to spit it out.

> Is that like a knob they can turn or is it something much more fundamental to the technology they've staked trillions on?

In a sense, it a knob. It's not fundamental to the technology; if it's reproducing something exactly that likely means it's over-trained on that data. It's actually bad for the models (makes them more incorrect, more rigid, and more repetitive) so that is a knob they will turn.
by smsm42 | 2026-01-26 05:35:27+00:00
> There are not non-citizens on voter rolls.

That is incorrect, there are actually non-citizens on voter rolls, especially in the states with automatic voter registration. Example: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/scotus-al...

Of course, actually voting would be a crime: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611 but it doesn't stop everybody: https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state-more-than-100-non...
by jy-tan | 2026-01-26 05:37:48+00:00
You can just install Fence in your deployed service (see the installation instructions in the README), then wrap the user command/script with `fence -t code <command>`. It will probably work fine in an EC2 instance but I'm not very sure about Fargate/ECS/Lambda.

The `code` template already allowlists npm, PyPI, crates.io, and Go modules, easy to extend for others by adding to allowedDomains in your config.
by JoshTriplett | 2026-01-26 05:38:04+00:00
The impression I get from this post is that anyone who doesn't like it needs to try it more. It doesn't really feel like it leaves space for "yeah, I tried it, and I still don't want to use it".

I know what its capabilities are. If I wanted to manage a set of enthusiastic junior engineers, I'd work with interns, which I love doing because they learn and get better. (And I still wouldn't want to be the manager.) AIs don't, not from your feedback anyway; they sporadically get better from a new billion dollar training run, where "better" has no particular correlation with your feedback.
by smsm42 | 2026-01-26 05:38:21+00:00
> Are you a citizen, can you prove it at the polling station?

Yes, I have multiple documents proving my citizenship. Never been asked though, ID always sufficed.

> so I think we'll set your vote aside, or possibly prevent it from being cast; we can't be too sure!

I have voted in more than one state (legally, I moved) never seen any voting place asking for any documents except for state ID and voter roll check. I don't think there is any voting place where local state ID is not "legit enough".
by Agentlien | 2026-01-26 05:38:26+00:00
This was a really weird ramble and I find myself disagreeing completely. As a lifelong gamer, it rings false because I've read many pieces of game critique and reviews which perfectly capture a game's soul. As a game developer, I just find the perspective confused.

I do think video games are art. And that good games can be transformative. But that certainly does not set them apart from any other kind of art. Besides, even if art is transformative and experiences are unique that does not make critique impossible. You can certainly talk about what it does, how, and why it affects you.

Freedom of choice is often limited enough to give a sense of agency while making most player experiences fairly predictable in all but the finer details. Even for games which give you vast freedom, the designers work hard to ensure most players understand the shape of the whole and encounter the most important beats.