MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ekropotin | 2026-01-13 00:24:44+00:00
> The idea of conflict with Greenland is kayfabe - it's all posturing and bombast

Given the times we live in, I won’t rule out any, even most crazy, possibilities.

If someone told me (Russian) 20 years ago that we’ll invade Ukraine, I’d think it’s some kind of terrible joke. But here we are.
by kellystonelake | 2026-01-13 00:25:57+00:00
Against a backdrop of recent Reuters reporting that 10% of Meta's projected revenue ($16 B) is coming from fraudulent or scam ads, and CBC's reporting on illegal drugs being sold via Instagram and Facebook ads (delivered by Canada Post), Meta is gobbling up Trump's former advisors and putting them into senior leadership positions.

Dina Powell McCormick was appointed as Meta's new President and Vice Chair. Curtis Joseph Mahoney as Meta's new Chief Legal Officer. Both are former Trump advisors.

These investigations reveal a pattern where legal compliance is treated as a variable cost, to be minimized and timed, rather than as a binding constraint.

- Illicit revenue persists because it is better for the company to “manage” vs. eliminate
- Enforcement becomes most aggressive only when/where penalties are imminent.
- Fines are anticipated as a manageable line item relative to revenue.

These stories are difficult to understand as isolated enforcement failures. They suggest a platform-level equilibrium: illicit advertising persists at scale because the systems that optimize for revenue and engagement do not treat illegality or harm to users as disqualifying in practice.

It’s the same pattern we see in Meta’s orientation to keeping kids safe online; too much impact to their profits to do the right thing.

Reuters reports internal documents that explicitly compare potential regulatory settlements to the revenue derived from higher-legal-risk scam ads, and it describes internal acknowledgement that leadership chose to act primarily in response to impending regulatory action (a characterization Meta disputes).

Meta appears to be treating laws as negotiable through delay, opacity, and the asymmetry between platform-scale profits and public-sector enforcement capacity

McCormick and Mahoney strengthen Meta’s ability to shape, resist, or reframe the rules that would otherwise constrain it. They have experience; they’ve done this for Trump.

When a platform’s revenue model is tightly coupled to automated targeting and optimization, and when enforcement is managed to protect revenue stability and platform engagement instead of users, illicit markets and bad actors will predictably find purchase.

We’ve allowed Meta to create a model where their public statements of commitment to safety can coexist with persistent actions that cause measurable harm.

The question policymakers, researchers, and the public should keep returning to is whether Meta’s governance choices make illegal and exploitative monetization a recurring, manageable feature of its business.

If the answer is yes, then the policy response should be designed accordingly: not as advice to improve moderation, not as a discussion about the burden on company of complying with law, but as an immediate shift of incentives and penalties around the only thing Meta cares about: their bottom line.
by AnotherGoodName | 2026-01-13 00:25:58+00:00
Lossy and lossless are essentially fundamentally the same actually. All state of the art lossy compressors use arithmetic coding as an example and they still do prediction. Eg. your favourite video codecs predict not only the next bit in the 2D frame, but also the next bit when modelling past frames (becomes a 3D cube of data at that point) and they also do things like motion prediction of individual objects in frame to help make a better prediction. They all use arithmetic encoders to encode the data.

Where the lossy part comes in is the point at which humans notice/don't notice data being thrown away. Got a bit that was waaay out of line in the prediction and going to cost you 10bits to correct? Perhaps to humans it doesn't matter? Can we throw it away? This throwing away of data is often done before the prediction+compression stage (eg. maybe quantizing the color space to 8bits from 32bits?) but from there on it's the same thing.
by defrost | 2026-01-13 00:27:06+00:00
I've always enjoyed field work, much of the code I've written has been well outside of any office.

Exploration geophysics paid for me to travel to and across more than half he countries on the planet, calibrating old maps, datums, projections against the 'new' WGS84, scaling peaks to stage base stations, getting familiar with the ins and outs of tides, magnetic fields, gravity, radiometric backgrounds, finding a good band in Mali ...

Loved it.
by linolevan | 2026-01-13 00:30:25+00:00
I'm wondering in what ways is this similar/different to https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms?

I saw TimeCapsuleLLM a few months ago, and I'm a big fan of the concept but I feel like the execution really isn't that great. I wish you:

- Released the full, actual dataset (untokenized, why did you pretokenize the small dataset release?)

- Created a reproducible run script so I can try it out myself

- Actually did data curation to remove artifacts in your dataset

- Post-trained the model so it could have some amount of chat-ability

- Released a web demo so that we could try it out (the model is tiny! Easily can run in the web browser without a server)

I may sit down and roll a better iteration myself.
by feb012025 | 2026-01-13 00:30:47+00:00
To be fair, I'll admit there's somewhat of a double standard when it comes to silence in regard to US support for Saudi Arabia vs Israel. But realistically, for me, I don't think the answer is to offer full-throated support to Israel and to be quiet about issues Americans have with it. Especially if it risks spiraling into a broader conflict.

I do think there are particular aspects about US support for Israel, outside of humanitarian concerns, that lead to people being more critical about US involvement in the conflict.
by autoexec | 2026-01-13 00:31:03+00:00
Generally I agree with you. My advice is that when you find a pair or shoes you like pick up at least 3 pair because by the time you need to replace them they'll be gone, but Converse isn't a great example of that because I can get a pair of Chucks which look/fit basically exactly like any pair I've ever had. It's actually kind of nice that Converse doesn't seem to play the same game as the tennis/running shoes I wear out.
by yencabulator | 2026-01-13 00:31:33+00:00
> [consumer] ToS states it cannot be used for commercial purposes

Where? I searched https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms for commercial and the only thing I can see is

> Evaluation and Additional Services. In some cases, we may permit you to evaluate our Services for a limited time or with limited functionality. Use of our Services for evaluation purposes are for your personal, non-commercial use only.

All that says to me is don't abuse free trials for commercial use.
by Aloisius | 2026-01-13 00:33:02+00:00
We're seeing what looks to be a full blown economic collapse. People don't have money to buy food right now.

I don't see what reforms they could implement that can quickly fix this as they need to radically alter trust in the government for currency reforms to work.

But who knows? Maybe they'll muddy their way through or rely on force to stay in power. Certainly large protests have happened before, but this is the first time in decades where all 5 conditions of a successful revolution are present at the same time.
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-13 00:33:11+00:00
>The thing about Trump being pro peace was just one more pure bad faith lie.

Okay, the reverse logic works as well. People didn't trust either candidate so it came down to all the above, superficial factors or much deeper, unspoken motivations.

My main point is more on "people already knew who they wanted" more than whatever their outward facing words say.
Show HN: Blockchain-Based Equity with Separated Economic and Governance Rights
by iam_pri_s | 2026-01-13 00:33:45+00:00
I've been researching blockchain-based capital markets and developed a framework for tokenized equity with separated economic, dividend, and governance rights.
Core idea: Instead of bundling everything into one share, issue three token types: - LOBT: Economic participation, no governance - PST: Automated dividends, no ownership - OT: Full governance control

Key challenge: Verifying real-world business operations on-chain without trusted intermediaries. I propose decentralized oracles + ZK proofs, but acknowledge significant unsolved problems.

This is research/RFC seeking technical feedback on oracle architecture, regulatory viability, and which verticals this makes sense for.

Thoughts?
by schiffern | 2026-01-13 00:33:54+00:00
That strikes me as a weak argument. We have vehicles with legs, but wheels are just better, practically speaking.

The argument is that humans provide a proof-of-concept that vision + neural net can drive a car, because (for some reason) some people doubt this is possible. However there's no need for a "proof of concept" that mechanical legs can be built, because everyone already know that building mechanical legs is possible.
by laurencerowe | 2026-01-13 00:34:04+00:00
I pretty much agree. There seems a clear economic case to install enough grid storage to smooth out within day variations but that will fill up during multi-day windy periods so there will certainly still be periods of cheap electricity just not every day.

That likely means you'll still be able to charge your car cheaply most of the time but it probably makes home battery investments less attractive since you might only get 100-200 opportunities a year to charge it cheaply instead of 365, halving the annual savings.

But then given so much of the cost of a home system is in the inverter and control unit maybe it will become economic to buy several days consumption worth of batteries.
by ggm | 2026-01-13 00:35:05+00:00
Douglas Mawson ("home of the blizzard") had a rich life after Antartica as a field geologist, exploring the flinders ranges. He found a radium mine and was shipping ore to Europe for a while. He led students on field trips, one of whom, Reg Sprigg caught the bug, explored as much as he could, persuaded the Australian petro and uranium sector to fund pushing tracks into his favourite spots, and then converted the landscape into the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. I got to spend a night there last year on a flight safari to Lake Eyre, it's an amazing place, dark sky with a big telescope, wildlife, well worth a visit.

Mawson had the field trip of a lifetime (for his two mates, it was the end of their lifetime!) and it didn't end his bug for the outside. I don't think he was made to sit in a lab.

I'd say your Mali trip was the same: it hasn't made you want to stop being outside from the sound of it.
by leptons | 2026-01-13 00:35:16+00:00
Good. I typed in a search for some medication I was taking and Google's "AI" summary was bordering on criminal. The WebMD site had the correct info, as did the manufacturer's website. Google hallucinated a bunch of stuff about it, and I knew then that they needed to put a stop to LLMs slopping about anything to do with health or medical info.
by array_key_first | 2026-01-13 00:35:20+00:00
It very obviously is, you'd have to be the most naive of the most naive to think there isn't a path for them to jack prices later. Maybe that's not nefarious depending on your definition, but the point is you will definitely be paying more in the future.

I mean, this is the playbook of every tech company for the past 30 years. You sell something at a huge loss to gain market share and force your competitors to exit, and then you begin value extraction from your, now captive, customer base. You lower quality, raise prices, and cut support, and you do it slowly enough that nobody is hit with enough friction at one time to walk.

If you expect anything else, I don't know what to tell you. This is very much the standard. In fact it's SO much the standard that companies don't even have a choice. If you choose not to do this, then the people who are doing this will just undercut you and run you out.

The key piece in this is that, once the value extraction begins, it can't just strive for profitability. No, it also has to make up for the past 10 or 15 years of losses on top of that. So it's not like the product will just get expensive enough to sustain itself like you'd expect with a typical product. It'll get much more expensive than that.
by redactsureAI | 2026-01-13 00:35:50+00:00
A lot of people here are discussing the security challenges here. If you're interested I'm working on a novel solution to the security of these systems.

Basic ideas are minimal privilege per task in a minimal and contained environment for everything and heavy control over all actions AI is performing. AI can performs tasks without seeing any of your personal information in the process. A new kind of orchestration and privacy layer for zero trust agentic actions.

Redactsure.com

From this feed I figured I'd plug my system, would love your feedback! I beleive we are building out a real solution to these security and privacy concerns.

While the entire field is early I do believe systems like my own and others will make these products safe and reliable in the near future.
Show HN: I found that Facebook made around 14K from my daily usage
by puildupO | 2026-01-13 00:36:00+00:00
I started using Facebook at the age of 13, for many hours every day. The same happened with other social media apps.
I recently found that Facebook alone made around 14K from my daily usage over the years.
I paid with my time and attention, and they made money from it.
Seeing the number made me less addicted and more careful.
It showed me that my time is actually expensive.
by ossa-ma | 2026-01-13 00:36:02+00:00
Actually its worse, those are all offer letters scraped from the internet. So Interview Coder is blatantly lying:

Apple (2017) - https://www.scribd.com/document/500958913/offer-1

Amazon - https://www.scribd.com/document/819970502/672915686-Amazon-O...

Microsoft - https://www.scribd.com/document/786362890/Arjun-Chakraborty-...
by lkbm | 2026-01-13 00:37:42+00:00
> !! Bang bang boolean conversion

This isn't a special operator. This is just how "not" (!) works. In basically every language: C, C++, Javascript, Perl, etc., ! is the "not" operator so !12 gives you false (12 is truthy), and !!12 (not false) gives you true.

It's the same in languages that use different operators for "not". In python, the "not" operator is just the word not, and can write "not not 12" to get True. They didn't implement a special "not not" operator, anymore than Perl implemented a "!!" operator. They just implemented the basic ! / "not" operator.
by nazgul17 | 2026-01-13 00:38:33+00:00
Is there anything like this but for music selection? I mean, for adults. Say I want to have a dozen "albums" on my coffee table (NFC, QR, whatever), and insert one in a box to listen to them. Like an Audio CD, but without the risk of running, leveraging Spotify, or my MP3 connection. Something like in the OP, but using something less prone to stop working than a floppy disk (I was there, I remember).
by CamperBob2 | 2026-01-13 00:39:11+00:00
Well, they couldn't generate 2D artwork if they weren't capable of working with multiple output dimensions.

An interesting thing about transformers is that they are world-class at compressing 2D image data even when not trained on anything but textual language ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.10668 ). Whether that notion is relevant for 3D content would be two or three figures over my pay grade, though.
by anonymars | 2026-01-13 00:40:10+00:00
Appointing judges to overturn Roe v. Wade was a focal point in the 2016 election. Dangling that possibility was the entire point of the confirmation shenanigans.

"Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that ... will happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court"
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-justices-dec...
by tptacek | 2026-01-13 00:40:36+00:00
From what I understand, which squares with the times I've been to the Pentagon:

* People working late at the Pentagon don't order pizza to the building

* The Pentagon has pizza options, including late-night ones

* The Pentagon is in fact chock-full of restaurants

* There is in reality no such thing as real telemetry about pizza orders near the Pentagon.

I have the opinion that this pizza thing is mostly just a story people tell because it makes them feel clever. Not high-horsing it; I have those too.
by noosphr | 2026-01-13 00:41:23+00:00
People should take this as a lesson on how much we are being subsidized right now.

Claude code runs into use limitations for everyone at every tier. The API is too expensive to use and it's _still_ subsidized.

I keep repeating myself but no one seems to listen: quadratic attention means LLMs will always cost astronomically more than you expect after running the pilot project.

Going from 10k loc to 100k loc isn't a 10x increase, it's a 99x increase. Going from 10k loc to 1m loc isn't a 100x increase, it's a 9999x increase. This is fundamental to how transformers work and is the _best case scenario_. In practice things are worse.
by smsm42 | 2026-01-13 00:41:47+00:00
Billionaires there are subjects to the regime, and only remain billionaires while they are absolutely loyal to the regime. And threat of disagreement not only would cause them stop being billionaires, but also stop breathing altogether. I mean, running away could be an option, but then one stops being Russian or Chinese billionaire. And also this may not preclude "stop breathing" option, as some examples show.
by jrs235 | 2026-01-13 00:41:56+00:00
If I understand you correctly, then if a President's cabinet (high officials) break the law the President can be impeached. Which makes sense to me. It places accountability on the President to pick trust worthy people and to immediately get rid of them if they break the law (to lessen the chances they'd be impeached for not doing something about it and insuring they are prosecuted).
by _blk | 2026-01-13 00:42:59+00:00
Yup that'd be very interesting. Notably missing from this project's list is the KJV (1611 was in use at the time.) The first random newspaper that I pulled up from a search for "london newspaper 1950" has sermon references on the front page so it seems like an important missing piece.

Somewhat missing the cutoff of 1875 is the revised NT of the KJV. Work on it started in 1870 but likely wasn't used widely before 1881.
Show HN: I made a physical app blocker with ESP32
by b_feldman | 2026-01-13 00:43:17+00:00
Lately I've been getting a ton of ads for a device called Brick https://getbrick.app/ which is an NFC tag that you have to scan in order to unlock distracting apps on your phone. I really like the idea, and since I had an ESP32 with a screen laying around I figured that I could use this instead.

I made a simple iOS app that uses the Screen Time API to block a selection of apps. Once blocked, you have to scan the QR code on the ESP32 screen. This QR code is updated every 30 seconds using the TOTP algorithm (which is used by authenticator apps). It only uses a hardcoded shared key and the current timestamp, so there is no need to make the ESP32 and the iPhone communicate together. You do need to connect the ESP to WiFi at boot to sync its clock via NTP.

This design allows the QR code to be displayed on anything (e.g. a web page), but having it on a dedicated device adds more friction, which we want!
by miltonlost | 2026-01-13 00:43:28+00:00
Removing "some" doesn't make it worse. They didn't include "all" AI titles which it would. "Google removes AI health summaries after investigation finds dangerous flaws " is functionally equivalent to "Google removes some of its AI summaries after users’ health put at risk"

Oh, and also, the Ars article itself still contains the word "Some" (on my AB test). It's the headline on HN that left it out. So your complaint is entirely invalid: "Google removes some AI health summaries after investigation finds “dangerous” flaws"
by jofer | 2026-01-13 00:43:46+00:00
I also have spent quite awhile as an exploration geophysicist. I miss it! I work purely with satellite data now, which is decidedly less tangible.

I've done a fair bit in the field, but a huge part of my career has been mining old datasets and reinterpreting things in light of new data/etc.

What the article is describing isn't new in any way. But it also doesn't remove the need for fieldwork or the need for the experience of having done fieldwork to use existing datasets. Observational sciences (e.g. geology, biology, etc) where you can't easily replicate the environment you are studying in the lab are always going to hinge on some sort of fieldwork.

Finding creative ways to use existing data doesn't change that.
by lioeters | 2026-01-13 00:43:50+00:00
That looks like a useful trick, using an ephemeral instance to SSH into a failed CI action context. I see in the script how it waits and checks for root user login, but to keep it alive, this part:

> Then it loops while there's an active SSH session present.

From what I can see, the loop stops when a user is logged in. Is this handled elsewhere?

> use Taskfiles inside a Docker container since then, so my local environment can replicate the CI/CD environment

Oh this is what I've been wanting, a vendor-neutral way to run the same CI actions locally. I'd seen go-task before, will try it, thanks for the info!
by bpt3 | 2026-01-13 00:44:48+00:00
The logical leaps you make are comically large.

Just as one example, how does "Iranians across the country are chanting slogans in support of Reza Pahlavi" demonstrate that Western nations want him in power?

And did you miss this in that article: "Few analysts think Pahlavi has a real path to the throne or leadership in Iran."
by nomilk | 2026-01-13 00:46:21+00:00
There's a bug in the Delta Air Lines chess program. After cxd6 en passant, the captured pawn isn't removed [0]. White's bishop is then able to check the black king through the pawn (the pawn that should have been removed) [1].

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nyov4F7eWbT8uNoeclPY8uXVG6f...

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eEPBHqE5rpefE9gWflgS_hUwYGS...
by stockresearcher | 2026-01-13 00:46:22+00:00
> Can you explain what he got wrong?

If I’m understanding this correctly, he is suggesting that Apple should put their fancy camera in a strategic location at every stadium and concert hall in the country/world and then give the Vision Pro owners live access to the cameras when there is an event going on. With no production crew sitting between the camera and viewer.

I suppose that it’s impossible to prove unless they actually did it, but this sounds like it would be a monumental failure! The “immersive experience” would be fun for 10 or 20 minutes and then people would want the different angles and replays and everything else you get from having a production crew. Just wait for the first time you wish you could see a replay!

I was at the “Sammy Sosa corked bat incident” game and you know what all of us inside the ballpark saw and heard? Nothing. A play happened, the umps gathered and chatted for a couple minutes, and the game went on. People wondered where Sosa went and then we read about it in the newspaper the next day.

You think people want to pay $3500 to not be able to see better angles? To not be able to see replays? Yeah, courtside seats are amazing; that doesn’t mean they are perfect.