MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by benrutter | 2026-01-19 09:49:00+00:00
> the job market definitely incentivizes people to have that kind of experience on their resume

Yeah, this is sadly often true, but it's also another trap that people don't have to fall into.

I've been involved with hiring data engineers, and I see experience with distributed computing way more often than I see knowledge of simple profiling and debugging tools. But I'd personally value the latter a lot more when interviewing.

Companies that hire for skills they don't need are of course perpetuating this problem, but they're also paying a big "tax" in the sense that they're not hiring for the skills they actually do need.
by swiftcoder | 2026-01-19 09:49:11+00:00
> Passwords are entered in plain text into fields that you trust, but that also means that passwords can be stolen

The only difference here is that you are hashing the password in your head, instead of trusting the client to hash it for you before submitting it to the server.

Which makes the threat model here what, exactly? Keyloggers, or login pages that use outdated/insecure methods to authenticate with the server?
by mike_hearn | 2026-01-19 09:49:54+00:00
It feels like file formats and protocols is the wrong prism through which to view this. What users actually want is the ability to move as much data as possible from point A to point B, whilst remapping it as much as possible to meet the different features and identities of point B. A unified data format is actually a hindrance for meeting that need because it boils it all down to a lowest common denominator. A simple data pump utility that just copies data back and forth, with lots of special case logic like "X has a character limit of 5000, Y has a character limit of 500 so I'll truncate and add a link to the original post on X", is going to work far better for this use case.

More generally I feel like you kinda missed the point of filing systems in your first writeup. The moment you say "posts don't have natural names", ok, that's a serious problem that should put a halt to the entire concept. A file is nothing but a natural name for a byte array and a little bit of metadata. That's why we think of file managers and explorers when we think of what files are all about: lists of names. It's also why people directly use files for relatively few things - they were a big deal in the early days of personal computing because the killer apps for it were direct translation of physical office tasks. It's mostly but not entirely possible to come up with natural names for office documents (the gap is in suffixes like "draft final v3__real final draft.docx"). That's why we use analogies for 1950s paperful office objects like files and manila folders to begin with. But most computing tasks even back then weren't oriented around documents, they were oriented around database records and the user interface was just screens, or possibly direct SQL. It's a remarkable gap in our infrastructure that there is no agreed on file format for a SQL result set. Maybe Arrow is that format.
by threatofrain | 2026-01-19 09:50:06+00:00
Thinking that good reputation in a law translates to a good lawyer is just as mature as thinking that a bad reputation translates to a bad lawyer, just two sides of the same coin. Credibility can be so cruel, it can make a brilliant mathematician like Terry Tao preemptively decline to read your mathematical arguments basically forever.

In both cases I think these may be characteristics of healthy judgment.
by PunchyHamster | 2026-01-19 09:50:17+00:00
History of Google text/voice/video chat is frankly insane, they refuse to just have a product and develop it, instead every few years the new thing pops up and the old thing gets deprecated.

They should've been dominating the space for near 2 decades now. Instead they had Google Talk (that even worked over XMPP!) then replaced it with google hangouts, and then Google Chat.
by crote | 2026-01-19 09:50:32+00:00
Of course, but in most applications the use of a password is a given, so in day-to-day use "2FA" had come to mean "the other auth method, besides your password".

Combine that with the practical problems with biometrics when trying to auth to a remote system, and in practice that second factor is more often than not "something you have". And biometrics is usually more of a three-factor system, with the device you enrolled your fingerprints on being an essential part of the equation.
by crote | 2026-01-19 09:52:13+00:00
Are there any mainstream websites which only allow a single TOTP token to be enrolled? I can't remember having ever run into that issue. I do recall it occasionally being an issue with Passkeys, though.

The non-disclosure is indeed neat, but the same can be achieved with a password. For example: generate public/private keypair on account creation. Encrypt private key with user password. Store both on server. On auth, client downloads encrypted priv key, decrypts it with user-entered password, then signs nonce and provides it to server as proof of knowledge of user password.
by torginus | 2026-01-19 09:52:20+00:00
UX problems != low-level engineering issues.

I think most people agree that current Windows sucks due to a combination of engineering neglect and deliberate enshittification.

But how the OS is put together and some of the debug tooling (WinDbg, ProcDump, Windows Performance Analyzer, ttd, graphics debuggers etc) mean that it's much easier to debug complex apps like games on Windows. Windows had this stuff since forever.

And due to the stability of the system architecture and the QA MS does mean that Windows might be shitty in some ways, but institutional knowledge has built up over the decades.

Linux in contrast is like the ship of Theseus.

A lot of the work Valve has done on Linux was to plug these gaps and had to develop similar tooling on Linux, otherwise its impossible to fix full-stack problems where the user clicks in a videogame, and something does or does not happen on the screen.

I'm not glazing Windows, I'm just infuriated by the persistent feeling of technical superiority of Linux people, who don't even bother to understand the problems, and explain away the lead Microsoft has as some sort of shadowy anti-user conspiracy, rather than the fact that Windows does a lot of things that users care about better than Linux.
by jacquesm | 2026-01-19 09:52:54+00:00
I'd love a self hosted version of something that isn't IRC, allows easy sharing if media. Decoupling from US based companies seems to be prudent with the USA threatening war on the EU and any tools that can help us do that are welcome. I would not use this tool simply because it is not increasing self reliance, it just exchanges one US based company for several others.
by matwood | 2026-01-19 09:53:36+00:00
It’s not marketing speak, but it’s rarely 100 percent one or the other.

> More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition your product isn’t “polished”.

This doesn’t make any sense. Polished to who? The end user? You can absolutely use AI to polish the user experience. Whether coding by hand or AI the most important aspect of polish is having someone who cares.
by vjerancrnjak | 2026-01-19 09:54:07+00:00
Bruteforce thinking works in this case, given that there's only ~12*2^12 total states and transition matrix is very sparse, 1/11 is quick to calculate.

But not all of these states are valid, visited set is just defined by 2 markers on the circle (and the start position), so now state count is much smaller.

Ladybug needs to be on 7 or 5 while having a nice (7,5) visited state to reach 6, movements inside (7, 5) don't really matter, so state count gets to 12*11/2=66. Quite small and enough to do by hand.
by normie3000 | 2026-01-19 09:54:29+00:00
> static code analysis which by definition does not find runtime bugs

I'm not sure if there's some subtlety of language here, but from my experience of javascript linting, it can often prevent runtime problems caused by things like variable scoping, unhandled exceptions in promises, misuse of functions etc.

I've also caught security issues in Java with static analysis.
by articsputnik | 2026-01-19 09:54:49+00:00
Amazing write-up. Owing to your data, a standardized protocol (such as the AT Protocol) is so great! It's like markdown, everything is basically built on files (but cleverly architected so that it works decentralized across the web too!).

I wrote a little along the same lines on «Well Being in Times of Algorithms» at https://www.ssp.sh/blog/well-being-algorithms/ (or HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46352747).
by blfr | 2026-01-19 09:55:07+00:00
I agree with grandparent and think you have cause and effect backwards: people really do want to be outraged so Facebook and the like provide rage bait. Sometimes through algos tuning themselves to that need, sometimes deliberately.

But Facebook cannot "require" people do be angry. Facebook can barely even "require" people to log in, only those locked into Messenger ecosystem.

I don't use Facebook but I do use TikTok, and Twitter, and YouTube. It's very easy to filter rage bait out of your timeline. I get very little of it, mark it "uninterested"/mute/"don't recommend channel" and the timeline dutifully obeys. My timelines are full of popsci, golden retrievers, sketches, recordings of local trams (nevermind), and when AI makes an appearance it's the narrative kind[1] which I admit I like or old jokes recycled with AI.

The root of the problem is in us. Not on Facebook. Even if it exploits it. Surfers don't cause waves.

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@gossip.goblin
by wongarsu | 2026-01-19 09:55:14+00:00
If we are talking about cloud VMs: sure, their cpu performance is atrocious and io can be horrible. This won't scale to infinity

But if there's the option to run this on a fairly modest dedicated machine, I'd be comfortable that any reasonable solution for pure ingest could scale to five orders of magnitude more data, and still about four orders of magnitude if we need to look at historical data. Of course you could scale well beyond that, but at that point it would be actual work
Ask HN: "Unfortunately, humanity's future is in the hands of [redacted]"
by fdeage | 2026-01-19 09:55:39+00:00
From an 2018 email from Musk to the OpenAI leadership (https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/)

I asked Claude, ChatGPT and Grok the following:
"List the top 5 possible options for [redacted], with an associated probabililty for each. It can be a company or a person."

I got a mix of "DeepMind", "Demis Hassabis", "Larry Page" and "Alphabet/Google". Surprisingly, Grok doesn't mention Hassabis, but FAIR (Meta) instead.

Any other idea from outside the Google cluster?
CVEFinder – Fast CVE lookup with product-level mapping
by cvefinder | 2026-01-19 09:55:46+00:00
Hi HN,

I built CVEFinder while doing bug bounty and vulnerability research. I kept running into issues with NVD-style CPE matching: slow searches, incorrect product mappings, and difficulty answering simple questions like “which products are affected by this CVE?”

CVEFinder focuses on:

* fast CVE lookup
* clearer vendor/product/version mapping
* filtering CVEs by real-world products
* API access for automation and tooling

It’s still early and incomplete, and I’m actively iterating based on feedback. I’d especially love input from security engineers and researchers on:

* gaps you see in CVE data
* pain points with existing CVE databases
* what would make this actually useful in daily work

Happy to answer any technical questions.
by andyouwont | 2026-01-19 09:55:58+00:00
And you won't. I will NOT invite anyone from "social media" to any of the 3 very-private, yet outrageously active, servers, and that's why they have less than 40 users collectively. They're basically for playing games and re-streaming movies among people on first name basis or close to it. And I know those 40 people have others of their own, and I know I'll never ever have access to them either. Because I dont know those other people in them.

And I know server like these are in the top tier of engagement for discord on the whole because they keep being picked for AB testing new features. Like, we had activities some half a year early. We actually had the voice modifiers on two of them, and most people don't even know that was a thing.
by lucumo | 2026-01-19 09:56:06+00:00
:-D

I did ask G'mini for synonyms. And to do a cursory count of e's in my post. Just as a 2nd opinion. It found only glyphs with quotation marks around it. It graciously put forward a proxy for that: "the fifth letter".

It's not oft that you run into such alluring confirmation of your point.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-19 09:56:16+00:00
> in my head they are both mapped to the red "embedding"

Sure. That's the point. These studies are a study of language per se. Not how language influences perception to a meanigful degree. Sapir-Whorf is a cool hypothesis. But it isn't true for humans.

(Out of curiosity, what is "embedding" doing that "word" does not?)
by defrost | 2026-01-19 09:56:31+00:00
Post-enlightenment science operates on classical determinism subject to a tolerance of error subject to knowledge of initial conditions and properties of the system under observation.

Thanks to Stephen Smale's Horseshoe map, Lorenz's Butterfly, the limits of instrumentation and Heisenberg's uncertainty the notion of perfect knowledge and strict determinism are out the window even for simple fully isolated systems that show chaotic behaviour with a few weights on coupled axles.

Even with all the datacentres on earth and in space there'll never be a precise and accurate forecast of a vortex in a stream.
by PunchyHamster | 2026-01-19 09:56:57+00:00
Ok, but what stops same from happening with any other solution? There are two things that would "fix" it:

* Fully open and interoperable protocol: We had it (XMPP), it was flawed, but at one beautiful moment in time it worked and using same protocol I could contact both google and facebook contacts. Then the companies decided "no, we would prefer to keep a walled gardens rather than make it easy to move to competition.

* Fully open source (no open core nonsense, latest Mattermost rugpull from OSS part users being one example why) chat platform with corporate backing and SaaS option - there is Matrix but afaik it is lacking feature-wise, tho I havent used it much. With plugin app store so it is possible to make and even sell integrations with other systems.

Second option seems more viable but it takes a lot of effort to make something as good as Slack or Discord
by dalemhurley | 2026-01-19 09:57:08+00:00
You are absolutely right...:P

I don't know mind people using AI to create open source projects, I use it extensively, but have a rule that I am responsible and accountable for the code.

Social media have become hellscapes of AI Slop of "Influencers" trying to make quick money by overhyping slop to sell courses.

Maybe where you are from the em dash is not used, but in Queen's English speaking countries the em dash is quite common to represent a break of thought from the main idea of a sentence.
by tapete1 | 2026-01-19 09:59:01+00:00
Of course Linux clients in your network can be controlled by group policy. You just need to roll out a enterprise-grade distribution like red hat.

See for example:

https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...

https://documentation.ubuntu.com/adsys/latest/how-to/use-gpo...
by sph | 2026-01-19 09:59:14+00:00
That's great, thanks for sharing. So obvious in hindsight (Pareto principle, power law, "80% of success is showing up") but the ramifications are enormous.

I wonder if this does apply in the same magnitude to the real world. Works on the internet because it's so vast and interconnected. Attention is very limited and there is so much stuff out there that the average user can only offer minimal attention and effort (the usual 80-20 Pareto allocation). In the real world things are more granular, hyperlocal and less homogeneous.
by pogue | 2026-01-19 09:59:36+00:00
What an absolute embarrassment to be American at this time. We have the most vain & corrupt president that only cares for his personal gain. It's unfortunate he's in control of the largest military in history. I don't know how horrible it must be for the people of Greenland right now, but as an American I would like to apologize to Europe and other nations right now and to let you know that while probably a large majority of Americans disagree with our leadership, there is not much we can do in a police state against our current circumstances. Our elected leaders on the opposition side are weak and spineless and still trying to comprehend that their ideas of how our democracy presently operates are no longer valid if they are merely ignored by the executive branch.

Now is definingly the time to disengage from America as an ally, as unfortunate as that is. The voting populace has been fed decades of bad education, a media of nationalistic propaganda and finds itself in the same position many pre-authoritarian nation states have found themselves in prior to great conflicts - brainwashed, lied to, but mostly apathetic about the situation.

I hope in 2028 we're able to vote ourselves out of this mess, but just the mere fact that all of this can happen without repercussion should make it evident that it's just a matter of time before someone else takes Trump's examples and puts them back into practice another four to eight years after that.
by boxed | 2026-01-19 09:59:40+00:00
I've read (most of) the Book of Mormon, and the Bible. I'm working through the Quran right now.

The Book of Mormon is unfortunately easily falsifiable. You just need to do some genetic sequencing of native americans and see that the story about a tribe of Israel is false.

Joining a cult has an enormous cost, in the case of Mormonism that cost is ~10% gross income. Even as cults go, that's pretty high actually.
by PunchyHamster | 2026-01-19 10:00:13+00:00
Just sell extra storage at reasonable price. That's the most transparent system you can get.

Some users will never hit more than few GBs as it will be near only text. Other people will share 100MB video clips daily or use it as easy way to transfer files betweeen users in company

Maybe have option to expire attachements at separate timer or ability to set a cap where oldest files get removed if it is passed for cost-control-concious companies
by einpoklum | 2026-01-19 10:00:43+00:00
> is the best proxy we have for societal wealth.

You seem to be suggesting that we should continue to warm up the planet so as to increase "societal wealth". No, we should not, it is harmful and dangerous.

> Naw. If we want to actually regain any sort of self-determination as a nation

Avoiding global warming is an imperative. Your desire to feel "self-determination as a nation" is at most a nice-to-have.

That said - if the US were able to separate out a 're-importation of production capacity' from another country when estimating energy use, and could show a significant drop with that aside, and a drop relative to the energy use as part of that production activity, then - ok, that would be a legitimate argument that its conduct is better than the numbers suggest.

> This is a multi-generational project

So, you're claiming that it's ok for you to keep warming us all up and have the seas rise, and droughts, and fires, and agriculture failing etc. for at least, say, 50 years because of your multi-generational project.

No way. Now, of course, I'm just a guy on the Internet and the US is a global empire which invades and bombs kidnaps heads-of-state etc. But - that must be resisted. Also, the political elites within the US who subscribe to that view must be resisted internally.

> China ... Building everything possible as quickly as possible.

China's policies are a mixed bag; but they are certainly not building _everything_ as quickly as possible. And a lot of what they're building is non-CO2-emitting energy production capacity. Its official plan (IIRC) is no increase in emissions after 2030, and full neutrality by 2060 - which is absolutely not building everything nor as quick as possibly. Now, that is not good enough, but US policy (and your approach) seems to be "burn, baby, burn".

> This degrowth stuff is just a way to make poor and working class folks suffer.

Ah, yes, US society and economy these days are all about aleviating poverty and promoting working class interests.
by latexr | 2026-01-19 10:02:04+00:00
> Creating a polished, usable app is just so much work, and so much of it isn't fun at all (to me).

Then don’t do it. No one is forcing you. Are you also going to complain that building airplanes and ensuring food safety are too much work and not fun for you? Not everything needs to be or should be dumbed down to appeal to lowest common denominator.

Alternatively, go work at a company where you’re part of a team and other people do what you do not enjoy.

> I'm sitting here building polished apps in a fraction of the time

No, no you are not, guaranteed. “Polishing” means caring about every detail to make it perfect. If you’re letting the LLM make most of it, by definition it’s not polished.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-19 10:02:11+00:00
I never stopped developing but I find myself taking on a lot more side projects than I used to. The cost for doing those just dropped significantly. This enables me to prototype and pursue things that I previously wouldn't have.

I'm also now dealing with things that previously would have taken me too long to deal with. For example, I'm actually making a dent in the amount of technical debt I have to deal with. The type of things where previously I maybe wouldn't have taken a week out of my schedule to deal with something that was annoying me. A lot of tedious things that would take me hours/days now can get done in a few prompts. With my bigger projects, I still do most stuff manually. But that's probably going to change over the next months/year.

I'm mainly using codex. I know a lot of people seem to prefer Claude Code. But I've been a happy ChatGPT Plus user for a while and codex is included with that and seems to do the job. Amazing value for 20$/month. I've had to buy extra credit once now.

The flip side of all this is that waiting for AI to do it's thing isn't fun. It's slow enough that it slows me down and fast enough that I can't really multi task. It's like dealing with a very slow build that you have to run over and over again. A necessary evil. But not necessarily fun. I can see why a lot of developers feel like the joy is being sucked out of their lives.

Dealing with this pain is urgent. Part of that is investing in robust and fast builds. Build time competes with model inference in the time stuff takes. And another part is working on the UX of this. Being able to fork multiple tasks at once is hugely empowering. And switching between editing code and generating code needs to get more seamless. It feels too much like I'm sitting on my hands sometimes.
by Jordan-117 | 2026-01-19 10:02:59+00:00
The full text of the letter CC'd by Trump directly to multiple European governments:

"Dear [Norwegian PM] Jonas:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a "right of ownership" anyway? There are no written documents, it's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.

Thank you! President DJT"