MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tecoholic | 2026-01-01 03:17:10+00:00
Oh man! This brings memories. I had a new set in a new place and dealing with sub 20 degree Celsius for the first time. The cold would numb my hand the blade would cut and I would know only after a few minutes. I spent those first couple of months constantly putting band aid on. I blamed it fully on the winter.

It’s been almost 1.5 years since the last cut and I now realize what was going on

Edit: Now that I realize this thread is going sort of sharp-vs-dull. I still use the slide sharpener and regularly sharpen the knives. The factory sharpness was just too much for me. I think a knife sharpened to appropriate level is the way to go. And a dull one is probably as dangerous as a overly sharp one
by JKCalhoun | 2026-01-01 03:17:27+00:00
Yeah, I kind of agree. I read Andrew Tobias's (did I get the apostrophe right?) book on investing and he made a point very early on: the people who are rich like money. No, not like you and I like money, they like money the way you and I like fishing, or reading, or hiking or whatever. It's their hobby, their love, the thing they like to learn about, read about…

Warren Buffett wouldn't be where he was if he wasn't obsessed with money. But to your point, that doesn't have to translate to material goods: the bigger house, yachts, etc.
by staticassertion | 2026-01-01 03:18:20+00:00
> Very to somewhat useful in some fields (like programming) but the average person will easily be able to go through their day without using AI.

I know a lot of "normal" people who have completely replaced their search engine with AI. It's increasingly a staple for people.

Smartphones were absolutely NOT immediately useful in a million different ways for almost every person, that's total revisionist history. I remember when the iPhone came out, it was AT&T only, it did almost nothing useful. Smartphones were a novelty for quite a while.
by refurb | 2026-01-01 03:18:34+00:00
It’s not only a logical negotiating position, it has legal implications.

Way back in the 50-60’s the government put in laws around “usual and customary price” in an attempt to rein in medical costs.

What providers were doing is charging cash customer $10, then when an insured patient came in (back when insurance paid 100%) they charged $100.

So a law was put into place to define what a “usual and customary price” is. The provider could not charge any customer more than this.

Like most well intentioned laws it created perverse incentives to jack up the public price as high as possible - if someone paid it, great, otherwise offer a discount.
by yencabulator | 2026-01-01 03:18:57+00:00
Facebook was never "the hacker company". Zuck was a scammer himself when it was still TheFacebook.

Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don't know why.
Zuckerberg: They "trust me"
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
by kasey_junk | 2026-01-01 03:19:11+00:00
A smaller oven. Ovens in the US are sized for 1 meal a year, Thanksgiving. If you instead use the smallest oven you can, it will be more efficient to operate and cook more precisely. Also easier to clean.

Unfortunately small ovens are frequently just geared at the cheaper market. So can cut corners on reliability. But these days that’s not uncommon.
by dented42 | 2026-01-01 03:19:52+00:00
This very much depends on your definition of ‘best’. While your criticisms of the environment are valid, smalltalk is flexible in tangible ways that Java couldn’t match. Java took the OO model of smalltalk and make a bunch compromises that had big negative impacts on the language that are still there today.

Smalltalk was (and still is in some places) successful because of its portability, flexibility, etc. while it hasn’t enjoyed the degree of success as Java, ruby, perl, python, C++, and friends it would be a mistake to call it just a you.
by vorpalhex | 2026-01-01 03:21:33+00:00
Texas has robust laws against facial recognition (and biometrics in general), including winning a major lawsuit against Facebook. Texas also has pretty good privacy laws in general. Right now, flock cameras are still permitted - but there's been talk about cracking down on them. There are also a first set of restrictions on ALPRs - not as restrictive as I would like, but generally data can only be retained for people suspected of committing a crime.

If you are a Texas resident, you also have a right to request data deletion (or correction) from brokers or other sellers of data, and permanently opt out of personal data profiling for a wide swath of industries including insurance and finance purposes.

Texas is one of the best states for privacy laws, even though we can obviously do better. I'd still like to see a general prohibition on things like flock and more restrictions on ALPRs, but much better than most states.
by jfengel | 2026-01-01 03:21:54+00:00
Unfortunately Manhattan doesn't seem like a great place for bikes. The weather is just too variable. Some daredevils will be out in any weather but for most people it's just not feasible about half of the days of the year.

Not that helicopters make any more sense. The city needs some car bans, and yes, bicycles are part of replacing that. But only mass transit will be able to move enough people when there's a foot of slush on the ground.
by n2d4 | 2026-01-01 03:22:38+00:00
That paragraph could be the truth, or it could be a lie. Maybe Emacs really did make you more efficient, or you made it all up, I don't know. Best I can do is trust you.

If you don't trust me, I can't conclusively convince you that AI makes me more efficient, but if you want I'm happy to hop on a screen-share and elaborate in what ways it has boosted my workflow. I'm offering this because I'm also curious what your work looks like where AI cannot help at all.

E-mail address is on my profile!
by weird-eye-issue | 2026-01-01 03:23:45+00:00
How much money you have depends on how much you make and how much you spend

While you can't budget your way out of being poor if you have a very low income you absolutely can keep yourself poor by not budgeting no matter how much you make

I don't know why you seem to take offense with a simple suggestion that will help reduce how much you spend

There are people who make six figures who are in debt because they overspend and food is often one of the biggest factors in that
by tedyyan | 2026-01-01 03:23:53+00:00
I’ve been working on a small side project and decided to open it up.

It’s an open-source (Apache-2.0) mobile app platform for AI features. Instead of everyone building standalone demos, the idea is: contributors focus on features, and I take care of the boring stuff like backend, builds, and App Store / Google Play reviews.

If you want to build an AI feature (image, voice, text, whatever), you can fork the repo, build it, and send a PR. If it makes sense, I include it in the next monthly release and it ships to real users.

The platform already runs a live iOS/Android app (just as an example), so this isn’t theoretical.

Not trying to sell anything — mostly curious if this is useful to other devs, and happy to get feedback or collaborators.

Repo link: https://github.com/tedyyan/appfoundry.ai
by mr_toad | 2026-01-01 03:24:01+00:00
There’s no getting around it. If we reduce CO2 emissions to zero it’s either plants or carbon capture, and one way or another the planet will have to do something with all that carbon.

Last time it took plants millions of years, and that was before things started eating wood. I’m pretty sure that we’ll have to have a hand in the process if we want to reduce CO2 levels in timespans shorter than geological.
by andrewinardeer | 2026-01-01 03:24:33+00:00
Thank you. Enjoyed this read.

AI slop videos will no doubt get longer and "more realistic" in 2026.

I really hope social media companies plaster a prominent banner over them which screams, "Likely/Made by AI" and give us the option to automatically mute these videos from our timeline. That would be the responsible thing to do. But I can't see Alphabet doing that on YT, xAI doing that on X or Meta doing that on FB/Insta as they all have skin in the video gen game.
by foldingmoney | 2026-01-01 03:25:02+00:00
exactly. when you're new, virtually any type of lifting you do is going to create sufficient stimulus to trigger maximum muscle growth, because you're going from 0 to 1. unfortunately, since the only people that researchers can usually convince to participate in their studies are untrained, this has led to an enormous amount of junk studies where they try to extrapolate the results to people who are not untrained.
by vorpalhex | 2026-01-01 03:25:59+00:00
> As part of its ongoing genocide, which started on 7 October 2023

Well that was quickly debunked as a viable source. Israeli's didn't retaliate for Oct 7th until a few days later.

> When some of the residents went out to investigate and tried to help, they were shot at by Israeli quadcopter drones.

And another easy debunk - Israel uses explosive drones. Mounting a firearm to "shoot at" things from a drone is basically a fools errand.

Provide video. That should be trivial.
by chmod775 | 2026-01-01 03:26:48+00:00
It'll get a lot of time to react at that energy as it's not going to "instantly" fry anything*. That's probably less energy/m2 than consumer heat guns, especially if consider that these drones are likely going to get sprayed in reflective paint. Easy defense for the drone would be just: get into a spin to get roasted evenly -> shut off -> fall for a few hundred meters, cooling using air that rushes by to counteract the laser further -> catch itself once it lost the laser.

That would force these laser systems to point each drone until it either visibly goes up in flames or impacts the ground (which means you also need to be able to track them all the way down), otherwise you can't be sure it won't just snap back to life once you started engaging the next drone.

I don't feel like 10kw/m2 would be anywhere near useful. It's gotta be more than that.

* Stadium floodlights aren't going to instantly grill any bird that flies in front of them either, and they reach that ballpark.
by paulmooreparks | 2026-01-01 03:27:21+00:00
Body mechanics, leverage, and neuro-muscular connection definitely come into play. I could deadlift 430lbs for reps at my peak, and I while I was no string bean, I also didn't look all that muscular compared to the other lifters at my gym. I have ridiculously long arms relative to my height and relatively shorter legs, which gives me an advantage for deadlift. I had monstrous-looking guys watch me lift and then ask me what stack I was on. They didn't believe me when I said I was natural.
by chii | 2026-01-01 03:27:45+00:00
the "usefulness" excuse is irrelevant, and the claim that phones/internet is "immediately useful" is just a post hoc rationalization. It's basically trying to find a reasonable reason why opposition to AI is valid, and is not in self-interest.

The opposition to AI is from people who feel threatened by it, because it either threatens their livelihood (or family/friends'), and that they feel they are unable to benefit from AI in the same way as they had internet/mobile phones.
by kamaal | 2026-01-01 03:28:22+00:00
>>Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing):

Perhaps the best thing Buffet has managed to do is to live long. Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out.

Second best thing he did was to start/acquire a insurance firm. The 'float' helps them to run a kind of in house index fund on other peoples money, without having to pay TERs/Fees. Thats basically no effort bogle style compounding. Even if you end with a situation where you have to return ALL the premiums collected, you still get to keep the returns.

Other wise everything else is just fairly normal, if you are sitting in front of charts for long, its impossible to miss something that's going up on a weekly timeframe for long periods of time. You just pyramid upwards and wait, patiently.

The real issue is waiting doesn't work too well for most people as you start to die out after 60.
by bsder | 2026-01-01 03:28:25+00:00
> There are people who make six figures who are in debt because they overspend and food is often one of the biggest factors in that

Those people aren't "poor". They aren't worried about eating or staying warm.

"Poor" is when you are deciding between fixing the car you need for work and whether or not you will have electricity the last 4 days of the month. You don't fix that with "clever budgeting".
by DrewADesign | 2026-01-01 03:29:19+00:00
There was also source point pollution before the Industrial Revolution. Useless, forced, irritating chat was ‘nowhere close’ to as aggressive or pervasive as it is now. It used to be a niche feature of some CRMs and now it’s everywhere.

I’m on LinkedIn Learning digging into something really technical and practical and it’s constantly pushing the chat fly out with useless pre-populated prompts like “what are the main takeaways from this video.” And they moved their main page search to a little icon on the title bar and sneakily now what used to be the obvious, primary central search field for years sends a prompt to their fucking chatbot.
by chii | 2026-01-01 03:30:51+00:00
but robotics had the means to do majority of the physical labour already - it's just not worth the money to replace humans, as human labour is cheap (and flexible - more than robots).

With knowledge work being less high-paying, physical labour supply should increase as well, which drops their price. This means it's actually less likely that the advent of LLM will make physical labour more automated.
by zvolsky | 2026-01-01 03:31:24+00:00
The idea of HN being dismissive of impactful technology is as old as HN. And indeed, the crowd often appears stuck in the past with hindsight. That said, HN discussions aren't homogeneous, and as demonstrated by Karpathy in his recent blogpost "Auto-grading decade-old Hacker News", at least some commenters have impressive foresight: https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/auto-grade-hn/
by weird-eye-issue | 2026-01-01 03:31:38+00:00
If you have a negative net worth then I consider you poor no matter how much money you make

But yes obviously there are levels to it however regardless if you are buying overpriced fast food when you could be cooking at home for much cheaper that's not good for anybody especially if you don't make a lot of money... So what's your point other than trying to argue over the definition of poor?

If you don't have an emergency fund and your car breaks down and then you have to get into debt to fix it and then you have to spend more paying interest on that debt and you get stuck in a cycle... Compare that to reducing your expenses by not buying fast food and building up an emergency fund and not getting stuck in that situation to begin with
by vorpalhex | 2026-01-01 03:32:16+00:00
> seeing kids shot at intentionally from drones

Anytime somebody makes a claim about a drone operating a firearm, you should be extremely skeptical. There's a reason everyone uses explosive drones, not "drone with a machine gun". Small flying machines trying to fire off rounds doesn't work out.

> submarine launched drones throwing incendiary munitions at a flotilla

Per the Greek coastguard, someone left a lit joint by a fuel canister. Maybe the Greeks are in on the deep conspiracy.. or potheads are just forgetful.
by jmward01 | 2026-01-01 03:33:58+00:00
The thing that worries me isn't the drone/anti-drone escalation. It is the fact that these weapons aren't actually limited to anti-drone use. Recently we have seen clear examples of countries, including Israel, that will use automatic id technology to mass tag a population. If you then have tools that can automatically track and mass kill, which this type of weapon represents, then we have reached a type of warfare that is new in the world and deeply scary. It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where person x is killed since they are marked as a 'bag guy' and as part of being marked every person they were next to for the last few days was also marked as likely enough to be bad guys to kill as well. All that has to be done is push a button. It is a scary, and unfortunately all to possible, future if not now.
by Aarostotle | 2026-01-01 03:34:02+00:00
The moral argument for a modern, rights-based society is cleanly on Israel’s side. I’m glad they’ve developed this technology, so they can continue defending themselves at a lower cost to their citizens. The engineers involved have done a very good thing.

Your snide tone can’t obscure that the moral issue is straightforward, if you’re aiming at a world where people can be free to live, grow, and flourish. If you want a society that enables builders and engineers to express themselves by creating new things, i.e., on in which people are permitted to think, then you are aligned with Israel’s basic cause.

The central difference is that Israel’s government is essentially secular and free, whereas its enemies — especially Hamas — are essentially theocratic and totalitarian. In Israel, the general trend is that people of all types, including Arab Muslims, have rights and live happy, free lives. If Hamas was to conquer Israel, as is their stated aim, those same Arab Muslims would have no rights - those individuals would be oppressed by exactly the type of vicious theocrats you falsely suggest Israel is composed of.

Last, to clarify the kernel of truth that your point relies on through distortion: while it is true that Israel contains a set of backwards theocratic tribesmen, their importance is marginal. Tel Aviv’s builders and entrepreneurs are the dominant cultural force in Israel, and they are proponents and practitioners of secular modernity.

Do not falsely conflate a marginal group with Hamas’ explicit cause, which is to destroy Israel’s free society and replace it with religious tyranny.

Unless, perhaps, that is what you really regard as moral?
by thisoneisreal | 2026-01-01 03:34:15+00:00
My take (no more informed than anyone else's) is that the range indicates this is a complex phenomenon that people are still making sense of. My suspicion is that something like the following is going on:

1. LLMs can do some truly impressive things, like taking natural language instructions and producing compiling, functional code as output. This experience is what turns some people into cheerleaders.

2. Other engineers see that in real production systems, LLMs lack sufficient background / domain knowledge to effectively iterate. They also still produce output, but it's verbose and essentially missing the point of a desired change.

3. LLMs also can be used by people who are not knowledgeable to "fake it," and produce huge amounts of output that is basically besides-the-point bullshit. This makes those same senior folks very, very resentful, because it wastes a huge amount of their time. This isn't really the fault of the tool, but it's a common way the tool gets used and so it gets tarnished by association.

4. There is a ridiculous amount of complexity in some of these tools and workflows people are trying to invent, some of which is of questionable value. So aside from the tools themselves people are skeptical of the people trying to become thought leaders in this space and the sort of wild hacks they're coming up with.

5. There are real macro questions about whether these tools can be made economical to justify whatever value they do produce, and broader questions about their net impact on society.

6. Last but not least, these tools poke at the edges of "intelligence," the crown jewel of our species and also a big source of status for many people in the engineering community. It's natural that we're a little sensitive about the prospect of anything that might devalue or democratize the concept.

That's my take for what it's worth. It's a complex phenomenon that touches all of these threads, so not only do you see a bunch of different opinions, but the same person might feel bullish about one aspect and bearish about another.
by bastawhiz | 2026-01-01 03:34:28+00:00
Non-sentient technology has no concept of good or bad. We have no idea how to give it one. Even if we gave it one, we'd have no idea how to teach it to "choose good".

> In general we trust people that we bring onto our team not to betray us and to respect general rules and policies and practices that benefit everyone. An AI teammate should be no different.

That misses the point completely. How many of your coworkers fail phishing tests? It's not malicious, it's about being deceived.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-01 03:34:43+00:00
PBKDF2 is outdated. You should be using Argon2.

But, why use a key stretching algorithm for this particular scheme to begin with? What is it protecting against here? The master key is presumably high entropy. If someone gains access to the master key and breaks into your server a key stretching algorithm isn't going to help you.

Lots of secrets get sent through the clipboard. Anything handling it either needs to be strictly local or E2EE. Otherwise everything is vulnerable if someone breaks into the server. It's also accessible by you at will regardless of any promises you might make to the contrary.

Seamless cross device sync isn't an excuse. E2EE itself doesn't impede that whatsoever, only certain protocol choices that aren't (or at least don't need to be) relevant here.
by throw0101d | 2026-01-01 03:36:43+00:00
> What software developers actually do is closer to the role of an architect in construction or a design engineer in manufacturing. They design new blueprints for the compilers to churn out. Like any design job, this needs some actual taste and insight into the particular circumstances. That has always been the difficult part of commercial software production and LLMs generally don't help with that.

As Bryan Cantrill commented (quoting Jeff Bonwick, co-creator of ZFS): code is both information about the machine and the machine:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPa5-BWd4w&t=4m37s

Whereas an architect creates blueprints which is information, that gets constructed into a building/physical object, and a design engineer also creates documents that are information that get turned into machine(s), when a developer writes code they are generating information that acts like a machine.

Software has a duality of being both.

How does one code and not create a machine? Produce a general architecture in UML?
by AdieuToLogic | 2026-01-01 03:37:19+00:00
> AI should, from the core be intrinsically and unquestionably on our side, as a tool to assist us.

"Should" is a form of judgement, implying an understanding of right and wrong. "AI" are algorithms, which do not possess this understanding, and therefore cannot be on any "side." Just like a hammer or Excel.

> If it's not, then it feels like it's designed wrong from the start.

Perhaps it is not a question of design, but instead on of expectation.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-01-01 03:37:59+00:00
> I don't understand why Hacker News is so dismissive about the coming of LLMs

I find LLMs incredibly useful, but if you were following along the last few years the promise was for “exponential progress” with a teaser world destroying super intelligence.

We objectively are not on that path. There is no “coming of LLMs”. We might get some incremental improvement, but we’re very clearly seeing sigmoid progress.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m tired of hyperbolic rants that are unquestionably not justified (the nice thing about exponential progress is you don’t need to argue about it)