MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Anon1096 | 2026-01-16 23:33:40+00:00
Interesting that OpenAI is trying to hammer the point that they won't sell user data to advertisers.

That's how all the major ads platforms work. I don't personally agree that it constitutes "selling your data" but certainly people describe it that way for Google/Meta ads which function the same way. By framing it this way they're clearly trying to fool users who really bought into the messaging that Google et al literally sell user data when they only provide targeting. I guess the hope is that the cleaner reputation of OpenAI will mean people think there's some actual difference here.
by Archer6621 | 2026-01-16 23:33:41+00:00
I agree. I also don't think forcing yourself to be an organizer is necessarily a solution to fixing the loneliness, as it also just requires a certain passion. In my experience, some people love organizing things, others just really hate it. I am in that last camp, after having organized quite a lot. For me, simply participating with things that are organized by others has done me much more good. Of course, that still requires being in a state of mind where you are able to take initiative with signing up for such group activities.
by jfengel | 2026-01-16 23:33:50+00:00
I'm not sure of the degree to which the two party system is a problem for state legislatures. It's an obvious problem at the federal level, but you do still stand a chance of knowing your local legislator to the state. When the constituents and representatives are just abstractions to each other, of course a party comes in to act as a middle layer.

But I do like the idea of list systems. Geographic districts are an artifact of slow communications, which don't exist any more. My neighbors and I have fewer overlapping interests than they did in the past.
by newfriend | 2026-01-16 23:34:28+00:00
Your pedantry is unnecessary.

"Largely eliminated". I didn't say "completely eliminated". <9,000 per month can be considered "largely eliminated" when the previous flow was often many hundreds of thousands per month. You can see it plainly on the graph.

Yes of course encounters are not total entries. Do you have a better way of estimating?

The net migration is due to several factors. The result of "largely eliminating" the flow of illegal aliens, along with dutiful removal of those in the interior, has made a big dent. There are other factors, including legal immigration, obviously.

There were 12 million (estimated) illegal aliens here in 2007. There are MORE now. No headway has been made.
by nine_k | 2026-01-16 23:34:52+00:00
Those who currently hold the majority don't want any ranked choice that might undermine their position. Worse, since there are only two parties, the other side is very often seen as deranged, corrupt, and evil, that should be kept away from power with any means short of a nuclear strike.

Only when there is a sizable number of disgruntled voters who are unhappy with both the red and the blue, and would vote for specific decent people, not party affiliation, then RCV has a fir chance of being adopted, I assume.
by Marsymars | 2026-01-16 23:34:58+00:00
I think the difference there has nothing to do with what people are willing to pay for, and is simply because of differences in the marginal costs of delivering physical and digital goods vs what they bring in with ad revenue.

If it was possible to turn a profit by showing ads to people eating burgers, we'd have restaurants hawking the most addictive, free burgers on the market.
by curtisf | 2026-01-16 23:35:39+00:00
It could, but under the current system, candidates who are affiliated with major parties (i.e., essentially everyone who ends up winning an election) already need to win the support of their party, and the process for this is generally opaque and largely controlled by often less-moderate insiders

Also, having viable third party choices puts more pressure on larger parties to field more widely palatable candidates, or risk losing their majorities
by oersted | 2026-01-16 23:36:10+00:00
I do agree with the general spirit, but do keep in mind that certain kinds of change are hard by design to ensure a degree of stability. Normalising the modification of electoral processes can backfire badly, certain groups will definitely try to bend the system to their advantage, and it is not unlikely that, the way the winds are blowing right now, it might lead to a collapse of the underlying democratic system that enables it. It goes both ways.
by BrandoElFollito | 2026-01-16 23:36:16+00:00
This is like reminding that there are CVSes from 2010. Yes there are. And there are plenty of vulnerable systems.

They decided to not fix the vulns (either directly by not patching, or indirectly by not investing in cybersecurity). So exploiting them is somehow an act of mercy. They may not know they have a problem and they have an opportunity to learn.

Let's just hope they will have white or gray-ish hats teaching the lesson
by fancyfredbot | 2026-01-16 23:37:09+00:00
Yes I agree it's more likely incompetence than malice. That's another reason I don't think it's a lab. Even if you don't like the big labs you can probably admit they are reasonably smart/competent.

Residential IP providers definitely don't remove reputational risk. There are many ways people can find out what you are doing. The main one being that your employees might decide to tell on you.

The IP providers are a great way of getting around cloud flare etc. They are also reasonably expensive! I find it very plausible that these IP providers are involved but I still don't understand who is paying them.
by asdff | 2026-01-16 23:39:01+00:00
The long con is already happening. Some unis are going full tilt on AI. Having mandatory AI courses. Buying chatgpt subscriptions for the students. Making them use ai for certain exercises. Ostensibly it is "preparing them for AI in the workforce" but in practice it is actually shaping up the workforce to be dependent on AI. Get an entire generation of workers to reach for chatgpt to do anything at all and suddenly it doesn't matter if it is less efficient than older methods since no one working will know them.
by based2 | 2026-01-16 23:40:27+00:00
# AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.:US San Francisco, California https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/

block from any to 173.245.58.0/24

# US https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/173.245.58.143

block from any to 173.245.58.140

# US https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/173.245.58.143

block from any to 173.245.58.143

# US https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/173.245.58.151

block from any to 173.245.58.151

# US https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/173.245.58.165

block from any to 173.245.58.165
by shuntress | 2026-01-16 23:40:47+00:00
I'm surprised that with this many comments about the relationship between testing, development, and QA there is so little mention of environment and deploy process.

The usability of your test environment (and associated tooling) has a massive impact on quality assurance.

Every small difference between Production and Production-Plus-Feature creates friction and, even in systems of only moderate complexity, that friction adds up fast.
by rramadass | 2026-01-16 23:41:03+00:00
I just remembered; every American should watch the documentary Waging a Living - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waging_a_Living - Available on Youtube and other sites.

People from other countries may also find it useful, though the lessons would need to be adapted to their own environments.

Our Economic System and Social Conditions are so skewed that many (all?) of the rules that enabled our grandparents/parents to raise and sustain a family without too much risk (i.e. guaranteed income from guaranteed job provided you met the requirements and didn't do anything absolutely self-destructive) no longer apply. Hence of a necessity our adaptation to these circumstances must change accordingly with a greater emphasis on safety-first.
by tharkun__ | 2026-01-16 23:41:07+00:00
I didn't mean reporting things that you wouldn't consider a bug and just close. FWIW tho, "Pasting War and Peace" is actually a good test case. While it is unlikely you need to support that size in your inputs, testing such extremes is still valuable security testing. Quite a few things are security issues, even though regular users would never find them. Like permissions being applied in the UI only. Actual users wouldn't find out that the BE doesn't bother to actually check the permissions. But I damn well expect a QA person to verify that!

Was I meant though were actual problems / bugs in the area of the product that your ticket is about. But that weren't caused by your ticket / have nothing to do with that ticket directly.

Like to make an example, say you're adding a new field to your user onboarding that asks them what their role is so that you can show a better tailored version of your onboarding flows, focusing on functionality that is likely to be useful for you in your role. While testing that, the QA person notices a bug in one of the actual pieces of functionality that's part of said onboarding flow.

A good QA understands and can distinguish what is a pre-existing bug and what isn't and report it separately, making the overall product better, while not wasting time on the ticket at hand.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-01-16 23:41:33+00:00
You keep saying 'it's not going to happen because MAGA' and I keep responding with 'Official Government policy is that it's going to happen, maybe you should focus on official government policy'. Sorry that you can't understand my point. I get that you really want to focus on rando MAGAs. I think it more realistic that we focus on what our Governments actual position is, and events occurring around it (such as Greenlander's that thought it was all meme'ing breaking down in tears when they met with us and realized it wasn't), and I'm not going to let your 'but Maga feelz...' have equal weight to ACTUAL United States policy and current diplomacy. Keep posting, I'll keep calling it out.

Active United States diplomacy trumps random Maga feelz. I'm not waiting for time to tell. I'm calling bullshit out, today, now. You can keep waiting for things to work out.
by nine_k | 2026-01-16 23:41:47+00:00
Be careful with what you wish: the worse system could stick for longer than you would find comfortable, or are able to stay alive.

Otherwise, I'm as much in favor of RCV as the next guy, or maybe more. New York implemented RCV for some smaller-scale things, so I was happy to actually do a ranked choice, instead of putting all my vote into strictly one option, last time I voted.
by themaninthedark | 2026-01-16 23:43:04+00:00
>China has gone all-in on EVs because over the years they smartly built up the world's best rare earth refining capabilities

If by that you mean they propped up their industry and undercut everyone else until they went out of business, then increased prices to a point just below where it would be profitable for someone else to try again?

Then use their monopoly position to further their interests in other sectors?

Edit: Which I may note is probably the same strategy being applied here as well.
by 999900000999 | 2026-01-16 23:45:29+00:00
The issue is most people don't have a setup that will even care.

Bluetooth lowers audio quality, and very few people have DACs or even phones right 3.5 jacks.

I often imagine an alternate history where Apple kept the jack, maybe added a 4.4... audio quality would be so much higher now.

Think about all the audio engineers who don't even consider higher quality setups. All the bandwidth on earth don't matter if the original master isn't perfect.
by throwaway150 | 2026-01-16 23:45:52+00:00
You have to understand though that this is X (rip twitter) we are talking about and from the verified account, the 14k follower count, it is evident that this person either is or is trying to be a tech "influencer". Posting controversial rage-baits is pretty much the pattern every influencer follows today to stir up discussion, increase their visibility, and get more followers.

> I don't think he cares about being polite.

If you're polite, debate civilly, say reasonable things and act like a normal person, you are a nobody on X. Nobody will see your tweet. Nobody will engage with it. You might as well have not said anything.
by foster_nyman | 2026-01-16 23:45:56+00:00
Yes, Ecology is a good starting place; here's a PDF copy -

https://ejcj.orfaleacenter.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

"All biological and evolving systems (i.e., individual organisms, animal and human societies, ecosystems, and the like) consist of complex cybernetic networks, and all such systems share certain formal characteristics. Each system contains subsystems which are potentially regenerative, i.e., which would go into exponential "runaway" if uncorrected. (Examples of such regenerative components are Malthusian characteristics of population, schismogenic changes of personal interaction, armaments races, etc.) The regenerative potentialities of such subsystems are typically kept in check by various sorts of governing loops to achieve "steady state." Such systems are "conservative" in the sense that they tend to conserve the truth of propositions about the values of their component variables—especially they conserve the values of those variables which otherwise would show exponential change. Such systems are homeostatic, i.e., the effects of small changes of input will be negated and the steady state maintained by reversible adjustment."
by 10000truths | 2026-01-16 23:46:32+00:00
Ah yes, I forgot about saturating arithmetic. But even for that, you wouldn't need infinite precision for all values, you'd only need "enough" precision for the intermediate values, right? E.g. for an inner product of two N-element vectors containing M-bit integers, an accumulator with at least ceil(log2(N))+2*M bits would guarantee no overflow.
by jacobgkau | 2026-01-16 23:46:33+00:00
This is just an anecdote, but having been dealing with similar problems on one of my websites for the past year or so, I was experiencing a huge number of hits from different residential IP addresses (mostly Latin American) at the same time once every 5-10 minutes (which started crashing my site regularly). Digging through my server's logs and watching them in real-time, I noticed one or two Huawei IP's making requests at the same time as the dozens or hundreds of residential IP's. Blocking the Huawei IP's seemed to mysteriously cut back the residential IP requests, at least for a short amount of time (i.e. a couple of hours).

This isn't to say every attack that looks similar is being done by Huawei (which I can't say for certain, anyway). But to me, it does look an awful lot like even large organizations you'd think would be competent can stoop to these levels. I don't have an answer for you as to why.
by JohnMakin | 2026-01-16 23:47:22+00:00
thanks, I had a hot start ten years ago with rehosts from very big streamers that led me to the very difficult concurrent viewer averages you need to maintain to get monetization status, since then I’ve put in the hours to maintain the status. I consistently see YoY growth it’s just slow. Overall though I’ve made less than $100 in ten years, which is kind of sad if you consider I haven’t missed a day streaming in several years now. I’ve had well paying jobs I’ve been less devoted to.

But like a sibling comment was getting at, maybe I have everything I want already.
by RichardCA | 2026-01-16 23:47:40+00:00
I used to work in my mom and dad's print shop when I was a kid. 6 picas in an inch, 12 points in a pica, and by the time you go home your hands smell like hypo. That should give you an idea of how old I am.

For a kid I was passably good at setting up headlines for paste-up, but I never had to be the one who used an X-Acto Knife.

I'll die on the hill where 2K is better than 4K if your livelihood depends on having to stare at a screen at a distance of 60cm for upwards of 10 hours a day, longer sometimes.

I also think you missed my point about about the anti-aliasing. For various reasons I still use Windows and some of my favorite monospace founds only exist in the the .FON format. I can emulate the X-Windows experience of using the misc-fixed-medium family and it works just fine for my needs.

I've tried most of the fonts here, but none of them really do it for me: https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads

But if you want to keep going on with the pedantry, have at it. Were you around in the Usenet days?
by pvtmert | 2026-01-16 23:47:57+00:00
there are many sibling/child comments here touching the bluetooth speaker topic.

obviously there are numerous people blasting those in public places in waay too high volume.

sometimes when I ride bicycle in non-car road (cycle/hiking paths around luxembourg) i put not-too-loud music playing on phone speaker (about 70% volume) both for vibes and also for safety. -- as there are people walking which may be obstructed by the bushes or other oncoming cyclists.

for the vibes part, i am really hoping smart-glasses or similar equipment to be more common, as i got echo frames last year, i am quite happy about the vibe it adds when i play background music (just to myself) in different occasions. (even though quality is not great)

many people mentioned headphones & earbuds, but i do not see them as the solution for nature/hiking related situations;

- (partial) blocking of external sounds, even if there is no noise cancellation, it dims outside sounds like bike bells, engine sounds, other people yelling at you because you are in danger, ie. may cause accidents

- comfort & compatibility issues with other equipment. like hearing aid (maybe that's the reason some people blasting away such high volumes? -- maybe never hearing loss haven't diagnosed properly!). if you have a helmet, over-head headphones usually dont work, stuck with ear-buds. fit and comfort of these are quite difficult. even if you use over-head ones, cushions usually go bad quite fast due to mild sweating or contact with external air & humidity.

i really hope price of bluetooth-speaker or bone-speaker glasses will go down significantly in the future. this way, you don't obstruct external sounds, not add heavy or squishy things to your ear while adding your theme song on a moment.

---

obviously i mention these as a reasonable human being, who keeps their phone in silent 7/24, and all videos muted all the time (i also mute my laptop, as i hate hearing other people's zoom/chime calls constantly ringing throughout the day!)
by rarisma | 2026-01-16 23:48:05+00:00
Great, I can now combine the potential maliciousness of a script with the potential vulnerabilities of an AI Agent!

Jokes aside, this seems like a really wierd thing to leave to agents; I'm sure its definitely useful but how exactly is this more secure, a bad actor could just prompt inject claude (an issue I'm not sure can ever be fixed with our current model of LLMs).

And surely this is significantly slower than a script, claude can take 10-20 seconds to check the node version; if not longer with human approval for each command, a script could do that in miliseconds.

Sure it could help it work on more environments, but stuff is pretty well standardised and we have containers.

I think this part in the FAQ wraps it up neatly:

"""
What about security? Isn't this just curl | bash with extra steps?
This is a fair concern. A few things make install.md different:

Human-readable by design. Users can review the instructions before execution. Unlike obfuscated scripts, the intent is clear.

Step-by-step approval. LLMs in agentic contexts can be configured to request approval before running commands. Users see each action and can reject it.

No hidden behavior. install.md describes outcomes in natural language. Malicious intent is harder to hide than in a shell script.

Install.md doesn't eliminate trust requirements. Users should only use install.md files from sources they trust—same as any installation method.
"""

So it is just curl with extra steps; scripts aren't obfuscated, you can read them; if they are obfuscated then they aren't going to use a Install.md and you (the user) should really think thrice before installing.

Step by step approval also sorta betrays the inital bit about leaving installing stuff to ai and wasting time reading instructions.

Malicious intent is harder to hide, but really if you have any doubt in your mind about an authors potential malefeasance you shouldn't be running it, wrapping claude around this doesn't make it any safer really when possible exploits and malware are likely baked into the software you are trying to install, not the install.

tldr; why not just have @grok is this script safe?

Ten more glorious years to installer.sh
by netsharc | 2026-01-16 23:48:29+00:00
The Wikipedia page references Günter Wetzel's website. Reading https://www.ballonflucht.de/en/missverstaendnis.html , he's written down more information - apparently they came to a disagreement about the story, and on that page there's more detail, from his point of view: for the first attempt they did everything in Wetzel's house (whose oldest kid was 4), because of concerns the Strelzyks' children (who were 10 and 14) could blurt something out. After some disagreements (Strelzyks told some relatives about the balloon, Wetzel thinks the balloon was too small) Wetzel gave Strelzyks all they've built (he was also worried about getting caught with the stuff, especially since now the relatives have heard about it) and decided to follow the concept of a ultralight airplane.

That's the reason the first attempt was just the Strelzyks...
by sholladay | 2026-01-16 23:49:23+00:00
Maintainer on the Ky library team here, a popular HTTP client for JavaScript.

We support these headers, but unfortunately there’s a mess of different implementations out there. The names aren’t consistent. The number/date formats aren’t consistent. We occasionally discover new edge cases. The standard is very late to the party. Of course, better late than never. I just hope it can actually gain traction given the inertia of some incompatible implementations.

If you are designing an API, I strongly recommend using `Retry-After` for as long as you can get away with it and only implementing the rate limit headers when it really becomes necessary. Good clients will add jitter and exponential backoff to prevent the thundering herd problem.
by FrankWilhoit | 2026-01-16 23:50:00+00:00
My former employer was ordered by their auditors (who had permanent offices in the company's HQ building) to scrap homebrew systems that worked and adopt rhymes-with-SteepleCoughed, which did not and could not work, because the auditors' staff were trained on it.

I was peripherally involved in a failed effort to retrofit ACL onto another system, which ran on DB2 but had originally been coded on VSAM. After years of valiant resistance, they were forced to replace it with something not named Minimo, and to eat at least $60M of retraining costs, for the same reason.

Similar stories abound.
by The_SamminAter | 2026-01-16 23:50:12+00:00
Neat. Up to this point you’ve had to install it on a windows device, and copy it along with a handful of dlls over[0][1]. Notably, I’ve only gotten Photoshop to work via this method, other products (InDesign and one other) will not run.

[0]: https://forum.mattkc.com/viewtopic.php?t=336
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20251203093202/https://forum.mat...