MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by convenwis | 2026-01-14 20:19:52+00:00
This is from a few years ago. Apparently he retired: https://www.kuer.org/arts-culture-entertainment/2021-10-22/j...

Since I've been skiing this has been how I've experienced all the terrain. His maps just are skiing to me. But, interestingly, with the rise of smartphones/gps apps like Slopes and the late lamented Fatmap have started to move the ski world towards 3d terrain maps and away from these artistic maps.

I have a side project I've been meaning to dust off that translated GPS coordinates to locations on Niehues maps. I got it working reasonably well but the distortions were significant enough that it needs a lot of control points to do the mapping.
by dkrychowski | 2026-01-14 20:20:16+00:00
I built a form builder where you define forms in TypeScript instead of using a visual editor.

Try it now (no signup): https://formts.com/editor

You write a function that receives a `form` object with methods like `addRow()`, `addTextbox()`, `addMoney()`. It compiles into a working form with reactive calculations, conditional logic, and multi-page support.

export function myForm(form: FormTs) {
form.addRow(row => {
row.addTextPanel('greeting', {
computedValue: () => {
const name = form.textbox('name')?.value();
const surname = form.textbox('surname')?.value();

if (name || surname)
return `Hello ${name ?? ''} ${surname ?? ''}`;

return 'Hello stranger!';
}
})
})

form.addRow(row => {
row.addTextbox('name', { label: 'Name' });
row.addTextbox('surname', { label: 'Surname' });
})
}

Why TypeScript? AI models know it really well. You can paste the type definitions into Claude/GPT, describe what you need, and get working code back.

Type definitions for LLM prompting: https://formts.com/types

Would love feedback on the idea!
by jjk166 | 2026-01-14 20:20:18+00:00
Again, not a straw man. It is necessary to destroy the entirety of US industry to destroy the supply chain of drones. Drones are incredibly easy to manufacture, among the very easiest. It does not require highly specialized machines or exotic skillsets. Components can easily be substituted and designs easily modified to match available resources. There are tens of thousands of manufacturers in the US with the capability to produce such devices. If something happens to a random electronics factory, that production can move to a different electronics factory.

To knock out out the domestic drone supply chain, such that it can not quickly be brought back online, you need to create a situation such that none of these manufacturers are able to make drones. Of course if there is no one who can make a drone, there's no one who can make a missile guidance system, there's no one who can make fighter jets, there's no one who can make radars, there's no one who can make radios, there's no one who can make spare parts for any of these systems and more out in the field. If you still had any of that capability, you would still be able to make drones. Losing the capability to make drones means you have been completely and utterly knocked out of the fight.

Again, I accuse you of not previously thinking through what the supply chain of drones is, and thus your argument is indeed quite silly.
by jamietanna | 2026-01-14 20:20:30+00:00
I've spent a bit of time thinking about this[0] - as a maintainer (oapi-codegen, Renovate, previously Jenkins Job DSL Plugin and Wiremock), as someone who used to work on "how can we better fund our company's dependencies", and building projects and products to better understand dependency usage

As others have noted, there are a few areas to watch out for, and:

- some ecosystems have more dependencies over fewer, and so we need to consider how to apply a careful weighting in line with that
- how do we handle forks? Does a % of the money go to the original maintainers who did 80% of the work?
- how can companies be clever to not need to pay this?
- some maintainers don't want financial support, and that's OK
- some project creators / maintainers don't get into the work for the money (... because there is often very little)
- there's a risk of funding requirements leading to "I'm not merging your PR without you paying me" which is /not problematic/ but may not be how some people (in particular companies) would like to operate

[0]: https://www.jvt.me/posts/2025/02/20/funding-oss-product/
by archalex | 2026-01-14 20:20:51+00:00
I have been reading over your comments for nearly two hours now. I find your writing suspiciously sterile, and I have trouble understanding how any one person could produce so much of it in such a small space of time.

The content is overwhelmingly compelling, and I think that any thinking person would have difficulty disagreeing with you.

I begin to wonder, cynically, that someone might enjoy presenting such a devastating, radically destabilizing picture.

Do you know how this thing works, that you can confidently claim, or even dare plant the seed in someone else's mind, that replacement is inevitable?
by tzs | 2026-01-14 20:20:54+00:00
You've almost got it right. You just need to modify this part:

> Just as the 3rd party site could use SSO login from your identity provider, perhaps the identity provider could provide signed evidence to the 3rd party site that asserts "I have verified that this person is age X" but not divulge their identity

The way you compared it so SSO login makes it sounds like there would be interaction between the 3rd party site and the identity provider. That's bad because if someone got a hold of the records from both the site and the identity provider they might be able to match access time logs and figure out who you are.

A fix is to make it so you get your signed document from the identity provider ahead of time, and that document is not tied to doing age verification with any particular site(s). You get it once and then use it with as many sites as you want.

When you use it with a site to demonstrate age we need to do that in such a way that neither of you have to communicate with the identity provider. If the site needs to verify a signature of the identity provider on something you present they use the provider's previously published public key.

We need to make it so that when you use the signed document from the identity provider to show your age to a site they don't see enough from the document to identify you, even if they have been compromised and are collaborating with the identity provider to try to identify you.

Finally, the signed document should be bound to you in some way so that you can't just make copies and give them to others or sell them on the black market to people who want to evade age checks.

BTW, since under this approach the identity provide isn't actively involved after their issue your signed document what probably makes the most sense is to have your government be the identity provider. In particular, the same agency that issues your driver's license or passport or nation ID (if your country has those).

Such a system can in fact be built. The EU is including one in their EU Digital Identity Wallet project, which has been in development for several years and is not undergoing large scale field testing in several countries. It is supposed to be deployed to the public this year or next.

The first version handles the binding of the document to you by tying it to your smart phone's hardware security element. They plan to later support other types of hardware security elements. 90+% of adults in the EU have smart phones (95-98% for adults under 54), and it is going up, so the first version will already cover most cases.

Google has published some libraries for implementing a similar system. Both the Google libraries and the EU system are open source.
by gforce_de | 2026-01-14 20:21:21+00:00
Does look alien. When Going to
http://baremetal.returninfinity.com/
one can only see some b0rken plaintext in the browser:

GET / HTTP/1HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found
Server: BareMetal
Content-type: text/html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>404</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>404 - Not found</p>
</boGET / HTTP/1
by ivvve | 2026-01-14 20:21:38+00:00
It sounds like you don't understand what a pub is like.

Whilst this is definitely not what's it's like, this quaint video is all about the lineage of the pub in the UK, and explains the third-spaceness of them, which I'd argue still exists[1].

Pubs are so important for our communities in the UK, whether that's watching the game, seeing a friend's band, celebrating a birthday or just catching up after work.

Many of the parts of my life have been lived in a pub. If it's criminal, I'd happily be locked up. Or maybe lock me in, a sadly rarer occurrence these days.

[1] https://youtu.be/_GCcoaSq3x4?si=QunsiKqk4D4IRV0M
by rbanffy | 2026-01-14 20:21:40+00:00
> I'm sure Brussels is super safe if you use Mogadishu as the point of comparisons

I believe their point was that Brussels is “super safe” compared to Chicago. 67 times fewer gun incidents is quite a lot.

I live in Dublin, Ireland, which is a lot smaller than Brussels, and when there is a shooting it gets on the news. You can imagine how amused I was coming from São Paulo that a full-on gang war was going on when I arrived here and 4 people had been shot in the previous year.

A friend of mine who also came from São Paulo, a trauma surgeon, had to change specialty here because there simply isn’t enough work.
by belorn | 2026-01-14 20:21:53+00:00
> There were great HN-related conversations to be had around DOGE and what it was (purportedly) trying to achieve with automation, AI, replacing old code bases etc

I have a very different impression of those discussions, with more or less half of the comments being flagged and downvoted into oblivion, and the overall mood being very heavy in negativity and hostility.

I would like to see great HN-related conversations. Maybe if they disabled donwvotes and flagging, and did some heavy handed moderation against negativity and hostility. A great conversation depend on a safe environment where people feel free to express their genuine views and opinions.
by xmprt | 2026-01-14 20:22:07+00:00
The first step to solving this is correct cost attribution. And then once you do that, it's easy to go to org leads and tell them that their logs are costing them $X and you can save them 40% by applying these suggestions. They'll be happy to accept your help at that point. But if the costs are all on the Ops team, then why would the product teams care about any cost optimizations which just takes away development time from them.
by giancarlostoro | 2026-01-14 20:22:38+00:00
Discord is 100% social media. Just like WhatsApp. MSN definitely was, remember MSN Groups? MSN Chat (the IRC knock off), and a bunch of other things. As someone who has consumed social media and chat platforms, I will note that most chat platforms are social media in their own regard. Habbo Hotel is another example of social media. :)
by leptons | 2026-01-14 20:22:53+00:00
>Where did I claim in my post to have written music worth listening to or nontrivial code? Seems like you’re just insulting me in particular instead of providing a counter-argument.

You didn't, and I never claimed that you did - I wrote that I doubt you have. If you had written non-trivial code, or written any music worth listening to, then I doubt you would have the same conclusions.

>A lot of the music people listen to is devoid of the depth, warmth and meaning you mention, even without AI involvement.

I agree, and it will be forgotten, and that's fine. Not every song is a winner. I guarantee that #1 AI generated hit will not be thought about a year after it comes out. Yes we're still listening to hits from the 1960s that real people created because they express human experience that isn't easily fabricated by a machine.

>
lukevp 13 hours ago | parent | next [–]

Where did I claim in my post to have written music worth listening to or nontrivial code? Seems like you’re just insulting me in particular instead of providing a counter-argument.
There have already been AI-created #1 hits.

Sure, there’s music that has all of the attributes you lay out as “requisite” for “good” music, but this is classic moving of the goalposts. It’s how people always justify that AI is not here yet, because there’s this facet of it that’s not human enough.

A lot of the music people listen to is devoid of the depth, warmth and meaning you mention, even without AI involvement. It’s written and produced by tens or hundreds of people and there’s no single visionary behind it. It’s a product.

>Similarly, there can be AI assisted music that has just as much depth, warmth and meaning as a human, BECAUSE a human is involved in the decision-making of that music.

AI-boosting nonsense

>Do you believe that if someone uses a sample, or uses a prebuilt drum loop, that their music automatically is bad?

Generally, yes. I abhor Kanye and his ilk. YMMV.
by Animats | 2026-01-14 20:23:16+00:00
There are lots of far-UV germicidal lamps. Here's one, from Shenzhen.[1] (This is Naomi Wu's business.)

There are lot of fake ones out there. Especially ones with LEDs. Nobody has a 222nm LED with enough power for this yet.

Someone should make a simple tester. Something that's on the end of a stick, you hold it up near the ceiling, and it lights up:

- Green - enough 222nm light to be effective, not too much other UV.

- Red - too much other UV, light is dangerous.

- Yellow - only "homeopathic" levels of 222nm, ineffective.

You can buy NBS-traceable UV meters, and even a spectrometer, but they're expensive.

[1] https://cybernightmarket.com/products/nukit-lantern-far-uvc-...
by DiabloD3 | 2026-01-14 20:23:46+00:00
Maybe it is that way for people in the UK, or maybe people of a certain age group.

However, I am, as I said, an American, but also a Millennial. For many Millennials, drinking isn't a social activity, it is a form of quiet shame. We saw our parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents destroy their lives because of alcoholism, we lost friends and family because of being victims of drunk drivers, we saw people die of complications of a lifetime of drinking.

A lot of us simply chose not to repeat those mistakes as those mistakes effect the people around us in grave ways.

If anything, drinking is an anti-social activity, even if you do it entirely socially.

I just don't see the point in keeping it around.
by watwut | 2026-01-14 20:23:56+00:00
Different IC define useful differently and the same discussion with two of them will lead to different understanding of whether they do useful work. Not every IC is motivated just or primary by that either. Many are more of about social recognition, validation, proving themselves on something they perceive as difficult.

Obviously useful teams with obviously useful members who fully understand they are useful frequently end up demotivated because they lack what they actually need to be motivated and perceive it unfair considering they are useful.

> If you include every single thing managers do then you will simply end up shifting the definition so that every manager is "good". What's so suddenly wrong with being everyday average Joe?

Why cant average Joe manager be a good manager? Or a good programmer or what have you? In well run organizations, they are. I have worked in teams where everyone or nearly everyone was good programmer and manager was good.

Also, in most companies, the quality of hardware is not on lower lever manager. These budget decisions are made closer to CEO levels.
by bluGill | 2026-01-14 20:24:06+00:00
Have you read the contract with Home Depot? You can't use their trucks for anything other than hauling your purchased from Home Depot home.

I haven't see the contract with enterprise trucks, but I suspect it is similarity restricted against the type of damage this is normal from using a truck for work. You can at least tow a trailer with them. Their locations are not convenient for me either.
by Mr_Minderbinder | 2026-01-14 20:24:36+00:00
Why does the current design paradigm in image coding formats emphasise supporting as many features as possible in order to have “one image format to rule them all”? You do not see this in audio and does anybody think that Opus and FLAC should be combined into one format? Does the fact that Opus does not support lossless encoding make it worse?
by tjohns | 2026-01-14 20:24:46+00:00
Carrier-level telco is labor intensive.

You're building new cell towers, managing countless failed backhual links (thanks to fiber's natural enemy, the backhoe), working with whatever obscure bugs your MVNOs have managed to uncover, certifying new cell phone designs, and still working on upgrading everything to 5G while simultaneously planning for 6G (keeping in mind that the 5G network architecture looks radically different than the LTE architecture). Much of that work is necessarily physically distributed across the entire country.

Not to mention dealing with end-user sales and support, which unfortunately often needs physical stores.

I'm not going to say whether 100k is too many, but there's a lot more involved here than just maintenance and monitoring - especially if you want your network capacity to keep up with growing demand.
by Moldoteck | 2026-01-14 20:24:48+00:00
France wants to spend less than 20bn/unit, afaik more like 12bn/unit and half of all the sum will be 0% govt loans, about 35bn (hence 1.5-2y of EEG), rest covered by edf.
EEG in Germany is projected to rise per EWI because it's paid more frequently

Hydrogen is insanely expensive. To think it'll be more economical than nuclear is strange. Germany isn't building transmission just for electrification, but mostly due to distributed generation and the need to avoid curtailment, like sudlink.
by HSO | 2026-01-14 20:25:13+00:00
I incidentally reviewed my medical journal today and had ONE infection since 2018 (which in all likelihood was an enterovirus). ONE. What a bit of awareness will do for you and your immune system! Not just no sars2 but nothing else either.

TWO YEARS (not to mention a trillion and a half usd and eur) wasted on "handwashing" against an airborne virus plus all the other crap that came along with this betrayal or was it utter stupidity I still cant tell which.
by wormius | 2026-01-14 20:25:26+00:00
Bloody rentierists. This is what I've been realizing more and more as this "AI" push combined with rising consumer hardware prices. IMO this is an intentional war on consumers to force them into being digital serfs (like MS and Sun and all the others wanted back in the day). Mainframes->Minis (and mainframes)->Micro/PC->Cloud(and back we go to centralization).

You will own nothing and be happy.
by sitharus | 2026-01-14 20:25:26+00:00
I just try to buy natural or the semi-synthetic cellulose fabrics, there's quite a variety.

Natural fabrics are cotton, silk, wool and linen of course, but the semi-synthetic fabrics like the rayons (viscose, modal, "bamboo", Tencel, Lyocell, Bemberg, and some sorts of artificial silk) are wood cellulose chemically rearranged so they're just cellulose when they reach you.

The fabric referred to as Acetate is cellulose acetate, so not pure cellulose like cotton and rayon but is just as biodegradable and contains no petroleum plastics.

Of course the production process for viscose rayons (not Tencel/Lyocell/Modal - those use a different process) isn't great. It uses carbon disulfide which is a neurotoxin. However it's not a persistent pollutant. Modern factories in the west try to capture and recycle as much carbon disulfide as possible (it's released from the rayon during processing and can be fed back in to the process) but as a lot of factories are in countries with poor controls on this it's hard to tell how many are doing this.
by buu700 | 2026-01-14 20:25:34+00:00
Some of those words appear in my comment, but not in the way you're implying I used them.

My argument was that 1) LLM output isn't inherently "legacy" unless vibe coded, and 2) one should not vibe code software that others depend on to remain stable and secure. Your response about "abandonware" is a non sequitur.
by rico_rodriguez | 2026-01-14 20:25:46+00:00
I went through an Uniqlo last month and was very disappointed at how just about every sort of basic article of clothing I was looking for was at least 30% polyester. Polyester has its place, the fact its not breathable and cheap does make it genuinely useful in moderation to help warm certain articles, but I don't want it in every single basic t shirt and pair of pants.

You can still get high quality or at the very least 100% Cotton clothes there but you'll have to seek them out and they know people will pay a premium for them so they tend to be 2x or more the price of the popular Airism t shirts for example.

I did give up entirely on trying to find outerwear there that was at least roughly >80% organic materials like cotton or wool which was probably my biggest disappointment. You can find nice basics with good quality fabrics at many brands. But Uniqlo 10 years ago was my favorite for wintertime because they're one of the few that had affordable coats and outerwear that made use of real wool + down with good quality lining, excellent heat-tech jackets that used a great blend of breathable fabric + artificial ones to keep you warm but not sweating. I've worn an Uniqlo duffel coat, peacoat, and several jackets every year for the better part of a decade and they still hold up excellent besides some pilling on the coats that I haven't fixed yet.

They don't even really seem to carry proper coats anymore in their stores nor decent jackets, everything seems like the cheap polyester fleeces and puffer coats that everyone else has.
by mywittyname | 2026-01-14 20:25:47+00:00
Civilization is expensive.

If an American factored in the totality of their tax burden, it would be pretty high. The USA has the benefit of higher incomes and a gigantic population, so there's some economies of scale. But even so, add up all of income tax (federal, state, city, county), sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, tolls, etc and the % is already pretty high. After factoring the cost of benefits that are free/subsidized in other countries, and the cost probably averages out to the same.

Of course, European countries can also have those same consumption taxes. But I'm not sure if OP factored that in.
by sciencemadness | 2026-01-14 20:25:49+00:00
My site is Sciencemadness. The forum is the most active part of the site:

https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/

Check out the library too (this started before Google Books, Internet Archive, and Hathitrust were offering scans):

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/index.html

The site performance has intermittently suffered a lot from badly behaved crawlers, so if it's slow when you visit I apologize in advance. (Edit: current load average on server is 63. Ugh.)

I have another much more active account here but Sciencemadness so easily reveals my IRL identity that I don't mention this site on the other account.
by throwway120385 | 2026-01-14 20:26:09+00:00
When I graduated in 2009 it was like this and I eventually took a job clerking in a warehouse to make ends meet. It turned out they had various IT needs but nobody to really fill them and so I eventually worked my way into a role doing application support stuff. It's a really good idea to stop thinking of yourself as the thing you learned to do in school and start thinking in terms of what your options really are. If you're looking at job boards and they're hiring people to ride a desk in a warehouse or work as a service technician or anything tech-adjacent for a small company, apply to those jobs too. Don't shy away from taking or asking for jobs that you might be overqualified for. Especially for small companies with flat management structures. Many of the trees in the forest wait years for an opening. The bigleaf maple will live small under the canopy until something falls and then sprint for the first opportunity. That's what you have to do.