MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-31 12:24:11+00:00
But those do exist and they are generally a lot cheaper; not more expensive.

BTW. it's all hosted in the EU if you use it in the EU. Amazon, Google and Azure have data centers all over Europe and using those is not optional for EU based companies. If that wasn't the case, they'd have no business here. Companies legally have to host in the EU and do business with US cloud providers through EU based subsidiaries (mostly based in Ireland. There's a bit of a murky situation with what level of access US intelligence agencies have exactly to all the data or who copies what where and when. But generally, data isn't supposed to leave the continent unless that's needed/required.

I work in Germany. We currently use Google Cloud. It's cheap and convenient enough. Our spend is only 300 euros/month or so. I could replace it. One of our customers insisted on Telekom Cloud; so we support that as well. I've used Hetzner in the past. There are a few other providers. It's not that big of a deal. But it's not a big/urgent issue for us.

However, Vms, object storage, elastic load balancers, managed databases, etc. are all commodities at this point. You don't need to pay AWS 2-3x for that. They aren't magically any better. They certainly aren't any faster. AWS squeezes hard on those VCPUs.

And there's a lot of exotic stuff that some people use. AWS is offering lots of that. But most of those things are a combination of a bit niche and very pricey and more aimed at enterprises than startups. When it comes to GPU hosting, AI stuff, etc. the premium options that Amazon offers really add up really quickly. I'm sure it's fantastic. But many people I talk to in Europe use alternative/cheaper solutions.

For bread and butter hosting, AWS is just expensive and overrated. Big companies don't seem to care much and are sensitive to big brands and the warm fuzzy feeling they get from expensive consultants telling them what to do. And AWS is very good at vendor locking. That's also why IBM still exists and why companies like Oracle still do a brisk business separating rich clueless enterprises from their cash. Vendor lockin is all they have left at this point But those are at this point the idiot option. AWS is increasingly like that. The times are gone that they are a sane solution for startups. Ten years ago they'd lure you in with "free" hosting for a year and then you'd be hooked for the life time of the startup. But it's not that obvious anymore that is a good choice for cash strapped startups.

Btw. Hetzner now operates in the US. It's a pretty good deal there as well. It's not like you have to give your money to Amazon.
by aarontice | 2026-01-31 12:24:12+00:00
3 more years, then the macroeconomic headwinds from aging millennials will be past peak earnings and rather than funding cap weighted index, they will be draining cap weighted index.

1929 silent generation decade or depression after.

1967 post war Baby boom from The Greatest Generation, followed by decade plus of stagflation and recessions.

1999, after a two decade run of the stock market going from 1000 on the Dow Jones in 1980 to 10,000 on the Dow Jones in 2000, the baby boomers born to the greatest generation, peak, earning ears, leading to the lost decade afterwards.

Two decades of stock market returns from 6000 on the Dow to 60,000 on the Dow, followed by post peak millennial earnings…

One does not speak unless One knows.

You know nothing Jon Snow.
by 202508042147 | 2026-01-31 12:24:53+00:00
Last week I migrated our db away from AWS RDS to a European cloud provider. Everything runs fine and we also have it cheaper!

One of our domains is due for renewal in a couple of months. I'm setting up the transfer to a EU registrar for it next week.

This all takes time and it's not the most important thing for the bottom line, but on the long run I'm sure I'll look back and say it was a great investment.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-31 12:25:10+00:00
> That’s where the misconception comes from as regards to LLM replacing completely developers I guess

The misconception also arises because Ai companies use the word thinking and everything else too which is what the general population says and then this just gets caught on by Engineers too.

When we say reason/think/etc. all the hype created by AI definitely gets a boost imo.

Do we say these for a lack of a better term or was it intentional that we say reason/think?
by jll29 | 2026-01-31 12:25:32+00:00
In the 1950s/1960s, the term "automatic programming" referred to compiler construction: instead of writing assembler code by hand, a FORula TRANslator (FORTRAN) could "magically" turn a mathematical formula into code "by itself".

"4GL" was a phase in the 1980s when very high level languages very provided by software companies, often integrating DB access and especially suited for particular domains. The idea was that one could focus more on the
actual problem rather than having to write boilerplate
needed to solving it.

LLMs permit to go from natural language specification to draft implementation. If one is lucky, it runs and produes the desired results right away; more often, one needs to revise the code base iteratively, again navigated by NL commands, to fix errors, to change the design based on reviewing the first shot at it, to add features etc.
by zelphirkalt | 2026-01-31 12:26:18+00:00
Wow, the tool for decomposing characters is very cool! I assume you are talking about the thing that appears, when I click "Matrix"? I think it would be good to have "decompose characters" somewhere. But I might actually use this to get the component characters. In my app in my vocabulary file I also have tags for words, which are like "component:<component here>", so that if one knows how parts of a character, one could also search for it, without knowing its pinyin, by searching for "tags contain component1 and contain component2 and ...". I might add more component tags using your tool.

What I noticed though is, that some of the components don't seem to be like what I would expect to be shown as components. For example I tried the word 衣服 and 服 is shown to have the component "二". I guess one could see it that way, but some other dictionaries stop at 月 which itself is a component with set meaning (moon) and usage as radical (often for body parts). My favorite online normal dictionary for example: https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=... (hover over 3 dots of character and click the button with the 字 and scissors to see decomposition) says:

服 = 月 + 𠬝
𠬝 = 卩 + 又

If you go further, wouldn't you also have to decompose "二" into "一" and "一"?

A Chinese teacher told me there are various approaches for decomposition, so this might not be a science or that rigorous, but I think consistency would then dictate, that you decompose "二" as well. I don't always agree fully with their decomposition either and usually I stop at any component, that still has meaning by itself, which can be pretty low level 1 or 2 strokes components already. For determining that, I also use information from a language school, which I copied into a repo: https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl/language-learning/src/... "All radicals from their website". Also useful for memorizing the characters, if one can derive a mnemonic for a character from its components and their meaning.

The advanced UI looks very complex, but I don't mind that. In fact it is quite cool! Just has some stuff I don't even know what it is about. I noticed, that once one toggles the advanced UI, I didn't find a way to toggle it back to simple again.

Bookmarked!
by xg15 | 2026-01-31 12:26:36+00:00
There are lot of useless, self-serving abstractions out there (looking at you, Spring and Angular)

There is also a lot of useful abstraction that ensures you can more easily understand the system - and that sneaks in orthogonal features such as monitoring and robust error handling, that managers aren't happy to allocate much time for but that prove their worth once the system is actually running.

It's possible, LLMs now offer a different way to solve the same problem, because the cost of adding those orthogonal features now approaches zero jueas quickly as working on the rest of the code. ("Add logging, please"). So it is possible that a lot of frameworks that did provide real value in the past will become obsolete with LLMs.

On the other hand, if you look at stuff like Gas Town, then it's clear people will still revel into inventing crazy architectures full of arcane terminology, independent of how much it's actually needed.
by jakkos | 2026-01-31 12:26:40+00:00
> their ideas where collected and documented

Yeah, documented *and credited*. I'm not against the idea of disseminating knowledge, and even with my misgivings about LLMs, I wouldn't have said anything if this blog post was simply "LLMs are really useful".

My comment was in response to you essentially saying "all the criticisms of LLMs aren't real, and you should be uncompromisingly proud about using them".

> Moreover there is a strong pattern of the most prolific / known open source developers being NOT against the fact that their code was used for training

I think it's easy to get "echo-chambered" by who you follow online with this, my experience has been the opposite, i don't think it's clear what the reality is.
by camgunz | 2026-01-31 12:28:06+00:00
Laws aren't fictitious just because people/countries break them. No one writes a law thinking "that settles that, no more embezzling." Laws simply tell you how that system works: you embezzle, FBI arrests you, you get tried, etc.

Also the US always made a big deal about not joining various treaties, with their reasoning explicitly being "we actually plan to do a lot of things that would violate that treaty." In that sense, that shows the US actually had respect for those institutions.

Also, the west benefited from this arrangement. Most western countries could benefit from the rules based order, and when they needed a little pump, the US broke some rules and brought home a treat for the home team. You might argue this undermines the whole enterprise, but my counterargument is this is the longest period of relative peace and prosperity humankind has ever experienced, so although it wasn't perfect, it was a huge improvement.
by nl | 2026-01-31 12:28:42+00:00
I think there's a difference between people getting a system a d realising it isn't actually what they wanted and "never survive collision with reality".

They survive by being modified and I don't think that invalidates the process that got them in front of people faster than would otherwise have been possible.

This isn't a defence of waterfall though. It's really about increasing the pace of agile and the size of the loop that is possible.
by pousada | 2026-01-31 12:29:01+00:00
You are able to do this stuff with open models for 1-2 years now, i for example have a comfyui pipeline that achieves a similar setup. It’s of course more work and you have to dig into the details more. I also have to adjust the pipeline and tweak it and use different models for each use case. But overall you can definitely achieve that level of control with open models already, it’s just not that user friendly
by lnsru | 2026-01-31 12:29:04+00:00
I upvoted you. That’s absolutely true for other roles as well. Like hardware design engineers. At US company in Germany one gets real salary. At German big company one will make 2/3 of that salary. People are not stupid, why choose fraction of the salary when one can take it all. There are outliers, but majority will want to work for more than less money.
Show HN: Project Xent – A native C++ UI framework in KBs
by AzusaBCSK | 2026-01-31 12:29:57+00:00
Modern UI frameworks (WinUI, Flutter, Electron) are bloated. Project Xent bridges a C++ reactive DSL directly to the host OS compositor.

The "FluXent" (Windows) Demo:

Binary size: ~300KB .exe (No heavy runtimes required)

RAM: <15MB idle

Stack: DComp + D2D + Yoga

The core architecture separates shared C++ logic from platform-optimal rendering. Instead of painting widgets, Xent bridges a reactive DSL directly to the native OS compositor:

- Windows: DirectComposition (FluXent)

- Linux: Wayland/EFL (LuXent - Planned)

- macOS: SwiftUI/Metal (NeXent - Planned)

I am a high school student. I acted as the architect, orchestrating this zero-bloat vision in 11 days of work using Claude and Gemini.

GitHub: <https://github.com/Project-Xent>
by sampo | 2026-01-31 12:30:27+00:00
> findings can alter humanity itself

Higgs boson was predicted in theory in 1964, and found in LHC in CERN in 2012-2013. With this, all elementary particles in the standard model of particle physics have been found.

From the 1970s to 2010s, physicists believed in a theory called supersymmetry, which predicted supersymmetric partner particles for the known elementary particles. But these should have been already found in the energies used in LHC.

For the first time, there is no mainstream theory that would predict any new findings. Maybe the next bigger particle collider will find no new particles at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlixMNBlQos
by antirez | 2026-01-31 12:30:43+00:00
To really understand how complicated is this matter, put into the mix that before AI in Europe there was no shortage of knowledge to have all our cloud services (to the point that a decent part of key infrastructure software is developed in Europe or mainly by Europeans), social networks, ..., but yet it was never strongly wanted. To reach this point, something is really odd with the current US-EU tensions.
by angoragoats | 2026-01-31 12:32:05+00:00
Do you ever watch videos on a computer? If so, do you ever switch away to a different tab, or to a different app entirely, and keep the video playing in your browser tab? YouTube artificially prevents that exact same action on tablets and phones unless you pay them.

Multitasking is a basic OS feature, no matter what kind of device you’re using. Gating it behind a paywall is user-hostile behavior at its finest.
by mikkupikku | 2026-01-31 12:32:16+00:00
The purpose of democracy is to create stable governance with peaceful transitions of power, so that people feel confident about the future and are willing to invest in long term things that require long term stability. It's not because we think the plebiscite are really wise and effective at governing, they're not, but stability is more important and ultimately more humane than government which is truly effective but not stable in the long run.
by mathgeek | 2026-01-31 12:32:26+00:00
Yes, but that is part of the point: a chair being built is mostly distinct from a chair being designed (there is of course a small amount of design that is done while building). Software is designed at a much higher percentage while being created (or if you prefer, there is a cycle between the two states).

You also don’t often learn why you don’t need a chair while building one.
by item007 | 2026-01-31 12:32:26+00:00
That’s a really thoughtful distinction. I like how you separate “write-only but still valuable” (emotional clarity / self-understanding) from “collection of facts” (laying pieces on the table until a structure emerges).

The “notes aren’t an obligation” line also resonates — treating them as medium-term memory rather than a forever archive removes a lot of pressure.

When you finish a project and you have leftover notes/todos you don’t intend to finish, do you actively prune/close them (mark done/obsolete), or do you just let them fade and trust that what matters will resurface naturally?
by jeffrallen | 2026-01-31 12:32:39+00:00
Right, but have you tried recruiting someone recently who is capable of running a pair of local servers (including organizing redundant power feeds), upgrading the OS on them with no downtime, and arranging for off-site backups of the enterpris's data?

These used to be the skills of a generalist sysadmin for a small-site with on-prem services.

Those skills are no longer available on the market. Students in the local apprenticeship program have one class about hardware, and they don't even touch it, just talk about it.
Show HN: Not_pad – a local Markdown notebook for thinking (newest ideas first)
by SylvaM | 2026-01-31 12:32:54+00:00
I built a small Windows app for capturing ideas and AI chats.

Each topic or project is a single local Markdown file.
When you open a file, the cursor starts at the top.
New thoughts go first. Older context stays below.

I didn’t want an IDE, a second brain, or a syncing system — just a quiet place to drop thoughts before they evaporate.

Built with Python + Tkinter, with help from AI.
Local-only, minimal, opinionated.
Show HN: Libmagicxx – Modern C++23 wrapper for libmagic
by oguztoraman | 2026-01-31 12:33:04+00:00
C++23 wrapper for libmagic (the library behind the Unix `file` command). Identifies file types by content, not extension.

Features:
- RAII with automatic cleanup.
- Exception-based and noexcept APIs (std::expected) for flexible error handling.
- Batch identification with progress tracking.
- Cross-platform: Linux and Windows (GCC, Clang, MinGW).
- CMake integration with presets.
- 600+ automated tests.

LGPL-3.0 licensed.
by bluecalm | 2026-01-31 12:33:13+00:00
>>As a European, I am glad that this is finally discussed in the open! I have made multiple comments in the last weeks that one of the most important things, for me, is an alternative to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly.

The main reason we don't have an alternative to Visa/Mastercard duopoly is protectionism of EU countries. There are local alternatives that do pretty well (BLIK in Poland, Revolut Pay in countries where it's popular) but entering more markets is like pulling teeth because EU throws regulatory obstacles at every step.

>> Why isn't the European Commission mandating these app payments in different EU countries to connect with each other? Wouldn't that go faster than the digital euro, that is set to come no earlier than 2029?

It would but then their non-local alternative could win which they really don't want to happen.
by motoboi | 2026-01-31 12:34:23+00:00
We maybe witnessing the last generation of master software artisans like antirez.

This is beautiful to see, their mastery harnessing the power of the intelligent machine tools to design, understand and build.

This is like seeing a master of image & light like michelangelo receiving a camera, photoshop and a printer. It's an exponential elevation of the art.

But to become a master like michelangelo one had to dedicate herself to the craft of manually mixing and applying materials to bend and modulate light, slowly building and consolidating those neural pathways by reflection and, most of all, practice, until those skills became as natural as getting up or bringing a hand to the mouth. When that happened, art flowed from her mind to the physical world and the body became the vessel of intuition.

A master like antirez had to wrap his head around concepts alien to the human mind. Bits, bytes, arrays, memory layout, processors, compilers, interfaces, abstractions, constraints, types, concurrency do not exist in the savannas that forged brains. Had to comprehend and learn to use his own cognitive capabilities and restrictions to know at what level to break the code units and the abstraction boundaries. At the very top, master this in a level so high that software became like Redis: beautiful, powerful and so elevated in the art that it became simpler, not more complex. It's Picasso drawing a dog.

The intelligent software building machines can do things no human manually can (given the same time, humans die, get old or get bored), but they are not brush and canvas. They function in another way, the mind needs other paths to master them. The path to master them is not the same path to master artisanal software building.

So, this new generation, wanting to build things not possible to the artisan, will become masters of another craft, one we right now cannot even comprehend or imagine, in the same way michelangelo could never imagine the level of control over light the modern photography masters have.

Me, not a master, but having dedicated my whole life to artisanal software building, am excited to receive and use the new tools, to experiment the new craft. Also frightened by the uncertainty of this new world.

What a time to be alive.
by briancr | 2026-01-31 12:34:42+00:00
“IMO it's pointless to distinguish syntactically between iterating forwards and backwards” — I completely agree. It’s really a compiler-macro limitation that’s preventing me from doing this.. though I don’t have to go that route.

I think what you’re suggesting would require the <a, b> syntax to produce a proper iterator type, which it doesn’t currently do. That’s definitely worth considering — then you could attach methods, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll think about the best way to fix this..
by eru | 2026-01-31 12:35:15+00:00
Yes, that's how a lot of Singapore looks like. It's an HDB car park.

But your picture of the Soviet Union is perhaps a bit too rosy.

I'm not sure why you'd be depressed? It's a picture of a construction site in a car park. Sure, I'd love having the car infrastructure being less front and centre, too. But otherwise it's fine.
by Biganon | 2026-01-31 12:35:30+00:00
I feel like my biggest gripe with every single WM I've tried is the Idea that if I reboot, I lose everything. Sure I can add complex rules in sway like "always open Firefox on workspace 2, slack on workspace 1", but i still have to launch them on boot (unless I automate this as well), and it becomes complex when I say I always want 3 terminals on workspace 3, etc.

I wish I could fine tune once, and snapshot whatever it is I'm using, and have it appear automatically when I reboot.
by zelphirkalt | 2026-01-31 12:36:08+00:00
Also I just read some of your blog about learning Chinese :) Haha, I can totally relate to some of it. What I noticed is, that when I speak Mandarin with locals (on vacation, because I am not living there), they are always super happy, that I speak their language and they make an effort to speak it with me. This might be dependent on the region one is in. From your writing I would guess you might be in Taiwan or HK, and while I have been in HK, I have never been in Taiwan and I don't know how people handle it there. I have mostly been in southern China and it's always been great and an overwhelming amount of people were very friendly and welcoming. Of course living there and traveling there for a while are 2 different things and experience might differ. If you happen to visit Berlin, feel welcome to visit our Chinese language meetup (https://dragon-descendants.de/en/) and if you want you can ask for me, 小龙.
by mikkupikku | 2026-01-31 12:36:57+00:00
Organized crime doesn't like publicly visible violence. That's bad for business. They only resort to that when they feel they have no other choice. They do shit like bomb judges and get into shootouts with the police when they have to exert their power, not when they feel secure and business is good.

A better measure of organized crime is the sort of crime they profit from, like the general availability of illegal drugs, trafficked women, etc.
by Etheryte | 2026-01-31 12:37:00+00:00
I know that's not what you really meant, but as an unrelated tangent, modern cars are safer exactly because they're not built like tanks. The car crumpling up event at the smallest of crashes is good, because the more the car crumples, the less any of the impact is transferred to the passengers. It might mean the car is totaled and you need a new one, but that's better than someone in the car being totaled.
by ben_w | 2026-01-31 12:37:23+00:00
> HN has always been very much right leaning.

By whose standards? I'm European, so for me the US Democrat party is too far to the *right* to be electable; but by historical American standards, the impression I've had is this site has been centrist.

Conversely, the current standard of the US right wing seems to be that Bush Jr and Cheney were lefty liberal wokes who undermined the US national interest by working with NATO and Europe instead of taking every opportunity to undermine both…