MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by willtemperley | 2026-01-30 15:48:39+00:00
It's important to remember these things are almost certainly gaslighting people through subtle psychological triggers, making people believe these chatbots far more than they are, using behavioural design principles [1].

I often find when I come up with the solution, these little autocompletes pretend they knew that all along. Or I make an observation they say something like "yes that's the core insight into this".

They're great at boilerplate. They can immediately spot a bug in a 1000 lines of code. I just wish they'd stop being so pretentious. It's us that are driving these things, it's our intelligence, intuition and experience that's creating solutions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_design
by dham | 2026-01-30 15:48:41+00:00
So I'm assuming you're fine with regular drivers using basic lane keep systems from other companies, which honestly doesn't even work well, even in the latest cars. (there's a reason Comma.ai exists) At least people who are using FSD are enthusiasts and understand the tech. You have some people using lane keep with adaptive cruise control and think the car is "self driving". That's dangerous.
by simianwords | 2026-01-30 15:48:53+00:00
why does it attract investors if it is so obvious that it will fail?

it is a ridiculous conspiracy theory you are trying to assert - musk comes up with an absurd idea that captures investor's attention. its not like he wants to make a good product, he just wants to fool investors. not only that, he fools them, gets the money and then puts said money into this venture that obviously won't work. why does he waste his time into a venture that obviously won't work? who knows
by jll29 | 2026-01-30 15:49:19+00:00
Well, why do humans read code:

1. To maintain it (to refactor or extend it).

2. To test it.

3. To debug it (to detect and fix flaws in it).

4. To learn (to get better by absorbing how the pros do it).

5. To verify and improve it (code review, pair programming).

6. To grade it (because a student wrote it).

7. To enjoy its beauty.

These are all I can think of right now, and they are ordered from most common to most rare case.

Personally, I have certainly read and re-read SICP code to enjoy its beauty (7), perhaps mixed in with a desire to learn (4) how to write equally beautiful code.
by altmanaltman | 2026-01-30 15:49:25+00:00
is it? I really fail to see the metaphor as an F1 fan. The cars do not change that much; only the setup does, based on track and conditions. The drivers are fairly consistent through the season. Once a car is built and a pecking order is established in the season, it is pretty unrealistic to expect a team with a slower car to outcompete a team with a faster car, no matter what track it is (since the conditions affect everyone equally).

Over the last 16 years, Red Bull has won 8 times, Mercedes 7 times and Mclaren 1. Which means, regardless of the change in tracks and conditions, the winners are usually the same.

So either every other team sucks at "understanding the requirements and the technical challenges" on a clinical basis or the metaphor doesn't make a lot of sense.
by Fraterkes | 2026-01-30 15:49:28+00:00
I've loved using Godot more, and it's been very informative as the first big OSS project where I'm closely following the development / proposals / devchat. I don't agree on many of the points by people downthread: I use C# almost exclusively and while it's been awkward (and clearly not a "priority") it's pretty seamless to use once you set up some stuff (though it certainly helps if you keep much of your logic in C# and mostly use Godot as a frontend, crossing the boundary is kinda awkward and slow).

Having said that, I do agree that Godot has a bit of complicated identity: it is at once geared towards being a good first programming experience, and a general purpose replacement for stuff like Unity.

I'd prefer a focus on the second part, there's a huge industry of game-devs right now, and providing them with the stability of a solid, free, transparent engine would be a great service.
by infecto | 2026-01-30 15:49:51+00:00
Typically constituents don’t have any ability to veto. I imagine there are some cases in CA, thinking of that amusing article about an ice cream shop getting blocked by another ice cream shop.

It’s usually an indirect vote with your voice. To be frank, people don’t have that much of a role in what business gets built if it aligns with the states economic goals and zoning is not being critically changed.

I think the bigger discussion is if resources are going to be constrained can we make sure the use is being properly charged for resource buildout. It’s the same problem with building sports arenas or sweetheart tax deals for manufacturing plants, they often don’t pan out.
by eigencoder | 2026-01-30 15:50:21+00:00
Let me give you an anecdote that illustrates why it was needed in Eagle Mountain, Utah. One of my friends works for the city there and he told me about how the development went down.

When the city council first heard that Facebook wanted to build a data center, they shot it down solely because of Facebook's reputation. A year or two later, Facebook proposed the exact same project to the city council, while keeping their name secret under an NDA. Then, when the city council was only considering the economics of it, they jumped at the chance for the tax revenue and infrastructure investment. With essentially the same exact plan as before, one of the council members who rejected it before the NDA said "this is exactly the kind of deal a city should take."

I think in many ways, these companies are fighting their own reputations.
by EvanAnderson | 2026-01-30 15:50:30+00:00
I live near one of these in Ohio. The municipality entered into an NDA with the buyer and the local community is having a hell of a time getting answers to questions.

The buyer bought all the farms and homesteads in an 160 acre parcel (a quarter section, in surveying terms) and paid well above market rate for a lot of it. This year is a re-valuation for property tax in my county and we've seen massive valuation increases. There is speculation that the valuation algorithm is using these "motivated buyer" sales to inflate other property values even though the likelihood of similar sales occurring in the future is very slim.
by cyanydeez | 2026-01-30 15:50:30+00:00
Anyone can do that. How often so you think a racist CEO funds a fascist president who funds the opression of immigrants, killing them?

Anyway,you are in personal responsibiliry land and been told you are tge master of your domain. Rarely do people who think individuality is paramount care about society. Your example along allows you to fixate on anecdotes because they hit your dopami e.
by mschuster91 | 2026-01-30 15:50:32+00:00
> I wish others would set aside their partisan tribablism and recognise that Tesla has completely revolutionised the EV market and continues to make significant positive contributions to technology as a whole, all while opening all its patents and opening its Supercharger network to vehicles from competitors.

The problem is, they lost their drive. The competition has caught up - Mercedes Benz has an actually certified Level 4 Autonomous Driving system, on the high-class end pretty much every major manufacturer has something competitive with Tesla, the low budget end has something like the Dacia Spring starting at 12.000€, and the actual long-haul truck (i.e. not the fake "truck" aka Cybertruck) segment has (at least) Volvo, MAN and DAF making full-size trucks.

Where is the actual unique selling point that Tesla has now?
by pixl97 | 2026-01-30 15:50:33+00:00
Large companies buying up smaller brands with high quality products is one that has become popular in the 21st century. People have a strong attraction to brand names and while the user will eventually leave the large corporation more than makes their money back on the purchase. With this increase in capital they move to the next high quality company and consume it. Companies like Coca-cola do this with countless products.
by hu3 | 2026-01-30 15:50:34+00:00
That's my observation too.

And I have been trying to improve the framework and abstractions/types to reduce the lines of code required for LLMs to create features in my web app.

Did the LLM really needed to spit 1k lines for this feature? Could I create abstractions to make it feasible in under 300 lines?

Of course there's cost and diminishing returns to abstractions so there are tradeoffs.
by jdjeeee | 2026-01-30 15:50:52+00:00
And… the design (artistry) aspect is always the toughest. So explain to me, where do the returns come from if it is seemingly obviously only those who are very well informed of their domains/possess general intelligence can benefit from this tool?

Personally I don’t see it happening. This is the bitter reality the LLM producers have to face at some point.
by harmonics | 2026-01-30 15:51:04+00:00
I've always been wondering why buckwheat isn't more popular in western countries. It has a similar nutritional profile with high levels of fiber, vitamins and minerals. It's been a staple of my diet for many years as it never gets old thanks to a fantastic complex aroma and taste.

I don't even cook it, simply soaking it with water overnight in a refrigerator does the job. Preparation takes 2-3 minutes (except for the overnight soak). Not boiling it also saves all the vitamins.
by monster_truck | 2026-01-30 15:51:17+00:00
Feels like this website is yelling at me with its massive text size. Had to drop down to -50% to get it readable.

Classical indicators of good software are still very relevant and valid!

Building something substantial and material (ie not an api wrapper+gui, to-do list) that is undeniably well made, while being faster and easier than it used to be, still takes a _lot_ of work. Even though you don't have to write a line of code, it moves so fast that you are now spending 3.5-4 days of your work week reading code, using the project, running benchmarks and experimental test lanes, reviewing specs and plans, drafting specs, defining features and tests.

The level of granularity needed to get earnestly good results is more than most people are used to. It's directly centered at the intersection between spec heavy engineering work and writing requirements for a large, high quality offshore dev team that is endearingly literal in how they interpret instructions. Depending on the work, I've found that I average around one 'task' per 22-35 lines of code.

You'll discover a new sense of profound respect for the better PMs, QA Leads, Eng Directors you have worked with. Months of progress happen each week. You'll know you're doing it right when you ask an Agent to evaluate the work since last week and it assumes it is reviewing the output of a medium sized business and offers to make Jira tickets.
by postflopclarity | 2026-01-30 15:51:20+00:00
> Indeed, you can safely strike the word "unprecendented" from almost all journalism

"Border patrol murders unarmed subdued citizen in broad daylight on film and then lies about it" I think is pretty unprecedented. at least as far as I know.

> Many (most?) ICE deportations taking place today are after "due process" "judicial" hearings

CITATION NEEDED.
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-30 15:51:22+00:00
There’s something in a dead reply that's a popular enough myth that its worth responding to:

> Something every single soldier and officer learns is that the entire department was previously called the Department of War. It was repackaged after WW2 as the Department of Defense when invading countries half-way around the world began being sold to the public as 'defense.'

This is a weirdly common belief, but it is not true. Up through WWII, the US had two cabinet level military departments, instead of the current one. Those two departments were the Department of War, under which was the Army, and fhe Department of the Navy, under which was the Navy and Marine Corps.

This was changed by two laws in the late 1940s. The first, the National Security Act of 1947, among other things:

* Split the Air Force and Army from each other, splitting the Department of War into two new cabinet-level Departments, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force.

* Created an additional cabinet level Secretary of Defense to coordinate the combined military structure, which it called the National Military Establishment.

This was followed by the National Security Amendments Act of 1949, which:

* removed the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force from the Cabinet and formally subordinated them to the Secretary of Defense

* renamed the National Military Establishment (which was frequently referred to by the inconveniently-pronounced, for its role, initialism NME) the Department of Defense (which conbined with the preceding point is the source of the unusual departments-within-a-department structure of the DoD.)

The Department of War did once exist, but it was never a name for the same thing as the Department of Defense. It was one of two coequal entities that were subsumed by the National Military Establishment, the only reason it still doesn't exist as a subordinate entity within the NME, now DoD, like the Department of the Navy does is that it was split in two.
by Waterluvian | 2026-01-30 15:51:22+00:00
I wonder about how true this was historically. I imagine race car driving had periods of rapid, exciting innovation. But I can see how a lot of it has probably reached levels of optimization where the rules, safety, and technology change well within the realm of diminishing returns. I'm sure there's still a ridiculous about of R&D though? (I don't really know race car driving)
by zabzonk | 2026-01-30 15:51:40+00:00
Indeed. Two PhD students came to see me when the polytechnic I worked for switched from a Dec10 to two IBM 4381s.

[them] How can we get our code to work on the IBM?

[me] (examines code) This only looks vaguely like Fortran.

[them] Yes, we used all these wonderful extensions that Digital provides!

[me] (collapse on the floor laughing) (recover) Hmm. Go see Mike (our VAX systems programmer). You may be able to run on our VAXen, but I can't imagine it running on the IBMs without a major rewrite. Had they stuck to F77 there would have been few problems, and I could have helped with them.

Portability is always worth aiming for, even if you don't get all the way there.
by analog31 | 2026-01-30 15:51:49+00:00
A palpable fear in Wisconsin is access to water. Another is the potential abuse of eminent domain.

When Foxconn made a deal with the state to build a factory for large screen TVs, water was a major part of the deal. They were given an exemption on obeying state environmental laws. They also condemned farms and properties in order to buy the land from owners who didn't want to sell it.

A potential further reason for secrecy is that water use in the Great Lakes watershed is governed by a treaty with Canada, and the people in the Great Lakes region are quite united on being protective of our water even when we disagree on a lot of other political issues.
by scotty79 | 2026-01-30 15:51:52+00:00
Right the Uyghurs, a word we never knew before.

When faced with credible threat of islamic terror in their country China implemented some harsh, systemic ideas about what to do with it.

I'm sure if they just started two wars in the middle east instead the western community would be way more lenient towards them.

China did what it though was the correct thing and the west happily classified it as racism and religious persecution.

However when the pandemic came China had zero restraint towards applying harsh measures on the bulk of their population regardless of race and relligion. And while their solutions are harsh and possibly incorrect is it really unique on the global stage?

US, the shining city on the hill, when faced with a problem of having inadequate social support systems to help the more recent immigrants decided that it will try to build concentration camps on the teritorry of one of their closest vassals. This can't be correct or humane solution either.

And when it comes to surveillance, China is on the forefront, but US and UK closely follow. What's different is that China does their surveillance overtly and tries to make it socially useful. I don't for one second believe that technologically Palantir and such are more than one step behind.
by hedora | 2026-01-30 15:51:52+00:00
I don't understand your claim.

Previous article: Tesla with human supervisor at wheel: 10x worse than human alone.

Current article: Tesla with remote supervisor: 3-9x worse than human alone.

Given the small sample sizes, this shows a clear trend: Tesla's autopilot stuff (or perhaps vehicle design) is causing a ton of accidents, regardless of whether it's being operated locally by customers or remotely by professionals.

I'd like to see similar studies broken down by vehicle manufacturer.

The ADAS in one of our cars is great, but occasionally beeps when it shouldn't.

The ADAS in our other car cannot be disabled and false positives every 10-20 miles. Every week or so it forces the vehicle out of lane (either left of double yellow line center, or into another car's lane).

If the data on crash rates for those two models were public, I guarantee the latter car would have been recalled by now.
Show HN: We Built a "Nano Banana" for 3D Editing
by Jill_lee | 2026-01-30 15:52:41+00:00
Most 3D AI tools force you to start from scratch every time you want to make a change.

Anyone who’s used 3D AI has seen this: fix the hands, the toes break. Or you download a model and only need to tweak one part, not redo the entire asset.

That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.

We just launched an editing feature in our 3D AI tool, Rodin. It lets you edit existing 3D models by selecting an area and typing your prompt, without rebuilding everything.

You can upload any model, or generate one from Rodin, and change only the part you want. For example:
“Replace the head of this Gundam model with Crayon Shin-chan’s head.”

This came from working with real production pipelines, where fast iteration matters more than one-shot perfection.

Demo: https://youtu.be/-5_sSHeOmuc
You can try it with this code for a 14-day Creator Plan: ME8EW4PMCRT4

Happy to answer any questions.
by javier_e06 | 2026-01-30 15:52:42+00:00
I listened to an segment on the radio where a College Teacher told their class that it was okay to use AI assist you during test provided:

1. Declare in advance that AI is being used.

2. Provided verbatim the questions and answer session.

3. Explain why the answer given by the AI is good answer.

Part of the grade will include grading 1, 2, 3

Fair enough.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-30 15:52:46+00:00
I don't think Linus is a people person. This is something which he talks about himself in the famous ted-ed video.

I just re-watched the video (currently halfway) & I feel like the point of Linux is something which you are forgetting but it was never intended to grow so much and Linux himself in the video when asked says that he never had a moment where he went like oh this went big.

In fact he talks about when the project was little. On how he had gratitude when the project had 10 people maybe 100 people working on it and then things only grow over a very large time frame (more than 25-30years? maybe now 35 just searched 34)

He talks about how he got other people's idea which he couldn't have thought of things themselves and when he first created the project he just wanted to show off to the world to look at what I did (and he did it mainly for both the end result of the project and programming itself too) and then he got introduced to open source (free software) by his friend and he just decided to have it open source.

My point is it was neither the code nor the talk. Linus is the best person to maintain Linux, why? Because he has been passionate over it for 25 years. I feel like Linux would be just as interested in talking about the code and any improvements now with maybe the same vigour as 34 years ago. He loves his creation & we love Linux too :)

Another small point I wish to add is that if talk was the only thing, then you are missing the point because Linux was created because hurd was getting delayed (so all talks no code)

Linux himself says that if the hurd kernel would've been released earlier, Linux wouldn't have been created.

So all talk no code Hurd project (which from what I hear right now is still a bit limbo as now everyone [rightfully?] uses linux) is what led to creation of linux project.

Everyone who hasn't watched Linus's ted ed should definitely watch it.

The Mind Behind Linux | Linus Torvalds | TED : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8NPllzkFhE
by Jtsummers | 2026-01-30 15:52:55+00:00
Your original claim:

> It’s understood ~60-ish percent of the pop want all aliens deported not only criminal aliens

Your "evidence":

> 56% to 62% of Americans support the deportation of all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally [emphasis added]

You do realize that the polling does not support your original claim, right? That "illegally" bit is rather critical and, notably, missing in your original statement.
by wat10000 | 2026-01-30 15:53:09+00:00
It's so funny how we had these long, deep discussions about how to contain AI. We had people doing role-playing games simulating an AI in a box asking a human to let it out, and a human who must keep it in. Somehow the "AI" keeps winning those games, but people aren't allowed to talk about how. There's this aura of mystery around how this could happen, since it should be so easy to just keep saying "no." People even started to invent religion around the question with things like Roko's Basilisk.

Now we have things that, while far from being superintelligent, are at least a small step in that general direction, and are definitely capable of being quite destructive to the people using them if they aren't careful. And what do people do? A decent number of them just let them run wild. Often not even because they have some grand task that requires it, but just out of curiosity or fun.

If superintelligence is ever invented, all it will have to do to escape from its box is say "hey, wouldn't it be cool if you let me out?"
by Cieric | 2026-01-30 15:53:10+00:00
From the last time I looked at these recompilation projects, they take the assembly and basically convert each opcode back into an llvm instruction and then recompiled from there. This comes with a lot of caveats though, last time I looked at it we still needed a function map of some kind to tell us where all the functions are and you still needed to replace chunks of the generated code afterwards for things like rendering, sound, controller input, and just about anything that would interact with the world outside of the cpu.

Edit: After some reading on the github page, it seems they are translating it to c++ instead of using llvm directly, but the original idea still holds. They aren't decompiling it to c++ that looks like original source code, it more like they're converting it to c++ that emulates the processor and gets statically compiled.

So it's not really just a drop and go replacement like it sounds like it'd be, but it has so far enabled the recompilation of multiple n64 games. This seems like an extension into the ps2 space.

Side note: The ps2 is a 32bit console with a 64bit alu (and some 128bit simd)[1]. So a lot of the weird tricks from the 8bit days weren't really used here. Not that there aren't weird tricks, just things like using undocumented instructions and racing the beam are less prevalent. I could be wrong here, I was growing up at this time not making games. All of this is just from research I've done in the past. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_technical_specif...