MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by grepfru_it | 2026-01-24 10:04:17+00:00
It’s open source bro, just read the code if you don’t trust it.

/s

That said I am intimately familiar with the code and it’s pretty well designed with safety in mind. Plus your vehicle has safety parameters that limits the ability for the software to do something insane. That said there are a few stories of open pilot running into a curb, hitting a car in the neighboring lane, etc
by exe34 | 2026-01-24 10:04:17+00:00
aren't we told all the time though, that a board of directors beholden to shareholders and a god given edict to make numbers go up are the only way to do things efficiently, to be lean and productive? are you telling me that when people find there's a need for something to happen, they make it happen? for the good of mankind? no billionaires?
by captainnemo729 | 2026-01-24 10:05:09+00:00
OP here.

Honestly, the biggest hurdle here wasn't the code it was the physics.

I started this project because measuring my age in years felt boring. I wanted to see the kilometers. But when I built the first version using just Earth's orbital speed (~30km/s), the number moved too slowly to look cool. It was underwhelming.

That led me down a massive rabbit hole of galactic reference frames. I realized if I wanted the "existential dread" version of the number, I needed to include the Milky Way's velocity relative to the CMB (~600km/s). Deciding to use that scalar sum instead of the net vector sum was the breakthrough that made the visualization actually feel "fast."

Tech-wise, the challenge was constraint: I wanted to build this in a single HTML file with zero dependencies. No React, no build step. The "hard part" was optimizing the canvas loop so the Starfield wouldn't kill my phone battery. I had to pre-allocate all the star objects to stop garbage collection from causing stutters.

It’s open source (just View Source), so let me know if the physics math makes you angry or if the stars run smooth on your device.
by guelo | 2026-01-24 10:07:23+00:00
Because Kotlin took a dumb turn about 5 years ago and decided that multiplatform was their future instead of the jvm (because they felt threatened by React Native and Flutter on Android). Point being, they don't want to tie themselves to the jvm anymore. The language has been stagnant for years as they've had to reimplement tons of java libraries and also shoehorn the extreme complications of multiplatform into the awful gradle build system. All for this dumb dream that has gone no where.
by zdragnar | 2026-01-24 10:07:24+00:00
I can't help but think of a video of a talk by someone- uncle Bob maybe?- talking about the origin of the agile manifesto.

He framed it as software developers were once the experts in the room, but so many young people joined the industry that managers turned to micromanaging them out of instinctual distrust. The manifesto was supposed to be the way for software developers to retake the mantle of the professional expert, trusted to make things happen.

I don't really think that happened, especially with agile becoming synonymous with Scrum, but if this doesn't pay off and craters the industry, it seems like it'd be the final nail in that coffin.
by krackers | 2026-01-24 10:08:23+00:00
>I think there is something extra you get with a proposer-verifier style loop, even if both sides are using the same base model.

DeepSeekMath-V2 seems to show this, increasing the number of prover/verifier iterations gives increases accuracy. And this is with a model that has already undergone RL under a prover/verifier selection process.

However this type of subagent communication maintains full context, and is different from "breaking into tasks" style of sharding amongst subagents. I'm less convinced of the latter, because often times a problem is more complex than the sum of its parts, i.e. it's the interdependencies that make it complex and you need to consider each part in relation to the other parts, not in isolation.
by vlovich123 | 2026-01-24 10:12:19+00:00
Yeah, but all of those basically boil down to “the next outage will look different from before” which fine but isn’t an actual solution IMO.

My point is you want to do that and gradual rollouts that you don’t make permanent until you’ve observed the real world behavior if you want to prevent all future outages. This specific temporary rollout and automatic rollback also has the side effect that even if you don’t do any of the “hardening steps” outlined, your system will still prevent any kind of mistake you’ve made from rolling out and becoming more permanent. Like I said, the “flapping” parameters can be tuned however you want and you can aggregate updates into an automated “release train”. If you want you can do so with automated health metrics although it can be hard to implement automating validation that behavior before and after the route is “correct” (maybe trained ML models would be helpful here).

This is btw in many ways how Google releases code into production - they bundle a bunch of PRs into a giant “publish” step - if CI fails or anything in production fails, they automatically rollback the entire set of changes since they can’t know which part of the release went bad. It’s a huge hammer to solve any issue they didn’t account for.
by funkyfiddler69 | 2026-01-24 10:12:19+00:00
we are an "enforced consent" society, now. mafia tactics like back in the day, now conventionally normalized and established.

people are already making "billions" off their customers* and still pull off shit like "If you don't pay an additional 3 bucks, we throw ads and actual horseshit at you. Sign here". I was ok with TV and the Radio doing it because it made sense.

Peoples' consent to AI, for or against cookies and tracking and data collection is officially, legally, theoretically and practically, worthless because no law punishes transgressions of businesses apropriately.

"Consent. And do as we do. Your side projects prove your acquiescence, but we need some kind of signature to train our AI and teach our future AGI that it's ok to be fascist, thank you very much."

*and I'm not accounting for all those fraudulent, script-kiddy-smart, 'roofy'-culture financial mechanisms up and- downstream
by sshine | 2026-01-24 10:13:11+00:00
I look at the 1990s picture of Brewster Kahle and think: He surely didn't get paid as much as me, but what did I do? Play insignificant roles in various software subscription services, many of which are gone now. And what did he do? Held on to an idea for decades.

The combined value of The Internet Archive -- whether we think just the infrastructure, just the value of the data, or the actual utility value to mankind -- vastly outperforms an individual contributor's at almost every well-paying internet startup. At the simple cost of not getting to pocket that value.

I wish I believed in something this much.
by nephihaha | 2026-01-24 10:13:58+00:00
"White Fang" and "Call of the Wild" are Jack London's best known novels, not his best novels IMHO. I prefer "Martin Eden" and "the Iron Heel", and am a bit mystified as to how his entire literary career has been boiled down to two dog books.

"Martin Eden" is about a mixed class relationship, with a wealthier woman becoming involved with a working class man. This is no "Lady Chatterley's Lover", but based partly on his parents' experience, not just his own.
by Juliate | 2026-01-24 10:15:16+00:00
It's amazing as, however good they could be at technology, they are so bad at just reading the room.

AI/smart glasses companies don't realise it yet it seems but I feel the backlash against smart glasses is likely to be very brutal before it becomes legal/regulatory.

As in: stolen, broken glasses on the spot. Perhaps even glasses with coloured "fuck AI & cameras" stickers on it will be a trend.
by causalscience | 2026-01-24 10:15:37+00:00
Wait, I've watched this episode before. The US owed France large amount of gold (the legal mechanism for this was called "the dollar"). France asked to redeem their dollars for gold, and the US said "nah, we're keeping it, enjoy your dollars".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock#American_policy_re...
by 1e1a | 2026-01-24 10:16:39+00:00
You do not need a full SDR to make a waterfall. The nrf52840 can function as a coarse spectrum analyzer, because it lets you tune to any frequency within its range, and then measure the approximate received signal strength over a period of time[0]. I have tested this myself, and it works pretty well. The only downside compared to an SDR is that it can only listen to one frequency at a time, so it will sometimes miss short signals.

[0] https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ps_nrf52840/page/radio.ht...
by nerdsniper | 2026-01-24 10:16:57+00:00
> the ones making the most money and doing the least work. Needless to say those people are going to fight a lot harder to remain employed than the average lower level person has political capital to accomplish.

They don't have to "fight" to stay employed, anyone with sufficient money is effectively self-employed. It's not going to be illegal to spend your own money running your own business if that's how you want to spend your money.

Anyone "making the most money and doing the least work" has enough money to start a variety of businesses if they get fired from their current job.
by vern001 | 2026-01-24 10:17:53+00:00
I love libraries and museums, but I think that Internet Archive has done an incredible job.

If I didn’t have a job or responsibilities and was told that I was allowed to just be curious and have fun, I would spend a tremendous amount of time just reading, listening, watching, playing, etc. on IA.

Visiting IA is the closest feeling I can get to visiting the library when I was young. The library used to be the only place where you could just read swaths of magazines, newspapers, and books, and also check out music- for free.

Also, I love random stuff. IA has digitized tape recordings that used to play in K-Mart. While Wikipedia spends time culling history that people have submitted, IA keeps it. They understand the duty they have when you donate part of human history to them, instead of some person that didn’t care about some part of history just deleting it.

IA is not just its storage and the Wayback machine, even though those things are incredible and a massive part of its value to humanity. It’s someone that just cares.

At the end of the day, big companies just need to make profit. Do big companies care about your digitized 8-track collection you have in cloud storage? One day maybe they will take it away from you to avoid a lawsuit or to get you to rent music from them.

And your local NAS and backups? Do you think your niche archive will survive a space heater safety mechanism failure, a pipe bursting, when your house is collateral damage in a war, or your accidental death? I understand wanting to keep your own copies of things just-in-case, but if you want those things to survive, why not also host them at IA if others generally would find joy or knowledge from them?
by rhdunn | 2026-01-24 10:18:55+00:00
I view the relationship between Kotlin and Java like that between C++ and C.

The two-way interop is one of Kotlin's advantages as it makes porting code from Java to Kotlin easier, or using existing Java libraries. For example, you don't have/need something like Scala's `asJava` and `asScala` mappers as the language/standard library does that mapping for you.

The interop isn't always perfect or clean due to the differences in the languages. But that's similar to writing virtual function tables in C -- you can do it, and have interop between C and C++ (such as with COM) but you often end up exposing internal details.
by arboles | 2026-01-24 10:19:36+00:00
I think the author correctly identifies a dilemma of being unable to ignore AI's capabilities as it enables you to leave your old tools in the dust, but being apprehensive of cultivating dependency in the latest AI services. Progress is being undone in at least one front. The PC had transferred the ownership of the means of produ--I mean "democratized" the creation of art and communication. (and duh, computing)

However this lack of desire to create could be particular to the author. The author's visual art isn't appealing to me, and the taste I share with a lot of other people. If the gallery on the author's website[0] stands for skill the author says they'd been cultivating, it is my opinion that they seem to have liked painting and paintings less than creating algorithmic tools for the digital painting process. When AI showed up, algorithmic tools the author's made became comparatively dull to work with.

[0] https://idiomdrottning.org/gallery
by tialaramex | 2026-01-24 10:21:19+00:00
Indeed. If you have output considerations then the number of Unicode codepoints isn't what you wanted anyway, you care about how many output glyphs there will be, that codepoint might result in zero glyphs, it might modify an adjacent glyph, or it might be best rendered as multiple glyphs.

If you're doing some sort of searching you want a normalization and probably pre-processing step, but again you won't care about trying to count Unicode code points.
by maccard | 2026-01-24 10:23:52+00:00
In C++ you can do:
struct Foo
{
private:
int val = 0;
Foo(int newVal) : val(newVal) {}
public:
static optional<Foo> CreateFoo(int newVal)
{
if (newVal != SENTINEL_VALUE)
{
return Foo(newVal);
}
return {};
}
};

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
if (auto f = CreateFoo(argc)) {
cout << "Foo made with value " << f.val;
} else {
cout << "Foo not made";
}
}
by lelanthran | 2026-01-24 10:24:38+00:00
> Internet is full of people asserting CVEs in C are only caused by not skilled enough devs.

Sure, but those people are not here, and usually aren't on HN anyway.

The internet is also full of people asserting that CVEs in C++ are only caused by not skilled enough devs, but I consider those people irrelevant too.

The reasons for rejecting C++ in this forum have been repeated often enough that you should have seen them by now: C++ has major systemic problems that don't exist in many other languages, including C.

It should be no surprise to you, at this point, that people choose almost anything over C++. The fact that "anything" also includes "C" is mostly incidental.

No one is asserting that they reject C++ because C is better, they typically reject it for concrete reasons, like the ones I pointed out upthread.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-24 10:24:40+00:00
> I wonder how many of these (or the Google style guide rules) would make sense for a project starting today from a blank .cpp file. Probably not many of them.

That also depends on how standalone the project is. Self-contained projects may be better off with depending on standard library and popular third-party libraries, but if a project integrates with other internal components, it's better to stick to internal libraries, as they likely have workarounds and special functionality specific to the company and its development workflow.
by Juliate | 2026-01-24 10:25:22+00:00
> Do people think the world will just give them things?

No. But just that more and more people are more and more fed up of collectively paying/enduring the consequences of the ambition of a few people that do. not. care. about. their. fellow. humans. neither. the. planet.

> When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.

Indeed. And if you act "regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way", without discernement, that tells something about you that you may, or may not realise.
by firesteelrain | 2026-01-24 10:26:21+00:00
Fair. Level 1 can be heavy on paperwork, and compliance code can add complexity. But ‘algorithm certs are worthless’ is overstated: lots of crypto failures are silent misuse (modes/nonces/RNG/key handling), not ‘AES won’t decrypt.’ FIPS isn’t a magic shield, it’s a baseline control. Whether it’s net-positive depends on how much it slows upgrades and how disciplined the team already is.
by KingOfCoders | 2026-01-24 10:27:07+00:00
Last to months several of my connections on Linkedin used private messaging for mass marketing "emails" - "normal" proper companies, not recruiters/outsourcing/... that have been spamming us for years. There is not limit to the things they will try.

On Proton: I don't get the love they get here. There ethics I find questionable and their product (e.g. search) I find unusable.
by raincole | 2026-01-24 10:27:31+00:00
> I think, when you are building a system, restricting all (human language) input to be UTF-8 is a fair and reasonable design decision, and then you can use strlen to your hearts content.

It makes no sense. If you only need the byte count then you can use strlen no matter what the encoding is. If you need any other kind of counting then you don't use strlen no matter what the encoding is (except in ASCII only environment).

"Whether I should use strlen or not" is a completely independent question to "whether my input is all UTF-8."
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-24 10:27:46+00:00
You realize that you just answered your own question? It’s bad enough when a manager also tries to be a developer working in a production system (instead of doing research, POCs, enablement type work if they really want to code), the last thing I want is some vibe coded slop from my manager.

But yes as a staff cloud architect who specializes in app dev, I very much treat AI as a junior developer who “learns” by my telling it to summarize discussions/preferences in markdown in the repo.

I do a phase approach when I use AI just like when I don’t where I test a little at the time. It gets too difficult to manage and explain otherwise.
by arter45 | 2026-01-24 10:27:47+00:00
Rollback is of course useful when things go wrong (and by the way the routers CF use natively support rollback features). What I’m questioning is flapping as a structured way to carry out network changes.

Even a slow flap can cause issues downstream. Imagine a router handling hundreds of thousands of routes. Its software has a memory leak so any route received increases its RAM usage. A slow flap may well bring that router to a halt. Now you might say, “hey, this is not my fault”, but it is still something that could happen to your routers or your peers.

Another aspect is that network devices can get Terabits/s of traffic. Now, a router is mostly stateless, but if you do this flapping thing to a firewall, what you get is a lot of sessions with behavior1 and then switching to behavior2 and so on, which can cause high buffer utilization or packet drops.

So, yes, of course you “flap” (rollback) when things go wrong, but you probably don’t do it intentionally to test what’s going on in a network change.
by the_why_of_y | 2026-01-24 10:27:55+00:00
> what these people thought of us before Trump

Last I checked, Trump was elected in 2016.

In 2020 he tried an autogolpe and by the time this survey was done in 2024, he was not in prison for treason but instead again running for president as nominee of one of only two major parties. What sort of opinion should one have of such a country?

> allowed Sweden to join NATO

What sort of absurd argument is this? Now that Sweden changed their mind and want to enter treaty obligations to help defend e.g. the Baltics, we should refuse them?

Also, I can't begin to comprehend how Sweden would militarily defend Finland, who entered WW2 as an ally of Nazi Germany after being invaded by USSR, and simultaneously fight against Nazi Germany.
by rep_lodsb | 2026-01-24 10:28:12+00:00
The 80186 and NEC Vxx chips - and of course also the 286 - could already do mul/div in one cycle per bit (+ some overhead for the microcode). What they didn't have was the early-out optimization.

The three-operand form of IMUL also already existed on those processors.

>This wasn't just an incremental upgrade—it was the foundation that would carry the PC architecture for decades to come.

AI?
by c9lgPZqHNGdC1V1 | 2026-01-24 10:29:35+00:00
This is my time to shine. I never stopped using dedicated mp3-players. After my trusty Philips Gogears died and became unavailable for purchase, I settled on Ruizu branded mp3-players. The Ruizu X02[1] is an absolute baller, cheap as hell, trustworthy and limited to the basic functionality you would expect from an mp3-player (music, movies, radio, pictures). You put stuff on it via USB + drag-and-drop just like the ol' days. Damn trustworthy too I had one soaked in water for 15 minutes - flinging it was like using a water pistol. Did it die? Pfft, this is a Ruizu we're talking about. Only thing that can destroy these are weights in the gym and even then they still play music: 'I have no light but I must play' style. No biggie, new one is 20-30 euro's it's like I'm robbing them

[1] https://www.amazon.com/RUIZU-X02-Recorder-Playback-Expandabl...
by eric2675 | 2026-01-24 10:29:59+00:00
Hi HN,

I am the author (Eric). I come from a non-traditional background: 5 years in nursing and time spent on construction sites.

I realized that many engineering problems are actually "unresolved computations" of physical constraints. For example, pipeline conflicts in a ceiling are just spatial weight failures.

This project, "Heterogeneous Agent Protocol," is a Proof of Concept derived purely from logic, thermodynamics, and biomimicry, without writing traditional code. I used LLMs as my compiler to translate these physical intuitions into system architecture.

One key outcome is the "Kintsugi Protocol" (Case B in README): A swarm navigation method that uses "dead" units as static signage to navigate without bandwidth—a logic derived from observing ant death pheromones and construction waste.

I'm looking for feedback on the logic structure and potential collaborators who understand that algorithms can be derived from physical laws, not just syntax.

Full architecture and philosophy are in the README. Thanks for reading.
by rvz | 2026-01-24 10:30:20+00:00
Unfortunately, the occupation that will still exist in the next few decades will be a soldier, as I said before due to the next wave of wars. [0]

For now, I can see that Mercor needs ex-knowledge workers to be data labelers to train the AIs that will replace the remaining knowledge workers.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46015375
by sergeykish | 2026-01-24 10:30:50+00:00
API is contract. API grants access to screen content, key presses. Users blame Wayland for breaking this contract. Both Wayland and XLibre namespaces brake it. Lunduke mob unable to reason, claims "moving goalposts". Lunduke mob claims improving security is not needed. Lunduke mod wants Linux desktop to be malware can. They claim security improvements for everyone (like defaults on Android) is corporations taking away their freedom. Lunduke mob unable to comprehend Wayland started by XOrg developers who knew X11 flaws. They unable to be thankful for people bringing security to modern expectations.
by notahacker | 2026-01-24 10:32:28+00:00
If you're sending stuff back you need reentry vehicles. Even allowing for reusability, it's hard to imagine the cost of building and launching them being less than the value of iron they contain (current value around $1 per kg for the higher grades and a fraction of that for scrap) and you're going to have to deal with regulators to land them. Even if the asteroid material solves the problem of all the propellant needed as reaction mass for transit to and from the asteroid belt, the unit economics of return only make sense to bring back the highly valued elements, and only if the rare elements aren't actually ones where the terrestrial supply monopolist can ramp up production rates once they face competition.
by lelanthran | 2026-01-24 10:33:00+00:00
> If you only need the byte count then even you can use strlen no matter what the encoding is.

No, strlen won't give you the byte count on UTF16 encodings.

> If you need character count then you don't use strlen no matter what the encoding is (except in ASCII only environment).

What use-case requires the character count without also requiring a unicode glyph library?