MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tzs | 2026-01-19 15:51:19+00:00
> Ten years ago, commingling was a necessary optimization. If seller A (county A) and seller B (county B) both sold the same widget, Amazon treated them as a single distributed liquidity pool to guarantee 2-day prime shipping nationwide without forcing every small seller to split their stock across 10 warehouses.

I don't see why that required commingling. When I click on a Foo in my Amazon search results show me the Foo from whichever of A or B is close enough to meet the 2-day shipping guarantee. If I care which of A or B it actually comes from I can click the option to see other sellers and decide if giving up 2-day shipping is worth getting my preferred seller.
by dahart | 2026-01-19 15:51:27+00:00
It’s not only for robustness. Splats are volumetric and don’t have topology constraints, and both of those things are desirable. The volume capability is sometimes used for volume effects like fog and clouds, but it also gives splats a very graceful way to handle high frequency geometry - higher frequency detail than the capture resolution - that mesh photogrammetry can’t handle (hair, fur, grass, foliage, cloth, etc.). It depends entirely on the resolution of the capture, of course. I’m not saying meshes can’t be used to model hair or other fine details, they can obviously, but in practice you will never get a decent mesh out of, say, iPhone headshots, while splats will work and capture hair pretty well. There are hair-specific capture methods that are decent, but no general mesh capture methods that’ll do hair and foliage and helicopters and buildings.

BTW I believe there is software that can turn point clouds into textured meshes reliably; multiple techniques even, depending on what your goals are.
by red-iron-pine | 2026-01-19 15:51:33+00:00
> The Plan 9 way just seems very clean although you now have to secure the server more strongly because you are exporting filesystems from it and others are mounting it.

aye. this was my first thought too. I seem to recall older Windows doing something like the same thing -- e.g. internet controls tied to the same system as the files -- and that's how we got the 90s-2000s malware 'asplosion.
by xandrius | 2026-01-19 15:52:01+00:00
Exactly this. Not sure what code other people who post here are writing but it cannot always and only be bleeding edge, fringe and incredible code. They don't seem to be able to get modern LLMs to produce decent/good code in Go or Rust, while I can prototype a new ESP32 which I've never seen fully in Rust and it can manage to solve even some edge cases which I can't find answers on dedicated forums.
by khuey | 2026-01-19 15:52:07+00:00
If my grocery store held themselves out as a banana marketplace, carried boxes from a variety of different banana companies and told me to do my own research on which ones are good, sold me a box labeled Chiquita bananas that I couldn't open until I got home, and then after I purchased it, got home, and opened it, it was full of bananas from Shitty Rotten Banana Farms LLC with fake Chiquita stickers on them, that would be pretty crazy yeah.
by al_borland | 2026-01-19 15:52:13+00:00
My nephew falls into the target demographic, but the profanity on the landing page means I can’t send it to my sister to have him try it. The farting she’d probably roll her eyes, but laugh at. Endorsing something with profanity, no way.

The starting problems are basic addition. I think it would be much more shareable if it was just toilet humor, without the profanity, where more parents are going to draw the line.

Yes, they’ve heard it before and said it before, but that is much different than a tacit endorsement from a parent by giving them a study aid with profanity in it.
by rhines | 2026-01-19 15:52:21+00:00
Something that's been on my mind for a while now is shared moderation - instead of having a few moderators who deal with everything, distribute the moderation load across all users. Every user might only have to review a couple posts a day or whatever, so it should be a negligible burden, and send each post that requires moderation to multiple users so that if there's disagreement it can be pushed to more senior/trusted users.

This is specifically in the context of a niche hobby website where the rules are simple and identifying rule-breaking content is easy. I'm not sure it would work on something with universal scope like Reddit or Facebook, but I'd rather we see more focused communities anyway.
by empath75 | 2026-01-19 15:52:50+00:00
They do memorize some books. You can test this trivially by asking ChatGPT to produce the first chapter of something in the public domain -- for example a Tale of Two Cities. It may not be word for word exact, but it'll be very close.

These academics were able to get multiple LLMs to produce large amounts of text from Harry Potter:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
by nottorp | 2026-01-19 15:52:53+00:00
With both MS and Google pushing "AI" on everything, it's possible no one realized they're reading an "AI" summary and the Copilot branding was what was on Word.

Hey btw, how do "AI" summaries on Google search look? Exactly like honest [1] results, like they did with ads?

[1] If there are any honest results left on a Google search. My impression is everything is from content mills, be it "AI" or human slop.
by ta20240528 | 2026-01-19 15:53:13+00:00
Yes, all of this is true. But they need the American president to find an off ramp that somehow satisfies his faction's desire for ownership without blowing up Nato - at least not before the mid-terms.

As for no stomach for a fight, Nato Europe can't even shoot down shahad drones that fly over their own territory.

This is not how it should be, but it is.
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-19 15:53:37+00:00
> Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) predicted [the Ask-Congress-About-Greenland-First bill] would easily pass if an invasion was imminent

I wonder what "imminent" might mean to Tillis. Anchorage to Nuuk is only ~5 hours by air; Newburgh to Nuuk, ~3h15.

----

the standard bureaucrats' response to a crisis, according to Sir Humphrey Appleby GCB KBE MVO:

- Nothing is going to happen.
- Something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
- Maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
- Maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
by zhyder | 2026-01-19 15:53:41+00:00
Love it. Wonder if it's viable for citizen journalism in warzones and areas of civil unrest, with the larger size of photos (and short videos), given the inherently slow transfer rates and battery life implications of going thru multiple hops before Internet-exiting the area that's otherwise Internet-offline. What's the back-of-the-envelope math here on viable bandwidth?

Wifi obviously has higher bandwidth, but I guess it isn't viable as a mesh, or is there any trick with turning on/off hotspots on phones dynamically that'd make it viable? (Afaik older phones made you pick between being a hotspot or being a regular wifi client, but at least some newer ones seem to allow both simultaneously.)

I'm definitely hoping for a future with wider support for C2PA (content credentials on images) on phone cameras to make these photos power citizen journalism. So far Samsung S25 and Pixel 10 support C2PA in the camera hardware: need other phone makers (especially Apple) to get on board already... if you're an iPhone user, please help yell at Apple support etc!

Aside: I registered a domain and plan to build a citizen journalism news feed for such photos (and uncut videos). I see it as the antidote to Instagram et al's feeds that're full of AI slop (and plenty of fakery even before AI-generated imagery got big). And it's essential to truth, democracy and ultimately (maybe I'm too idealistic here) peace. Aside to the aside: wish some of us techies banded together to build "peace tech" as a new sector in tech, DM if interested in brainstorming or working together.
by modeless | 2026-01-19 15:53:50+00:00
Walkie talkies as licensed today wouldn't because they are required by law to use stone-age radio technology. But modern unlicensed radio technology is incredibly good at sharing scarce 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Sometimes devices do interfere with each other, but they remain useful and they are far better at sharing than any expert would have predicted years ago. Let the radio engineers try.
by Workaccount2 | 2026-01-19 15:54:15+00:00
This is great, but it misses one thing:

The software paradigm is changing.

People don't need a calculator website anymore. They can just prompt their own AI account to generate whatever calculator they need in the moment. I already have a few pinned in my favorites that I use often.

That is the real promise of AI driven software. Bespoke tiny apps available to anyone whenever they simply just ask for it.
by rramadass | 2026-01-19 15:54:19+00:00
The key to understanding their longevity lies in the fact that they were the earliest high-level languages invented at a time when all software was built for serious long-lived stuff viz. Banking, Insurance, Finance, Simulations, Numerical Analysis, Embedded etc. Computing was strictly Science/Mathematics/Business and so a lot of very smart domain experts and programmers built systems to last from the ground up.
by duxup | 2026-01-19 15:54:22+00:00
We will see if SCOTUS majority decides tariffs are a tax or not and push the absurdity of their position even farther.

I fear that they already decided that issue when they chose not to intervene and now have the excuse of "lol well can't undo it now" ready to go.

--------

There does seem to be some indication that the actual tariffs collected seems far lower than the actual tariffs promised, likely just half of what was promised:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/business/economy/trump-ta...
by dathinab | 2026-01-19 15:54:29+00:00
to be honest I don't expect a effective long term consumer boycott

but any companies which have their brand closely tied to the US image (e.g. Coca Cola) will most likely have bug issues

and if people have a choice between a product from a company they now is EU or better local and one where they don't know about it the choice will be influenced by it

and maybe we can finally take tear down some of the absurd misinformation companies and corruption originating from MS and similar. (E.g. systematic malicious misinformation often supplemented with non fair competition/subsidization and outright bribery (no joke, MS has (through middle mans) wide spread bribed public, research and school organizations in Germany, like actual bribes, not just things which should count as bribes but do not(1)))

(1): I knew some people which had been involved in it. But any case where legal actions where taken ended without relevant outcome because all the blame always feel to the sales middle man AFIK and supposedly MS didn't know. Also the bribes mostly ended up as additional founding for the research institute and only in small parts in personal pockets from what I have heard. At the same time politics have caused so massive issues due to incompetently made laws and regulations for many public organizations that accepting this bribes and using them as additional founds often looked as a necessary evil... :sob: (yes I know there are not emotes on HN)
by Trifectorium | 2026-01-19 15:55:06+00:00
When people say “law,” most imagine judges, statutes, judges’ robes, and legal arguments. That’s one slice. But law in the deepest sense is pattern; a persistent, rule-like regularity that governs behavior and outcomes at every layer of reality. There are laws that hold regardless of our consent (gravity), laws that describe how living systems tend to behave (natural selection, ecological balance), and laws that we humans make to organize our social life (constitutions, criminal codes).
by bwat49 | 2026-01-19 15:55:10+00:00
LLMs are far more flexible in what you can create, opening up many niche use cases for non programmers (or those with very limited programming experience).

For example, I use LLMs for one specific thing, making plugins for an app I use (which need to be written in javascript/typescript). No code tools wouldn't be of any use to me here.

No code tools put you in a box that limits what you can create, whereas LLMs allow you to code pretty much anything (though of course how far you can get does depend on having at least some technical ability/knowledge).
by DrScientist | 2026-01-19 15:56:06+00:00
Sure -it's a mix - but to be honest I think it's over-emphasized - in that in the US most of that kind of money driving politics operates in plain sight.

For example, the 'Russian interference' in the 2016 US election, was I suspect mostly people trying to make money, and more importantly, was completely dwarfed by US direct political spending.

There is also a potentially equally, if not larger problem, in the politicisation of the 'anti-disinformation' campaigns.

To be honest I'm not sure if there is much of a difference between a grifter being directly paid to promote a certain point of view, and somebody being paid indirectly ( by ads ).

In both cases neither really believes in the political point they are making they are just following the money.

These platforms are enabling both.
Ask HN: Do many people know that Grand Theft Auto is Commodore's biggest legacy?
by amichail | 2026-01-19 15:56:18+00:00
When you think of Commodore computers, you probably imagine the C64, Amiga, or the golden age of 80s home computing. Most people don’t realize that Commodore’s most visible legacy is Grand Theft Auto.

Here’s the connection:

* Many of the developers who eventually made GTA cut their teeth on Commodore machines, learning to optimize code, simulate AI, and push hardware limits.

* Lemmings, one of their early hits on the Amiga, gave the team the money, skills, and confidence to take bigger creative risks.

* That experience directly fed into the creation of GTA, a franchise that now earns billions and dominates gaming culture worldwide.

Is this something many people know?
by Noaidi | 2026-01-19 15:56:25+00:00
It is not my job to be the regulator, that is the regulators jobs. I do nopt have the time of capacity in my bipolar affected mind to cram in the detail of this corrupt capitalist world we all let happen.

And I cannot read that article because it is behind a paywall and I am too poor and homless to afford a subscription.

And how many people even come to HN (not just thinking about myself).

And now I have no option but to buy from amazon since I am homeless and do not have a fixed address where I can has stuff shipped to.

All of your point are fine if you are well off and capable, but putting this on me, and people like me, is just wrong.

If you want to organize a boycott against amazon, I will be right there with you. Until then all you have are words.
by internet2000 | 2026-01-19 15:56:58+00:00
> Sorry for yucking into everyone's yum here but... did we miss an opportunity here as programmers to provide simpler tools for people to build simple applications for themselves?

It's not that programmers should've made tools with training wheels, but that the regular programmer tools exploded in complexity. Microservices, Kubernetes, etc. Not saying those don't have their places, but often they come across as the One True Way of doing things.
by darhodester | 2026-01-19 15:57:19+00:00
First, all credit for execution and vision of Helicopter go to A$AP, Dan Streit, and Grin Machine (https://www.linkedin.com/company/grin-machine/about/). Evercoast and Wild Capture were also involved.

Second, it's very motivating to read this! My background is in video game development (only recently transitioning to VFX). My dream is to make a Gaussian splatting content creation and game development platform with social elements. One of the most exciting aspects of Gaussian splatting is that it democratizes high quality content acquisition. Let's make casual and micro games based on the world around us and share those with our friends and communities.
by carderne | 2026-01-19 15:57:21+00:00
I wasn't able to find any imagery online, and I don't have anything I can share publicly.

These are some of the existing commercial solutions (just found these on Google, can't remember which I was comparing my own work against):

- https://koregeosystems.com/digital-core-logging/

- https://mountsopris.com/wellcad/core-logging-software/

- https://www.geologicai.com/logging/

I don't know enough about the science side to take it any further on my own.
by soraminazuki | 2026-01-19 15:57:29+00:00
Modern Linux supports asynchronous I/O. It's debatable whether NT's lack of memory overcommitting is a superior choice. OS personalities have never been relevant outside of marketing, as virtualization offers a more effective solution with significantly less complexity. Moreover, the Linux kernel maintains a stable ABI.

Much of the discussion surrounding NT's supposed superiority is outdated or superficial at best. Linux, on the other hand, offers several advantages that actually matters. It supports a wider variety of filesystems natively, with FUSE providing exceptional utility. Linux also accommodates more architectures and allows for more creative applications through features like User Mode Linux and the Linux Kernel Library. It also has a more robust debugging ecosystem thanks to its large community and open source nature. All of these things are possible because Linux isn't bound by a single company's commercial interests.

Also, is Microsoft putting as much effort into NT these days? I find it hard to believe they care about NT when they stopped caring about what runs on top of it, leading to articles like this one.
by boelboel | 2026-01-19 15:57:34+00:00
After years of scamming customers, amazon has finally seen the light and won't be prioritizing shareholder returns (which they're legally required to do). In reality hey're just trying to tone down the scamming they've been doing ever so slightly because it's hurting revenue. 100% sure it will just end up at 2019 or 2021 amazon scam levels, Some sort of 'scamming optimum' for amazon.

If you think it never started try going to some third world country and compare, their people are used to the bargaining/scamming but nobody cares. Things will end up the same here at some point.
by uyzstvqs | 2026-01-19 15:57:58+00:00
Android is generally more popular in Europe.

The reason is how messaging works. In the US (and Canada?), SMS was affordable since before smartphones, and people kept using SMS once smartphones became common. Apple automatically integrated iMessage into that. Americans are used to texting using the default messaging app, and using an iPhone to text another iPhone provided a better experience than plain old SMS/MMS.

In Europe, SMS was extremely expensive in the late 2000s/early 2010s, so people never really used it, and instead started using cross-platform internet messengers. MSN, Skype, then WhatsApp. Android was/is seen as the same or better quality for a lower price, so why buy an iPhone?
by JKCalhoun | 2026-01-19 15:57:58+00:00
Why, yes I am.

I know Ben is having some fun, perhaps making a valid point, with the burning component on the breadboard. I think it does underscore a difference between software vibing and hardware vibing—crash vs. fire.

But in fact vibe-breadboarding has drawn me deeper into the electronics hobby. I have learned more about op-amps and analog computing in the past two months in large part thanks to Gemini and ChatGPT pointing the way.

To be sure I research what they propose, but now have the language and a better picture in my mind to know what to search for. (Hilariously too, I often end up on the EE Stack Exchange where there is often anything but a concise answer.)

5V USB power, through-hole op-amp chips… I'm not too worried about burning my house down.
by chuckadams | 2026-01-19 15:58:12+00:00
Yah, that does look awfully baroque. My experience with s6 has largely been minor tweaks to an existing setup where the complexity was hidden away from me. I used to use runit for managing daemons, but nowadays my supervisor of choice is docker compose. process-compose does look enticing though, and the Nix world seems pretty fond of it.
by meetingthrower | 2026-01-19 15:58:16+00:00
But this nightmare is ALREADY true, except that software is a spreadsheet. Or a piece of paper on someone's desk. Or an email that someone is supposed to send every day.... Yes it's an absolute nightmare to maintain if you built a fortune 500 off of it. But for a 100 person company that is 95% blue collar workers, this is fine. And better.
by empath75 | 2026-01-19 15:58:33+00:00
How could that possibly have not been the case. A tariff is no different from the cost of any input into the price of a finished good. There is some sense in which price increases are limited by supply and demand, but if the market won't pay for the production cost of the good, then the market will cease to provide that good. There are only two possible outcomes, long term -- either the price goes up, or the product becomes unavailable.

There's an argument that domestically produced goods would substitute for imported goods leaving the market, but markets are so global and intertwined now that even domestic goods have imported inputs that are also affected by tariffs, and there often are no domestic goods or not enough domestic goods produced to act as a price-competitive substitute, and companies are not going to invest a ton of money into expanding domestic capacity, when tariffs are imposed on the whim of a lunatic and will probably be eventually tossed out by the supreme court or congress.
by sodafountan | 2026-01-19 15:58:34+00:00
And yet, there's still room for people who love to code to do great work. Look at bun for instance https://bun.com/. It's a JavaScript runtime that dramatically improves on the performance of node.js to the point where it will likely completely deprecate it in the coming years. It does so many things right out of the box, but it's essentially just an incremental improvement in the development world.

I think AI-augmented development will lead to faster and vastly improved software over the years. This isn't just a space that's being disrupted on the maker/creator side of developing software. And from a makers/creators point of view, you wouldn't even need to keep up with the latest trends like performance, AI should just know which libraries are the best to use to develop your solutions.
by arghwhat | 2026-01-19 15:59:21+00:00
I must admit that the ability to randomly bind on top of your "drivers" to arbitrarily overwrite functionality, whether to VPN somewhere by binding a target machine's network files, or how rio's windows were merely /dev/draw proxies and you could forward windows by just binding your own /dev/draw on the target, holds a special place in my heart. 9front, if nothing else, is fun to play with. I just don't necessarily consider it the most optimal or most performant design.

(I also have an entirely irrational love for the idea the singular /bin folder with no concept of $PATH, simply having everything you need bound on top... I hate $PATH and the gross profile scripts that go with it with a passion.)
by browningstreet | 2026-01-19 16:00:06+00:00
I've never really had issues of counterfeit products, but I often buy 2-3 of a thing (I hate thinking about re-ordering) and frequently, when I buy 2 of a given item, they come in separate deliveries on separate days. I wish there was a way to request that they come from the same distribution center, on the same day, in the same delivery.

I live in a slightly out of band area, so getting things from Amazon that are hard to buy elsewhere is great, but the "order 5 items and get 4 separate shipments" thing isn't ideal.