MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nothrabannosir | 2026-01-12 08:10:31+00:00
Simple is the opposite of complex; the opposite of hard is easy. They are orthogonal. Chess is simple and hard. Go is simpler and harder than chess.

Program optimization problems are less simple than both, but still simpler than free-form CRUD apps with fuzzy, open ended acceptance criteria. It would stand to reason an autonomous agent would do well at mathematically challenging problems with bounded search space and automatically testable and quantifiable output.

(Not GP but I assume that's what they were getting at)
by cassepipe | 2026-01-12 08:10:56+00:00
Cinnamon is indeed great ! Looks great out of the box and easy to configure quickly. I generally have to set a bunch of options and set up two shortcuts and I can do that under a minute. I think it deserves more praise. GNOME is too limited and I get lost in KDE, cosmic does not support gestures yet... I always come back to it.
by gspr | 2026-01-12 08:11:00+00:00
> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer, and for them, I understand LLMs remove the fun part.

I know you didn't mean to, but I think that description is a mischaracterization. I'd wager most of us "I control the computer" people who enjoy crafting software don't really care for the actual imputation of symbols. That is just the mechanism by which we move code from our heads to the computer. What LLMs destroy – at least for me – is the creation of code in my head and its (more-or-less) faithful replication inside the computer. I don't particularly enjoy the physical act of moving my fingers across a piece of plastic, but I do enjoy the result executing my program on my computer.

If an LLM is placed in the middle, two things happen: first, I'm expressing the _idea_ of my program not to a computer, but to an LLM; and second, the LLM expresses its "interpretation" of that idea to the computer. Both parts destroy joy for me. That's of course not important to anyone but myself and likeminded people, and I don't expect the world to care. But I do also believe that both parts come with a whole host of dangers that make the end result less trustworthy and less maintainable over time.

I'm definitely warming to the role of LLMs as critics though. I also see value in having them write tests – the worst a bad or unmaintainable test will provide is a false error.
by throwaway2037 | 2026-01-12 08:11:20+00:00
> Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

I don't know what to think when I see these quotes. Are you writing a local newspaper opinion piece about the "decline of America"? How is it meaningful to this discussion? It's like a poison blowdart shot from behind the stage curtain that kills the messenger.

By the way, I Googled for the equivalent stat about Canada: "48-49% having skills below a high school level". I'm not here to bad mouth the Canadian education system, but I think you will find fairly similar stats in most highly developed nations.
by knorker | 2026-01-12 08:11:55+00:00
When talking C++ move semantics it's easy to talk past each other. So I'm not sure what your claim is. Another commenter said that one can tell if something is moved or not without looking at the body of the callee. Is that what you're saying? Because you can't.

I apologize if you're making a different claim, but I'm not clear on what that is.

Anyway, for my point, here's an example where neither copy nor move happens, which one can only know by looking at the body of the callee: https://godbolt.org/z/d7f6MWcb5

By changing only the callee we can cause a move: https://godbolt.org/z/b8M495Exq

Equally we can remove the use of `std::move` in the callee, and now it's instead a copy. (of course, in this example with `unique_ptr`, it means a build failure as `unique_ptr` is not copyable)

> [assignment or construction of a variable] happens at one place

Not sure what you mean by that. The callee taking an rvalue reference could first copy, then move, if it wants to. Or do neither (per my example above). Unlike in Rust, the copy/move doesn't get decided at the call point.

You can, at one point, statically determine if the (usually const) single ampersand reference function is called, or the rvalue reference function, via standard polymorphism. But that's not the point where the move cons/assign happens, so for that one has to look in the callee.
by magicalhippo | 2026-01-12 08:12:04+00:00
My memory isn't good enough to recall the name of the paper, however doing some searching I see the field has not stood still. Here[1] is an example of a more recent paper where they've included more variables. A quote from the conclusions:

The closest natural resource–society interaction to predict conflict risk according to our models was food production within its economic and demographic context, e.g., with GDP per capita, unemployment, infant mortality and youth bulge.

[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/16/6574 Revisiting the Contested Role of Natural Resources in Violent Conflict Risk through Machine Learning (Open Access)
by pgryko | 2026-01-12 08:12:11+00:00
Training AI models on videos of drones scrapped from public sources. Everyone in Europe is building ani drone systems and nobody has real data. Lots of companies operating on synthetics only.

There's very strict laws against data export from Ukraine, so scraping (lower quality) data is a work around that. Ukraine is unfortunately the current laboratory for state of the art of anti drone warfare.

Lots of work to automatically filter and process scraped footage into something that will train well.
by rurban | 2026-01-12 08:12:31+00:00
Turning it off and on again is risky. I recently upgraded a robot in Australia, had problems with systemd, so I turned it off. And had to wait a few weeks until it could be turned on again, because tailscaled was not setup persistently, the routing was not setup properly (over a phone), the machine had some problems,...

High risk, low reward. But of course the ultimate test if it's properly setup.

But on the other hand, with my tiny hard real-time embedded controllers, a power cycle is the best option. No persistent state, fast power up, reboot in milliseconds. Every little SW error causes a reboot, no problem at all.
by gethly | 2026-01-12 08:12:41+00:00
I started working on a simple(meaning, to provide only the functionality I actually use) IDE to replace my JetBrains Goland. Right now I am writing my own layering library based on the ideas behind Clay, which is a known layouting library in C. I am also making it all in Go, with Raylib, because I want to do more desktop stuff with Go - knowing how well it can do it after doing some research. Which I hope will open up possibilities for me bu also shot gophers they have much wider opportunities for work or fun.
Show HN: GAM7 Companion – macOS app that automates Google Workspace admin
by stormer72 | 2026-01-12 08:13:33+00:00
The Problem Every Google Workspace Admin Faces
Managing Google Workspace is complex, time-consuming, and error-prone. Whether you're auditing user access, tracking license usage, managing shared drives, or monitoring security alerts, these tasks require hours of manual work, deep technical knowledge, and constant attention. One missed permission or overlooked inactive account can create security risks or unnecessary costs.

The Solution: GAM7 Companion
GAM7 Companion is a professional macOS application that transforms Google Workspace administration through intelligent automation. It is the bridge between the powerful command-line tool GAM (Google Apps Manager) and the modern, user-friendly interface administrators deserve.

You can download the free version and purchase premium features here:

Free (no sign-up): https://github.com/halcarrell/gamgui-releases/releases/tag/v...
Gumroad: https://gamcompanion.gumroad.com/l/gam7admin-free

What Makes It Different
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Shared Drive Audit – Complete visibility into shared drive access and permissions

Calendar Resource Management – Efficiently manage and audit calendar resources

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Drive Ownership Transfer – Safely transfer file ownership during employee transitions

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by unwind | 2026-01-12 08:13:39+00:00
True story: I was once (late 90s, I think) made part of an impromptu taste-test in a 7 Eleven store in Stockholm [1], when a (probably bored) employee grabbed a Coke, a Pepsi and a Dr Pepper and some espresso-size paper cups and made me and some friends close our eyes and try to guess which was which.

I remember being upset since he claimed I failed to even point out Dr Pepper, which I still think is unbelievable since even its smell is super distinctive and way different from a cola.

[1]: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-bl... is the same store, article (in Swedish) about a recent prank someone did there
by hvb2 | 2026-01-12 08:13:49+00:00
> Could you please explain your objection to steam-based power?

My guess would be that you're taking energy that you burn, you then boil water, water then goes through a number of turbines, then to a generator and then you might have electricity. Every step in that process is not 100% efficient.

Direct PV is, sunlight, cell that generates current, current gets transformed into whatever the grid needs. So it's fewer steps.
by noufalibrahim | 2026-01-12 08:14:01+00:00
I'm somewhere in between myself. Before LLMs, I used to block a few sites that distracted me by adding entries in /etc/hosts file to mapping them to 127.0.0.1 on my work machine. I also made the file immutable so that it would take a few steps for me to unblock the sites.

The next step was for me to write a cron job that would reapply the chattr +1 and rewrite the file once in 5 minutes. Sort of an enforcer. I used Claude (web) to write this and cut/pasted it just because I didn't want to bother with bash syntax that I learned and forgot several times.

I then wanted something stronger and looked at publicly available things like pluckeye but they didn't really work the way I wanted. So I tried to write a quick version using Claude (web) and started running it (October 2025). It solved my problem for me.

I wanted a program to use aider on and I started with this. Every time, I needed a feature (e.g. temporary unblocks, prevent tampering and uninstalling, blocking in the browser, violation tracking etc.), I wrote out what I wanted and had the agent do it. OVer the months, it grew to around 4k lines (single file).

Around December, I moved to Claude code from aider and continued doing this. The big task I gave it was to refactor the code into smaller files so that I could manage context better. IT did this well and added tests too. (late December 2025).

I added a helper script to update URLs to block from various sources. Vibe-coded too. Worked fine.

Then, I found it hogging memory because of some crude mistakes I vibe-coded early on fixed that. Cost me around $2 to do so. (Jan 2026).

Then I added support to lock the screen when I crossed a violation threshold. This required some Xlib code to be written. I'm sure I could have written it but it's not really worth it. I know what to do and doing it by hand wouldn't really teach me anything except the innards of a few libraries. I added that.

So, in short, this is something that's 98% AI coded but it genuinely solves a problem for me and has helped me change my behaviour in front of a computer. There are no companies that my research revealed that offer this as a service for Linux. I know what to do but don't have the time write and debug it. With AI, my problem was solved and I have something which is quite valuable to me.

So, while I agree with you that it isn't an "automation tool", the speed and depth which it brings to the environment has opened up possibilities that didn't previously exist. That's the real value and the window through which I'm exploring the whole thing.
by nyku | 2026-01-12 08:15:08+00:00
Hey HN,

I built this because I kept running into the same problem with keyword research: traditional tools only show variations of what you already know.

You enter "project management software" and get "project management tool", "project management app", "best project management software"... but you never discover the industry jargon, abbreviations, or question queries that people actually search for.

BrightKeyword works differently. You enter a topic, and it generates 9 keyword types: synonyms, alternate terminology, long-tail, questions, LSI, phrase match, and a few others. Then it clusters everything by search intent and suggests a page type for each cluster (blog post, comparison, product page, etc.).

Every keyword gets real metrics from DataForSEO: search volume, CPC, competition, and 12-month trends.

Free to try (1 topic, no credit card). Curious to hear what you think.
by fetzu | 2026-01-12 08:15:55+00:00
I think this is very dangerous perspective. A lot of attacks on infra are automated, just try to expose a Windows XP machine to the internet for a day and see with how much malware you end up with. If you leave your security unchecked, you will end up attacked; not by someone targeting you specifically, but having all your data encrypted for ransom might still create a problem for you (even if the attacker doesn’t care about YOUR data specifically).
by stevenhuang | 2026-01-12 08:15:57+00:00
I couldn't find it, I'm starting to think it might have been a hn comment thread.

At the time I read this article but I don't completely agree with some of the points. For one it's too certain for some things and also seems AI generated, but it was somewhat interesting

Yes I do remember reading and agreeing much with your comments on this topic!

https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-c...
by Youden | 2026-01-12 08:15:58+00:00
In defence of young people, it's "determined" by the people who actually go out and vote the same way a child "determines" what's for dinner when asked "would you like broccoli or brussels sprouts?"

American democracy is broken. Not in an abstract, hand-wavy feelings way but a hard, numerical, mathematical way. A two party system results in no real choice. First past the post results in a two party system. America uses first past the post. Therefore, Amercian democracy gives voters no real choice.
by zmmmmm | 2026-01-12 08:15:59+00:00
it's kind of fascinating, LLMs suddenly are making the Linux Desktop waaay more accessible, of all things.

All those fancy GUIs in Mac and Windows designed to be user friendly (but which most users hate and are baffled by anyway) are very hostile for models to access. But text configuration files? it's like a knife through butter for the LLMs to read and modify them. All of a sudden, Linux is MORE user friendly because you can just ask an LLM to fix things. Or even script them - "make it so my theme changes to dark at night and then back to light each morning" becomes something utterly trivial compared to the coding LLMs are being built to handle. But hey, if your OS really doesn't support something? the LLM can probably code up a whole app for you and integrate it in.

I think it's going to be fascinating to see if the power of text based interfaces and their natural compatibility with LLMs transfers over into an upswing in open source operating systems.
by gethly | 2026-01-12 08:16:01+00:00
The Chariots of the gods was impressive piece of work to read when I was a child and it definitely started something that lasts to this day. Although I must admit, Daniken was more of a sensationalist than a serious author. Thanks to him though, I have discovered Sitchin and all his body of work and thanks to him, few other authors - mainly the O'briens. So I guess Daniken did his job after all and got me interested in these topics.
by whs | 2026-01-12 08:16:05+00:00
The same news is reported at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562949

I don't think this is related to third-party use of CC. This is the same blocking as Anthropic blocking OpenAI access to CC https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-revokes-openais-access... , which I think is fair that they don't want to help competitors.
by adornKey | 2026-01-12 08:16:45+00:00
For a normal User I think Linux has been almost perfect for decades. For Games Windows still had some advantage. But for developing software I really didn't like Linux. The windows API is very stable. In Linux constantly new problems showed up. E.g. some window-manager suddenly started stealing my focus, just because it wants to have the focus on an irrelevant Edit-Field somewhere... If Linux wants to be the standard I think it should have a stable Api first. And I don't have much hope in Gnome and KDE doing anything like that.
by maest | 2026-01-12 08:17:00+00:00
This argument is particularly pernicious as it can, in it's general form, always deflect from the issues of climate change and always focus on blaming local governments.

This is what will happen in the future btw - climate change will apply pressure via famine and droughts, but the fallout will always be attributed to the failure of local governments to correctly "manage the change".

We'll go from "climate change is a hoax" to "climate change is just a given and it's your duty to manage it".
by tsimionescu | 2026-01-12 08:17:06+00:00
Yes, looking at some of the code others have shared, I realized where my confusion and mistake was.

I mistakenly treated in my mind `foo(obj&& x)` as `foo(obj x)`, which would indeed move or copy statically. But with functions that take an r-value reference, you're of course absolutely right, it becomes impossible to determine statically if they will move or not.
by gambiting | 2026-01-12 08:17:50+00:00
I think it's obvious that a corporation the size of Pepsi could replicate the taste of coke if they wanted to. But why would they - their customers buy pepsi because they want pepsi, not because they are looking for cheaper coke - pepsi is not even cheaper, it's just a different product. Just like 7up tastes different to Sprite.
by elvis10ten | 2026-01-12 08:18:05+00:00
While intuition takes a while, I think it can be learned in less than a month or two.

This has been my experience. When something gets good enough, someone will create some really good resource on it. Allowing the dust to settle, to me is a more efficient strategy than constantly trying to “keep up”. Maybe also not waiting too long to do so.

This wouldn’t work of course if a person was trying to be some AI thought leader.
by gitaarik | 2026-01-12 08:18:25+00:00
Some things you can easily dismiss with the proof of the opposite or something conflicting. But some parts of the hypothesis can't be either disproofed or proofed.

You could personally dismiss it, but you can't proof your point either. Like general archeology says humanity is only as old as the oldest evidence of it ever found, and some pseudo scientific hypothesis might say humans are older. You can't prove or disprove that. But you can't prove or disprove either that humanity is exactly as old as the oldest evidence we have. But when some older bones are discovered then you have proof that humanity is at least that old.

So yeah, absence of evidence doesn't disprove the hypothesis.
by wiether | 2026-01-12 08:18:32+00:00
First and foremost they are humans, with a limited time on Earth.

Being a software engineer doesn't mean you want to spend you free time tinkering about your self-hosting setup and doing support for your users.

With Tailscale, not only you don't have to care about most things since _it just works_, but also on-boarding of casual users is straightforward.

Same goes for Plex.
I want to watch movies/shows, I don't want to spend time tinkering with my setup.
And Plex provides exactly that.
Ditto for my family/friends that can access my library with the same simple experience as Netflix or whatever.

Meanwhile, I have a coworker who want to own/manage everything.
So they don't want to use Tailscale and they dropped Plex when they forced to use the third-party login system.
Now they watch less than a third than they used to be, and they share their setup with nobody since it's too complicated to do.

To each their own, but my goal is to enjoy my setup and share it with others. Tailscale and Plex give me that.
by richardw | 2026-01-12 08:18:39+00:00
I’ve recently created many Claude skills to do repeatable tasks (architecture review, performance, magic strings, privacy, SOLID review, documentation review etc). The pattern is: when I’ve prompted it into the right state and it’s done what I want, I ask it to create a skill. I get codex to check the skill. I could then run it independently in another window etc and feed back to adjust…but you get the idea.

And almost every time it screws up we create a test, and often for the whole class of problem. More recent it’s been far better behaved. Between Opus, skills, docs, generating Mermaid diagrams, tests it’s been a lot better. I’ve also cleaned up so much of the architecture so there’s only one way to do things. This keeps it more aligned and helps with entropy. And they’ll work better as models improve. Having a match between code, documents and tests means it’s not just relying on one source.

Prompts like this seem to work: “what’s the ideal way to do this? Don’t be pragmatic. Tokens are cheaper than me hunting bugs down years later”
by staticshock | 2026-01-12 08:18:43+00:00
Yes, the layoffs are a market correction initiated by non-AI factors, such as the end of the ZIRP era.

The world is chock-full of important, society-scale problems that have been out of reach because the economics have made them costly to work on and therefore risky to invest in. Lowering the cost of software development de-risks investment and increases the total pool of profitable (or potentially profitable) projects.

The companies that will work on those new problems are being conceived or born right now, and [collectively] they'll need lots of AI-native software devs.
by _def | 2026-01-12 08:18:52+00:00
I recently learned about a shortcut you can enable for moving windows, is something similar around for resizing? On linux I do this via alt + left click and alt + right click

`NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture` setting allows you to drag windows at any point if you hold ⌃⌘

`defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool YES`