MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nosianu | 2026-01-09 11:55:15+00:00
Here is a short example from my daily live, A D96A INVOIC EDI message containing multiple invoices transformed into an Excel file.

I used the ChatGPT web interface for this one-off task.

Input: A D96A INVOIC text message. Here is what those look like, a short example, the one I had was much larger with multiple invoices and tens of thousands of items: https://developer.kramp.com/edi-edifact-d96a-invoic

The result is not code but a transformed file. This exact scenario can be made into code easily though by changing the request from "do this" to "provide a [Python|whatever] script to do this". Internally the AI produces code and runs it, and gives you the result. You actually make it do less work if you just ask for the script and to not run them.

Only what I said. I had to ask for some corrections because it made a few mistakes in code interpretations.

> (message uploaded as file)

> Analyze this D.96A message

> This message contains more than one invoice, you only parsed the first one

(it finds all 27 now)

> The invoice amount is in segment "MOA+77". See https://www.publikationen.gs1-germany.de/Complete/ae_schuhe/... for a list of MOA codes (German - this is a German company invoice).

> Invoice 19 is a "credit note", code BGM+381. See https://www.gs1.org/sites/default/files/docs/eancom/ean02s4/... for a list of BGM codes, column "Description" in the row under "C002 DOCUMENT/MESSAGE NAME"

> Generate Excel report

> No. Go back and generate a detailed Excel report with all details including the line items, with each invoice in a separate sheet.

> Create a variant: All 27 invoices in one sheet, with an additional column for the invoice or credit note number

> Add a second sheet with a table with summary data for each invoice, including all MOA codes for each invoice as a separate column

The result was an Excel file with an invoice per worksheet, and meta data in an additional sheet.

Similarly, by simply doing what I wrote above, at the start telling the AI to not do anything but to instead give me a Python script, and similar instructions, I got a several hundred lines ling Python script that processed my collected DESADV EDI messages in XML format ("Process a folder of DESADV XML files and generate an Excel report.")

If I had had to actually write that code myself, it would have taken me all day and maybe more, mostly because I would have had to research a lot of things first. I'm not exactly parsing various format EDI messages every day after all.
by toddmorey | 2026-01-09 11:55:32+00:00
I didn't understand this argument, either. I think the argument is that general purpose skills will likely continue to be baked into the LLMs, so we'll see less of the repos of "expert designer" and "python expert" as if you are creating personas. But as a way to teach an LLM bespoke processes or APIs, I think skills make a ton of sense and are a super small footprint.
by lproven | 2026-01-09 11:55:38+00:00
> The span from my thumb to my pinky in a “measuring position” is 20 cm

26 cm for me. I can stretch to 27 cm quite easily, though.

> The length of my “thumbs up” hand is 16 cm.

18 cm.

> The width of my fist is 10 cm

Same.

> The length of my pinky is 6 cm.

7.5 cm.

> The width of my thumb is 2 cm

2.5 cm.

I guess the main thing between mine and more typical hands is my long, fairly slender fingers, then.
by antonymoose | 2026-01-09 11:55:51+00:00
I just looooove (read: hate) the ratings system on FB Marketplace. We bought a house semi-recently and it conveyed a front-loader washer dryer set. Wife wanted to get rid of it after about 6 months. I list it for an incredibly reasonable rate based on local past sales, eg a standalone washer routinely sells for $200 so I sold a set for $200.

Then come the low-ballers, they want to offer only $50 or $100 for my set. I click through into their profiles and see that they are resellers of washers and dryers in bulk so they want to buy and flip my set. I decline.

Well, after only 3 messages a “buyer” can rate you as a seller so I have a stack of 1-star reviews from resellers angry that I politely declined to sell to them when I had a queue of asking-price buyers lined up to buy same-day.

Trash system.
by Lio | 2026-01-09 11:56:24+00:00
> their music

Richard and James Aphex; the Aphex twins. :P

> leaves a doubt if some of the praise being heaped on it is 'perfomative'.

This sounds like rather like someone that doesn't like art in general complaining about those that do. I've heard many people complain about "modern art" in the same way.

I think it's a valid enough opinion but I still like Aphex Twin's music for the same reasons I like Eno's.

Nobody cares about my opinions though so if it is performance, it's performance into the void. I like that idea too.
by PurpleRamen | 2026-01-09 11:56:32+00:00
>> Also open source government code means other governments can fork it, overall lowering implementation costs, while still keeping code sovereignty.
> This is completely unrelated.

This is an option which does sometimes happen. And there is motivation to make happen more often, at least for EU-wide services. And there is also the side that it's doesn't have to happen between countries, it could be also happen the local level, like between administration of cities in the same country. The main reasoning here is more about spreading awarness and building the mindset that sharing code on all levels and working together even on such internal tools, can be good and should be increased.

> French government won't deploy a Polish public health management website just because they found it on Github.

Some governments have also their own platforms, specifically for co-working on code accross administrations. They are usually not public for reasons.

> For projects of such magnitude you need deep mutual cooperation between both governments, and a lot of changes. Making the code open-source is the least important part, the code can be just shared privately.

You still have to put it under a licence when you are co-working, even when it's shared privatly. Open Source does not neccessaly mean that the source is automatically accessable to the whole world.
by tomhow | 2026-01-09 11:57:01+00:00
> anything critical of any of Musk's companies gets flagged

Yes, because there's been so much controversy and criticism of him and his companies in recent years that it's stopped being "significant new information". We've moved on.

The purpose of HN is to discover and discuss interesting new things. Sometimes that includes political topics. The rest of the internet is always there for for keeping up with the daily rage cycle.
by GuB-42 | 2026-01-09 11:57:44+00:00
What the European Commission is doing is the right thing, then.

It is a "call for evidence", not a directive. It can be summarized as: for our software needs, we depend too much on non-EU countries, we heard about this open source thing, will it solve our problem?

They studied the political aspect (dependence on non-EU countries), that's their job. They are now asking experts about the technical aspect.
by graemep | 2026-01-09 11:59:00+00:00
> Who would win in a war? Russia, easy.

Really? Russia has not even done all that well against Ukraine, a much smaller economy.

What sort of war? I agree Spain could not successfully invade Russia, on the other hand Russia could not invade Spain either. No working aircraft carriers so their air force would be operating from very distant bases (even if they were allowed to pass over the countries in between), limits on ability to land large numbers of troops, etc.

> no longer part of the EU, but was better for both when they were

I do not understand why you even mention that as the EU does not have a military, NATO is relevant and the UK is in NATO.

Its a matter of opinion. I think the UK is at least as well off (growth has been similar to comparable economies like France and Germany since Brexit) without even seeing the long term benefits AND the EU is better off as the UK was a major impediment to the political integration the Euro zone needs.
by mike_hearn | 2026-01-09 11:59:52+00:00
Some hardware in the past has had a hidden/cpu managed stack. Modern CPUs with features like CFG have mandatorily structured control flow. Using a stack machine instead of a register machine is indeed a key difference but the actual CPU is a register machine so that just means WASM has to be converted first, hence the JIT. Stack based assembly languages are still assembly languages.
by traceroute66 | 2026-01-09 11:59:56+00:00
> Or does the air conditioning make it dry enough that this wouldn't happen. Foggy windows could also affect the pilot's ability to see, I suppose the flight deck windows must also be insulated.

Depends on the aircraft but a typical design would connect the space between the panels to an air supply or otherwise a self-contained desiccator system.

Flight deck windows are completely different, typically three layers, two full thickness and one half thickness. With additional anti-fog, anti-ice and moisture absorption systems built-in. The fact that some of them are sliding (i.e. openable) adds to the design complexity.
by jamesmunns | 2026-01-09 12:00:18+00:00
As others have mentioned, ~all of the embassy HALs support nearly 1:1 parity of blocking interfaces for drivers next to the async ones. You really can avoid async entirely while still using embassy hals. The ecosystem is not tightly integrated/locked in.

Even data structure libraries, like embassy-sync, all have `try_` methods, which would allow for polling usage outside of async.

There's no mandate to use async - and helping folks that DO see value in it (which is a LOT of folks), isn't "splitting the ecosystem" - it's people doing things the way they like to do it. Embassy still works very hard to support folks who DON'T want to use async, to avoid duplicated work. There's nothing stopping you from preferring to write and maintain your own HALs, I know you have been for a while! But it's not something that people necessarily have to do, even if they aren't interested or don't prefer async!
by menaerus | 2026-01-09 12:00:49+00:00
Did you miss the topic that is being discussed, as in:

> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.

> you and your peers seem to select professions and work positions solely based on monetary profits is what it is

No, I have never done that and I couldn't have done it because of a very simple reason - there was no market at the time I was starting with my profession and what I am still doing today is a direct consequence of what I found appealing most at that time and during my Uni days - bleeding edge computer science and computer engineering coupled with the bleeding edge hardware.

> but don't try to give the impression it's like that all over the world, because it isn't. It's probably more common than you think, but your environment might lead you to believe it isn't. For that, I feel pity for you.

You live in a fantasy world. And the only issue I have with that is that you spread your claims as something that is (EU) universally true, which is not. Please leave your utopistic comments elsewhere and not on this topic where it's relevant to stay objective.
by lazyasciiart | 2026-01-09 12:00:54+00:00
You sound like you’re trying to collapse the term into a single definition based on one guy, which just doesn’t match the variety of people and motivations using it today. Christian white nationalists in the US are not calling themselves Zionist because “we need a homeland, let’s all go back to Israel”.

You might as well say that Republicans are the party that fought the Confederates and freed the slaves. It is not true today.
by sylware | 2026-01-09 12:01:19+00:00
With technical interop?

For instance, IRC bridge with account creation enabled on noscript/basic (x)html browsers(lynx/links/netsurf/w3m/etc). Account creation which should be optionally augmented with some interop with self-hosted email servers, no dns, namely IPv[46] address literals (stronger than SPF), and why not a mobile phone number.

basic SIP for audio and video calls?

Or full public protocols for custom client development for technical interop? Hopefully a protocol stack not too much brain damaged and complex for no good reason (except impedding the development of real-life alternative clients...)?

I personnaly would not mind if those are only provided for ipv6 only since it destroys the complexity of communication protocols.
by amadeuspagel | 2026-01-09 12:02:17+00:00
Nice idea, nice dotcom.

I like that the homepage shows the extended hours breakouts (as opposed to Trading View Charts, which just shows $AAPL). I could imagine checking this every day like HN just to see what those are.

To me the signup field is a bit aggressive, with the blinking arrow and the slideshow, but I might just be neurotic about these things, and as I keep my money in index funds I'm unlikely to pay for this anyway.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-09 12:02:21+00:00
> Then there is the whole experience, again depending on the language, to produce a .wasm file, alongside the set of imports/exports for the functions, instead of a plain "-arch=wasm".

Doesn't the "WASM Components Model" kind of solve this? I've been hacking on a WASM-app runner (in Rust) which basically loads tiny apps that are compiled into "Components", and seems simple enough to me to use and produce those.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2026-01-09 12:02:47+00:00
<< Do not mistake global economic resilience for a triumph by the likes of Mr Trump.

You know.. it is a little hard to take legacy media seriously if the reporting they do amounts to:

'economy is working, but it is not thanks to ANYTHING Trump does'

Give him some credit; try to make it believable.
by menaerus | 2026-01-09 12:02:47+00:00
You're missing my point. "Chucking in a few bounties" is very different from what this topic is about. Let me spell it out for you once again:

> The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. This reduces users' choice, hampers EU companies' competitiveness and can raise supply chain security issues as it makes it difficult to control our digital infrastructure (both physical and software components), potentially creating vulnerabilities including in critical sectors.
by gilleain | 2026-01-09 12:03:03+00:00
I believe you, but is that not a strange position to take on music? Appreciating it artistically, but not liking listening to it?

Am I right in saying you like the _idea_ behind the music rather than the music itself? That's almost as strange to me as people who do not listen to music at all - it's fine, of course! They are your ears, and you can do what you like with them :)

shrug Different people are different, I suppose.
by fergie | 2026-01-09 12:03:35+00:00
You only have to spend 5 minutes browsing for MCP servers to see that there is an issue with AI slop. MCP is probably the first "standard" to be built out in the vibe-coding era and it really shows.

As mentioned in the article, its not clear to me what the advantage over OpenAPI is. Surely a swagger file solves more or less the same issue.

That said, one minor nice thing about the MCP servers is that they operate locally over stdin stdout, which feels a lot faster than HTTP/Rest.
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-01-09 12:03:56+00:00
> Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy. Scott and I were titular “co-directors” but we did not provide a lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were driven largely by individual initiative.

While I love that anarchists and sociocrats exist, I would say from personal experience (admittedly, over 30 years ago when I was a student) that every single "anarchist collective shared living space" will get to a point where someone (even me, even if I'm attempting to be chill about everything) will grab someone by the shirt front, haul them to their feet, and threaten to knock seven shades of shit out of them if they don't take their turn of washing the dishes.

Any successful business has a lot of dishes to wash.
by cybrefly | 2026-01-09 12:05:00+00:00
Hello world!

Happy new() year++

Happy to share this project with you:

Complete end-to-end browser automation pipeline running in browser (or locally).

Codify and replay browser actions as robust (deterministic) and reusable scripts.

From rapid prototyping and quick automation scripts to sophisticated deployments at scale.

Best way to register your interest (or provide welcome feedback) is to try it out on Apify (free account). You will be updated about progress automatically.

---

Why?

---

Problem:

- current agents are useful but not reliable

- code is robust but coding can be inefficient

---

Solution:

- improvement of automation throughput

- seamless local and cloud development

- scalable when you are ready for more

---

Limited preview on the way to production.

Feedback welcome and highly appreciated!
by p_l | 2026-01-09 12:05:22+00:00
IIRC Samba started out working on interop with DEC Pathworks, which was somewhat compatible SMB implementation (devil in the details, Pathworks predates SMB ossifying into what it became in NT4 when there was a lot of customization by vendors).

This meant that early versions were compatible with Pathworks servers but not Windows ones (but Windows could be configured to work with Pathworks)
by abhi555shek | 2026-01-09 12:05:44+00:00
I built an app that helps people practice speaking skills through AI-powered challenges. Its built for verbal fluency—quick thinking, debate, vocabulary usage.

The problem: We spend years learning to write but almost no structured time learning to speak well. Communication coaching costs $200+/hour. Video courses are passive. I wanted active practice with real-time feedback.

How it works:

9 game modes targeting different skills (debate, comebacks, metaphors, negotiation, etc.)
Voice-first input with real-time transcription
AI opponents that adapt and push back
Detailed feedback on logic, vocabulary, and delivery
Belt progression system (white → red) based on accumulated "Chi" points
by valadaptive | 2026-01-09 12:05:49+00:00
I second this; the tooling is somehow still not there after 10 years.

- The main toolchain for compiling existing C codebases to WebAssembly is Emscripten. It still hasn't escaped its tech-demo origins, and it's a rats' nest of compiler flags and janky polyfills. There are at least 3 half-finished implementations of everything. It doesn't follow semver, so every point release tends to have some breaking changes.

- The "modern" toolchain, wasi-sdk, is much more barebones. It's getting to the point of being usable, but I can't use it myself because it ships a precompiled libc and libc++ that use `-O3`, whereas Emscripten recompiles and caches the sysroot and uses `-Oz` if I tell it to. This increases the code size, which is already quite large.

- LLVM is still not very good at emitting optimized WebAssembly bytecode.

- Engines are still not very good at compiling WebAssembly bytecode to optimized machine code.

- Debug info, as you mentioned, is a total mess.

- Rust's WebAssembly tooling is on life support. The rustwasm GitHub organization was "sunset" in mid-2025 after years of inactivity.

- There is still no official way to import WebAssembly modules from JavaScript in a cross-platform manner, in the year of our lord 2026. If you're deploying to the browser and using Vite or raw ES modules, you can use `WebAssembly.instantiateStreaming(fetch(new URL('./foo.wasm', import.meta.url)))` and eat the top-level await. Vite recognizes the `new URL('...', import.meta.url)` pattern and will include the asset in the build output, but most other bundlers (e.g. Rollup and esbuild) do not. If you're on Node, you can't do this, because `fetch` does not work for local files. Most people just give up and embed the WebAssembly binary as a huge Base64 string, which increases the filesize by 33% and greatly reduces the compression ratio.

- If you want multithreaded WebAssembly, you need to set the COOP/COEP headers in order to gain access to `SharedArrayBuffer`. GitHub Pages still doesn't let you do this, although it's the third-most-upvoted feature request. There's a janky workaround that installs a service worker. All bets are off on how that workaround interacts with PWAs.

If the tooling situation had advanced past "tech demo" in the past 8 years since WebAssembly first shipped, a lot more people would be using it.
by lxgr | 2026-01-09 12:06:07+00:00
> On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets

Kessler syndrome has little to no effect on trajectories only briefly transiting any given orbital shell. The collision probability of anything going straight "up"/"out" is negligible.

> On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS

GPS is in MEO, Starlink is in LEO. There's absolutely no chance any material will be propelled up to MEO via a series of even very unlucky LEO collisions, as far as I know.
by dgroshev | 2026-01-09 12:06:17+00:00
Equating surveillance flights off the coast with "operating in the country" is tenuous at best. If that's the threshold, Russian military is already operating in Britain (see Yantar's adventures).

The mental effort a lot of people has made to pretend they aren't entirely powerless and irrelevant for stopping Israel's crimes is deeply impressive. The reality is that there's nothing the UK can do to stop Israel as long as the US is supporting them (short of going to war with both the US and Israel), but this reality is at odds with the desire to do something, so people invent and inflate leverage where there isn't any. Moreover, most of the time the very same people oppose creating more leverage for the future, as your added qualifier of "post-colonial" implies. It's depressing.