MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nephihaha | 2026-01-17 12:13:28+00:00
Some ways, yes, some ways no. Communism and Fascism in practice had mutual influences on one another although they would be loathe to admit it. (By Communism here, I mean Communist party rule, not the future utopia which none of these countries ever achieved.)

If you want to take a more Trotskyite view, many post-revolutionary states enter a so called "Bonapartist" phase, where militarism, ultranationalism and symbology combine to produce something which looks a lot like Fascism. Mao and Stalin were not above using ultranationalism and chauvinism to push their rule. North Korea has gone all the way with this with Juche which contains mystical, ultranationalist and even racial supremacist features.
by traceroute66 | 2026-01-17 12:14:20+00:00
> Do people actually use Word?

I mean, for starters just walk into any law firm.

Especially the junior desks who do the donkey work of turning contract drafting notes from the Seniors into reality. Their entire careers are based around knowing Word templates and macros like the back of your hand. Those dudes probably know more about Word than Microsoft does.

And a whole niche side-industry has established around them, for example people writing software to diff Word files.
by zahlman | 2026-01-17 12:14:24+00:00
> DHS training manual says not to stand in front of a vehicle

Supposing that you could cite this, it is irrelevant, because he was not "standing" there but completing a circle of the vehicle to gather video footage.

> But also, depending on the angle of entry, you could be quite far to the side and still shoot through the front.

There are photos of the bullet hole in the windshield and it's quite clear that the impact was quite square.

> Or if the direction of entry is the most important to you, most of the bullets went through the side window, what position does that indicate?

It indicates the result of the car moving during the fraction of a second required to fire multiple shots (faster than a human can consciously process the decision to stop firing, and congruent with standard LEO training to fire multiple shots).

> Or maybe none of this is important in the case of propaganda, like I implied.

This is not an argument and is also not appropriate rhetoric for HN.
by acron0 | 2026-01-17 12:15:03+00:00
I am going to give a predictable rebuttal. Many of these articles come from a place of fear and uncertainty, which is completely understandable. We ascribe value to the things we love, we love coding and therefore coding is valuable. But if it's commoditized how can it be valuable anymore? This alone is enough to shake the tree of rationality and most articles, including this one, set out with a mission of bashing a force they don't really understand. One signature of these articles, as I have noticed, is that they talk about AI writing code fairly reasonably but then insist that without a clear mental view of it, how could it ever be understood, or debugged, or optimised? This simply illuminates the lack of experience with the tools. Anyone who's used Ralph or Taches skills will understand this is a non-problem because well-attuned, AI-first codebases are actually very good at debugging, optimising, and will happily relay to you the model they've used, so that your grey matter can understand it.
by have_faith | 2026-01-17 12:15:43+00:00
No one who regularly watches biased news sources does so while acknowledging the constant bias. And I don’t think most people think the BBC is unbiased, it’s constantly attacked as having bias to both sides of the aisle ironically. The BBC is far from perfect but it’s in a different league to Fox News to the point that it feels disingenuous to suggest you’d be better off watching Fox News while telling yourself that you’re filtering out the bias.
by jetin | 2026-01-17 12:16:13+00:00
There is also a whole population category that isn’t capable of differentiating Windows from Linux.
Just yesterday I was showing something on Zorin OS to my father and I had to explain to him that I was not using Windows 10 like he is at home.
As long as the web browser is working and he can use his printer, a desktop is a desktop and icons are icons that can be clicked.
Any other operation will be written on paper in a step by step well phrased manner.
OS choice doesn’t matter for him, he will always struggle so making him switch to Linux won’t change a thing of his experience.
by torginus | 2026-01-17 12:16:19+00:00
There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.

Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.

As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.

There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.
by michaelmior | 2026-01-17 12:16:58+00:00
Note that the headline is from Langfuse, not ClickHouse. Reading the announcement from ClickHouse[0], the headline is "ClickHouse welcomes Langfuse: The future of open-source LLM observability". I think the Langfuse team is suggesting that they will be continuing to do the same work within ClickHouse, not that the entire ClickHouse organization has a goal of building the best LLM engineering platform.

[0] https://clickhouse.com/blog/clickhouse-acquires-langfuse-ope...
by mocana | 2026-01-17 12:17:54+00:00
We have the dumbest bullies in the world running the country.
What did they expect? Tariffs. Threatening to turn the country into a state. Harassing Canadians living in the U.S.
And very purposefully kneecapping the EV market in the U.S. forcing automakers to roll back their investment while the Chinese continue to lower their costs and refine the technology.
I can only hope that that the damage to the U.S. and it's standing in the world is not totally irreparable. A lot of the damage is, I am afraid, permanent.
by Wurdan | 2026-01-17 12:17:57+00:00
I've recently started trying open ear phones for other reasons and I've found the current state of the art pretty good in terms of sound quality. I use Nothing's open ears, but I'm sure there are many others that are equally good. They won't act as cougar alerters, but if you want to listen to both music and the environment where others are around, the tech is ready
by mrighele | 2026-01-17 12:18:07+00:00
> There's a tricky ethical question here: if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again, you can either ignore their will, which is rude, or chose to follow it but then you are doing a disservice to the public's understanding.

Calling somebody with his former name and mentioning his former name in a Wikipedia page are two completely different things. Using the fact that the former is seen as rude by some to avoid the second is in my opinion just an example of the level of extremism of the pro-trans activists.

But if in fact it made sense, shouldn't we completely remove any reference of the previous name also from the pages of people like Yusuf Islam [1] or Muhammad Ali [2] ?

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
by Deeptiman | 2026-01-17 12:18:22+00:00
Cryptographic hash functions are foundational to the construction of practical cryptographic systems. A hash function transforms input data of arbitrary length into a fixed-length message digest that is easy to compute but impossible to invert. Once a digest is produced, recovering the original message is computationally infeasible. Hash functions are widely used in cryptographic applications, including verifying data integrity, authenticating messages, generating deterministic randomness, and deriving keys for secure communication protocols.

This article provides a detailed design of the FIPS 202 standard. I'll begin by explaining the sponge construction and its security properties, then examine how SHA-3 achieves diffusion and irreversibility through its internal permutation. Along the way, I'll clarify which components of the design are reversible in isolation and why the overall construction remains a one-way function. Finally, the SHA-3 and SHAKE design will highlight that they are particularly well-suited for modern cryptographic systems, including post-quantum cryptography.
by ihagen | 2026-01-17 12:18:47+00:00
Great story, but Buddhism is not about cherishing the beautiful moments of life. It is about perceiving the universe as it is. It is about accepting that everything unfolds as it does and having the ability to see things as temporary forms of matter. In this story, the monk sees the cup as clay, a cup, and shards at the same time. So when the cup is broken, it means nothing to him.
by rsp1984 | 2026-01-17 12:18:53+00:00
The obvious problem with the 5% rule is that voters who don't like any of the established parties are faced with the decision between voting for something they don't like or most likely throwing away their vote.

As someone who writes algorithms for a living I can think of ~ 100 ways to resolve this bug without limiting the original intent. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to come up with one. However the fact that this %5 rule hasn't been changed tells you everything you need to know about the legislators.
by evolve2k | 2026-01-17 12:18:54+00:00
Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.

Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.

There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.

I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.

Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.

As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.
by koito17 | 2026-01-17 12:19:17+00:00
In the case of Lean, propositions are encoded as dependent types and the user typically has to encode that themselves then make use of e.g. tactics to derive a term of said type.

Writing a statement you don't understand then later getting a proof from an LLM doesn't seem all that useless to me; in my mind, it could still be useful as exploration. Worst case scenario: you encoded a tautology and the LLM gave you a trivial proof. Best case scenario: the proposition ends up being a lemma for something you want to prove.

I do think there is a kernel of truth in what you've stated: if the user does not actually understand the statement of a proposition, then the proof is not very useful to them, since they don't know what the statement's truthiness implies. As someone who used to do mathematics, I still find immense value in vibe-coding away mundane computations, similar to what Lean's `simp` tactic already does, but much more broad.
by graemep | 2026-01-17 12:19:50+00:00
I agree we need multiple news sources, but the UK has multiple news sources. What the BBC adds is one with a different funding model so different biases. I do not think this works as well as it did historically.

As for unwillingness to pay the license fee, the biggest issue is the rise of streaming alternatives. It reduced the BBC from providing about half of available TV to being one among many providers so the license fee no longer feels like good value for money.

Its not mandatory. I have never owned a TV. If you do not watch broadcast TV or Iplayer you do not have to have a TV license.

I also think Capita's aggressive scare tactics in trying to get people to pay the license fee have created a lot of hostility towards the BBC.
by hairofadog | 2026-01-17 12:20:01+00:00
I've been amazed that US CEOs haven't pushed back harder on the administration due to the threat of the rest of the world leaving US services like these.

I know the goverment has a lot of power over even the largest companies, but these companies also have power, and moving into a world in which AWS, Apple, Microsoft, and Google can only operate in the US, and maybe with the Saudis, isn't going to be good for shareholders.

They bent a knee to this administration so fast. I'm curious to see if there will be an equally fast pivot in the other direction when Trump starts showing holes in his armor. There will come a time when corporate greed no longer points in the direction of Trumpism.
by tarsinge | 2026-01-17 12:20:17+00:00
To me there is an even more important point than economics and geopolitics: the Chinese government is thinking about the long term sustainability of its population, and given how large it is it makes quite aligned with the rest of the world. Environment, health, education, science, etc. when comparing the trajectory and future plans of China and the US it is quite telling. Here are a few excerpts, guess if they come from Project 2025 or Xi Jinping 14 commitments:

- Adopting new science-based ideas for "innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development".

- Improving people's livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development

- Coexisting well with nature with "energy conservation and environmental protection" policies and "contribute to global ecological safety".
by GrowingSideways | 2026-01-17 12:20:22+00:00
There's quite a rich history in that article. Looks like the current president's father was tortured to death by the then right-wing executive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Antonio_Rodr%C3%ADguez

Perhaps there's more at play here than pretending like Maduro is a uniquely bad guy but also so hilariously incompetent his corruption scheme blacked out the country.

Let's be clear here, there are many evil states in this world. But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.
by pona-a | 2026-01-17 12:20:42+00:00
I see how this would be useful once we take binary signing for granted. It would probably even be quite unobjectionable if it were simply a domain binding.

However, the very act of trying to make this system less impractical is a concession in the war on general purpose computing. To subsidize its cost would be to voluntarily loose that non-moral line of argument.
by adrian_b | 2026-01-17 12:22:02+00:00
When you create LibreOffice documents and you want to send them to others, which may not be LibreOffice users, the normal procedure is to export your documents as PDF files, which ensures that anyone can use them.

Less frequently, you may want to export your documents to MS formats, if you want them to be editable, but that is much less foolproof than exporting to PDF.

I have worked for many years in companies where almost everybody was using MS Office, while I preferred to use LibreOffice (nowadays Excel remains better than any alternative, but I actually prefer LibreOffice Write to MS Word, because I think that the latter has regressed dramatically during the last 2 decades). Despite that, my coworkers were not even aware that I was using LibreOffice, as all the documentation generated by me was in PDF format.

Product documentation in any serious company should be in PDF format anyway, not in word processor formats that cannot be used by anyone who does not have an appropriate editor or viewer. Even using MS Office is not a guarantee that you can use any MS Office document file, as I have seen cases when recent MS Office versions could not open some ancient MS Office files, which could be opened by other tools, e.g. they could be imported in LibreOffice.
by tialaramex | 2026-01-17 12:22:15+00:00
To be vulnerable to this, what sort of dumb things are end users doing?

I couldn't immediately figure out here whether we're talking

0. Microsoft's supported products default enable this worthless "authentication" feature

1. Microsoft's supported products provide such a feature behind a UI that's not clearly marked "Danger: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye"

2: Microsoft does still support this, behind some Registry nonsense most users do not understand and once enabled it doesn't turn on the "I am a toxic waste dump, leave by nearest exit" warning signs on affected machines

3: Microsoft doesn't support this at all but some 3rd party commercial stuff does and customers really do love their crusty archaic 3rd party garbage

4: But this long abandoned SCO machine we've kept on life support for twenty years!

5: What does "supported" mean? Windows NT is scary, we're still on Windows 98 here.
by iLoveOncall | 2026-01-17 12:22:17+00:00
> Your problem is probably that your first instinct is to emulate your old workflow instead of finding a new workflow.

You perfectly captured in a single sentence the attitude of Linux maintainers and why it will never ever be a mainstream OS.

> > MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckNux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

> There is no real compromise here. If you are running a distro that isn't capable of running everything, you are barking up the wrong tree and probably trying to use some random hannah montana linux maintained by 1 guy.

You got me wrong, I'm not saying that you should go for either of those options, but that if you search online a little bit as a layman, you will be confused because some distributions (popular ones at that) advertise themselves as the right choice to do X.

It's all about confusion for the end user. Just search for "linux gaming distro" and see for yourself the slurry of stupid ass distributions recommended when none of them should exist in the first place.
by notahacker | 2026-01-17 12:22:51+00:00
Yeah. Also not an edge case where an unpopular candidate sneaks in by virtue of deadlocked opponents and quirks of electoral math, or a case where voters thought they were getting a moderate who then pivoted in a different direction. Trump's been open about his belief that trade is a zero sum game he's going to win by crushing other economies with tariffs, his contempt for Western democracies and his admiration for Putin for several years, the corruption isn't exactly hidden and even the Greenland nonsense isn't new. It won him a plurality of votes because most of his base was enthusiastic about his approach and the rest didn't mind.
by ben_w | 2026-01-17 12:23:23+00:00
> People boycott AI art in indie games, music, etc. but it's still finding massive use everywhere across most industries, and by and large companies are getting away with it.

Use, yes. I find it on packaging, on billboards. "Massive" use? Not so clear, e.g. how much is this just a substitute for clip art and stock photography? I.e. stuff that was already low-value.

But even there, to the extent they get away with it, that's due to people like me who care about aesthetics.

To illustrate the difference:

Know what I don't care for? Der Kuss[0], the Mona Lisa[1], everything Van Gogh is famous for[2], likewise Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Monet, and Gauguin.

Know what's expensive? All of those things I don't care for.

> That is based on current sensibilities which are capable of change. Give it 20 years of PR campaigns and who knows where we end up.

Peacock tails are, necessarily, expensive signals.

When there's a thousand indistinguishable replicas of the Mona Lisa, the original becomes worthless, the replicas don't gain value.

The effort is the point, it's the reason for the price. When an expensive thing becomes cheap, it stops being an expensive signal (and vice-versa).

[0] the woman's head looks like it's been severed, rotated 90°, her ear placed where the stump of her neck ought to be. Most of Klimt's other stuff is better.

[1] her smile is not "mysterious", it's just the resting face of someone who had to keep still for long enough to get painted

[2] the stuff he's not famous for is, IMO, generally better than the stuff he is famous for.
by nephihaha | 2026-01-17 12:24:24+00:00
If no one gets paid, no one can pay for anything. What are they supposed to live off? Thin air, welfare/benefits or inherited money. At least the people who write Britannica get to make a living.

I edited Wikipedia for many years and have seen how it has (d)evolved into an oligarchy. I have absolutely nothing to show for it, and now I see companies using it to build products which they do make money off. They are making money off my work (and others). I am glad that I did get to make sure Wikipedia covered certain subjects, but it was not a rewarding experience otherwise.

I've sold fanzines and published stuff in hard copy, and they made a little money. Not enough to live off but far more rewarding than my Wikipedia interactions.
by rafaelbeirigo | 2026-01-17 12:25:06+00:00
For the case of Propositional Logic, ChatGPT reflects the current epistemological crisis. When asking for help on a question, it could not properly apply the Law of the Excluded Middle [1].

1. https://chatgpt.com/share/696b7f8a-9760-8006-a1b5-89ffd7c5d2...
by endoblast | 2026-01-17 12:26:13+00:00
It's funny how every source of knowledge converges to the same thing: mass media. Telling you what to think and trying to influence your behaviour rather than trying to inform you.

Using facts, omitting facts or emphasising particular facts over others in order to mislead you. The scientific journals are now included with their anonymous editorials. Peer review is pretty much the same as fact-checking.

Contrast this with good fiction, which employs falsehoods to point towards the truth: truth which cannot easily be verified but which is our real bread and butter.
by littlecranky67 | 2026-01-17 12:26:18+00:00
Do product companies visit their own websites? You have to click on three (!) overlays/popups if you visit the website - cookie notice, another popup telling me that I am not from the US and can visit their european website, and an AI alert overlay telling me about their new AI features. Only after clicking away all three I can actually see the product content. Madness.
by derangedHorse | 2026-01-17 12:26:24+00:00
> Ridiculously high wages for jobs whose explicit purpose is to make human workers(including those partaking in those jobs) obsolete

I would say they are making the current cost of one's labor "obsolete". Most jobs are like this. If you work for yourself, you're trying to make the cost of your labor obsolete in place of cheaper work. If you work for a company, the company will be trying to make the cost of your labor obsolete in place of cheaper work. Any value captured in the arbitrage of product price and employee pay is seen as the value of management.