MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wtcactus | 2026-01-01 15:09:38+00:00
Those billions are because of the USA. In the EU, it was merely a slap in the hand.

Annual revenue of VW at the time was 217B €. In the EU, they paid 1.5B €. So, 0.7% of their annual revenue for a scheme that went on for years.

Granted, in the US, they actually did persecute VW properly, and they ended up paying close to 30B $. A much proper sum.

As for the jail time, they arrested 2 from middle management in the EU. No member from the board or the CEO went to jail here.

Is that what we call justice now? Specially when we want to pretend we are superior to the USA in that regard?
by commandersaki | 2026-01-01 15:09:59+00:00
I posted in the other thread but in case that no longer has traction I will repeat my question here:

I'm still wondering what the Scam Prevention Framework enacted in Australia will do to mitigate this kind of stuff.

https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/conso... (Part IVF)
by b3nji | 2026-01-01 15:11:10+00:00
I thought the same.

Have you thought that there was a massive physical infrastructure left behind by the original railroad builders, all compatible with future vehicles? Other companies were able to buy the railroads for low prices and use.

Large Language Models change their power consumption requirements monthly, the hardware required to run them is replaced at a rapid rate too. If it were to stop tomorrow, what would you be left with? Out of date hardware, massively wasted power, and a gigantic hole in your wallet.

You could argue you have the blueprints for LLM building, known solutions, and it could all be rebuilt. The thing is, would you want to rebuild, and invest so much again for arguably little actual, tangible output? There isn't anything you can reuse, like others that came after could reuse the railroads.
by CuriouslyC | 2026-01-01 15:11:17+00:00
Time under tension is an imperfect measure, it's just less bad than other measures we could use. Sort of like lines of code in software engineering. Given that, saying it's "just TUT" is misleading.

It could turn out to be that the brain is coordinating hypertrophic biochemical cascades in muscles, and TUT is just a fairly reliable method for inducing this.

I was a competitive powerlifter and trained around pro bodybuilders for years, and in my experience, the only commonality between them was the intense all consuming drive to be absolutely monstrous (and they ate a lot). Some would train for 2 hours a day, some would train for 45 minutes 3x a week, some would use high volume in the 50-70% range and others would focus on 70-85%, some were explosive some were slow and steady, really it was all over the map.
by jcims | 2026-01-01 15:11:59+00:00
It feels like there are several conversations happening that sound the same but are actually quite different.

One of them is whether or not large models are useful and/or becoming more useful over time. (To me, clearly the answer is yes)

The other is whether or not they live up to the hype. (To me, clearly the answer is no)

There are other skirmishes around capability for novelty, their role in the economy, their impact on human cognition, if/when AGI might happen and the overall impact to the largely tech-oriented community on HN.
by mort96 | 2026-01-01 15:12:05+00:00
You'd need something which better encapsulates the power level of a pokemon; move pools, abilities, typing and synergies all play a role. There are bad pokemon with a huge base stat total, and a hypothetical pokemon with a tiny base stat total of 50 but with ground/poison typing and the wonder guard ability would be an absolute nightmare.

The Smogon tiers (NU, RU, UU, UUBL, OU, Uber) is a thorough attempt at placing all pokemon in tiers based on overall power level and to make interesting balanced matches at different tiers.
by gregdoesit | 2026-01-01 15:12:20+00:00
> The unhelpful feedback was a consistent push to dumb down the book (which I don't think is particularly complex but I do like to leave things for the reader to try) to appease a broader audience and to mellow out my personal voice

Interestingly, this was my exact experience when working with a publisher (Manning, in my case), and it was the main reason I decided to part ways when writing my book (The Software Engineer’s Guidebook). While I did appreciate publisher’s desire to please a broader crowd by pushing a style they thought would broaden the appeal: but doing so makes technical books less attractive, in my view. And even less motivation to write!

In my case, self publishing worked out well enough with ~40,000 copies sold in two years [1], proving the publisher’s feedback wrong, and that you don’t need to dumb down technical books, like this specific publisher would have preferred to do so.

Even if it wouldn’t have worked out: what’s the point writing a book where there’s little of the author (you!) left in it. Congrats to OP for deciding to stick to your gut and write the book you want to write!

[1] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-software-engi...
by BigTTYGothGF | 2026-01-01 15:12:24+00:00
> The trigonometric functions with arguments measured in cycles are more accurate and faster to compute.

Please expand on this. Surely if that were the case, numerical implementations would first convert a radian input to cycles before doing whatever polynomial/rational approximation they like, but I've never seen one like that.

> Because Pi is needed so much more rarely, it is simpler to just have a constant Pi_2 to be used in most cases and for the rare case of computing a circumference from the diameter to use Pi_2*D/2,

Well of course, that's why you have (in C) M_PI, M_PI2, and so on (and in some dialects M_2PI).
by lotsofpulp | 2026-01-01 15:12:28+00:00
> but the central point is that people who have to USE their insurance (i.e. sick people) subsidize the premiums of people who don't (healthy people), and this critique applies regardless of age.

You’re losing me here. This claim is categorically false. You cannot consider only the deductible when calculating who subsidizes who.

The only way to calculate it is premiums + deductible + out of pocket maximum = total healthcare costs. And the subsidy via premium is so large that it negates effects of a deductible and out of pocket maximum.

Note that all plans have to be actuarially equivalent, regardless of what deductible you choose. The actuaries have to account for rebates and other pricing strategies when ensuring actuarial equivalence, so that the ratio of what the plan pays versus what you pay meets the required ratio for that metal level.

https://www.healthcare.gov/choose-a-plan/plans-categories/

Since your health is not a factor in pricing your insurance, it has to be that people less likely to need healthcare pay for the people likely to need healthcare.

It is the same as if the government forbade auto insurers from using moving violations history, or life insurers from using health measures, or home insurers from using flood maps.
by barnabee | 2026-01-01 15:12:54+00:00
To me this sounds like “can you not conceive of some content sufficiently valuable that you’d let someone get you addicted to their brand of cigarettes so you could get it for free”

If it’s that valuable, just let me pay a fair price to see it.

In general, I’d like to see personally targeted ads banned entirely and a legal requirement for a fairly priced (i.e. same order of magnitude as the lost ad revenue) ad free option.
by pornel | 2026-01-01 15:13:00+00:00
There is a cranelift backend written in Rust.

Rust is pragmatic about its implementation. The goal isn't some ideological purity (despite the reputation Rust has), but to empower users to make safe and efficient systems software. LLVM works well for that, so replacing it isn't a priority. The cranelift backend exists to make debug builds faster.
by anovikov | 2026-01-01 15:13:36+00:00
Just like in Soviet Union's case, trick isn't how to topple a regime, a sufficiently rotten one will fall by itself, but how to make sure the country that remains is sufficiently neutered to not become a menace again. It was simply overlooked by the West in 1991: they foolishly fell under the influence of their own propaganda and believed that Communism was the problem and with it gone, there was nothing left to worry about. As it turns out, Russia itself, was the problem. It was easy to solve in 1991 and extremely hard now.
Hopefully it won't be repeated with Iran.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-01 15:15:51+00:00
> When considering NAC's mechanisms, it seems that it's efficacy is likely dependent on an individuals's glutathione status.

NAC interacts with a lot of things. Not just glutathione.

It modulates glutamate activity in the brain. That’s a key neurotransmitter. It’s why it can be helpful in some specific psychiatric conditions, but also why many people discovering it to be cognitively dulling or to induce blunt effect.

It also interacts with trace minerals in your body. Taking it for a long time can reduce these levels, creating multiple secondary problems.

The list of things it does goes on and on. It’s not a simple supplement for glutathione.
by arturmakly | 2026-01-01 15:17:37+00:00
As a WNIP OG who made it to 90% of the meetups, I can honestly say these nights were a highlight of my time as an expat in Buenos Aires.

Between the consistent curation and Morgan’s "Kevin Bacon-style" network, I met a huge spectrum of people—both locals and world travelers.[1])

Side note: if you’re in a relationship, these nights are even better. You end up with so many fresh ideas to share with your partner from conversations they weren't part of.

Thanks for hosting, Morgan! And a special thanks to Celia for being so gracious about those late-night "extra innings"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
by kamaal | 2026-01-01 15:18:18+00:00
I think people who are looking at long term wealth building are better off looking at John Bogle's work. The key is this, you absolutely must stick to investing in the index as a whole, but the issue there is fees you pay is a percentage of your investment, even if small, over years compounds against you. That might look small, but its a double digit percentage if done over decades. Hence picking a fund that charges you the lowest is the key.

Buffet does this better. He basically takes the float from insurance business(Geico) and invests in the index his company manages. This basically sets you up for a long compounding cycle. Translation- You are basically investing in the US economy.

Apart from this there are some base businesses in an economy that's under long term multi year climb. Now anybody who is staring at stock charts(weekly) will tell you eventually you do learn to 'Pyramid upwards' on stocks that are clear winners. Lots of literature has been written on this.

All said and done, you can be rest assured there only at best 10 such stocks in any economy. Once you find them, you do periodic audit if the companies are holding up good and just keep putting in money as time passes.

I don't remember where- but I remember reading, Fidelity found out the most profitable accounts belonged to people who were dead. That says two things. 1) You have to hold stocks for long periods of time, like really long periods of time(Index, and some of its constituents that are carrying most of the freight) . Most people won't make it. 2) Live long enough.

Quite literally once you gain the skills to pick stock. Next single biggest skill you can master is to be healthy and live long. These things take lots of time to work.
by canadiantim | 2026-01-01 15:18:20+00:00
The thyroid is I think far enough away from the main cervical lymph nodes and also the olfactory lymphatic drainage pathways too that I don’t think you need to worry about thyroid removal affecting the lymphatic drainage there.

That being said your lymphatic drainage could still be affected by many other things. Eg do you have chronically inflamed sinuses? Difficulty breathing? These would be things pointing towards greater obstruction of the drainage pathways as it points to inflammation potentially impacting the flow of lymph out of the head/brain.
Show HN: I built a CLI tool while waiting for food
by vseplet | 2026-01-01 15:18:43+00:00
I was waiting for my food to be prepared and decided to run an experiment: can I actually code from my phone using AR glasses?

Setup:
- Samsung S25 running Termux
- Rokid Max 2 AR glasses (as a display)
- Claude Code (AI pair programmer)
- Voice control for input

Result: A fully functional Git profile manager (gp) — switches between work/personal GitHub accounts with separate SSH keys
by filoleg | 2026-01-01 15:18:44+00:00
There was a period of time in my mid 20s when me and a close friend ot mine lived across the street from each other, and what you said here resonates with me strongly.

It is such a massive boost to quality of life to just be able on a whim to send a text like “i am tryna grab some food+drink in 15min, you down?” and actually make it happen more than half the time (and being able to receive similar texts from the friend too). Lots of spontaneous interactions and (barely-any-)planning for just normal low-pressure outings was absolutely my favorite part of that time period.

On a sidenote, I absolutely despise the “guest spreadsheet canva invites for an event scheduled a month in advance and endless emails booking a band” way of regularly doing social stuff. It is totally chill and reasonable to do so for special occasions and bigger events, but having it as the primary way of socializing makes me want to drill a hole in my skull.
by LightBug1 | 2026-01-01 15:18:53+00:00
Back when decent civilization was a thing, there were rules of engagement, conduct, the pursuit of security, and strategic goals which didn't include active genocide of civilians.

Now, granted, we've witnessed horrible things in wars that don't match up to order and clarity of my previous sentence. But there were end goals that made sense.

Sorry, genocide, apartheid and the establishment of a religious-fascist state at the behest of Israeli ring-wing fascists that wouldn't put a foot wrong in Hitlers RKF, isn't an end goal I'd say justifies the means, ends or anything in between.

The establishment of security to the denial of all else, isn't the only dish on the table.
by chollida1 | 2026-01-01 15:19:28+00:00
> You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.

Hard disagree here.

Ask a 4 person family stuffed into a one bedroom condo if buying a larger 3 bedroom home would make them happier, I'd imagine to 99.99999% of them the answer is yes.

I upgraded my road bike 2 years ago from an entry level one to a nice racing bike and each weekend I ride a 100km route, that sure as heck makes me happier than riding the old slower and heavier bike.

We just took our extended family on a vacation for a week. Money sure as heck made us happier in that instance.

It is true that cash can't fix all issues in life but any one who says money can't make you happy is either lying or doesn't have money.

Run a simple thought experiment in your head. If you woke up tomorrow under crushing credit card and medical debt and it was suddenly paid off, would that make you happier?
by kaoD | 2026-01-01 15:19:30+00:00
I didn't accept any deal by clicking a link that took me to a webpage. I don't think anyone using Python, which is GPL-compatible, expects it to come with a "and you'll see our popup advertising for donations if you visit our site".

If you (generic "you") make me accept that deal, guess what: I won't (and I actually don't, this happens routinely to me since I'm european -- I always close pages that ask me to "log in or accept our cookies").

Feel free to block me. I don't care that much about your content anyways. I won't see ads one way, or the other. And I will work hard to make this the default experience of my friends and family.

I'd gladly click a checkbox "tell the server I'm using adblock so they can block me". I don't care about your content that much. It's often crap and low value, that's why you do drive-by advertising with clickbait titles and low effort mass slop.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-01 15:19:58+00:00
Rock climbing (in the US gyms, anyway) is such an easy way to meet new people.

You don’t even to find a group or friends before you go. Just go to the bouldering area and hang out during a popular time.

Most gyms have partner finder programs and designated social nights.

Every gym I’ve been a member of has also had a bring a friend program where you get to bring one new person for free periodically.

Online groups are also a good way to meet new friends. This is HN so a lot of people will turn their nose up at Facebook but it’s full of groups of people who go out and do things.
by sigwinch | 2026-01-01 15:20:19+00:00
I would hope for something stronger. Put a currency value on some kinds of info. To store my SSN and full name and military ID totals 20 units. Maybe a full name and home address is 15 units. If I agree to give you my info, you agree that I can keep the CEOs home address, stored as safely and hygienically as I can. Part of our contract mandates when we mutually delete. Because of course we trust each other.
by nathanlied | 2026-01-01 15:21:19+00:00
There was a lot of inter-community conflict in the years (decades) preceding the formation of Israel, so it wasn't exactly peaceful. That there were some groups (on both sides, though the Jewish ones were far more effective, well-trained, and well-funded) that exploited those conflicts for escalation does not deny that the conflict already existed.

I would also argue that imposing the jizya/dhimmi status, creating "second class citizen status" for non-Muslims was, in and of itself, a form of Muslim-supremacist society in Palestine before Israel existed. Either convert to being a Muslim, or be stuck as a second-class citizen.
by bdangubic | 2026-01-01 15:21:24+00:00
my best friend had kids before me and told me something before I had kids that changed my life forever - “I was here first and I have my life, the kids need to adapt to my life just as much as I have to adapt to theirs.” I have followed this mantra for the past 12 years and I think both my life and my kids life is much better for it. I see too many parents turning their lives upside down after they became parents, I have not much at all. I am definitely more risk averse which is probably the biggest personal change I made but otherwise I do everything I’ve done before I became a parent and my kid has experienced extreme levels of boredom while waiting for me to finish what I am doing
by Jackblack1929 | 2026-01-01 15:22:20+00:00
Subsurface storage vaults for biogenic carbon is likely the most energy and cost efficient way to sequester carbon at this time. Wet vaults for biochar and dry vaults for carbon casting blocks are promising. These methods can help mitigate embodied emissions related to low carbon energy sources such as renewables and batteries. Also, it can buy time for concrete and steel to decarbonization while clean infrastructure scales. These carbon capture methods are modular, deployable across wide geographies, biomass agnostic, and have low energy inputs in comparison to DAC and point source capture. The trick will be avoiding land use diversion while maximizing photosynthesis across all not agricultural lands. This method can also be useful for carbon currency creation which I believe is a precursor for atmospheric GHG stabilization.
by NoImmatureAdHom | 2026-01-01 15:22:35+00:00
The president is a person and can make whatever proclamations he wants. Sometimes people will even do what he says! But the way the system works is:

- orange man makes dumb obviously unconstitutional proclamation about flag burning

- most likely nobody does anything about it, but if someone does there is a law suit

- the courts are like 'lol no'

- back to status quo ante
by themafia | 2026-01-01 15:22:38+00:00
Wouldn't the worse problem be that humans are consuming it first? These aren't "animal byproducts" it's food meant to be served to humans in restaurants who ended up discarding it.

In any case, it truly is part of several state laws, including where I grew up, in Minnesota. You wouldn't believe what they feed pigs back there. All kinds of expired foods, pastries, candies, and other convenience store fare. That's what the law is meant to cover, including, "discarded or unused restaurant food."
by llm_nerd | 2026-01-01 15:22:59+00:00
This system was originally built as a cheaper version of Iron Dome, useful against dumb, slow, predictable trajectory Hamas rockets. The new drone branding is a twist, but of course it's fully usable against things like the Iranian Shahed drones that are basically slow, prop driven cruise missiles.

If someone got close enough that a normal FPV drone like what is seen in Ukraine was in play, I don't think these laser stations would survive for long. Nape of the Earth followed by a barrage of very inexpensive exploding drones.
by thiago_fm | 2026-01-01 15:23:00+00:00
Meanwhile I like the optimization analysis, the initial assumptions are very wrong. I know the author mentioned that they are optimizing for stats + being resistant to other Pokémon types, but that analysis will lead to very bad results.

There are Pokémon with certain abilities or tricks that makes it much better than legendary ones, with certain move sequences that could wipe the entire other team.

There are also Pokémon with certain types that are actually good against what the 'data' would say otherwise.

Maybe the analysis could be better done if you instead analyzed matches data.

BTW, the way people pay Pokémon since many years is to also divide the Pokémon into tiers and in a competitive setting, you are only allowed to pick Pokémon from the same tier or lower. This adds another level of complexity.
by caspar | 2026-01-01 15:23:22+00:00
Unity is Unreal Engine's biggest competitor by far. Godot competes with Unity (mostly for 2D games) but is at least a decade off being any threat to Unreal.

So yes, funding Godot is A Nice Thing To Do but it also conveniently puts a bit of pressure on Unity, their biggest competitor, without impacting their own business.

Also, if you believe Matthew Ball's take[0] then Epic is all-in on fostering as many gamedev-ish creators as it can so that it can loop them all into making content for its metaverse later. As you alluded to, in the long term funding a FOSS game engine which is focused on ease of use helps that too.

[0]: https://www.matthewball.co/all/epicgamesprimermaster
by signal11 | 2026-01-01 15:23:39+00:00
Many people forget — Google once used to penalise sites with some abusive behaviours, so webmasters had a vested interest in having decent web pages if they wanted good rankings.

Somewhere along the line (when Prabhakar Raghavan was running search maybe?) that seems to have changed. Part of it might be cookie popups (thanks EU*). Part of it might be giving networks using Google’s own ad networks a free pass. In any case, webmasters had no reason to stop abusive/dark UX any more.

*This is not an anti-EU jab. It’s a jab at an inadequate technical measure. Given how many sites people visit, cookie consent popups do not provide informed consent, and further legitimise popups.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2026-01-01 15:25:09+00:00
> The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well.

Indeed. As I remarked last time (1) "it's long distance and can be rough seas" They get to pick a good time of year, but either route goes past places known for storms and shipwrecks in the winter (June to September). Would you choose to go via Cape Agulhas or around Cape Horn?

It would be annoying to be ready to deliver the ship, but due to schedule over-runs, to have to wait 4 months for the weather to improve.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832