MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dangus | 2026-01-25 00:44:21+00:00
No, not superficial at all. I brought up serious concerns along with a little fun bashing your project as AI slop because it is AI slop.

Your child wants to hear a story with grandma’s voice, then all of a sudden later they’ll be talking to real grandma as if she was really saying the things in the story. Grandma will have no recollection that she said any of those things because she wasn’t there and didn’t say them. Creepy stuff.

Psychologically I can’t see how introducing this element to a child could be a good thing.

Good point about story books. Anyone who wants to use this should just buy a quality book at their local bookstore or check one out at the library.

No one asked for this dystopian AI slop.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-25 00:44:55+00:00
"But also, surely, because it is fun. Plagiarism stories follow a perfect tragic arc: a flawed hero suffers a whopping comeuppance. It is a wonderful spectacle."

The so-called "tech" company, flawed hero?

It does not produce content, only intermediates access to it

Now it can produce content

But to create a system to do produce content, "Generative AI", the so-called "tech" companies needed to use copyrighted material on massive scale without a license

Was that use infringing. The courts will decide

The intermediary (middleman) companies no longer need longer need "user-generated content" to attract an audience

Of course they will still intermediate and hoover up data from anyone that uses their software, which generally they can use for any purpose
by jkubicek | 2026-01-25 00:45:05+00:00
> what the contingency plans are if new work is discovered (reducing specific scope, moving more people (who are hopefully somewhat ramped up), moving out timelines)

I think this is the most important. You can't just HAVE contingency plans, but you need to be clear in who you need to get approval / sign-off on those contingency plans and who you need to notify. As a developer, knowing that you're going to need to drop Feature B to hit your deadline, but being unable to get the right people to approve dropping Feature B is endlessly frustrating and a massive waste of time on any project.
by Bender | 2026-01-25 00:45:13+00:00
And before that and before Trucrypt many used Jetico BestCrypt [1] not free... It can pretend the OS disk is invalid until a passphrase is typed. Only useful to fool smash-and-grab trash level thieves but I found it entertaining.

Either way once the Windows OS volume is unlocked it's all moot. There are many other ways to access ones machine remotely such as pushing a targeted update to the specific machine OS agnostic but easiest on Windows as Windows update fires off all the time despite patches being on a specific Tuesday. This method applies to phones as well.

I think of disk encryption as a way of forcing low-level trash thieves to install their own OS or reinstall Windows using the embedded OEM key. Not perfect but just good enough. A physical tracker can help find the trash. An etcher can reduce the pawn value. "STOLEN FROM NAME, CITY, STATE". That method forced some coworkers to return tech books when their kids asked, "Why does your book say STOLEN FROM (my name)".

I think it's best to monitor ones hardware with hidden cameras and motion sensors. Remote monitoring of such a system can enable someone to make remote decisions.

[1] - https://jetico.com/data-encryption/encrypt-hard-drives-bestc...
by Mordisquitos | 2026-01-25 00:45:39+00:00
To clarify, that sentence is not from a Spanish translation of the Tao Te Ching; it is a fragment of Antonio Machado's poem 'Caminante no hay camino':

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
by scrubs | 2026-01-25 00:45:40+00:00
In near term you are mostly ie 85% right. And yet the time will come when they'll have to choose between themselves and Trump in the 2026 and 2028 elections. Meanwhile, I think a lot of Republicans simply don't know how to handle this and by inertia do nothing out of cowardice.

Now this situation is complicated. Take the border. The dems (plus cnn, ms-now) cannot bring themselves to say: illegal immigrants must be deported, and those adjudicated in court ordered to leave but didn't must be deported. That kind of stupidy doesn't help force Republicans to get a backbone as it may keep the voting public somewhat on trump side, which happened on 2024.

At the same time ICE's execution is so piss-poor including ignoring habius corps, ignoring court orders, snd killing US citizens Republicans without backbone cannot delay their reckoning overly long.

Indeed republican congressman are uniquely positioned to effect law+funding to deport lawfully, to require operational control at the border, and to mark off limits those that are here legally and do something about the multi-year backlog in cases. And importantly hold the executive branch in check.
by panarky | 2026-01-25 00:46:26+00:00
This is straight-up Baudrillard simulacra/simulation.

The moment you say "Dao" (or "Agile", or "methodology"), you've already moved from the thing-in-itself to a sign living inside a sign system. That sign can be useful, but it can't be identical to what it points at.

> “The Agile that can be PM’d is not Agile.”

That’s exactly the stages of simulacra in miniature:

- Faithful copy: "Agile" names a set of lived practices that correspond to reality.

- Masks/denatures: cargo-cult rituals distort it (standups-as-status-reporting).

- Masks absence: the org performs Agile theater to hide that genuine agility is gone.

- Pure simulacrum: "Agile" becomes a self-referential brand/signifier (certs, metrics, tooling) that relates primarily to other signs ("Agile maturity model", "story points velocity"), not to any actual working output.
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-25 00:46:43+00:00
The thing is, none of this is really better than any of the simpler systems in terms of use.

If you are required to pay attention most of the time, it defeats the purpose of self driving. Most humans can perform very complex tasks while keeping a car in lane, and adaptive cruise control is nothing new.

Also, being in my coworkers/friends Teslas that are using Autopilot, it almost seems like there is more cognitive load in using it in crowded areas, because you have to be very attentive to catch a disengagement.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-25 00:46:55+00:00
> So the PM must have the velocity of the team to be able to estimate timescales for the project, which is what they care about, and this velocity metric is only as good as the estimation of complexity points of a team?

Basically, yup. It takes a few sprints to start to establish a meaningfully reliable sense of velocity, and the estimation accuracy is why planning poker takes a couple of hours of real discussion over feature complexity, rather than just a few minutes of superficial guesses. But the end result is a far more accurate ability to estimate what a team can reliably deliver in a sprint, and is really good at bringing stakeholders down to earth in terms of what can actually realistically be delivered.

> Seems a bit ironic that complexity doesn't measure time but then we are measuring how much complexity can someone deliver on average on a given time.

What's ironic? And no, it's not about "someone", it's about the the team. Different people on the team will be able to deliver different numbers of points depending on their skill, experience, etc.

> Isn't complexity directly proportional to uncertainty factors

Yes, this is explicitly part of it.

> and therefore inversely proportional to confidence of time to completion?

Yes, which is precisely why stories over a certain size are disallowed (the feature must be broken up into parts), and why sprints are measured in a very small number of weeks -- to avoid the accumulation of too much uncertainty.
by bojan | 2026-01-25 00:47:07+00:00
> while Europe is many different countries that are completely different.

I've always found this a weird take. European (EU) countries are more similar to each other than any country outside of Europe is to any European country.

In your example, if you drive two hours to Germany or Czechia, your car will still be insured, all your bank cards will still work, the price of your mobile phone service stays the same, you'll have a good idea how health and employment systems work, and the chances are you'll be able to talk to people in English.

It remains true that the barriers the businesses face are higher, but that's not what your example was about.
by busyant | 2026-01-25 00:47:22+00:00
> Why is the focus on Minneapolis? Is it really the training ground for ICE?

Somalis and Ilhan Omar.

Was talking to a Unitarian Universalist minister recently. He says his life is pretty much dealing with immigration issues for the past year.

He said there is considerable 'chatter' that the next significant target will be Maine because there is a large-ish Somali community there.

I have no idea how reliable that chatter is, so take it as a piece of gossip on the internet.
by okanat | 2026-01-25 00:47:59+00:00
The big picture isn't that different in Europe. Most EU countries are also oligarchies, just with a lot more bloody histories and national traumas. The social safety net is kept to the level of remembrance of those traumas. Once people start forgetting them, the oligarchs will take away the rights one by one.

The response to US betrayal is weak because our oligarchs own lots and lots of investments in the US. Our banks invest in US treasuries and especially in the US real estate market. They then leverage those US investments against normal people in the EU and consolidate more and more power (and assets) and blame normal people for not having investments or not working enough. They are the ones who take away EU GDP and park it in US investment tools. Forming businesses is more risky in many EU countries due to extremely conservative policies of those same banks who prefer US investments instead.
by tim333 | 2026-01-25 00:49:02+00:00
There was an interesting take from Garry Kasparov. Excerpts:

>what’s happening in Minnesota is method, not madness. Trump wants violence, to radicalize & divide, to create pretext for crackdowns.

>...Having lived through a similar, nationwide version of this in Trump's model, Putin's Russia, it’s not easy to fight against (https://x.com/Kasparov63/status/2015126502845587957)

I'm not American and not saying it's right or wrong but maybe?
by otterley | 2026-01-25 00:49:06+00:00
> At $WORK, a multi-billion company with tens of thousands of developers, we train people to never "click to accept", explaining it like "look, you wouldn't think of sitting down and signing a contract binding the whole MegaCorp; what make you think you can 'accept' something binding the company?"

That sounds pretty heavy-handed to me. Their lawyers almost certainly advised the company to do that--and I might, too, if I worked for them. But whether it's actually necessary to keep the company out of trouble....well, I'm not so sure. For example, Bob the retail assistant at the local clothing store couldn't bind his employer to a new jeans supplier contract, even if he tried. This sounds like one of those things you keep in your back pocket and take it out as a defense if someone decides to litigate over it. "Look, Your Honor, we trained our employees not to do that!"

At least with a mechanical agent, you can program it not to be even capable of accepting agreements on the principal's behalf.
by anonymous908213 | 2026-01-25 00:49:10+00:00
> Do you understand how your code gets translated down to C, assembly, machine code? How all that becomes electrical signals on a PCB? How the material properties work at the physical level and how its manufactured?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and not really but I would absolutely learn about it if I had any ability to control it. As it is, knowing more about material properties would not allow me to improve my programs, and I do not have a hardware foundry so it would not allow me to improve the hardware either. If I happened upon 1 trillion dollars or so, though, I would certainly invest time in learning all of the technical details of hardware manufacturing with the goal of creating a better hardware stack than the ones that we currently have available to us.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-25 00:49:19+00:00
Error bars are complicated, and who's to say how large they should be? It winds up being a lot of pointless arguing over arbitrary precision.

The Fibonnaci sequence of point values has wound up just being a lot simpler for most people, as it encapsulates both size and error, since error tends to grow proportionally with size.

I.e. nobody is arguing over whether it's 10h +/- 1h, versus 12h +/- 1h, versus 12h +/- 2h, versus 11h +/- 3h. It's all just 5 points, or else 8 points, or else 13 points. It avoids discussion over any more precision than is actually reliably meaningful.
by tchalla | 2026-01-25 00:49:19+00:00
I don’t understand your question. I’m assuming you are asking about the part “Europe deserves”. It’s simple really - for decades now Europe has been relying on US for military support. It’s a cardinal sin to do so if one wants an equivalent seat at the negotiating table. But the EU just can’t agree amongst themselves. Mercosur takes 30 years, India defence agreement has taken 20. The warning signs were there during 2016 but conveniently brushed. EU either acts together for the common good even if they don’t like something or continues to be bureaucratic, irrelevant old person. It’s slow agony at the moment.
by TheAlchemist | 2026-01-25 00:49:47+00:00
Americans, where will you realize that the longer you wait, the worse it will get ? The whole country should be in the streets now. You guys are fast tracking your way into a dictatorship, and unfortunately you may drag the entire Western world with you.

The videos from this are numerous and very clear about what happened. And yet, all the officials are telling that a guy is a domestic terrorist and approached ICE officers with a gun, with intent to kill them. How crazy is that ? And if they do this in cases where everything is filmed, you can only imagine what's happening behind the scenes.
by Nextgrid | 2026-01-25 00:50:08+00:00
The main vulnerability of the Western world isn't technical, it's that we voluntarily surrendered our communication and social fabrics to advertising-driven businesses that will happily host and promote anything as long as it generates engagement. This makes it trivial for foreign agents to sway public opinion where as back in the day influencing media required actual capital and connections.

Unfortunately, a lot of our own people (and especially politicians) make money out of this situation so there's very little incentive to change this. Just look at the reaction every time regulations designed to curtail Big Tech ad-driven monopolies (EU DMA, GDPR, etc) are discussed. Our greed is what makes us vulnerable.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-25 00:50:28+00:00
> Do you feel equally strongly about people using drives that can fail? Is selling a computer without redundant drives also borderline malicious?

No. Drives wear out and fail, like all hardware. Much like the compressor in your fridge, or V-belt in your car, you can extend the service life of your drive through proper care, and replace it when it fails to keep the system running. And in practice, hard drives are reliable enough that, with typical usage patterns, most people don't need RAID).

And, much like with fridges and cars, computers and their parts are subject to both market forces and (in more civilized places) consumer protection laws, which ensure computer hardware meets the usual, reasonable expectations of the common person.

> To accounts there is. But data gets lost all the time.

Data loss still happens, which kind of proves my point - computers are hard, and normal people can't even be expected to back things up properly. That's why every commercial PC and mobile OS vendor these days is pushing automated off-site backups using their cloud offerings. Might not be ideal, and even might be a tad anti-competitive, but it's a good deal for 99% of the users.

But this brings me back to my other pet peeve: 2FA, via authenticator apps, passkeys, and other such things that tie your credentials to a device via magic crypto keys. These crypto keys are data, and given how tech companies get away with having no actual customer support, 2FA ends up turning data loss into account access loss.

Mandatory 2FA is a trap, a time ticking bomb, because it's way too easy to make a mistake and lose the keys - and if the backend follows the current High Security Standards, this is irreversible even from the vendor side.

Compare that to expectations people have about the real world - if you lose all your keys to your home or your car, you... just go to a locksmith and show some plausible proof of ownership, and they'll legally break in and replace the locks for you. If you can't produce a plausible proof of ownership, you involve police in the process. And so on. There's always a recovery path.
by Marsymars | 2026-01-25 00:51:07+00:00
I wonder about difference in experience that different people have with gmail’s spam filter. In my case, the majority of emails that go to my gmail spam folder are legitimate. I don’t actually receive much spam, a single-digit number of emails per month (in the past 30 days, 2 emails), so any time I see anything in my spam folder I have to check so that I can rescue the email if legitimate.
by netsharc | 2026-01-25 00:51:19+00:00
It's fascinating to learn how IBM, Hugo Boss, or BMW could've been involved with the Nazis, by watching the present day: Just look at how Zuck, Bezos, Google's CEO were at the front row of the Trump inauguration and surrendered before even a fight, because hey, "I need to deliver value to my stockholders!", or in the case of Zuck I think it's more "Gotta make sure I stay in the 3-commas-club!".

Meanwhile there's a flagged to death comment about policing the border and illegal immigrants. Oh yeah, the 2 year old "illegal immigrant", he's out to take your job!
by blurbleblurble | 2026-01-25 00:52:05+00:00
That's right. What you don't understand is that we must and can only move in resonance with our understanding and with the mass and momentum we are capable of. It's painfully slow, I know. Please be encouraging. We are being harassed by the "commander" of the (formerly) most powerful military in the world. He is a psychopath nobody can deny.

We MUST find our power and our power is NOT violence. But our power is MORE POWERFUL THAN VIOLENCE.

And when as you find it I hope you will see it in you and your people and realize that you too had it all along.
by magicmicah85 | 2026-01-25 00:52:41+00:00
When I want to learn code or understand a new architecture, I stick at stage 1. When I want to validate an idea, stage 5 and beyond makes perfect sense to go YOLO. I might have to try one of these orchestrators one day, but only when I'm regularly getting stopped cause I've hit my credit limit. For my current usage, I'm pretty happy where I'm at.
by teraflop | 2026-01-25 00:52:45+00:00
I don't really understand what you mean by this or how it relates to what I said.

I certainly wasn't suggesting that you can vertically scale a service to handle unlimited traffic on a single instance.

The point is that if you have stateless services, where the resources being consumed per request are mainly CPU and network bandwidth, then "scaling independently" is not a useful thing to do. You can just scale everything instead of artificially restricting which instances can handle which kinds of requests.
by ryan_n | 2026-01-25 00:53:16+00:00
I dont think parent comment was being petty. Not understanding what agents write, especially in larger and/or more complex code bases is a valid thing to be concerned about. It's not really about understanding assembly or machine code, and I think more about really understanding your code and how things fit together. That way when something goes wrong you have an idea of how to fix it.

"I dont write code anymore I just review what Claude Code writes" is, unfortunately, not a unique way to view coding with agents. About a million people have discussed it like this in the past year or so.
by madhadron | 2026-01-25 00:54:17+00:00
This seems overly pessimistic. We regularly engage with other cultures and their texts and understand them, and, yes, it takes time and knowledge of context to do so. Someone needs to explain quite a bit about Roman society under Augustus for you to understand what is going on in detail in Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia. The Tao te Ching suffers from being written in a style that was very much for people in the know in a certain milieu, limited texts, and a huge amount of cultural baggage on top. The most interesting recent scholarly translation I know of is by Victor Mair, of a different, recently discovered text, and his contention is that the book is a 'mirror for princes' and not a mystical text at all.

> they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means

I don't think anyone is particularly fighting over what it means, just how to translate it when there isn't a parallel in modern English. My personal favorite is a translation that opens with 'Bro!'.
by Guid_NewGuid | 2026-01-25 00:54:18+00:00
This site has always been easy to co-opt to fascism with their supposedly apolitical outlook. Flagging from unknown accounts easily kills stories of importance, even where they have relation to the supposed interests of the site. Such as the AI altered image being posted by the White House this week.

The idea we have to treat arguments in good faith like the other user in this story excusing fascist death squads show how well this moderation approach aligns with the Thiel-ite sympathies.
by acdha | 2026-01-25 00:54:21+00:00
Think about why the administration and its backers lie so frequently: they know they’re lying, and they know that evidence will come out showing that they’re lying, but they’re gambling on a lot of people being busy and not following the story closely enough to realize how misleading the initial claims were.

They do that because their policies are unpopular and they would lose power if most people voted. That’s why these videos matter: it’s probably not going to convince the MAGA diehards to recant but they’re shocking enough that anyone more patriotic than that might realize that this is far more than normal politics.
by CqtGLRGcukpy | 2026-01-25 00:54:53+00:00
Tiktok.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-beaches-blame-brett-vira...

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/tiktok-video-app-g...

https://blog.symphonic.com/2025/09/11/how-to-make-money-on-t...

https://routenote.com/blog/tiktok-has-the-power-to-make-arti...
by 12_throw_away | 2026-01-25 00:55:32+00:00
> micro services could actually live up to the promises if you follow ALL the rules religiously.

To be fair, I think this is true of nearly everything (well, except maybe Agile). Like, yeah, a monoliths work great IF you rigorously follow software engineering best practices about isolation, coupling, concurrency, and overall project organization ... but in real life they usually turn into a tangled mess of broken abstraction boundaries and encapsulation-breaking hacks.

(that said I'd still much rather untangle and refactor a poorly organized monolith than a mush of poorly factored microservices )
by shiveenp | 2026-01-25 00:55:40+00:00
I don’t understand the kind of mentality that takes to put out genuine slop like this. Use the LLM or the agents or the fancy way to call a markdown file a skill to do your job; but stop pretending that it makes you in any way exceptional.

The whole post says nothing, seems AI generated itself and on top of that, adds nothing of value - simply exists to increase the entropy in the world.