MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-22 17:32:22+00:00
While converting it is not economical, class c office space (which is least desirable) demand is probably gone in this market due to lackluster demand for office space; the value of the building will get zeroed out by the market, at which point it can trade hands, be demo'd, and new residential can go up in its place.

You can think of class c office space, broadly speaking, as oil wells that have very little life left, and get bought up by folks who intend to extract the cashflow until they dump the externality on the public government and taxpayers (like abandoned shopping malls).

A recent example in St Louis is the AT&T office tower [1] [2].

[1] One of St. Louis’ tallest office towers, empty for years, sells for less than 2% of its peak price - https://www.costar.com/article/642008108/one-of-st-louis-tal... - April 10th, 2024 ("Goldman Group buys 44-story former AT&T office tower for $3.6 Million")

[2] St. Louis office vacancy hits all-time high [21.2%] as major companies downsize their footprints - https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/15/office-v... - January 16th, 2026

(conversions when the economics pencil out, haircuts for investors when they don't and more investment is needed to wholesale replace a structure)

US office vacancy rates chart supposedly pulled from Moody's: https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1p8mhmq/us_office_v...
by tialaramex | 2026-01-22 17:32:41+00:00
To me "a bunch" is when it'd be tedious to list them. For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none. Canada as a whole isn't in that place yet, though it doesn't have plans to build more of these plants and they will gradually reach end of life or transition to burning something else.

Coal isn't one of the "convenient" fossil fuels where you might choose to run electrical generation off this fuel rather than figure out how to deliver electricity to a remote site, coal is bulky and annoying. Amundsen Scott (the permanent base at the South Pole, IMO definition of remote) runs on JP-8 (ie basically kerosene, jet fuel), some places use gasoline or LNG. I don't expect hold outs in terms of practicality for coal, it's just about political will.
by hexbin010 | 2026-01-22 17:32:47+00:00
The UK will perpetually have "issues" that lead to higher pricing. We just put up and pay. It is unspoken energy policy to be expensive

Oh no we messed up nuclear oops sorry made it very expensive. Pay up

Oops sorry we messed up transmission pay up

Oops sorry we let people get into huge energy debt pls pay off their debt in your bill...
by micromacrofoot | 2026-01-22 17:32:48+00:00
A lot of prolific artists historically have passed their own work off to apprentices (for hundreds of years), and there's probably not much different here.

This frees the lead artist up for more conceptual work. AI can potentially carry on this tradition, and at less of an expense.

The truth of many great artists is that they needed to produce a lot more work than they'd have liked to make a living for themselves.
by striking | 2026-01-22 17:32:55+00:00
That's all the better for a cause that needs attention. If everyone's to one side then the conversation quickly dies out, while if something is contentious there will be two or more parties keeping it alive.

A protest doesn't need to be perfect and it shouldn't convince everyone who sees it in one shot. A protest that causes outrage is much more effective at reaching whoever it needs to reach.
by mothballed | 2026-01-22 17:33:03+00:00
There's already enough plumbing in there for a whole office to shit when they get to the office.

History favors the bold, and code inspectors blabbering about "written in blood" don't see all the homeless people they kill via reduced access to housing.

I've seen plenty of artist collectives that manage it; on paper they are office/industrial but actually everyone lives there. Every once in awhile one burns down but the mortality rate isn't as high as living on the streets which is ultimately what happens to those on the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid when the ones higher up push the ones under them down a rung to snag housing.
by boredtofears | 2026-01-22 17:33:16+00:00
Yeah, I kinda stopped involving myself in other people's OSS projects a while ago for that reason. If I have an itch to scratch, I just use my fork. It usually feels like my itch isn't theirs and I always feel like I'm imposing on the maintainer's vision or at best just taking time away from them. I think maintainers have a lot of pressure to accept things because "open source!".
by zdragnar | 2026-01-22 17:33:19+00:00
Honestly, in my experience the original stuff largely disappeared. I vaguely remember watching some of it back in the early 90's, but never in school. The holiday specials would be on TV if you went looking for them, but that's about it.

Snoopy was more ensuring than Charlie Brown, but even that was more "cute cartoon" than anything to do with any message.

Edit: I see some sibling comments that it's making a comeback, though I've no idea if any of it is all that faithful to the original.

Charlie Brown had a lot of Christian messaging reflecting Schultz's devout beliefs, and I doubt any of that will show up in whatever Apple and Target and current schools are putting together.
by svat | 2026-01-22 17:33:22+00:00
OP here (though I don't claim any special insight, as I said).

It would be interesting to consider the differences between the Charlie Brown and Arthur Dent character archetypes.

One difference seems to me exactly the undying earnestness and optimism you mentioned: in a way, Charlie Brown and other American characters like him are simply not touched by failure (even if bad things happen to them), because of their optimism[1]. This makes them lovable: we appreciate them for this quality that we (most of the audience) do not have.

[1]: (or lack of self-awareness, in some other cases mentioned here like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin)

Arthur Dent, on the other hand, is not gifted with undying optimism. He's constantly moaning about things, starting with his house and his planet being destroyed. This makes him relatable more than lovable: he's not a “lovable loser” (and for the right audience, does not seem a “loser” at all), he is just us, “my kind of guy” — we feel kinship rather than appreciation. We relate to the moaning, whereas if Charlie Brown were to lose his optimism (or if Homer were to say "D'oh!" to complain about big things in life rather than hurting his thumb or whatever), they would become less endearing American institutions IMO. (And if Arthur Dent were to remain unfailingly optimistic… he'd be different.)
by seanmcdirmid | 2026-01-22 17:33:27+00:00
> It will also funnel large amounts of revenue out of every city into SF.

Why SF? Does Google even still have an engineering office in the city? Alphabet is a publicly traded company with employees all over the USA and the world, even if you said the money would be funneled into Mountain View you'd be incorrect. The money will be funneled into 401Ks would be more accurate, and a lot of snowbirds in Florida are living off of their 401Ks and stock investments (which probably have a lot of Alphabet in them), so it is definitely something for Florida.

But I think your point is that gig workers won't be making the money anymore. That's definitely true. That is just like when loom machines took money away from weavers back in the 19th century, or computers took money away from typists/secretaries in the 20th century. We should carefully consider whether or not that is a net good for society.
by closewith | 2026-01-22 17:34:12+00:00
> Or, you could have a central, federally run organization that takes responsibility for delivering sealed ballots to the respective states in a timely manner. Which is what we call voting by mail.

No, postal voting is not the same as bringing ballot boxes to voters in exceptional circumstances and does not have the same set of tradeoffs. Postal voting in particular certainly does not solve the voter manipulation problem.

The fact that so many other countries manage to actually provide ballot boxes to all voters, even to voters in much more remote scenarios than US military service and countries with far fewer resources means that the US has no excuses.
by giancarlostoro | 2026-01-22 17:34:35+00:00
From the perspective of competing against China in terms of AI the argument against open models makes sense to me. It’s a terrible problem to have really. Ideally we should all be able to work together in the sandbox towards a better tomorrow but thats not reality.

I prefer to have more open models. On the other hand China closes up their open models once they start to show a competitive edge.
by deivid | 2026-01-22 17:34:43+00:00
Unikraft is cool, I still have it in my 'todo' list to play around with sometime.

Linking the app with the 'kernel' seems pretty nice, would be cool to see what that looks like for a virtio-only environment.

Just wanted to point out that the 150ms is not snapshot based, you can get <10ms for small vms (128MB ram, 2GB ram moves you to ~15ms range), for 'cold' boots.
by spijdar | 2026-01-22 17:34:43+00:00
This isn't really my arena, but I did happen to recently compare the implementation of ReactOS's RTL (Run Time Library) path routines [0] with Wine's implementation [1].

ReactOS covers a lot more of the Windows API than Wine does (3x the line count and defines a lot more routines like 'RtlDoesFileExists_UstrEx'). Now, this is not supposed to be a public API and should only be used by Windows internally, as I understand it.

But it is an example of where ReactOS covers a lot more API than Wine does or probably ever will, by design. To whom (if anyone) this matters, I'm not sure.

[0] https://github.com/reactos/reactos/blob/master/sdk/lib/rtl/p...

[1] https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/master/dlls/ntdll/p...
by jeffwask | 2026-01-22 17:34:50+00:00
This is why we are seeing a resurgence of Double A with games like Expedition 33 taking the limelight because art does not thrive under corporate control. I'm old enough to have seen this cycle of birth and death of studios a few times already.

They start of making cool things, get acquired, get forced to make profitable things that aren't necessarily good, the talent that built the place fucks off, and you are left with a name and a factory of devs who have no agency, and the studio eventually dies.
by jsolson | 2026-01-22 17:35:02+00:00
Columbo is anything but a failure, though, and the audience knows that. His genius is leveraging humility to convince killers that he's a bumbling idiot, while in reality he's onto them from the first encounter.

_Slow Horses_ came up in another thread. I'd argue that Columbo has more in common with Jackson Lamb than with Charlie Brown.
by vel0city | 2026-01-22 17:35:09+00:00
Another thing about a lot of commercial buildings is the floorplate size and layout. Office buildings often don't care if there's a lot of interior spaces without any windows, but people need outside light. So if you've got a massive floorplate it can be kind of a pain chopping it up into good sized units that meet the demand of the residential market in the area. This definitely varies from building to building though.

There's also a lot of work that probably needs to go in to the ventilation and fire code changes. An office building isn't designed for people having ovens and stoves. It also often just assumes its OK to have less isolation between units for the ventilation, or previously entire floors were considered to be one space ventilation-wise but now you might be trying to split it into 2-3 units that require separation. This separation can also complicate things like AC and heat.

The ventilation issue comes up a good bit with a lot of these poorly done conversions. You end up with units that just don't get nearly enough airflow, and all the windows are sealed so its not like one can just open the window to get more air.
by btmiller | 2026-01-22 17:35:49+00:00
I’m skeptical. Is the presence of a human driver keeping you from using Uber/Lyft/taxis more than you currently are? Why would you think removing a driver will lead to more ride share trips? Capitalism is going to do its thing, so between the touted benefits of driverless ride shares and capitalist economics, could you please explain how exactly our city landscapes, namely parking lots, will be revolutionized in any way, shape, or form other than zombie lots occupied Waymos endlessly arranging and charging themselves? Forgive my cynicism, it feels like I’ve seen this how this dream turns out many times before.
by xnx | 2026-01-22 17:35:52+00:00
> It should be significantly less to the point it drives Uber out of business.

Prices are rarely based on cost, and more often based on what a customer is willing to pay. Waymo is a better experience than Uber (predictable, safe, clean, quiet, etc.), so it makes sense people would be willing to pay more.

> Is Waymo close to bankruptcy, unable to be profitable, or are they just greedy?

No x 3
by boringg | 2026-01-22 17:36:06+00:00
I don't disagree but the major energy being exported is from hydro or nuclear. It isn't coming off rooftop even at the margins. Rooftop solar is purely residential play.

If you are trying to argue that in aggregate the demand for energy in canada drops because of high adoption of residential solar which then passes off clean energy to the US - its a reach. Also the amount of individual infra for each small residential asset is probably not particularly great return on investment - would be better to do as large deployments.
by BugsJustFindMe | 2026-01-22 17:36:22+00:00
That's irrelevant and for the person to manage for themself like everything else in life. Working for stock options also involves risk, and people still do it all the time and nobody says that it's not compensation.

> If you release something to the world and place yourself in a high-visibility maintainer position, burn out on it and then decide to drop it, it's very hard to ensure that your legacy and reputation in perpetuity will be "released something great and did the world a solid by maintaining it for a while" as opposed to "person who overcommits, bails, and leaves the world in a jam".

This is like saying you suffer reputational damage by retiring from a career. The claim is absurd. It's not hard to step down from leading a project in a way that preserves reputation in the same way that it's not hard to leave a company without burning bridges. Some people are bad at being people and fail at both. That's not the same thing.
by jesse__ | 2026-01-22 17:36:24+00:00
> Slop vs. Art

> If you can push a button and get content, then that content is a commodity. Its value is next to zero.

> Counterintuitively, that’s my biggest reason to be optimistic about AI and creativity. When hard parts become easy, the differentiator becomes love.

Love that. I've been struggling to succinctly put that feeling into words, bravo.
by SamPatt | 2026-01-22 17:36:32+00:00
>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me.

That's because you're rich like most people on HN.

Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again.

A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their energy usage is renewable.
by vel0city | 2026-01-22 17:36:36+00:00
For a lot of the office buildings I've been in, there aren't that many toilets per floor. Its also different when you've got some toilets that are often unused compared to people running laundry, cooking, bathing, etc. Very different demands on the plumbing system.

You also then had everything pretty much isolated to two rooms for an entire floor meanwhile now every unit is going to have a separate kitchen, a bathroom (or two, or three), a laundry room, etc.

And you're going to need a good bit of engineering studies done before you start cutting that many holes in the floor.
by linuxhiker | 2026-01-22 17:36:45+00:00
The Call for Papers is from:

Thursday, October 9. 2025 until Friday, January 30. 2026.

Your proposal is expected to be reviewed before:

Friday, February 6. 2026.

We have 6 tracks:

Postgres Extensions Day: Dedicated to developers building and maintaining PostgreSQL extensions. Share your work, learn from others, and connect with the extensions community.

Dev: Application development with PostgreSQL. Topics include using extensions like pg_vector for enhanced search performance, creating custom data types, building applications, and leveraging PostgreSQL features in your development workflow.

Ops: Operational practices for PostgreSQL and related technologies. Covers deployment, monitoring, performance tuning, backup strategies, high availability, replication, and infrastructure management.

Essentials: Deep dives into core PostgreSQL functionality. Explore data types, built-in features, query optimization, indexing strategies, and fundamental concepts. If it’s in the documentation or should be, this track explores it thoroughly. Core PostgreSQL knowledge that provides long-term career value.

Life and Fun: Nothing about Postgres goes here. Non-technical topics that make us human. Share your hobbies, side projects, and interests outside of databases. Topics include beekeeping, gardening, homesteading, solar projects, IoT experiments, mountain biking, camping, and anything else that brings you joy.

Professional Development & Wellness: Career growth and personal well-being. Topics include career advancement, managing burnout, work-life integration, mental health, communication skills, leadership development, and building sustainable careers in technology.
by anon291 | 2026-01-22 17:37:01+00:00
Again, misconceptions abound. US elections are run by bureaucrats with an elected head. There are consistent rules across the entire state for all elections, with some federal oversight. Scrutineers are appointed by both parties, but also from members of the public.

Like... what do you think American elections are actually like? Do you think some democrat/republican counts them in secret somewhere?
by treis | 2026-01-22 17:37:07+00:00
I think the pie will grow more than Waymo takes out. Stuff like a plumber realizing they're missing a part. What might be a trip to the supply house can be a self driving delivery instead.

Either way, it's not all that much different. Most of the money spent on getting around a city goes elsewhere through vehicle and gas purchases. Adding the cost of self driving to that probably won't move the needle all that much.
by dbspin | 2026-01-22 17:37:09+00:00
David Brent is poisonous, and indeed hatable. The point of the British version of the show is not that he's more tolerable or likeable to the British. If anything it's more pointed how awful he is this side of the water, given the preponderance of bosses exactly like this. What makes the show work in the UK (and Ireland), is a greater cultural willingness to see the worst aspects of reality reflected in entertainment. Versus the focus on escapism in even the most grim US television - i.e.: Tony Soprano is a monster, but he also has charisma and glamour. Walter White is dying and becoming more and more amoral, but he also goes from being a dork to a badass. Both characters are utter glamorisations of what their real life counterparts would be like. Along with the surrealism there's a genuine existentialism to the darkest of UK comedy - from early Alan Partridge to Nighty Night. An actual interest in examining the nature of cruelty and suffering.
by dns_snek | 2026-01-22 17:37:14+00:00
> Why aught there be an exception for academics?

I didn't ask for an "exception" in terms of knowledge, I pointed out a bias in favor of one specific type of assessment. I didn't do great on verbal exams but I could run circles around other people when it came to more hands-on assessments that required a deeper understanding of the material and applying it in practice.

A surgeon is a perfect example. Before you trust your life to someone, would you rather find out their grades on verbal assessments in med school or do you prefer to see their patient outcome statistics?

When hiring a software developer would you rather verbally quiz them on theoretical knowledge of SOLID and TDD or would you rather see their code and work history?

> Do you want your lawyer or surgeon to have performance anxiety? This seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to filter out on.

As a client you can do whatever you want, but that's not the goal of educational institutions. It's antithetical to their goals unless you subscribe to the cynical belief that schools only exist to produce easily replaceable, obedient, compliant workers.

[And reading your other comment, this indeed seems to be your view.]
by javier123454321 | 2026-01-22 17:38:00+00:00
This is terrifying. With this and z-image-turbo, we've crossed a chasm. And a very deep one. We are currently protected by screens, we can, and should assume everything behind a screen is fake unless rigorously (and systematically, i.e. cryptographically) proven otherwise. We're sleepwalking into this, not enough people know about it.
by LinuxAmbulance | 2026-01-22 17:38:08+00:00
The MoMA has some of the best art pieces I've seen out of the hundred plus museums I've been to.

It also has by far some of the absolute worst art pieces I've seen in my life - in person, or otherwise. One of them was literally a pile of trash.

I used to think that art shouldn't have any gatekeepers, but I've begun to wonder if maybe it should.
by eigenspace | 2026-01-22 17:38:37+00:00
Focusing on Solar+Battery is only effective when the solar is not accounting for a majority of electricity generation (at least in geographies significantly north of the tropics). The problem is that while the sun shines, solar will drive everyone else out of business, but then leaves you stranded in the winter, and no practical amount of electricity storage will save you.

Fortunately, wind energy generation also exists, and is a nearly ideal complement to solar power, because it's nearly as cheap as solar, and its energy peaks are mostly anti-correlated with solar energy peaks (typically the winter and sunset are the windiest parts of the year / day).

Wind's main problem is that it's more reliant on large scale projects (rather than solar which scales all the way from a pocket calculator to an installation the size of city), and wind is also more susceptible to regulatory / NIMBY sabotage than solar.

Especially with China currently flooding the market with cheap solar and batteries, I think it makes sense for governments to focus much more of their attention and efforts on promoting (or at least getting out of the way of) wind projects, and let the market drive solar adoption.