MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by simonw | 2026-01-23 14:23:56+00:00
I've been calling LLMs "electric bicycles for the mind", inspired by that Jobs quote.

- some bicycle purists consider electric bicycles to be "cheating"

- you get less exercise from an electric bicycle

- they can get you places really effectively!

- if you don't know how to ride a bicycle an electric bicycle is going to quickly lead you to an accident
by pzmarzly | 2026-01-23 14:24:16+00:00
Docker, or rather containerd, still has better plugin ecosystem around it. Unregistry https://github.com/psviderski/unregistry, Nydus https://github.com/dragonflyoss/nydus, all the different "snapshotters" (storage formats), or the utils for sharing NVIDIA GPUs with containers, etc.

The gap with Podman is closing though, and most users don't need any of these in the first place.
by snarf21 | 2026-01-23 14:24:43+00:00
Some of this "I can do it for free" stuff gives me the vibes of people who monitor gas prices every day. Only to drive 10 miles out of their way to save $0.30 a gallon filing their 15 gallon tank ($4.50 savings - $2.00 gas used - $X for time). They probably also buy an overpriced drink/snack for a net negative value proposition even if time is free.

Some of these things are the feeling of "getting a deal" or "screwing the system" and people can spend their time in whatever way brings them joy. I don't want to be a "markdown editor app developer" or whatever and would rather work on more creative endeavors. In the end, we give our time to get money and then trade our money for time but time is our only limited resource.
by dgacmu | 2026-01-23 14:24:45+00:00
The thing that gets me is the assumption that we're not complex creatures who might each value different things at different times and in different contexts.

As for me, sometimes I code because I want something to do a specific thing, and I honestly couldn't be bothered to care how it happens.

Sometimes I code because I want something to work a very specific way or to learn how to make something work better, and I want to have my brain so deep in a chunk of code I can see it in my sleep.

Sometimes the creative expression is in the 'what' - one of my little startup tasks these days is experimenting with UI designs for helping a human get a task done as efficiently as possible. Sometimes it's in the 'how' - implementing the backend to that thing to be ridiculously fast and efficient. Sometimes it's both and sometimes it's neither!

A beautiful thing about code is that it can be a tool and it can be an expressive medium that scratches our urge to create and dive into things, or it can be both at the same time. Code is the most flexible substance on earth, for good and for creating incredible messes.
by jsw97 | 2026-01-23 14:25:39+00:00
This is scary and it affects the degree to which I invest in building Claude-specific tooling, either code or in my brain. You can never guarantee that a dangerously-skip-permissions session is going to stay on the rails, what flags it might trip while you're not looking.

I wonder if Anthropic realizes the chilling effect this kind of event has on developers. It's not just the ones who get locked out -- it's a cost for everybody, because we can't depend on the tool when it's doing precisely what it's best at.

Personally, I am already avoiding Gemini because a) I don't really understand their policy for training on your data; and b) if Google gets mad at me I lose my email. (Which the author also notes.)
by red-iron-pine | 2026-01-23 14:25:49+00:00
they're playing the long game and it's better to hold and not hold.

plus keep rents high and the handful of folks that really need it will pay it.

several cities get around this by having under-utilization taxes -- e.g. slap an extra 30% on any property in X neighborhoods that are empty or otherwise cannot prove 50% occupancy
by sjajshha | 2026-01-23 14:25:56+00:00
> People are happy to buy buggy products.

Western society falls apart when we compromise on quality. This kind of behavior is much more common in 3rd world countries. One of the key differentiators in western society is how much we value trust, and “doing the bare minimum to get it done” is low trust.

There’s more to it than that ofc, but blaming “the people” is wrong and will never fix things. Blame the people in power, the people making things, etc. The consumers don’t stand a chance.
by kranner | 2026-01-23 14:26:16+00:00
> My underlying point I left out is that I already understand most of the problems I’m trying to solve from a coding perspective

OK, in that case you make a fair point. I'm not averse to the typing autocompletion either. But most of the work I've been involved with has been research-oriented where the AI's offer to help solve the problem is neither welcome nor useful. So it's a different orientation altogether.
by xattt | 2026-01-23 14:26:17+00:00
One of the referenced articles is an even wilder read, just even from the title: “Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’” (1).

This research is more than deserving of the Ig Nobel.

(1) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3029360/
by Eingrand1978 | 2026-01-23 14:26:34+00:00
In the last HN thread from the article we shared on this topic, a bunch of folks argued that the “future” is treating Wi-Fi as untrusted—more like Starbucks/hotel Wi-Fi—and pushing trust decisions up to identity + app access (VPN/Zero Trust, encrypt everything, etc.). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42632356We took that idea and wrote a practical design note: run a single open SSID (prefer OWE + PMF + client isolation) for encrypted L2 transport, and use ZTNA to decide access per app/session, aiming to reduce VLAN/SSID sprawl and get consistent policy across guest/BYOD/managed devices.
If you’ve implemented something similar or are considering it, what are your thoughts on:
In an enterprise....would you actually go with open+OWE for Wi-Fi, or stick with 802.1X / WPA-Enterprise?
How do you handle the long tail of legacy devices and IoT?
What’s the failure mode you’d worry about most (visibility, incident response, roaming issues, support load, etc.)?
Thanks feedback would be much appreciated
by throw310822 | 2026-01-23 14:26:46+00:00
The horse metaphor would also do, but it's very tied to the current state of LLMs (which by the way is already far beyond what they were in 2024). It also doesn't capture that horses are what they are, they're not improving and certainly not by a factor of 10, 100 or 1000, while there is almost no limit to the amount of power that an engine can be built to produce. Horses (and oxen) have been available for thousands of years, and agriculture still needed to employ a large percentage of the population. This changed completely with the petrol engines.
by canibal | 2026-01-23 14:26:56+00:00
Am I missing something? This isn't what ssh's purpose is. Why should anyone care? We're talking about a game built to run over an encryption protocol? What are we even doing anymore? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but client-side option existing is secure design, really feels like it shouldn't be circumvented server-side without giving the client the choice to do so or not by default. Don't lobby for watering down security for convenience, especially for trivially important objectives, please?
by chuckadams | 2026-01-23 14:27:11+00:00
These are all dev environments running at the same time. I wasn't sure if Nix had some kind of port mapping or proxy config for this sort of thing. I'm still partial to having containers as self-contained build artifacts, I just like to have options as dev environments go, and "Docker from Nix" looks like the best option so far. But it's a vast ecosystem, and there's plenty I might be missing.
by IshKebab | 2026-01-23 14:27:36+00:00
Uhm no. Podman is a different product that is pretty much a drop-in replacement for Docker but lets you run as non-root.

You have to be root to set it up, but after that you don't need any special privileges. With Docker the only option is to basically give everyone root access.

It's true that it requires root for some setup though. Unclear if op was complaining about that.
by gruez | 2026-01-23 14:27:42+00:00
>>multi-account sync and scheduled sending

>I would expect such a feature to use end-to-end encryption for the data

How would "end-to-end encryption" when such features by definition require the server to have access to the credentials to perform the required operations? If by "end to end" you actually mean it's encrypted all the way to the server, that's just "encryption in transit".
by dralley | 2026-01-23 14:27:49+00:00
It didn't help them that they rejected the traditionally successful ways of monetizing open source software. Which is, selling support contracts to large corporate users.

Corporate customers didn't like the security implications of the Docker daemon running as root, they wanted better sandboxing and management (cgroups v2), wanted to be able to run their own internal registries, didn't want it to fight with systemd, etc.

Docker was not interested (in the early years) in adopting cgroups v2 or daemonless / rootless operation, and they wanted everyone to pay to use Dockerhub rather than running their own internal registries, so docker-cli didn't support alternate registries for a long long time. And it seemed like they disliked systemd for "ideological" reasons to an extent that they didn't make much effort to resolve the problems that would crop up between docker and systemd.

Because Docker didn't want to build the product that corporate customers wanted to use, and didn't accept patches when Red Hat tried to get them implemented those features themselves, eventually Red Hat just went out and built up Podman, Quay, and the entire ecosystem of tooling that those corporate customers wanted themselves (and sold it to them). That was a bit of an own goal.
by horsawlarway | 2026-01-23 14:27:50+00:00
Just to poke at this a bit -

Isn't this a bit like saying you love storytelling, but you don't value actually speaking the words?

Because this feels very close to skating across a line where you don't actually understand or value the real medium.

Basically - the architectural equivalent of this leads to things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

Where the architects are divorced from the actual construction, and the end result is genuinely terrible.
by gnosis67 | 2026-01-23 14:27:54+00:00
Fentanyl has been a significant instrument in the secret war. While sure, there are independent sources bringing the stuff from China and South America, the white terror cells have enough fentanyl stock piled in secret secure bunker safe houses all throughout America.

When I say “they have enough fentanyl stockpiles to kill every man woman and child in America ten times over”, the questioning layperson (white American male) says “why would they want to do that?” Hah. They don’t. The stuff is ridiculously cheap to make in vast quantities and they love Power.
by PaulHoule | 2026-01-23 14:28:06+00:00
I don't feel this way, but that's because I see them as the coding buddy I never had rather than a slave that knocks off tickets for me.

Now I can try two or three implementations of something that I can throw away in the process of really understanding a problem and then quickly do it right.

Instead of spending a day tracking down a problem in my mental blind spot I have a 70% chance of getting the answer in two minutes.

Instead of overthinking the documentation I can have a prototype running in 10 minutes.
by WarmWash | 2026-01-23 14:28:11+00:00
I think there is a legitimate fear that is born from what happened with Chess.

Humans could handily beat computers at chess for a long time.

Then a massive supercomputer beat the reigning champion, but didn't win the tournament.

Then that computer came back and won the tournament a year later.

A few years later humans are collaborating in-game with these master chess engines to multiply their strength, becoming the dominant force in the human/computer chess world.

A few years after that though, the computers start beating the human/computer hybrid opponents.

And not long after that, humans started making the computer perform worse if they had a hand in the match.

The next few years have probably the highest probability since the cold war of being extreme inflection points in the timeline of human history.
by Aurornis | 2026-01-23 14:28:32+00:00
There’s more to a LA than the sample rate. The main benefit of the Saleae is the software, which is what you’re really paying for.

For a budget hobbyist I do agree that going with a very cheap hardware and dealing with Pulse View is the way to go. For anyone doing more serious or paid work the Saleae devices really can be worth the premium if you can swing it.
by Daviey | 2026-01-23 14:29:32+00:00
It means it has a dependency on X11.

$ go install github.com/ramonvermeulen/whosthere@latest
# golang.design/x/clipboard
clipboard_linux.c:14:10: fatal error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
14 | #include <X11/Xlib.h>
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
by thisislife2 | 2026-01-23 14:29:40+00:00
I've moved houses 3 times in the last 3 years. The pain of moving all my personal belongings made me realise how much unnecessary stuff I had accumulated. So I made it a point to throw or give away many things that was no longer really needed. It was a revelation and now I am more mindful to storing anything for long-term without thought. I still have more than 2+ decades of stuff in a storage - books, sentimental stuffs, things I thought may be useful or needed in the future etc. Still figuring out how to go through all that.
by ToucanLoucan | 2026-01-23 14:29:55+00:00
One of my most guilty indulgences is the various TV programs about hoarders and hoarding. They are of course sensationalized all to shit and they basically provoke mental breakdowns out of their subjects to make good TV. The guilt isn't just that it's bad like all reality TV- you can tell these people, a lot of them anyway, have serious mental difficulties that a TV show showing up with 4 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks and parking them out front of their homes before pulling all their shit out for neighbors to see and then yelling at them for being distressed about it isn't addressing. They offer "therapy" as part of it, after they've traumatized the fuck out of someone already struggling. Woo.

But I watch. I have a mother who's started down the path. Maybe I'm like... training myself for what's probably due in about 15 years. Or maybe I'm just making excuses for indulging in trash TV.

The article is definitely correct: these people need help. They also usually need money. They usually need a lot of both. A lot of those shows take place in dilapidated parts of the world where you can tell, obviously, that the hoarding is certainly an issue but an even more pressing one is poverty. People keep everything when they're broke, far long past the point of reason, because they've found themselves needing... who knows, a tooth brush, a can of food, and had it kept from them by money so many times that they psychologically can't bear to throw one out, ever. Even if it's rotted away.

And what's worse: because throughout any attempt at helping them, anyone, is then a threat. They become animated, angry, and any action that can actually help them is like playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in a 6-shooter. They'll tell you with a straight, red face that yes they fucking need the mayo that's been in the diner packets for 10 years because it's still fine and usable. It's hard to feel sympathy for people so insufferable, and it's not even just you, the helper. They're often estranged from family and have no friends because their behaviors strain every relationship beyond repair.

It's... tragic, in every sense of the word.

FWIW, I also watch a lot of YouTubers who do this in a way that isn't evil. But also the content is less engaging because, well, reality TV wouldn't poke people the way it does into acting the way they do if it didn't make fucking good content. But yeah, I feel notably less disgusting consuming that at least.
by godzillabrennus | 2026-01-23 14:30:17+00:00
I switched to Podman on Windows and found it less laggy, and it works fine for local development. I'm sure I'm missing some features, but as Docker continues to struggle to generate revenue, the open-source option will be important to an increasingly large part of the industry.

FYI- If I was docker, I'd stand up some bare metal hosting (i.e., a Docker Cloud) designed around making it easier for novice developers to take containers and turn them into web applications, with a product similar to Supabase built around this cloud to let novice developers quickly prototype and launch apps without learning how to do deployments in more sophisticated clouds. Supabase and AI vibe coders pair well, but the hole in the market is vibe coders who want to launch a web app vibe coded but don't know how to deploy containers to the cloud without a steep learning curve. It keeps many vibe coders trapped in AIO vibe coding platforms like Lovable and AI Studio.
by DangitBobby | 2026-01-23 14:30:28+00:00
Congrats on saying that in the most one-sided way possible. Google makes it literally impossible for them to pay for access to search results to make the product they want (customizable subscription search with no ads), and Google also is the de-facto globally sanctioned crawler because they are the only search engine anyone gives a shit about, and also sites need to be indexed by them to survive. In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it. Google is in a monopoly position in search.
by dangus | 2026-01-23 14:30:39+00:00
They basically made the case for podman existing, and I see podman gaining steam and being easier and easier to drop in as a replacement for Docker.

If they never changed that licensing, nobody would have had an incentive to put big effort into an alternative.

I think the hosted Docker registry should have been their first revenue source and then they should have created more closed source enterprise workflow solutions and hosted services that complement the docker tooling that remained truly open source, including desktop.
by jcims | 2026-01-23 14:31:06+00:00
There's one interesting phenomenon that I noticed in myself and others with generating music with AI. You develop this kind of outsized emotional connection with it, even though your contribution to the 'work' was minimal, the fact that you saw this (arguably not) new 'thing' come into being creates an atypical bond. Not that it's 'mine' but that it's this beautiful thing.

So you (or in this case I) get all excited about how fantastic it is, but others that hear it are just kind of 'meh'. The only way I know this is listing to songs shared in that same exuberance by others, and to me they are 'meh'.

I shared this sentiment with some folks and one person said 'yeah, you should try writing your own music sometime...same thing happens' xD
by benldrmn | 2026-01-23 14:31:15+00:00
Funny, I had a similar experience TAing “Intro to CS” (first semester C programming course). The student was certain he encountered a compiler bug (pushing back on my assumption there was something wrong with their code, since while compilers do have bugs, they are probably not in the code generation of a nested for loop). After spending a few minutes parsing their totally unindented code, the off-by-one error revealed itself
by agentultra | 2026-01-23 14:31:40+00:00
If you have to review the code afterwards before you ship it because you have to take responsibility for it then you have to know how to code it yourself.

I, personally, don't understand what it is people enjoy about using these tools. I find them tedious, boring, and they often make me angry: subtle bugs and outright lies in the output and no prompt can resolve the problem so I end up having to fix it by hand anyway. It's not pleasant for me.

But other people do and while I don't get it I try not to yuck in their yum too much.

There is no empathy from companies though. They don't care about code and never have.

They should though. Every line of code is a liability. And now we have tools that can generate liability on demand faster than a team of dedicated humans who are trying to be conservative about managing that liability. You still have to be careful of course but now you're taking responsibility for what the machine generates. You're not the one driving anymore and using a tool. You're a tool being used. At least, that's how I feel about it.

Of course to capital holders and investors this doesn't matter, so we may end up being forced to use these tools even if they're not sufficient or useful. Even if they generate liability. We're rather good, as an industry, at deflecting the consequences of liability.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-23 14:32:00+00:00
> is to make some system changes as root

Yeah, I mean what do you expect or is the alternative? If you have a process that needs access to something only root typically can do, and the solution been to give that process root so it can do it's job, you usually need root to be able to give that process permission to do that thing without becoming root. Doesn't that make sense? What alternative are you suggesting?
by simonw | 2026-01-23 14:32:11+00:00
Not typing every line of code myself doesn't divorce me from the construction.

I frequently find that the code I write using agents is better code, because small improvements no longer cost me velocity or time. If I think "huh, I should really have used a different pattern for that but it's already in 100+ places around the codebase" fixing it used to be a big decision... now it's a prompt.

None of my APIs lack interactive debugging tools any more. Everything that needs documentation is documented. I'm much less likely to take on technical debt - you take that on when fixing it would cost more time than you have available, but those constraints have changed for me.
by matthewkayin | 2026-01-23 14:32:19+00:00
I like this analogy. I'll add that, while electric bicycles are great for your daily commute, they're not suited for the extremes of biking (at least not yet).

- You're not going to take an electric bike mountain biking

- You're not going to use an electric bike to do BMX

- You're not going to use an electric bike to go bikepacking across the country
by exceptione | 2026-01-23 14:32:30+00:00
quadlets fully depend on systemd doing its work. So, assuming you are running rootless, if you change your quadlets, you will need

systemctl --user daemon-reload

to let systemd ingest the changes. And, if you have configured to start your container on boot, then still you have to start the container by hand, as you typically won't reboot during development. If you have multiple containers, it might be easiest to have them in one pod, so you only need to start the pod.

I agree that the documentation needs a good tutorial to show the complete concept as a starting point. There are multiple ones though on the internet.
by phkahler | 2026-01-23 14:32:57+00:00
>> But had they written their software in C, they wouldn't have needed to do any conversion at all. It means they could have titled the article "How we lowered the performance penalty of using Rust".

That's not really fair. The library was doing serialization/deserialization which was poor design choice from a performance perspective. They just made a more sane API that doesn't do all that extra work. It might best be titles "replacing protobuf with a normal API to go 5 times faster."

BTW what makes you think writing their end in C would yield even higher performance?