MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tbrownaw | 2026-01-06 13:33:49+00:00
> From a resource allocation perspective, this doesn't feel particularly undesirable, at least in terms of certain assets like vehicles. The current system of ownership is quite wasteful.

People are by and large not that dumb. If they consistently choose a more expensive alternative, it means the cheaper alternative is missing something that matters.

> I own a high end GPU that I use maybe 4 hours a week for gaming.

Why? Why currently prevents you from being more efficient and streaming your display from the cloud?
by kergonath | 2026-01-06 13:33:52+00:00
> I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU.

Yes, you can. Plenty of overseas territories span the complete gamut between autonomous regions outside the EU and overseas EU regions. Each one is a special case and has specific reasons why there are inside or outside the EU.
by dangus | 2026-01-06 13:34:15+00:00
That doesn’t explain why Apple “wastes” die area on their NPU.

The thing is, when you get an Apple product and you take a picture, those devices are performing ML tasks while sipping battery life.

Microsoft maybe shouldn’t be chasing Apple especially since they don’t actually have any marketshare in tablets or phones, but I see where they’re getting at: they are probably tired of their OS living on devices that get half the battery life of their main competition.

And here’s the thing, Qualcomm’s solution blows Intel out of the water. The only reason not to use it is because Microsoft can’t provide the level of architecture transition that Apple does. Apple can get 100% of their users to switch architecture in about 7 years whenever they want.
by WhyNotHugo | 2026-01-06 13:34:44+00:00
> More likely people will retain their current devices for longer and wait this whole thing out

Wait it out? The rich have realised that they can buy the entire stock of computing power and deprive the common folk of it, renting it to them instead.

In practical terms, they have infinite resources. Definitely enough to long outlast our lifetimes and the next generation and the next. We can’t “wait out” until they run out of money.
Show HN: I'd never touched Swift. Built a Mac app in 4 weeks
by amortka | 2026-01-06 13:35:50+00:00
Hey HN!

3-4 weeks ago I was trying to record a webinar for another side project. Screen recording, full screen presentation, talking through slides — should be simple.

Except I kept forgetting what I wanted to say. And every time I glanced at my notes, it was obvious on camera. Worse — when recording full screen, there's nowhere to put notes without them being captured.

Tried a few teleprompter apps. They either covered half my screen, scrolled at a fixed speed I couldn't match, or showed up in the recording.

So I thought: I've been a full-stack dev for 20+ years. Never touched Swift or SwiftUI. Can I actually build a native Mac app?

Turns out — yes. Took about 4 weeks of evenings and weekends. Claude helped me get past the Swift learning curve when I got stuck, but the architecture and problem-solving was mine.

What it does:
- Sits in the MacBook notch area (right below camera)
- Scrolls based on voice — speak and it moves, pause and it waits
- Invisible during screen sharing/recording (uses a specific NSWindow level that screen capture APIs ignore)
- Runs 100% locally, no cloud

The technically interesting bits:
- Voice detection uses just audio input, mic — just detecting audio levels, not transcribing
- The "invisible during screen share" trick is just the right window level + excluding from capture
- SwiftUI made the UI surprisingly fast to build coming from React/NodeJS

The biggest surprise: Launched on Product Hunt on Dec 31st. No prep, no audience, no hunter — just posted it myself. Hit #4 for the day, got into their newsletter (1M+ subs), 75 sales so far. Wild.

For a niche utility I built to scratch my own itch, this exceeded every expectation.

Curious if others here have jumped into unfamiliar stacks for side projects. How steep was the learning curve?

Site: notchie.app
by lm28469 | 2026-01-06 13:36:16+00:00
I've witness two municipal employees using gas powered blowers on bushes for like an hour right in front of my building. It's completely useless because no one ever goes in the bushes (duh), and it's depleting the ground from nutrients for no reasons.

We really have to stop acting like gas is free and unlimited, burning fossil fuels used for legitimate reasons is bad enough, but burning them for such dumb tasks is an insult to nature.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2026-01-06 13:36:24+00:00
> I wouldn't say anyone didn't notice "when basically all of the land banks and large assets were sold off", there was years of protest and reporting about this.

I definitely was upset at the time, but didn't really notice many people paying attention. We basically sold off our future development policy to get out of the Troika bailout (and I understand why this happened, but I think the long term consequences of this are have been shown to be really, really bad).

> Yeah, I'd largely agree it's a services issue, and most people I speak with correctly direct that anger at the state.

And they are correct to do so. Basically all FFG have done is wait until the housing issue had gone way too far (and started impacting their voters) and then done a bunch of demand side initiatives which have just pushed up prices rather than focusing on the development side.

Not to mention the absurdity of our national spatial strategy where we won't zone more in Dublin and instead want people to move to Meath & Wicklow and commute for hours to their jobs.

But at least no-one's left in negative equity. FML.
by kridsdale1 | 2026-01-06 13:36:29+00:00
Similar: During pandemic Ewan and Charlie did an electric bike ride from Argentina to the US and the support crew were in Rivians along with the Rivian CEO or head of engineering or something, as an extended QA run before full production. It was my introduction to the brand and sufficiently impressed me such that I think it’s the only option I’d look at for an EV.
by nicoburns | 2026-01-06 13:36:44+00:00
> Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services?

The supply chains for high-end chips are brittle enough that it's a very real possibility we end up with a severe supply crunch such that neither clouds nor individual users can access new chips at anything approaching reasonable prices.

TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decides to invade Taiwan, that would likely mean ~60% of CPU and GPU manufacturing capacity permanently destroyed at once. That would be "iPhones are no longer for sale this year, and PCs now cost $5000 if you're lucky enough to get ahold of one" kind of territory.
by techdmn | 2026-01-06 13:36:48+00:00
I've been reading Steve for a long long time. He's had a lot of good ideas, issued some solid advice, but has always had a quirky sense of humor. A few pages into it I thought "this has to be a joke". But I couldn't find the punchline. This is the most depressing comment section I've read in a long time. I might have to enter the lottery to become an apprentice electrician.
by fzeroracer | 2026-01-06 13:37:23+00:00
I'm not sure if you're doing this intentionally or not, but it is incredibly funny to see people on HN doing what is effectively manufacturing consent for people to not actually own anything. We've gone from home computing is the future to no one should own a computer because it's wasteful.

I'm not sure where this sentiment even comes from but if the economy only consists of renters and landlords then we don't even have the thinnest veneer of capitalism anymore. We're just Feudalism 2.0.
by conartist6 | 2026-01-06 13:37:41+00:00
I dunno, I see problems with every one of those things.

You could make a customer service AI that was an advocate for the consumer, but it would likely spend the company's money liberally. So instead you'll end up with AI agents incentivized to be stingy and standoffish about admitting the company could improve, just like the humans are.

You can tutor with AI, but there's no knowing what it will teach you. It will sound as convinced of itself when it teaches you why the earth is flat as it does teaching you why the earth is round. The one thing it will certainly do is reinforce your existing biases.

You can practice with AI, but you'd learn more by posing yourself the questions.

A doctor can have AI look at medical scans, but they can't defer to AI judgement and just tell the patient "AI says you have cancer, but I don't really know or care one way or the other". So again, the skill in reading results needs to be in the doctor.
by CurleighBraces | 2026-01-06 13:38:07+00:00
I've been vibe coding my own personal assistant platform, still haven't read any of the code but who cares it's just for me and it works.

Now I've got tools and functionality that I would have paid for before as separate apps that are running "for free" locally.

I can't help but think this is the way forward and we'll just have to deal with the landmine as/when it comes, or hope that the tooling gets drastically better so we the landmine isn't as powerful as we fear.
by youhatetheleft | 2026-01-06 13:38:33+00:00
The USA has no left, I can’t say I blame them because I don’t know what they could do, but honestly that a bunch of people are justifying the kidnapping of the President and First Lady of a foreign nation, by a confirmed peado rapist makes me accept the United States for what it is a rogue empire.

Edit:
I find it insane that American imperialists don’t realise that at some point in this might makes right world people won’t be bound to them, if countries are forced to choose between various authoritarian regimes what is it that makes the United States stand out from the rest of them? At least during the Cold War the semblance of freedom was required to win an ideological war. In a world where all pretence of the United States being a more responsible hegemony and free place is dropped for its allies as well what makes these people think people will tow the line?

The fact that the Biden administration spent years trying to gaslight every one about how important winning the Ukraine war was for global stability and the rules based international order, just to stick their thumbs up their asses when their dictator pulls shit like this is beyond me.

Their country is in a constitutional crisis and most people are just shrugging.
by dangus | 2026-01-06 13:38:50+00:00
Bingo. Maybe Microsoft shouldn’t even be chasing them but I think they have a point to try and stay competitive. They can’t just have their OS getting half the battery life of their main competitor.

When you use an Apple device, it’s performing ML tasks while barely using any battery life. That’s the whole point of the NPU. It’s not there to outperform the GPU.
by ted_bunny | 2026-01-06 13:39:18+00:00
I asked GPT for rules on 101-level French grammar. That should be well documented for someone learning from English, no? The answers were so consistently wrong that it seemed intentional. Absolutely nothing novel asked of it. It could have quoted verbatim if it wanted to be lazy. I can't think of an easier question to give an LLM. If it's possible to "prompt wrong" a simple task that my six-year old nephew could easily do, the burden of proof is not on the people denying LLM intelligence, it's on the boosters.
by f1shy | 2026-01-06 13:39:22+00:00
I tested both. None worked.

It is a little bit like “it’s not what you know, is what you can prove”: I mean: “it’s not what you do, is what the boss of your boss sees”. And I emphasize “boss of your boss” because him is who you have to impress (or somebody 2 levels above, anyway).

Also in moderately big to big companies, is all about contacts and personal marketing, which could (and typically is) orthogonal to your actual work.
by oooyay | 2026-01-06 13:39:38+00:00
I actually didn't know this was coming up and just bought an electric. They all kind of suck except for the Ego and the Ego is like $250.

Portland has gotten quite a bit more expensive. We've begun rejecting taxes, which as the self-selected second highest taxed city in the nation is new. Our economy has struggled to return post-COVID lockdowns. There's a lot more I could say but people are really feeling the economic squeeze. I doubt this will help, but is pretty minor when you think about housing, electricity, gas, and water costs that continue to rise as wages go down in the city. I call this place the city of a thousand cuts, there's a lot to like, but there's a lot that hurts too.
by rsynnott | 2026-01-06 13:40:33+00:00
> I’ve tried reporting many accounts and posts.

I mean, honestly, you are wasting your time. Why would you expect the website run by the guy who likes giving Nazi salutes on TV to take down Nazi content?

There's no point trying to engage with Twitter in good faith at this point; only real option is to stop using and move on (or hang out in the Nazi bar, I guess).
by Fnoord | 2026-01-06 13:40:39+00:00
If my choice is an American company which does tracking, and a European company which does tracking, then I as European prefer the European one. Because they can be held accountable in a court of law. In Russia or China, that isn't the case. And it doesn't seem like it remains the case in USA. SCOTUS, for example, has been a political instrument for a long, long time.
by asadotzler | 2026-01-06 13:40:43+00:00
AI luminary and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton predicted in 2016 that AI would be able to do all of the things radiologists can do within five years. We're still not even close. He was full of shit and now almost 10 years later he's changed his prediction, though still pretending he was right, by moving the goal posts. His new prediction is that radiologists will use AI to be more efficient and accurate, half suggesting he meant that all along. He didn't. He was simply bullshitting, bluffing, making an educated wish.

This is the nonsense we're living through, predictions, guesses, promises that cannot possibly be fulfilled and which will inevitably change to something far less ambitious and with much longer timelines and everyone will shrug it off as if we weren't being mislead by a bunch of fraudsters.
by beepbooptheory | 2026-01-06 13:41:08+00:00
This is not the case, has been corrected a million times by millions of people, and, frankly, if it was about anything else would not be considered appropriate on HN as a comment.

We can do better than play out the same conversations also happening in middle school cafeterias. It helps everyone and could even reinforce your opposing views on the matter. You do your entire ideological position a disservice just doing this old hat!
by mirawelner | 2026-01-06 13:41:09+00:00
I really love Zed bc it’s fast and doesn’t try to run the code for you. I really dislike the “play” feature of IDEs. I learned Java in eclipse and for the linear time don’t know how to run it from the terminal. It has all the editing and highlighting features of a full ide but makes you run it from the terminal. And if you have Zellij or another muxer set up, it runs it in the Zed terminal automatically.
by seanwilson | 2026-01-06 13:41:19+00:00
> They make the web worse for the world by tempting the developer to take the easier, less interactive route than what would have been taken in the pre-SSG world.

If I didn't have the static site option though, I might not host a project at all because I don't want to have to deal with the maintenance burden. I haven't kept up but it would be nice if there were more options between a no-maintenance static site hosting, and a high-maintenance dynamic site.

Would be amazing if the web/browsers had standardized ways by now of easily adding common website features like authentication, search, comments, votes, and saving user data (via bring your own storage) that didn't require everyone to host and maintain a custom stack. Email is a solved problem that you don't have to host yourself for example, why is it still such an effort for the other common website features?
by BadBadJellyBean | 2026-01-06 13:41:48+00:00
Possibly. But the people who matter the most in this discussion lost their trustworthiness. The government and the tech giants are working together to be a bad partner.

It unfortunately doesn't matter if the average Joe is not with them unless they do something about the state of things.

And not trying to get too political: the GOP and Trump did win the electorate and the popular vote. So the USA kinda wanted this.
by 1313ed01 | 2026-01-06 13:42:14+00:00
DOSBox is a great virtual machine. Some versions will give you SVGA (VESA) modes matching modern screen sizes. You have audio and even network access if you must. Super stable APIs that will never change. And it self-hosts compilers and editors (up to latest versions of Emacs and at least versions of vim from earlier this century) so anywhere your code can run you can also modify and recompile it.

(In practice I edit my code outside of DOSBox, and sometimes I use cross-compilers, but it is good to know that there is a fallback.)
by jqpabc123 | 2026-01-06 13:42:49+00:00
Is there any doubt that this is about oil, not drugs?

In 2024, the ex-president of Honduras was convicted of conspiring with drug traffickers and using his government position to help hundreds of tons of cocaine enter the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Trump pardoned him right before invading Venezuela and charging Maduro of the same?

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12621
by stockresearcher | 2026-01-06 13:43:34+00:00
Every modern chip needs some percentage dedicated to dark silicon. There is no cheating the thermal reality. You could add more compute units in the GPU, but you then have to make up for it somewhere else. It’s a balancing act.

The Core Ultra lineup is supposed to be low-power, low-heat, right? If you want more compute power, pick something from a different product series.
by scott_w | 2026-01-06 13:43:42+00:00
> But the radiologists that I've talked to aren't impressed with the work AI had managed to do in their field.

Just so I understand correctly: is it over-reporting problems that aren't there or is it missing blindingly obvious problems? The latter is obviously a problem and, I agree, would completely invalidate it as a useful tool. The former sounded, the way it was explained to me, more like a matter of degrees.
by Fnoord | 2026-01-06 13:43:51+00:00
Do you really think if the NSA is not allowed to do something, that they'll be held accountable? In 2026? I doubt it very much so. The USA sits on a lot of data from EU, and that is a bad situation. We also need to stop selling important companies such as Nexperia (to CN) and Zivver (to USA).
by CurleighBraces | 2026-01-06 13:44:04+00:00
I've replaced a couple of apps that I would have previously paid for with my own vibe coded agent based setup similar to GasTown.

What I am finding most beneficial almost immediately is I have a dedicated Telegram channel that I can post all sorts of unstructured data into and it's automatically routed via LLMS and stored into the right channel and then other agents work on that data to provide me insights. I have a calorie counter, workout capture, reminders, daily diary prompts all up and running as of right now, and honestly it's better than anything I could have bought "off the shelf"
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-06 13:44:24+00:00
> [trade] creates a huge monoculture that is unable to accommodate people's with vastly different needs

How so? Cash on the barrelhead doesn't care which cultures are on either side. During the Cold War, capitalists and communists traded with each other. I myself have traded with people whose language and culture I hadn't the foggiest of.

Monoculture is problematic, yes, but its roots must be in something other than trade.
What managing 300+ Windows laptops really taught me
by elinacorval | 2026-01-06 13:44:47+00:00
I’ve helped manage 300+ Windows 10/11 laptops in a small, growing company. Onboarding was the first big pain: each device took hours of manual setup (apps, Azure AD, VPN, security), and any missed step created future tickets. Standardizing a Windows device management baseline and a small approved software catalog changed that. Centralized Windows update management removed random reboots and inconsistent patching. Now I work on Scalefusion MDM, an MDM/UEM platform, and the same lesson holds: treat endpoint management and mobile device management for Windows as core infrastructure, not an afterthought.
by TrackerFF | 2026-01-06 13:45:06+00:00
Well, two issues here:

1) The moment US decides to completely exit EU and brick their devices, China will step in and provide the alternatives. Or it will trigger some tech arms race inside Europe, and we will see European providers rise up.

2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.

As others have mentioned, not only is it a danger to their own revenue, but the US stock market is being carried by these tech companies.

The US has always profited the most from providing products / services which are better and cheaper to Europe, to such a degree that organic growth has been naturally suppressed.

Necessity is the mother of invention.
by 1980phipsi | 2026-01-06 13:45:31+00:00
> Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games but charging per hour. Imagine how that impact Call of Duty or GTA.

MMORPGs have had monthly subscription fees for a long time.

For a lot of games if they charged by the hour would probably see less revenue...people buy tons of games and then barely ever play them.
by SkiFire13 | 2026-01-06 13:45:44+00:00
> I'd like to have a stable Rust ABI to make safe plugin systems

A stable ABI would allow making more robust Rust-Rust plugin systems, but I wouldn't consider that "safe"; dynamic linking is just fundamentally unsafe.

> Large binaries could also be broken down into dynamic libraries and make rebuilds much faster at the cost of leaving some optimizations on the table.

This can already be done within a single project by using the dylib crate type.
by Uniqueness_Labs | 2026-01-06 13:45:49+00:00
I built this to make browser tracking visible.

Enter any URL and it shows:
- Trackers detected
- Cookies planted
- Fingerprinting attempts (Canvas, Audio, WebGL)

Everything runs server-side via headless browser, so you see what the site does before you visit it.

No account required. Free to use.

Feedback welcome - especially on detection accuracy.

P.S. This is part of a larger project called Uniqueness Labs, where I'm building zero-knowledge tools for file transfers and encrypted communications. Happy to share more if there's interest.
by dominicrose | 2026-01-06 13:46:09+00:00
Property prices are a big concern nowadays indeed, especially in high-demand areas. Complete (rich) strangers can come and outbid you.

In the most capitalist places (rich areas without rent control), you can rent a place for years trying to save money to buy in the area and see the rent grow fast enough that you can't buy and even have to leave as a renter.

Capitalism seems to work well for transportable things though, including cars. A house isn't transportable and it also tends to be something quite unique, which makes it incompatible with production in series. Even if you are somehow authorized and able to buy a cheap home, you still have the issue of the terrain, which can be more expensive than the home.

That being said I'm sure that there are people living on cheap (per square meter) terrain and happy about it, but that requires the ability to make the best of it, work on it or find work close to it.