MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by advael | 2026-01-27 13:38:43+00:00
One is an operating system maintained and run by a diffuse community of people, (albeit a flavor of linux with the explicit backing of at least one large company), whose primary goal is to create and maintain a functional operating system that can be used by many people for many different purposes. The other is a product whose primary goal is to convince investors that the company is on a growth trajectory that will continue into the next quarter by extracting value from that product's customers. We've now seen decades of data that suggest disparate results stemming from these priorities in a lot of contexts. I think viewed through that lens, the reason is obvious and was inevitable over time no matter what your threshold of "sucks" is, so long as it has something to do with the thing's function as an operating system
by Teever | 2026-01-27 13:38:47+00:00
> This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.

I used to work at a place that sold a lot of fertilizers. We mostly sold stuff like Monoammonium phosphate or potassium nitrate.

One time while cleaning out a back storage room I came across an open bag of ammonium nitrate. I picked that thing up, carried it around, putting it on a cart and wheeling it around kicking up a lot of dust, all the kinds of stuff that you’d expect while cleaning out a storage room.

A day or so later I got on a plane and they swabbed me and my bag before doing so. I was startled when I didn’t raise any alarms.

I was completely under the misguided impression they something like ammonium nitrate would be detected on a person if they had handled it within a few days of being tested and that would have to explain myself.
by FilosofumRex | 2026-01-27 13:38:48+00:00
These types of fabricated stories, mostly by Iranian women, began to surface after Obama and later Biden, made domestic and gender base violence as grounds for political asylum. Also, the number of Iranian "Christians" with Islamic first names, has since ballooned too!

Iranian diaspora are second only to H1-B/OPT Hindus when it comes to visa fraud.
by Lerc | 2026-01-27 13:39:22+00:00
>How do we get from there to a utopia?

How to get there:

1. Define the utopia in more detail.

2. Make the case that this is a preferable state. Make people want it.

3. Make the case that it is sustainable once achieved.

4. Identify specific differences between the preferred destination and where we are now.

5. Avoiding short term and temporary effects, work towards changing the differences to what the destination has. Even if that is only proclaiming that these changes are what you want

6. Show how those changes make us closer to the destination that people want.

Some of these are hard problems, I don't think any are intractable. I think they don't get done because they are hard, and opposing something is easier. Rather than building something you want, you can knock down something you don't like. Sure, that might get you closer to your desired state if you consider nothingness to be better than undesired, but without building you will never get there.

If you want everyone to live in a castle, build a castle and invite everybody over. If you start by destroying huts you will just be making adversaries. The converse is true also, if you want everyone to live in huts, build more huts and invite everyone over. If they don't come it's because you haven't made the case that it is a preferable state. Knocking down the castle is not going to convince them of that.
by layer8 | 2026-01-27 13:39:56+00:00
Updates breaking stuff already started when they moved from the security/bugfix-only updates to the add-new-features-into-the-mix with Windows 10. That was roughly 10 years ago.

For example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-on-windows-10-annive...

These things have been keeping happening.
by MSFT_Edging | 2026-01-27 13:40:01+00:00
> Also, as a Russian who left Russia

I've noticed there's two distinct 20th century Russian diaspora groups in the US. Those who came here prior to the fall of the USSR, and those who came after.

In talking with the ones who came after the fall, life wasn't glamorous but got truly unlivable in the wake of the collapse.

In talking with the ones who came before the fall, they wanted to make money.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-27 13:40:48+00:00
I think you don't get it :) I've written more about how I see it being here: https://emsh.cat/good-taste/

To repeat, I'm not worried. Making music might be easier than before, but having "Good Taste" isn't easier than before, it's still hard. And good stuff isn't just produced and made, they have decisions and choices behind them, and make the wrong ones, your thing ends up sucking.

If you just care about average content then yes, you can probably live on slop. But do you want to? Because no one is forcing you, there is still high quality stuff out there, produced by people with good taste, and it'll remain like that forever.
by ern_ave | 2026-01-27 13:41:06+00:00
> if, for example, you're writing Python or Javascript or Perl, it is dead easy to have Python or Javascript or Perl also be your configuration file language.

Sure. Like C header files. It's the easiest option - no arguments there.

But there are considerations beyond being easy. I think there's a case to be made that a config file should be data, not code.
by apothegm | 2026-01-27 13:41:48+00:00
I disable all notifications except for:

* SMS (and WhatsApp) for direct communications (disabled for an hour or two when seeking flow).

* Phone calls from family and close friends (filter disabled for a few hours when expecting an important call from elsewhere)

* Mentions and DMs on Slack (work hours only)

* Calendar

* Occasional temporary exceptions (Airbnb and airline apps during travel and a few days before/after; Taskrabbit the day before and day of a task; food delivery when expecting one, etc.)

Everything else I try to be notified of through email, which is easier to manage on a pull rather than push basis. I DO NOT allow email notifications. That’s begging for a deluge.

The default when an app or site asks to send me push notifications is a hard NO.

This volume of notifications is very manageable.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-27 13:42:29+00:00
> AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation.

There are two things you're mixing here.

One is how others use AI, the other is how you use AI. No one forcing you to consume content made by AI that you think suck, just turn it off if you don't like it.

Seems really doomsday-like to proclaim "The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible" when that's not realistically feasible, regardless of what the AI-hypers say. Don't listen so much, and think more.
by sbarre | 2026-01-27 13:42:35+00:00
Yeah but Israel doesn't have the proximity (in culture, media, advertising, entertainment, etc) that we do to the US.

All that US-centric stuff overshadows us constantly. And it's not just in the startup landscape.

We literally have laws on the books [0] that force our media companies to maintain a certain amount of Canadian content on TV/radio/streaming/etc so we're not only consuming US content.

This isn't a comment on whether that's good or bad, it's just a fact, and it has a real impact on our society at all levels.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content
Show HN: Lenma – A Voice Assistant for macOS
by furkankoseoglu | 2026-01-27 13:43:18+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m Furkan. I built Lenma — a voice assistant for macOS that lets you control your Mac and your productivity tools using voice.

Try it here: lenma.app

Tech note: Wake word detection runs fully local using openWakeWord, integrated in Rust.

What it does

1. Integrations (work apps)

Google Calendar, Slack, Notion, Linear, Apple Notes, Mail, Calendar, Reminders

- “What do I have today?”
- “Create a Linear issue…”
- “Send this to Slack…”

2. macOS control

- “Set volume to 30%”
- “Move this window to desktop 3”
- “Split screen left and right”

3. Dictation anywhere.

4. Brain Book

Save what you’re looking at on your screen into notes/memory

- “Save this to Brain Book”

5. Real-time web search for grounded answers

weather, currency, quick facts, etc.

6. Custom voice commands

Trigger chains of bash/scripts, keyboard shortcuts, and clicks by voice.

Why I built it

I started Lenma after wrist/RSI issues forced me to reduce keyboard/mouse time. Dictation helped, but I wanted a voice interface that could take actions across macOS and my tools—not just type text.

Feedback I’d love

What’s the one macOS action you’d want to trigger by voice every day?

For Raycast/Alfred power users: what would make voice control genuinely useful (and not annoying)?

Thanks — I’ll be around to answer anything.
by WaalkTheEaarth | 2026-01-27 13:43:37+00:00
I used CrDroid for a period of time, i enjoyed it for a while since it worked with everything i use (Nationwide bank, Google Wallet, Whatsapp, Phocid, YT Music revanced, all that), i was conscidering buying a Google Pixel 3A to try PMOS or Ubuntu Touch.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-27 13:43:39+00:00
>[citation needed]

If I show you camera footage on X of this happening will you accept it in good faith or nitpick it on why it's not valid?

>Also even if true, there's a vast difference between a rando on the street asking those questions vs a government agent.

Ah classic, so even if it's happening, it's not a bad thing because an unelected unaccountable mob is doing it, just like in third world countries.
by brewmarche | 2026-01-27 13:43:42+00:00
Still using it, it’s fine performance wise, maybe needs another new battery in a year or so. Apple Pay, authenticators and messaging apps are working.

Was hoping for the new iPhone Fold (with Touch ID even) to be small but looks like it’s going to be a really weird ratio when folded.

Of course there are caveats:
- Spotify not getting app updates anymore (but still playing fine)

- some websites do not support the Safari version, e.g. GitHub

- most banking apps are not supported
by neomantra | 2026-01-27 13:43:48+00:00
My running joke after showing off some amazing LLM-driven work is...

if you think this is impressive, I once opened a modal dialog on an Apple IIGS in 65C816 assembly

I don't think you need to learn BASIC, if you know concepts like conditionals and looping and indexing. It is interesting to compare the higher-level language of the time with its companion assembly. And you might find yourself writing BASIC programs to complement your assembly, if you stick to that platform.

<lore>
A friend dropped me a BASIC program that ran and wrote text to the Apple IIGS border. He asked me to figure it out, because it wasn't obvious what was going on. OG hacker puzzle... it was a BASIC program that jumped to hidden assembly after the apparent end of the text file (hidden chars maybe, I forget) and the assembly was changing the border at appropriate rate to "draw" on it. Those were the days... trying to find some reference to this and am failing.
</lore>

I certainly credit my stack-frame debugging capability to dealing with that stuff so long ago. Oddly enough, I didn't really find it helpful for computer architecture class. Just because you know registers exists and how to manipulate them, doesn't exactly map architecting modern hardware system. But being fluent in logic operations and bit-twiddling and indexing does help a lot.
by inaccuratebee | 2026-01-27 13:44:04+00:00
> The FAA says that for each percent of downhill slope, landing distance is increased by 10%.

This is accurate as to their recommendation, but it was surprising. I know it’s inaccurate, because at a perpendicular angle there would be no way to land. I know they don’t allow an angle that steep, but that means this is “gut feel” inexact math that seems unsafe.
by gryzzly | 2026-01-27 13:44:05+00:00
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""

Calling all the people defending civilians, in a country with mandatory army service (so basically calling ALL ISRAELIS, of whom 80% are jewish) scum is really showing who you really are – a blatant antisemite. Disgusting.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-27 13:44:20+00:00
I set some rules for myself: three days of total time, no 3rd party Rust crates, allowed to use commonly available OS libraries, has to support X11/Windows/macOS and can render some websites.

After three days, I have it working with around 20K LOC, whereas ~14K is the browser engine itself + X11, then 6K is just Windows+macOS support.

Source code + CI built binaries are available here if you wanna try it out: https://github.com/embedding-shapes/one-agent-one-browser
by ACCount37 | 2026-01-27 13:44:22+00:00
Major incentives currently in play are "PR fuckups are bad" and "if we don't curb our shit regulators will". Which often leads to things like "AI safety is when our AI doesn't generate porn when asked and refuses to say anything the media would be able to latch on to".

The rest is up to the companies themselves.

Anthropic seems to walk the talk, and has supported some AI regulation in the past. OpenAI and xAI don't want regulation to exist and aren't shy about it. OpenAI tunes very aggressively against PR risks, xAI barely cares, Google and Anthropic are much more balanced, although they lean towards heavy-handed and loose respectively.

China is its own basket case of "alignment is when what AI says is aligned to the party line", which is somehow even worse than the US side of things.
by PMunch | 2026-01-27 13:45:01+00:00
Thanks! I would imagine printing on paper would be a completely different ball game. I actually considered scanning the actual epaper display to show each of the dithering techniques in their intended environment as it does change the look quite a bit. From the little I know about typography and things like ink-wells I can definitely see how certain algorithms can change quite significantly. The original post here has a pattern which looks similar to old newspapers, maybe that's worth looking into?
by dev_l1x_be | 2026-01-27 13:45:10+00:00
> Taiwan belongs to China

So they are on the same page as the UN and US?

The One China policy refers to a United States policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan.[1] In a 1972 joint communiqué with the PRC, the United States "acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China" and "does not challenge that position."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_and_the_United_Nations
by derelicta | 2026-01-27 13:45:14+00:00
The NED is a CIA-cut out says the New York Times: "The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency has done surreptitiously for decades"[1].

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20161118042417/https://www.nytim...
by MSFT_Edging | 2026-01-27 13:45:33+00:00
> civilians aren't the target in Gaza

The "Where's Daddy" program in Israel tells the opposite story. They take anyone designated a target, track them home, then send rockets to their home to take out their family.

There's dozens of documented events like this happening to doctors working to save casualties, finding out their entire family was killed.

After seeing the highly targeted attacks in Iran that Israel was capable of, makes you think that targeting families of aid workers was the point.
by ml_visoft | 2026-01-27 13:45:48+00:00
Imho there are still tasks that can't be done by AI good enough. Wouldn't let clawbot handle my personal relationships. Not even scheduling a football [or dota2] game. Yet alone navigate job. So, maybe level up the goal post? Try do something not-easily-done by AI? Select from your fringe interests [if core is AI powered already]. Anyway, it is a relevant question these days.
by tialaramex | 2026-01-27 13:45:59+00:00
Shots aren't necessarily 25ml, prior to metrication the legal situation had been that in England a shot was a sixth of a gill, in Scotland either a fifth or quarter depending on the establishment. The metric "Weights and Measures" legislation said each such licensed premises in the UK gets to pick, either 25ml (most common in England) or 35ml and they shall post a notice explaining to the public which volume they've chosen.

The differences in signage are because the UK's Road Traffic laws specify miles and yards still, whereas most other legislation specifies metric units, including for the waterways. So a sign legally required for an 18th century canal might say "100m" meaning metres, while an equally modern, legally required sign for a road built this century says "10m" meaning miles. This is embarrassing, but there's a strong feeling that somehow archaic unit systems are an important part of our heritage, and at least it's not as bad as when we propose getting rid of statues that celebrate slavers...
by GuB-42 | 2026-01-27 13:46:21+00:00
> WD-40 themselves have come out with improved "Specialist" formulations that mostly just copy other, superior products.

We all know that there is something better for the job than WD-40, its value comes from its convenience, affordability, availability, brand recognition, and the number of cases where it is "good enough".

The "specialist" brand is what its name imply, specialist products, all of them better for a specific application, but none of them as universal as the original. The original formulation is not magic, but it is the one we are familiar with and it works well enough when you don't have anything better for your specific job.
by apical_dendrite | 2026-01-27 13:46:31+00:00
If the US alliance with Israel is the reason why this conflict generated so much protest activity, then why didn't the pro-Palestinian left object to US ally Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign and blockade in Yemen? The US arms the Saudis. Much of what happened in Yemen is very similar to what happened in Gaza (airstrikes that hit civilians, hunger caused by blockading imports, etc)

And there have absolutely been examples of mass protest movements against regimes that are hostile to the US that are committing crimes against humanity. Years ago I went to a huge demonstration about the genocide in Darfur on the national mall in Washington. Raising awareness of what is happening and putting pressure on the Iranian regime (and on Western governments) can have an impact regardless of whether or not the West is hostile to Iran.
by topaz0 | 2026-01-27 13:46:32+00:00
You could think of it as wanting your desire to hear the song again build up to a sufficient level to make it worth a relisten, sort of how a bus driver might want potential passengers to accumulate at a bus stop before picking them up, and therefore delay arrival. Very plausible to me that a good music randomization would have similar statistics if you phrase it right.
by lukan | 2026-01-27 13:46:33+00:00
https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203447

"On 9 October 2023, Mr Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister of Israel, announced that he had ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza City and that there would be “no electricity, no food, no fuel” and that “everything [was] closed”. On the following day, Minister Gallant stated, speaking to Israeli troops on the Gaza border:
“I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against . . . Gaza won’t return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”
by redleader55 | 2026-01-27 13:46:33+00:00
I am a strong believer in the "low-tech" solutions for this kind of thing. I seriously doubt the terrorist suicide bomber knows if drinking the explosive is going to prevent them from taking the mission to the end (ie. they will die in 5 min, in 30 min or in 24h), so they will start panicking when asked to drink from the bottle.
by sepisoad | 2026-01-27 13:46:51+00:00
An iranian expat here. I have been following the news closely, mostly getting my data from my friends in Iran before the internet shutdown and after it was (sort of) lifted.

The death toll is way above this number, you have to consider the fact that Iran is a big country with many small cities, and in my city alone (which is very small and rarely has any protest going on) many people have died (i don’t have the exact numbers but it could be anywhere between 100 to 200) and when you put this into perspective you will understand that in scale of the entire country a lot of people have died.

I have heard that not only they killed people on the street but they have chased those who fled and killded them at their places or hidings, let alone the killing of the injured ones in hospitals.

It’s is a big tragedy and people are reluctant to talk about it because those who are committing this massacre are MUSLIMS and support PALESTINE so this is a moral dilemma for the left lovers! because they see Mullah’s regime as one of their biggest allies when it comes to attack West/Israel/Free market

It’s a shame that all those activist that would shred themselves for Palestine are absolutely quite about Iran
by subscribed | 2026-01-27 13:47:20+00:00
I do.

But the government doesn't just implements things the people want.

The government passes whatever government wants, and if the STATED purpose matches the engineered demand, it's called democracy.

Tell me how much public support is for the ongoing UK participation in the genocide of Gaza (yes, participation, RAF flies spy planes and feeds Intel to IDF). How much public support is for human hormones treated beef/chlorinated chicken? How much public support is for the ongoing assault on freedoms / liberties? For the continued enshittification (literal!) of our rivers, lakes and beaches? For another Heathrow runway, for the ongoing, stealth privatization of NHS.

Policing bill (2022) had a significant opposition, recent upgrades to sentencing bill causing environmental protesters planning an event go to the prison for more than may be handed out for rape,

Legacy Act in 2024 shuts down all inquests and civil cases pertaining to the British Army alleged crimes during the Troubles.

The government legislates whatever government wants to legislate.

And I don't think the majority of the people want THIS exactly, they've been brainwashed by the overwhelmingly rightwing and pro-state media.
by Gareth321 | 2026-01-27 13:47:26+00:00
The last few years has made me extremely cynical. I am beginning to think we don't see the protests because the bad guys are brown and Muslim, and people in those circles are not allowed to criticise brown Muslims. I've seen a weak defense that "our government isn't funding this," but our governments aren't funding the Sudanese Civil War in which 150,000 have died to date, and there is still radio silence in those same circles.