MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by retsibsi | 2026-01-22 12:03:57+00:00
I reckon that's empirically false. Shops set prices like $499.99 for a reason.

(And it has to be theoretically false, otherwise $X is equivalent to $X + $0.01 for all X, and so if you'd buy something at 1c you'd buy it for the contents of your bank account.)

If you still dispute this, you need to try to explain how a larger price difference can affect your decision. If you'd happily place a $1 bid, and you'd definitely not place a $100 bid, and a 1c difference could never deter you from placing a bid, then... well, how is that possible?
by maxglute | 2026-01-22 12:04:24+00:00
PRC built ~550 GW of solar last year, ~300GW domestic, ~250GW export. About 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in energy flow. Assume 30 year lifespan, everyday OF PRC solar production = ~120 million barrels of oil stock (4mbd * 30 ys) , assume 17% capacity factor = 820Twh/yr using primary energy / equivalent / substitution method of 1 unit of solar = 3 unit of oil @35% work efficiency.

For reference global oil production is ~100 mb/d. Global LNG= ~70 mb/d equivalent. Global coal = ~110 mb/d equivalent. PRC solar effectively brrrintg new emission free oil field every 24 hours that is larger than all global oil producers combined.

PRC solar capacity is like 1100 GW... lots of idle plants, but on paper PRC solar can produce more energy than all global fossil combined. But world (including PRC) can't absorb/plugin/transition that fast. Now consider solar takes PRC like 18 months to build / scale vs 7-10 year lead for oil infra from RoW.

Another point to consider is manufacturing all these panels, which are net carbon sinks, count towards PRC emissions, vs extracting oil/lng where exporters who gets to shift emission accounting onto importers/consumers. IF PRC got credited for ~100 mb/d of fossil displaced via solar (round down for conservative carbon payback), PRC emissions would be completely negated, i.e. PRC solar would avoid like 1.5x-2x more emissions than PRC generates.
by bjourne | 2026-01-22 12:04:27+00:00
The other side of the coin is that many real bug reports are dismissed out of hand. That is frustrating if you have spent hours or days triaging an issue and have submitted a well-written bug report. It would be useful if projects advertised what their de facto bug report policy is. If it involves snide remarks and pointless bureaucracy ("you did not check this box") then that should be stated to help others avoid wasting time. Perhaps an LLM could help with that: "The likelihood of an external bug report being acted upon is X%, given analysis of past interactions on bug tracker."
by ben_w | 2026-01-22 12:04:38+00:00
Looking at the price of industrial lasers, right now the only thing stoping a random 3rd world terrorist cell from being able to afford to destroy all of them is the adaptive optics to compensate for atmospheric turbulence.

Well, that and the fact that so much of the stuff on Amazon etc. that's listed as "welding laser" is actually a soldering iron.
by sellmesoap | 2026-01-22 12:04:50+00:00
I think a lot of it comes down to the rural/urban divide, in a rural setting there's a lot less convinence, fewer services. A need to be more self suficcient. While urban settings have many amenities and services, they also tend to be hotspots for mental illness, crime, lack of housing for those who don't or can't make enough money to afford increasing rent and food costs, it's harder to police (more resources needed) illness from concentrated pollution. Theres some who see the conservative side of politics as fiscally conservative, and the liberal side aiming for more social support. This is a gross simplification of U.S. politics (I'm Canadian, we have a rural divide as well, take a look at how the urban Canadian centres vote vs rural, the difference is our party colours are backwards to yours!) So many rural folks see the tax bill and say "what do I get for this" and many urban folks see the need for stricter regulations, more social support etc. And say "We need more resources, let's throw money at the problem". Coming from a small town if you see someone in need it's not too burdensom to lend a hand, in a dense urban situation it's neccesary to turn your back on the many individuals and say this is a social problem that is more comfortable to abstract to the government to handle. Now subsides for farmers seem weird from my vantage point. On one hand the scale of operations for a farmer do seem lofty compared to my experience as an individual earner, I don't have to budget for sub $1M equipment upkeep/replacement etc. But on the other I'm not beyond considering "conspiracy theroies" like "sugar makes us more susceptable to influance, and lowers immune response, leading to higher healthcare costs" - bassically we are the product not the customer.

More importanly there's a rift between "I care" and "I'm paid to care" that's common for social support, just like it's common for the tech industry.

All this is an over simplification, but I'd love for us to do better as a whole. I think that starts with people using their empathy and curiosity to understand the divide. Maybe through understanding we can be less judgemental of each other and find ways to work together, or at least understand and build boundaries to make the divide more livable.
by Kamq | 2026-01-22 12:05:10+00:00
> My "actual job" isn't to write code, but to solve problems.

Yes, and there's often a benefit to having a human have an understanding of the concrete details of the system when you're trying to solve problems.

> That has increasingly shifted to "just" reviewing code

It takes longer to read code than to write code if you're trying to get the same level of understanding. You're gaining time by building up an understanding deficit. That works for a while, but at some point you have to go burn the time to understand it.
by rcxdude | 2026-01-22 12:05:33+00:00
When you open up a folder in VS code, addons can start to set up language servers to index the code in the folder. This usually involves invoking build systems to set those up.

(I think some people are fixating on the specific feature that's mentioned in the article. The reason this pop-up exists is that there are many ways that this code execution could happen. Disabling this one feature doesn't make it safe, and this feature if not present, could still be achieved by abusing other capabilities that exist in the vs code ecosystem)
by knitef | 2026-01-22 12:05:46+00:00
Maybe. I have hated crowds all my life. I can always see filth in people. I have helped people cheating at interviews. I want to vomit everytime somebody asks me to make a CV. Vomit in the sense I genuinely hate overselling myself but if I don't, I just don't. And what I'm open if you want to ask any question about me?
by pm215 | 2026-01-22 12:06:36+00:00
Yes; this is why QEMU's user-space-emulation clone syscall handling restricts the caller to only those combinations of clone flags which match either "looks like fork()" or "looks like creating a new pthread", because QEMU itself is linked with the host libc and weird clone flag combinations will put the new process/thread into a state the libc isn't expecting.
by freakynit | 2026-01-22 12:06:41+00:00
Indian here (~15+ years in tech). I've seen this behavior a lot, and unfortunately, I did some of this myself earlier in my career.

Based on my own experience, here are a few reasons (could be a lot more):

1. Unlike most developed countries, in India (and many other develping countries), people in authority are expected to be respected unconditinally(almost). Questioning a manager, teacher, or senior is often seen as disrespect or incompetence. So, instead of asking for clarification, many people just "do something" and hope it is acceptable. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society.

2. Our education system mainly rewards results, not how good or well-thought-out the results are. Sure, better answers get more marks, but the gap between "okay" and "excellent" is usually not emphasized much. This comes from scale problems (huge number of students), very low median income (~$2400/year), and poorly trained teachers, especially outside big cities. Many teachers themselves memorize answers and expect matching output from students. This is slowly improving, but the damage is already there.

3. Pay in India is still severely (serioualy low, with 12-14+ hour work days, even more than 996 culture of China) low for most people, and the job market is extremely competitive. For many students and juniors, having a long list of "projects", PRs, or known names on their resume most often the only way to stand out. Quantity often wins over quality. With LLMs, this problem just got amplified.

Advice: If you want better results from Indian engineers(or designers or anyone else really), especially juniors (speaking as of now, things might change in near future), try to reduce the "authority" gap early on. Make it clear you are approachable and that asking questions is expected. For the first few weeks, work closely with them in the style you want them to follow.. they usually adapt very fast once they feel safe to do so.
by themafia | 2026-01-22 12:06:55+00:00
> Which country doesn't count spoiled or blank votes?

The USA. We have districts where turnout is as low as 25% of eligible voters.

> anyone can start a political party of their own and participate in the election.

You don't get federal funding and the FCC doesn't force networks to cover your party or include you in debates until you win 5% on a national platform. Have fun actually doing this. Which was the only reason I voted for Nader. I wanted the greens to have a standing in the US. It's never even come close to happening since.

> "cancel the election and find new candidates"

Then your political parties will engage in a race to the bottom with you. You don't sense this already happening?
by squeefers | 2026-01-22 12:07:12+00:00
define social media. because in UK law its defined as app or website with a chat or messaging functionality, and in US law its even more nebulously defined than that. UK law counts FitBit as social media.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?def_id=42...

> Its an algorithmic feed that only occassionally shows content from people you're friends with

problem how? ill assume you mean the problem is it shows you or other people stuff that will turn them toxic, not that it literally shows you other peoples content.
by croon | 2026-01-22 12:07:13+00:00
Every place on the internet where discussion on politics is "encouraged" is a heavy handed echo chamber. I think people wanting to discuss politics here specifically want to engage in a reasonably unbiased moderated venue, and people not wanting to discuss politics either want to focus on hacker news (very reasonable) or keep their politics over at [echo chamber X/Y/Z] (bad for society by isolating people in self reinforcing bubbles and not engaging outside of them). I don't envy Dan's or Tom's job, but am thankful for the balance they strike.
by mfalcon | 2026-01-22 12:07:47+00:00
In my opinion, conferences are mostly high noise low signal. My boss went to an "AI conference" last month and all the learnings he shared were things I was advocating already:

- use claude code

- evals are critical

- don't use AI everywhere

I think the conferences are more "work vacations" than work. Maybe they're useful if you think about them this way.
by 8bitsrule | 2026-01-22 12:07:51+00:00
>I've never had it not serve my needs

Same here. It may be 'not very good' for highly specialized or complex technical questions ... but I do research across a broad range of (non-specialized) topics daily. I often need to find 2nd and 3rd points of view on a topic ... or detailed facts about singular events ... and I rarely need to go to the 2nd page. And all ad-free!

It's a remarkable education tool. A curious, explorative kid these days could easily sail WAY beyond their age group using DDG. I can only wish I'd had it.

Their recently added 'Search assistant' consistently provides a couple of CITATIONS to backup its (multi-leveled) responses (Ask for more, get more.) I've seen nothing like it elsewhere. It is even quite good at diggin up useful ... and working ... example code for some languages. Also with citations.
by woof | 2026-01-22 12:07:55+00:00
Summary using Claude 3.7 Sonnet:

"Your Brain On Chat GPT" Paper Analysis

In this transcript, neuroscientist Ashley and psychologist Cat critically analyze a controversial paper titled "Your Brain On Chat GPT" that claims to show negative brain effects from using large language models (LLMs).

Key Issues With the Paper:

Misleading EEG Analysis:

The paper uses EEG (electroencephalography) to claim it measures "brain connectivity" but misuses technical methods
EEG is a blunt instrument that measures thousands of neurons simultaneously, not direct neural connections
The paper confuses correlation of brain activity with actual physical connectivity
Poor Research Design:

Small sample size (54 participants with many dropouts)
Unclear time intervals between sessions
Vague instructions to participants
Controlled conditions don't represent real-world LLM use
Overstated Claims:

Invented terms like "cognitive debt" without defining them
Makes alarmist conclusions not supported by data
Jumps from limited lab findings to broad claims about learning and cognition
Methodological Problems:

Methods section includes unnecessary equations but lacks crucial details
Contains basic errors like incorrect filter settings
Fails to cite relevant established research on memory and learning
No clear research questions or framework
The Experts' Conclusion:

"These are questions worth asking... I do really want to know whether LLMs change the way my students think about problems. I do want to know if the offloading of cognitive tasks changes my own brain and my own cognition... We need to know these things as a society, but to pretend like this paper answers those questions is just completely wrong."

The experts emphasize that the paper appears designed to generate headlines rather than provide sound scientific insights, with potential conflicts of interest among authors who are associated with competing products.
by JaumeGreen | 2026-01-22 12:10:14+00:00
One of my list of dream projects that I might never have time to do, and so feel free to "steal" the idea, would be a eink notepad in where you could code in APL or similar.

APL was born as a mathematical notation, pertaining to the blackboard, so it makes sense to write it using a writing implement. Its terseness would make it ideal for the handwriting world, it's REPL implementation would give quick feedback loops, you could move around input and output streams.

You could be in a sofa, writing the solution, expending most of your energy thinking, not writing, once you got used to the new way of thinking and the vocabulary.

If you haven't tested any array language I would recommend you try to solve things using one, and check existing solutions so you can see how to think differently. Some problems are naturally easier with this approach, some are harder.
by theshrike79 | 2026-01-22 12:10:54+00:00
Depends on how you define "production".

People in general would recoil in horror if they knew how many essential operations are backed by a mess of Excel sheets with formulas and VBA nobody understands anymore.

All it needs is the maker mindset of being just lazy enough to be bothered by a repetitive task and the courage (and permission) to use an Agentic LLM to figure out a fix for the issue.
by jalict | 2026-01-22 12:11:13+00:00
This reminds me so much of Maggie Appleton blog post on "Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers" [1]

We have so many people who are so excellent and fast and developing nowadays that we can even afford the time to build things for our community, friends and even just for ourselves.

It has probably always been like this, but I am just personally observing a higher-degree of people doing and talking about it. Even just the small-web/neocities bobble points into this.

[1] https://maggieappleton.com/home-cooked-software
by cebert | 2026-01-22 12:11:39+00:00
> Pay in India is still severely (seriously low, with 12-14+ hour workdays, even more than the 996 culture of China) low for most people.

My employer outsources some work to Indian contractors. I know how much we are paying the contracting firm, which is low. Knowing the firm takes a cut before the contractors are paid, I feel terrible for how little they are compensated. I frequently wonder if we’d get better output if we paid more.
by SwiftyBug | 2026-01-22 12:11:55+00:00
I had the same exact experience with an Indian contractor. I requested that he used git instead of Shopify CLI for his changes to a store's theme. He acknowledged my request but kept using the CLI. I once again asked him to use git and even offered a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to pull, branch and then push changes. He absolutely ignored everything and simply kept using the CLI. That was actually amazing to witness. The only hypothesis I have is that it's some kind of cultural thing where asking for help is worse than doing the opposite of what's expected from you. I don't know, but your story supports my hypothesis.
by littlecranky67 | 2026-01-22 12:12:32+00:00
It is cultural - the whole "not losing face" thing. In a project, I once was squad lead - I was onsite, my squad members were in Bangalore of course. Same experience as you. Once I wanted to talk about a piece of code that we need to improve and refactor, and I was acting in good faith calling the dev that commited that code. When I braught up the code on my screen to start a pair programming, he immediately denied having written the code. Unfortunately for him, being a junior, he did not know about git blame - I entered it in the terminal and his name showed up on that code. Still, he would simply just deny that he wrote it. I then took the git commit hash and looked it up in gitlab, able to bring up the MR he created and the reviewer (wasn't me). Even with that on screen, he still denied being the author - with no arguments or alternative reasoning, he just constantly would repeat "No, I haven't written that". "No no, but I haven't written it". I pulled even the JIRA ticket up, that was about that feature and guess what - he was the assigne and moved it to "In Progress" and "Done". Still with that on screen all I got was a "no, haven't written it".

I had more of those interactions, and we also exchanged some of the indian devs (they were sold to the client by a big consulting group, and immediately replaced by someone else if we wished). I later found out, people that I have had replaced in my sqaud for not being qualified, ended up in different teams in the same corporation, they were basically just moving around inhouse.

After a few month in the project I swore to myself never to work with offshores again. And as a side note, the bank I did the project with, does not exist anymore :)
by duckydude20 | 2026-01-22 12:13:13+00:00
i think the same, i think backend where data is more prominent is not going anywhere soon. llms produce very bad data structures.

but from good apis, good data, good interface they can generate quite nice frontends.

i guess, frontend as job is going to have a hard time.

also, writing code is not cognitive load, its always reading code. and llms just increase that. so i mostly try to avoid using them.

but i do like researching with them. context free. like googles ai mode, etc. not from my code editor cause then they get biased and suggest stupid sh8t all the time.
by kumrayu | 2026-01-22 12:13:53+00:00
Thank you so much, I also regularly read your blogs.

I am looking forward for better iOS support. :)
Hope Apple can be much reasonable.

Also, what network trackers do you think are most harmful for privacy? — WebRTC, hardware fingerprinting, etags, cookies?
Do you think Adguard will hone themselves much more in the future from just being an ad-blocker to evolving into an all-in-one privacy protector?

Also, I apologize for asking too many questions, I just got a bit excited when I saw you comment.
by j-bos | 2026-01-22 12:14:16+00:00
Seems like a lot of the problems had by the low friction of first eternal september and now LLM genrated reports and contributions, could be resolved by restoring friction. First time reporters/contributers could be required to send their report or PR by paper mail. Strict requirements for the sender: all text printed on postcards (no letter opening) as QR or other data codes according to a standard formatting. Anything even slightly off goes straight to the trash, high signal/interest contributors can still get their foot in the door.
by somenameforme | 2026-01-22 12:14:16+00:00
This is what Japan's GDP/capita [1] looks like. I assume you're around my age because we grew up in a time when Japan was set to become the next economic super-power, and it looked like it might even surpass the US. But sometime around 1995, their economy peaked and they've been in pretty bad shape since then. Their current GDP/capita is about 25% lower (and falling) than it was in 1995. They work as a great argument against people who insist to just always buy the dip. What goes down does not always come back up.

By contrast this [2] is China's GDP/capita which is something really close to a vertical line. But for all the talk about economic systems, I think it's just because of good leadership and a motivated population. There's plenty of capitalist countries that aren't going anywhere, and there's endless examples of hybrid/social economic systems that have also gone nowhere. So I think there have to be explanations outside of the economic system itself.

[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

[2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
by thisislife2 | 2026-01-22 12:14:19+00:00
As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many westerners here who think just because Iranians are disgruntled at their current rulers, they are waiting to welcome the son of a despot ruler who they overthrew once, who has lived most of his life abroad, and urges foreign countries to invade his country so he can be the ruler of Iran again! The same with Venezuela too - however pissed of the Venezuelans are the current government, no Venezuelan is going to welcome the current Nobel peace prize winner, a right-wing politician who plans to privatize the energy resources of her country so her family can get back the "rights" that she believes was "stolen" from her, especially when she too urges foreign countries to invade her country.

I do subscribe to the view that politicians like these, who seek the help of foreign powers to come to power, are definitely traitors to their country. Inviting foreign powers to meddle in your affairs is how civil war erupt and lead to the eventual breakup of a country.
by altmanaltman | 2026-01-22 12:14:27+00:00
> I think architecture and UX have more impact on the quality of the software you write for the end user than the details of a specific language. And when you're creating guitar training software, music and guitar playing knowledge has more impact on the quality of the software, than the details of a specific language.

hard disagree on both points. You're talking about "impact" but surely you'll be a better coder if you can actually, you know, code? The other stuff is important sure but if you literally cannot read the code and just pleasure yourself with dreams of architecture and UX, what you're generating is 99% bad quality.

But prove me wrong, would love to see something you've made.