MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zamadatix | 2026-01-10 01:49:37+00:00
Cool stuff, I'm sure that saved you a lot of time and let you get to messing with the fun/physics parts quicker.

Feedback on the UI side: It'd be cool if the stars used more random positions rather than sine/cosine looking patterns. There are lots of different approaches one could try (from simple random positions to very complex types of clustered randomness and brightness variation to realistic star maps). My suggestion would be take whichever approach sounds the most fun!
by Adrian-ChatLocl | 2026-01-10 01:50:14+00:00
I don't know if vibe coding is the solution to all problems. There's a lot that it can't solve, which means it's up to humans to develop the applications. Maybe you just need to find the right application to create.

It's kind of hard these days, because if you look at the world of software, corporations have enterprise systems that don't really spark any excitement for the people working on them, video games are worse than what they used to be, specifically AAA titles (indie games are cool, but they don't bring me as much excitement as AAA titles), there's like a million Android and iOS apps, most of which just aren't as... amazing as you'd want them to be.

If you really think about it, it just really comes down to the money. See, the United States is $38 trillion in debt, and as a result, I think a lot of people are struggling. If the U.S. wasn't $38 trillion in debt, I think a lot of people would have a lot more fun with software, in a way that... there would be something to create.

So, what I'm saying is, if there's a way to create software that revives society, and eases the struggle with money, that would be the thing to create.
by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-10 01:50:41+00:00
For sake of completeness, another important reason:

4. These kinds of "social ills" hypothetically affecting only individuals, actually spill over to affect their families, and, at scale, communities.

That being said, in most cases it still doesn't justify this level of drastic intervention. Otherwise, cigarettes and alcohol and even Lotto would've been banned out of existence by fiat.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2026-01-10 01:50:47+00:00
> Their CEO comes off as a real self-righteous character.

https://www.ci.staunton.va.us/home/showpublisheddocument/134... (PDF)

My favorite part:

> [Activists are] also trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.

As if people are not simply asking for something to which they are entitled through legislation.
by orwin | 2026-01-10 01:51:09+00:00
If they enter it illegally, that's probably a crime (I have no idea of what it's like in the US).

Of course visa violations aren't a crime, did you ever had to fill administrative papers? What if misfiling your taxes was a crime, regardless of intent? Do you want everyone who made a mistake on their taxes to go to prison preventively? Or only fraudsters?
by perching_aix | 2026-01-10 01:51:43+00:00
> so are kings of England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Netherlands & Arabia

The first six of which to my understanding are token roles, sometimes de jure, but definitely de facto. This is unlike the role of the Iranian Supreme Leader, who according to my findings is heavily involved and has the license to do so.

I don't know what country Arabia is supposed to be.

> The Guardian Council is an elected body with the power to remove the so-called "Supreme Leader", so his power is limited too

You know that I considered and checked for all of this ahead of time, right?

The Supreme Leader directly elects 6 of the Guardian Council members, but also the judiciary chief, who elects the other 6.

The Supreme Leader is elected and kept in position by the Assembly of Experts, the members of which are... elected by the Guardian Council. And considering they have never exercised their authority to remove a Supreme Leader according to my search, it's a reasonable conclusion that this authority in practice is a token one.

I have also looked into whether these bodies are partial, and not only is this true covertly, it is true openly. Candidates that don't fit the bill on any of these levels are proudly filtered out in droves.

I'm not convinced you're here to inform with honesty.
by maxwells-daemon | 2026-01-10 01:52:10+00:00
We are! We very recently announced some results on formally proving the correctness of programs: https://harmonic.fun/news#blog-post-verina-bench-sota

Formal methods are cool because, by contrast to tools like the borrow checker, you can prove some very "nonlocal" properties: this system does not deadlock, or it makes progress at least every N steps, etc.
by sibrahim | 2026-01-10 01:52:28+00:00
That's what's covered by the "assuming you have formalized the statement correctly" parenthetical.

Given a formal statement of what you want, Lean can validate that the steps in a (tedious) machine-readable purported proof are valid and imply the result from accepted axioms. This is not AI, but a tiny, well reviewed kernel that only accepts correct formal logic arguments.

So, if you have a formal statement that you've verified to represent what you are interested in by some other means, Lean can tell you whether the proof created by genAI is correct. Basically, there is a nigh infallible checker that won't accept incorrect hallucinations.
by SecretDreams | 2026-01-10 01:52:36+00:00
> Ie. they mirror the intellect of the user but give you big dopamine hits that'll lead you astray.

This hits so true to home. Just today in my field a manager without expertise in a topic gave me an AI solution to something I am an expertise in. The AI was very plainly and painfully wrong, but it comes down to the user prompting really poorly. When I gave a el formulated prompt to the same topic, I got the correct answer on the first go.
by seba_dos1 | 2026-01-10 01:52:56+00:00
> You can still do whatever computing you want on your device.

Maybe there's some alternate reality where that's the case, but it's not this one.

> Please take a charitable interpretation. What you are saying is what I meant.

It's hard to figure out what you meant, you seem confused about how this works. Have you read the article? "Secure Kernel" is what Microsoft calls the piece of software that runs within the trusted context and is distinct from the NT kernel, inspecting and attesting its state.
by lifetimerubyist | 2026-01-10 01:53:44+00:00
We start the meeting at 2 minutes past. Meetings end at 10 minutes before the hour (or half hour) - yes, "30 minute" meetings are only effecitvely 18 minutes, but we leave a few minutes of buffer.

Any meeting that goes over an hour has a mandatory 10 minute break at the 50 minute mark every hour.

If you're not on time..tough sh*t we're starting without you. Use the AI minutes or something to catch up.
by _--__--__ | 2026-01-10 01:53:46+00:00
This is a mindset that is intentionally cultivated in Jesuit novices to the priesthood in what they call the "pilgrimage experiment": each is given $50 and a bus ticket in order to make a trip to a specific/meaningful destination while giving and receiving aid in whatever opportunities arise. Example anecdote: https://www.jesuitscentralsouthern.org/stories/judge-for-you...
by dekhn | 2026-01-10 01:53:53+00:00
I don't particularly like the openflexure approach. Instead, I build stages similar to standard XY stages: https://www.asiimaging.com/products/stages/xy-inverted-stage... which uses standard motion components (linear rail and linear bearings, 3d printer style steppers), all of which gets mounted on aluminum extrusion (4040). Then the illuminator and camera just get mounted on the aluminum extrusion.

It's pretty close to the Thorlabs Cerna, https://www.thorlabs.com/cerna-r-series-modular-microscopy-s... although I just do low-magnification light microscopy.
by nebula8804 | 2026-01-10 01:53:54+00:00
Reminds me of the old Apogee/3DRealms/Build Engine DOS Games. In the sound card setup you could choose 44.1Khz but if you didn't have the CPU/sound card processing power there was also something along the lines of 33Khz and 22Khz and I always remembered how the sound degraded. It sounded nicer to my ears at times.
by aj7 | 2026-01-10 01:53:56+00:00
I’m an optomechanical engineer and I’m sorry. I’m not impressed. In a Michelson, the single most important requirement is that the optical path lengths of the two arms do not drift with respect to each other, either in length or angle. Having that path length determined by a fused deposition polymer is about the LAST choice I would make. I have a suggestion. Fused quartz rods are relatively cheap. Buy some 6mm rods and a thin diamond blade to cut them to size. Use the 3D printer to make plate-like parts, ‘replicating’ a cage structure. The polymer parts should be used only for components PERPENDICULAR to the optical path. You could even experiment with using embedded rods to stabilize the plates in various directions. So much of hobbyist activity amounts to a kind of adult coloring or copying. Rather, at your own level, try to be a scientist.
by VerifiedReports | 2026-01-10 01:54:36+00:00
I did, and Word version 2 was an excellent product. WordBasic was incredible. There was even a graphical dialog-builder, so you could invoke dialogs from your macros. I wrote a macro that parsed and re-wrote SQL queries for a Big-6 consulting firm, saving them man-weeks if not months.

Word today is a ghastly, incompetent shitshow.
by mc32 | 2026-01-10 01:55:07+00:00
I mean, the product makes their jobs easier and cheaper (for investigations). People may debate that, but these things come down to efficiency.

So, whether it's vendor A or Vendor B municipalities don't care. What they want is the capability. The municipalities have the backing of the communities -with few odd exceptions because most people in most communities want LE to "catch the perps."
by AnonC | 2026-01-10 01:56:03+00:00
> while Outlook supports starting five minutes late

This contrast is an incorrect assumption. Outlook does allow starting meetings late as well as ending meetings early, with somewhat arbitrary durations. [1] I have definitely seen these options in Outlook settings (on web, since I hate Outlook).

However, I haven’t used it because the teams one works with need to be alerted and reminded of it before it sticks in their minds (if nobody else is using such settings).

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/end-meetings-earl...
by nebula8804 | 2026-01-10 01:56:47+00:00
They pushed it hard during the Biden years. Thats partly why GM went so hard into it. If they manage to really elect an AOC type candidate next time, they will definitely go back to it. Maybe if they get a Fetterman like candidate, they will back off but I dont think thats going to happen given everything that has transpired election wise over the last year or so.
Show HN: Fin2cents – Portfolio simulator I built because quant ≠ good investor
by amywangyx | 2026-01-10 01:56:55+00:00
I've worked as a quant trader for 3 years, and I still had no idea how to allocate my own savings. Sounds ridiculous, but market making at work is very different from figuring out "should I put my retirement money in VTI or gold."

So I built the tool I needed. fin2cents has a portfolio sandbox that runs Monte Carlo simulations using historical return/vol profile, updated daily.

Most tools show you "7% expected return" and call it a day. But I wanted to know: what's my realistic downside?

Monte Carlo shows the range of outcomes, not just the average — specifically the 25th–75th percentile, so risk is visible before you commit real money.
by yallpendantools | 2026-01-10 01:57:21+00:00
Can someone please ELI5 what this means for Deno and Python? TFA: "deno is being distributed on pypi for use in python projects" makes it sound like you can now `import deno` and have a JS engine/subsystem in Python, like we finally came full circle from [PyScript](https://pyscript.net/).

However, other comments make it sound like a bunch of other projects have discovered that PyPI is a good distribution channel. Which, to me, sounds like using the Internet Archive as your CDN. Is PyPI the next apt/yum/brew or what?
by maxwells-daemon | 2026-01-10 01:57:27+00:00
Thank you! It depends on the topic. Some fields (algebra, number theory) are covered well by Lean's math library, and so I think we are already there; I recommend trying Aristotle for yourself to see how reliably it can formalize these theorems!

In other fields (topology, probability, linear algebra), many key definitions are not in Mathlib yet, so you will struggle to write down the theorem itself. (But in some cases, Aristotle can define the structure you are talking about on the fly!)

This is not an intrinsic limitations of Lean, it's just that nobody has taken the time to formalize much of those fields yet. We hope to dramatically accelerate this process by making it trivial to prove lemmas, which make up much of the work. For now, I still think humans should write the key definitions and statements of "central theorems" in a field, to ensure they are compatible with the rest of the library.
by wizzwizz4 | 2026-01-10 01:57:45+00:00
Philosophically, this is not true in general, but that's for trivial reasons: "how many integers greater than 7 are blue?" doesn't correspond to a formal question. It is absolutely true in many specific cases. Most problems posed by a mathematician will correspond to exactly one formal proposition, within the context of a given formal system. This problem is unusual, in that it was originally misspecified.
by imcritic | 2026-01-10 01:58:22+00:00
That alliance costs money. It doesn't bring anything good in return: the USSR (that this alliance was created against) is long gone. Trump is a genius if he somehow manages to kill 2 birds with 1 stone: make OTHER parties of the alliance want to disband the alliance AND get some piece of land with a unique strategic position all to himself/U.S.

I think it's Putin who is going to be jealous of Trump, not the other way around.
by saulpw | 2026-01-10 01:58:33+00:00
I don't know how you can't see it, but people who have gobs of wealth absolutely have more options (and more powerful options) than people who don't. For just one small example, they can purchase equity in non-public companies. If a regular person wanted to invest in OpenAI, they couldn't. But if a billionaire wants to throw down $10b, they can.

Just like how someone who has $200k can get a mortgage to buy a house, whereas someone with only $20k cannot. That's economic power that comes from having wealth to leverage.
by bsder | 2026-01-10 01:58:42+00:00
> LLMs generate junk

Apparently, so do humans.

Recent manager quote from a CRUD shop: "I don't understand why you are so negative on AI. As far as I can tell, AI is better than our Hyderabad team, I don't have to manage it, and it's in my time zone to boot."

I was agog.
by noAnswer | 2026-01-10 01:59:06+00:00
> Aren't those Fritz!Box routers (common in Europe) precisely examples of "shitty routers with terrible security?"

Not at all. They had security bugs, sure, but not constantly. Each device has a randomized admin password from the factory. Some changes require physical hardware access because one needs to press a button to confirm. They support the hardware for ages. Their 7490 model just got a feature firmware update. The model is 13 years old!

In Germany, if you ask someone where his router is he might not know what you talk about. But he understand if you asked about "your fritzbox". (Even in cases where they have something else.)

But enough of the glazing. In 2024 they got sold to private equity. Lets see how the enshittification will treat them.
by fallingfrog | 2026-01-10 02:00:23+00:00
Sorry I was in the car and tried to see how I would do it as an exercise. I actually think I undercounted because for the king and rooks you have to store whether they have been moved yet, and for the pawns whether they just jumped two spaces (so you know if en passant is a valid move).

So I wasn't saying the article is wrong, just engaging in a bit of intellectual exercise.
by jrowen | 2026-01-10 02:00:28+00:00
> After all, we aren't volitionless molecules bouncing off walls.

Are we not?

The free will debate aside, I think what you said makes a lot of sense, and comes across as empathetic, and you didn't need to use that word. I just think it's too loaded, aggressive, and broad to be very useful as a shorthand for the more complex thought you expressed.
by lovich | 2026-01-10 02:00:47+00:00
>The sales didn't materialize plus they were forced to do so by governments and short term investors that saw Tesla's stock shoot up. Now GM is writing off ~7 billion dollars. Whats worse is when Dems take back the white house, they will force the automakers to go back to green again.

Ah yes, the terrible force of getting EV subsidies, which the Republicans have now cancelled causing the writeoff. How dare the Dems force the Republicans to do that?
by demetrizz_ | 2026-01-10 02:01:14+00:00
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by dang | 2026-01-10 02:01:30+00:00
We've asked you to stop posting like this to HN. I understand that the topic is sensitive and personal, but being this aggressive in HN comments is not ok and we ban accounts that do it.

You've been a good contributor to HN for a long time and most of your comments aren't like this, but there is also a long history of us asking you to stop posting personal attacks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46012112 (Nov 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867262 (Dec 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21327013 (Oct 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17371604 (June 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16017705 (Dec 2017)

Moreover, your account has continued to be in the habit of posting aggressive comments recently, including personal attacks (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478121, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46463522). This is not cool.

I don't want to ban you but it's important to preserve this place for its intended purpose of curious conversation (which depends on thoughtful, respectful comments), so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop doing this going forward, we'd be grateful.
by jjmarr | 2026-01-10 02:02:15+00:00
Not the OP, but I tried it when it came out. VR headset technology wasn't good enough for screens within screens and it was nauseating more than anything.

There's also impedance mismatch between using the headset controllers and the physical ones in the game. Ideally, I should be able to use my own fightstick in an augmented reality configuration.
by maxwells-daemon | 2026-01-10 02:02:50+00:00
Aristotle's output is formally verified in Lean, so you can run it for days on a hard problem and be assured that the answer, no matter how complex, is right without needing to manually check it.

Claude Code can write lean, but we do a heck of a lot of RL on theorem proving, so Aristotle winds up being much better at writing Lean than other coding agents are.
by saulpw | 2026-01-10 02:02:51+00:00
I don't hate billionaires. They just shouldn't have that much money. NO ONE should have that much money. In fact, back in the 80s, virtually no one did. Remember when Bill Gates was the richest person in the world in 1995? And he had $13b of MSFT stock. Now the 10 richest people all have 10-20x that. That's not inflation (which is only 3x since then), that's an incredible increase of wealth concentrated in their hands, that gives them the power to light our industrial society on fire if they want. And some of them do want.
by Animats | 2026-01-10 02:02:55+00:00
The Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago).

One of the big classics. It once contained exhibits from major manufacturers. US Steel, General Electric, RCA. AT&T, IBM, Whirlpool, International Harvester, the Santa Fe Railroad... Most of the corporate sponsorship is gone, it's more "educational", and it costs $30 instead of being free.

Museum of Broadcast Communications (Chicago).

This was once impressive, and now it's closed with the artifacts in storage. It had much early TV studio equipment. Their nostalgia exhibit, pre-Internet, was that they had a huge library of TV shows on VHS tapes, and you could request that one be played for you.
by linuxhansl | 2026-01-10 02:03:15+00:00
And so it begins... Or continues...

Apple is already a walled garden, granting you only access to your hardware and they see fit.
Google desperately wants to follow suit by enforcing developer registration (which is just the first step).
And now this. This is will happen in the EU and US as well.

And always in the name of security, safety, or "will nobody think of the children?!"

My hardware, my choice, period.
by zamadatix | 2026-01-10 02:04:38+00:00
I don't think I've seen Netflix comment on this since a long time ago, but back in 2018 it was:

- 15% PC

- 10% Smartphone

- 5% Tablets

- 70% TVs

In terms of viewing hours https://www.statista.com/chart/13191/netflix-usage-by-device.... So definitely most viewing on TV, but still something like 1/3 of households with TVs don't have a 4k TV at all (as of 2025) in the first place. Hard to definitively say more since Netflix & others don't seem to publish the numbers often.

I'd love to find out I'm wildly wrong though and have a bunch of people willing to push Netflix to have higher quality content... but so many people don't even seem to pay for the premium plan with 4k (anecdotally, Netflix doesn't seem to publish numbers on that) that I'm not holding my breath as I sit here with UHD Blu-Ray quality instead :D. It seems like most people just want something quick to turn on in the background than something to really sit down and bask in every detail of.
by perching_aix | 2026-01-10 02:04:56+00:00
What bias?

It seems to me that in your view the sheer openness to evaluate LLM use, anecdotally or otherwise, is already a bias.

I don't see how that's sensible, given that to evaluate the utility of something, it's necessary to accept the possibility of that utility existing in the first place.

On the other hand, if this is not just me strawmanning you, your rejection of such a possibility is absolutely a bias, as that inhibits this exploration.

To willfully conflate finding such an exploration illegitimate with the findings of someone who thinks otherwise as illegitimate, strikes me as extremely deceptive. I don't appreciate being forced to think with someone else's opinion covertly laundered in very much. And no, Tao's comments do not meet this same criteria, as his position is not covert, but explicit.
by fsniper | 2026-01-10 02:06:09+00:00
Even if the instructions don't change in the lifecycle of a particular release, software still fails. Because software is not just the instructions, it’s a combination of the instructions and inputs. At least the output is.

The mentioned bridge failed because it was not designed for the particular input of the ship collision. Same applies for software.

Hardware, time, entropy, users are all inputs. Software and inputs could be the same but some entropy change, or hardware aging could still result in failed output. Isn’t it also failure of the software?