MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by JohnLeitch | 2026-01-18 22:02:42+00:00
What was his role? How did he slow the project down? I ask because quite often, the value of "soft skills" is exaggerated. In almost 20 years of software engineering I have met some of the worst personalities imaginable. Yet, I cannot think of a single time somebody's personality got in the way to such an extent it slowed the project down. Some problems can't be solved by average people. In such cases, bad social skills with above average intellect will go farther than average intellect with good soft skills.
by bvisness | 2026-01-18 22:03:12+00:00
It's very easy to say the New Reddit devs were just "doing it wrong" and oversubscribing their components to Redux state, for example. (I love me a good `state => state` selector.) But also, this irrelevant-update problem was pervasive across all of New Reddit, across the app I worked on professionally for five years, and across many other applications I've looked at with the React and Redux dev tools. Irrelevant updates happen all the time with this stack.

If everyone who uses it seriously ends up "doing it wrong", I say it's the framework's fault.
by saila | 2026-01-18 22:03:13+00:00
Thanks. I came up with this Python simulation that matches your 68%:

import random

def lying_flippers(num_flips=1_000_000):
"""

- Bob flips a coin and tells Alice the result but lies 20% of the
time.
- Alice tells me Bob's result but also lies 20% of the time.
- If I trust Bob, I know I'll be correct 80% of the time.
- If I trust Alice, how often will I be correct (assuming I don't
know Bob's result)?

"""

# Invert flip 20% of the time.
def maybe_flip_flip(flip: bool):
if random.random() < 0.2:
return not flip
return flip

def sum_correct(actual, altered):
return sum(1 if a == b else 0 for (b, a) in zip(actual, altered))

half_num_flips = num_flips // 2
twenty_percent = int(num_flips * 0.2)

actual_flips = [random.choice((True, False)) for _ in range(num_flips)]
num_heads = sum(actual_flips)
num_tails = num_flips - num_heads
print(f"Heads = {num_heads} Tails = {num_tails}")

bob_flips = [maybe_flip_flip(flip) for flip in actual_flips]
alice_flips = [maybe_flip_flip(flip) for flip in bob_flips]

bob_num_correct = sum_correct(actual_flips, bob_flips)
bob_percent_correct = bob_num_correct / num_flips

alice_num_correct = sum_correct(actual_flips, alice_flips)
alice_percent_correct = alice_num_correct / num_flips

# Trusting Bob should lead to being correct ~80% of the time.
# This is just a verification of the model since we already know the answer.
print(f"Trust Bob -> {bob_percent_correct:.1%}")

# Trusting Alice should lead to being correct ?% of the time.
# This model produces 68%.
print(f"Trust Alice -> {alice_percent_correct:.1%}")

print()
by mezyt | 2026-01-18 22:04:07+00:00
The metaphor doesn't match very well here because stackoverflow is not selling new tape at a premium but giving them for free and reading a stackoverflow answer is harder than asking an LLM.

Could be that AI companies feeding on stackoverflow are selling tape at a premium, and if they tell you it's only supervised learning from a lot of human experts it's going to destroy the nice bubble they have going on around AGI.

Could also be that you have to do the actual theory / practice / correction work for your basal ganglia to "know" about something without thinking about it (i.e. learn), contrary to the novel where the knowledge is directly inserted in your brain. If everyone use AI to skip the "practice" phase lazily then there's no one to make the AI evolve anymore. And the world is not a Go board where the AI can learn against itself indefinitely.
by dgroshev | 2026-01-18 22:04:35+00:00
I wish we collectively had a better understanding of those ad tech shifts being fundamentally zero sum.

If we treat marketing as a black box, where are the benefits from supposedly more efficient marketing? Ad budgets are the same. People have the same amount of disposable income (or less, really). So on the both sides of the box converting ad budgets into paying customers the sum is the same. Quasi-monopolistic ad networks (Google and Meta) just hoovered up the money that previously went into other ad spaces, like local papers. Now OpenAI is going to fight for the same pie.

Ad tech is a market failure.
by LexiMax | 2026-01-18 22:05:40+00:00
The funny part is that Alexander comes to the exact same conclusion:

Adams is easy and fun to mock - as is everyone who lives their life uniquely and unapologetically. I’ve had a good time psychoanalyzing him, but everyone does whatever they do for psychological reasons, and some people end up doing good.

Though I can’t endorse either Adams’ politics or his persuasive methods, everything is a combination of itself and an attempt to build a community. And whatever the value of his ideas, the community seems real and loving.
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-18 22:05:49+00:00
> a lot of things end up having really awkward "ctl" files which you write command strings to that the fileserver needs to parse.

These are no different in principle than ioctl calls in *ix systems. The `ctl` approach is at least a proper generalization. Being able to use simple read/write primitives for everything else is nonetheless a significant gain.
by lizknope | 2026-01-18 22:06:22+00:00
Bots have ruined reddit but that is what the owners wanted.

The API protest in 2023 took away tools from moderators. I noticed increased bot activity after that.

The IPO in 2024 means that they need to increase revenue to justify the stock price. So they allow even more bots to increase traffic which drives up ad revenue. I think they purposely make the search engine bad to encourage people to make more posts which increases page views and ad revenue. If it was easy to find an answer then they would get less money.

At this point I think reddit themselves are creating the bots. The posts and questions are so repetitive. I've unsubscribed to a bunch of subs because of this.
by upofadown | 2026-01-18 22:06:34+00:00
The cookie banners are for initial consent. You just consent to less stuff sometimes.

A website might claim some sort of legitimate interest for the initial collection of data but might not think that they can claim that for the retention of data I suppose. That would seem kind of dodgy to me...

Just because a website claims something doesn't mean it is valid. There isn't a lot that falls under legitimate interest for a website.
by catapart | 2026-01-18 22:06:53+00:00
yeah, I was one of them. developers are not the endgame, though. true social media needs people who are not going to do anything more complicated than "go to website, sign up". there's no world where setting up your own pds is that simple without an organized piece of software to do that kind of thing.

personally, I could probably get behind recommending something like umbrel[0], if it included something like a "include a pds" option during config. but even that is asking for a lot of mind-share for a non-tech user. it would take a super smooth setup process for that to be realistic. point is, though, I'm not saying it can't be done; I'm saying no one is doing it and what people are doing is not getting the job done for wider adoption.

[0] https://umbrel.com/
*and, naturally, at this point, I'd prefer they include something that isn't based on AT proto for social publication. I wouldn't mind if they had both, but just an AT proto implementation wouldn't attract me.
by tim333 | 2026-01-18 22:07:17+00:00
I think there may be a bit of a losing battle here. In the title you have AI doesn't think but then in the Gemini API docs you have the section on "Generating content with thinking" and how to print the thought summaries https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/thinking

It seems a bit like saying cars don't run, we have to stop saying they are flying along. I mean Gemini doesn't think the same or as well as a human but it does something along those lines.
by pixl97 | 2026-01-18 22:07:56+00:00
The funny thing is I knew people that used the phrase 'you're absolutely right' very commonly...

They were sales people, and part of the pitch was getting the buyer to come to a particular idea "all on their own" then make them feel good on how smart they were.

The other funny thing on EM dashes is there are a number of HN'ers that use them, and I've seen them called bots. But when you dig deep in their posts they've had EM dashes 10 years back... Unless they are way ahead of the game in LLMs, it's a safe bet they are human.

These phrases came from somewhere, and when you look at large enough populations you're going to find people that just naturally align with how LLMs also talk.

This said, when the number of people that talk like that become too high, then the statistical likelihood they are all human drops considerably.
by orbabam | 2026-01-18 22:08:20+00:00
Kinda funny the author fed a visual from French film 'La Haine'[0] to ChatGPT to produce whatever this illustration is supposed to convey ("The world is our/ads"? What does that mean?).

Without crediting the movie of course.

[0] https://www.machina-deriveapprodi.com/post/le-monde-est-%C3%...
by rpiguy | 2026-01-18 22:08:40+00:00
Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes, but they were morons

No, not without an amendment allowing a third term, but even if there were an amendment probably still a No because he is too old and his very blunt and impolitic manner is not sustainable long-term in national leadership.

According to the WSJ, thr President has lost about 8% of his voters, so he should make some adjustments.

WSJ POLL: 92% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are giving him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve”
Exploring hard-constrained PINNs for real-time industrial control
by stevealphios | 2026-01-18 22:09:37+00:00
’m exploring whether physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) with hard physical constraints (as opposed to soft penalty formulations) can be used for real-time industrial process optimization with provable safety guarantees.

The context: I’m planning to deploy a novel hydrogen production system in 2026 and instrument it extensively to test whether hard-constrained PINNs can optimize complex, nonlinear industrial processes in closed-loop control. The target is sub-millisecond (<1 ms) inference latency using FPGA-SoC–based edge deployment, with the cloud used only for training and model distillation.

I’m specifically trying to understand:

Are there practical ways to enforce hard physical constraints in PINNs beyond soft penalties (e.g., constrained parameterizations, implicit layers, projection methods)?

Is FPGA-SoC inference realistic for deterministic, safety-critical control at sub-millisecond latencies?

Do physics-informed approaches meaningfully improve data efficiency and stability compared to black-box ML in real industrial settings?

Have people seen these methods generalize across domains (steel, cement, chemicals), or are they inherently system-specific?

I’d love to hear from people working on PINNs, constrained optimization, FPGA/edge AI, industrial control systems, or safety-critical ML.

I’m not hiring at this stage — this is purely to learn from the community and potentially collaborate on research or publications as data from the industrial pilot becomes available. I’m also happy to share findings as the project progresses.

If you have experience, references, or strong opinions here, I’d really appreciate your thoughts.
by gambiting | 2026-01-18 22:09:57+00:00
>>No, but what claim did Denmark have over the native people when they invaded?

If you really are American then I hope the irony of this question is not lost on you.

I guess talking to you is kinda like talking to a citizen of Germany circa 1939 who is saying that of course Poland should be taken, they have the best location in Europe with all trade between east and west going throught it, lots of natural resources, and after all why do the Slavs have claims to it, Prussians lived there too. I don't want to see my country collapse militarily and economically - and we are amazing too.

It just makes sense, doesn't it. America is powerful, of course it should take Greenland if it wants to - why shouldn't Denmark give it away, they owe you, right?

I suppose the only question is - are you ready to pick up a rifle and come and take it? Or just to send other young men do to it for you? Or is your plan just to destroy your alleged allies economically until they do what you want them to do?

I think my main regret at the moment is looking up to America as an adolescent, your cultural exports have really worked in that sense. You might have the best rockets around, but at the end of the day you're just a country of bullies.
by jgerrish | 2026-01-18 22:10:03+00:00
Indian River State College in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, Florida is an OCLC member.

Their kids section is always busy.

They provide more than just books to patrons, one of their projects provides rentable backpacks with food making kits:

(Sorry about the Facebook link)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRS...

Cooking together provides an educational and bonding opportunity for kids and caretakers, and nutrition is important. Making it easier is a win to me.

We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries.

I appreciate I'm just replying to a off-hand comment, so I'm sorry for the next part.

I will be battling my family for decades about IP and how they are relying on it instead of first mover advantage and the IQ we had today and yesterday. And how it changes cultural values around sharing. It's not good. I know we probably agree on that, so that part isn't directed at you, just the future.
by CGMthrowaway | 2026-01-18 22:10:09+00:00
Go to the primary source. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1914-20v02...

It's clear that the threat of Denmark falling into the hands/influence of another power, not the fall itself, was enough. In case it wasn't clear, Lansing writes "the possible consequence of absorption," not, "the absorption of Denmark."

The US position was that Denmark was too small and weak to remain neutral or defend the islands. Therefore, as long as the islands remained Danish, they were a security risk to the US.
by pintxo | 2026-01-18 22:10:22+00:00
#8 + #9 by assets are combined bigger than JP Morgan (which is #5 on the list) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_banks]

SWIFT sits in Belgium, why would anyone in Europe need to switch away from it? Is the US able to handle their (international) financial transactions without access to SWIFT?

The financial market being significantly smaller, sure, but will it stay like that?

Quickly summing up total spending of the European countries on this list, the Europeans seem to spend about half of what the US spends on the military, quite a lot more than I expected. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...]
by epolanski | 2026-01-18 22:11:02+00:00
It's not about Romania or any other country.

I was making a point that whether you graduate or not has little correlation with your capacity of handling higher abstractions and complexity, because neither bootcampers nor engineering graduates have the experience of building complex systems, let alone under time, tech leadership and management pressure.

It is likely that the original authors may have found themselves in a situation where they were tasked to build a trivial form with technologies they were not accustomed to at the request of some superior and they ended writing a soup.
by graemep | 2026-01-18 22:11:12+00:00
> So you can push other parts more if that makes sense: top cyclists can do 400-600 W sustained or 1-2 kW in short sprints.

Very few people are top cyclists, or top anything else. Top cyclists are doing it as a sport, not as a means of transport.

> Anyway, from the CO2 perspective, biking vs walking is splitting hairs really

I agree. I am responding to people who are claiming it is better than walking to a significant extent.
by jemmyw | 2026-01-18 22:11:51+00:00
> He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back.

My understanding, dealing with VAT/GST in another country, is that a business customer still gets the VAT back even if they're the end user. If my company (which comprises of 1 person) buys paperclips, or a laptop or whatever for business use, I claim the VAT back. It's only the consumer who pays VAT. If I want to transfer an asset from my business to myself then I have to pay the VAT.
by garganzol | 2026-01-18 22:12:06+00:00
This is what they want you to believe. You are useful and convenient when you are malleable (to someone's else agenda aka "their choice"). Ideally, you should not practice any discernment at all, raise no questions, silence any suspicions. As if it's all by sheer coincidence and predefined by external forces ("chance").

Straight out of "Manipulators' Handbook 101".
by frabonacci | 2026-01-18 22:12:20+00:00
re: unattended setup.

You're both right - Apple's official zero-touch setup requires MDM + DEP, which needs Apple Business Manager (and yes, a DUNS number).

But for VMs specifically, DEP doesn't work anyway - VMs don't have real serial numbers that can be enrolled in Device Enrollment Program.

VNC-based setup automation is the only practical option - it's what the ecosystem has converged on for macOS VMs. Lume connects to the VM's VNC server and programmatically tabs, clicks, types through Setup Assistant.
by hirako2000 | 2026-01-18 22:13:23+00:00
Also because it's a large PR. Also because the maintainer has better things to do than taking longer and more energy to review than the author spent to write it, just to find that multiple optimisations will be requested, which the author may not be able to take on.

the creator of llama.cc can hardly be suspected to be reluctant or biased towards GenAI.
by xhkkffbf | 2026-01-18 22:13:47+00:00
It don't mean to diminish Warhammer's success, but part of the reason why it's one of the "biggest companies" is because many of the other big companies have slowly disappeared. Britain used to have a viable ship building industry that employed huge amounts of people. It's gone. It can't compete. And the same story is repeated again and again. Companies like Morris Garage and Triumph used to compete on the world stage. No longer.

Again, I'm proud of the Warhammer folks. It's just the fact that it's one of the "biggest" makes me sad.
by gambiting | 2026-01-18 22:13:52+00:00
>>But it's never been the case that a dev could just focus on technical things and not spend any time figuring out the context they are working in, and behaving accordingly.

I've worked with plenty of programmers who were absolutely insufferable human beings but we're some kind of supernatural coders who were doing the work of 20 people or were literally the only people who could understand the maths of physics or rendering in our products - so everyone kinda put up with it. I used to know someone who had dozens of HR complaints about them every year and nothing was done because the company didn't think they could risk firing them.

So yeah. They exist. And I don't think AI is going to do much about them, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
by seanmcdirmid | 2026-01-18 22:15:40+00:00
> life isn't easy in china, necessarily, but there's a better, accessible path to become middle class.

You set the bar in your original comment, I didn’t raise it.

> they won't be in a debt spiral like most people here who have no advantages.

Ant tribe life is debt free, but it isn’t really living by our standards. At least we can say it’s better than living on the streets even if such housing isn’t allowed in the west.
by antirez | 2026-01-18 22:16:19+00:00
One of the most important thing to do right now to redistribute something to the society, is to use AI to write free software: more free software than ever. If AI will be hard to access in the future, the more software it is released free, the better. If instead things go well (as I hope), there will be just a multiplication of the effect of OSS using today and tomorrow AI. In any way, writing free software using AI is a good idea, IMHO. I believe LLMs are the incarnation of software democratization, which aligns very well with why I used to write OSS. LLMs "steal" ideas, not verbatim code, you can force them to regurgitate some verbatim stuff, but most of it is ideas, and we humans also re-elaborate things we saw and we avoid (like LLMs are able to do) to emit the same stuff verbatim. But the software can't be patented for very good reasons, and LLMs capture all this value that is not subject to intellectual property, and provides it to the people that don't have the right tools and knowledge. And, it allows people that can code, to code 100x more.
by pessimizer | 2026-01-18 22:16:26+00:00
The 2000s internet was way bigger than the 2026 internet. Every google search pulls up the same 50 sites now, and the first page will be split between just two sites, as if I needed 6 slightly different Amazon links about a book I was googling.

In the 2000s you could literally use google to scrape for open camera feeds; it was just internet-grep. Random people had extensive pages about their random hobbies. The actual internet was buried when the search engines decided to ignore queries and guide traffic, and eventually mostly disappeared. Back then there was more variety on youtube; there was more variety on myspace than is now on facebook.

People spend more time on the internet now, but it's just scrolling versions of the same 20 stories of the day linked from the same 50 sites on the same 5 social network feeds. Even those 50 sites are all owned by the same 10 people, which means you get between one and two self-interested perspectives on those 20 stories. The rest of the internet is filled with slop and the rest of your feed (from real people you don't even really know) is repoasts that they imitated from seeing them updooted somewhere else. It's positively claustrophobic.

The catch is that they eliminated public space and made unmediated communication suspicious and borderline illegal, so where are you going to go? Find somebody on an app to hang out with? Watch some netflix? Isn't that still the internet? Make your kids put down their phones and talk to you? How are you going to have a party if you don't post it on facebook?
by gruez | 2026-01-18 22:16:33+00:00
>The Constitution was meant to be permanently fixed and extremely literal about only the technology available from centuries ago, it was not meant to describe general concepts nor intended to be updated to ensure those same rights are retained along with changes in society.

/s?

I can't tell because people unironically use the same reasoning to make the "2nd amendment only apply to muskets" argument.
by RobinL | 2026-01-18 22:16:38+00:00
I think that's totally fine for individual work, but in larger data engineering teams it's less good to switch between tools because other people may have to maintain your code.

That said, polars is good, and if the team agree to standardise on it then that's a totally reasonable choice.

I guess one of my reservations is I've been (historically) burned by decisions within data eng teams to use pandas, causing all sorts of problems with data typing and memory and eventually having to rewrite it all. But I accept polars doesn't suffer from the same problems (and actually some of them are even mitigated in more recent versions of pandas)
by graemep | 2026-01-18 22:16:46+00:00
Walking covers most of my journeys for which a bike would work. I am not going to bike a hundred mile, or even 15 and back. Nor is it practical to bike to the supermarket. On the other hand its easy to walk a few minutes to the local shops and pubs.

Transportation and exercise are linked. Walking kills two birds with one stone.