MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thaumasiotes | 2026-01-08 05:59:17+00:00
> anyone pushing such reform would be obliterating the average Joe's net worth.

Only in a purely illusory sense. Suppose you have all your net worth tied up in a house. If your house magically vanished, you'd have nothing but your job.

The price of houses falls to $500 and you potentially go bankrupt. Then, you buy a house for $500.

You, personally, are now better off than you were before. Some examples:

---

1. You have $200,000 of equity in a $700,000 house. After the price drop, your net worth in dollars has improved by $300,000. Your net worth in "stuff" has risen dramatically; you kept your job, and now you have 100% of a house instead of having 30% of a house.

2. You have $700,000 of equity in a $700,000 house. After the price drop, your net worth in dollars is down by $699,500. Your net worth in stuff is unchanged. Assuming you always need to live in a house, this will never have any negative impact on you. You retain the option to live in the house you have (which leaves your life unchanged), and you also retain the option to sell your house and use the proceeds to buy another house (and this option looks a lot better than it used to; given the crash in prices, you can probably afford a much nicer house).

3. You have $200,000 of equity in a $700,000 house. You also have $15,000 of "equity" (resale value) in a car that you owe no money on and bought for $50,000. After the price crash, you lose your house and your car, and then you buy another house for $500.

Replacing your car will cost you $50,000. You are in a similar position to the guy in example (1), but $50,000 poorer. So now we ask: was it better to be $500,000 in the hole on your house before, or to be $50,000 in the hole on your car now?

---

There isn't a way for the average Joe not to come out ahead. There is a way for someone else to lose out on the price crash: if you had more than one house before, you lost everything on the houses you weren't living in. But that's got nothing to do with the average Joe.
by Strilanc | 2026-01-08 05:59:34+00:00
> By late 2024 the biggest numbers that had been factored by an actual digital quantum computer had 35 bits (citing https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.14397v1 )

This is incorrect. The cited reference says "N <= 35". That N is the number being factored, not the number of bits in the number. Also, footnote a of that paper points out (correctly) that the circuits that were used likely needed knowledge of the factors to create (e.g. as explained in https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7007 ). As far as I know, only N=15 has been factored on a quantum computer in a no-shenanigans way.

It's conceivable that current ion trap machines could do a no-shenanigans N=21.... but anyone judging progress in quantum computing by largest-number-factored is looking at the wrong metric (for now). You won't see that metric move meaningfully until quantum error correction is done spinning up.
by Tanoc | 2026-01-08 06:00:16+00:00
There's one date they'll always point to because it fits all their stereotypes. Sixth of June, 1944. Lots of young men dying fighting a valiant war against a seemingly insurmountable enemy surrounded by icons of American military might, all to show those pansy Europeans how it's done.It's always something to do with World War II because that was the last time the U.S. got into a war and came out the other side being nearly universally praised instead of being broadly condemned.

It's also before second wave feminism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the eco friendly shift that began in the 1960s. 1967 haunts the American regressive right wing in more ways than they ever want to acknowledge, as that's the year when they finally lost control.
by vunderba | 2026-01-08 06:01:05+00:00
Great article! Love early CRPGs especially stuff like the original Wizardry!

So back when I was going to university, I had an old, dusty 486 DX 33 MHz.

Over the course of one semester, I put together a procedurally generated, wireframe 3D dungeon RPG game.

I basically had an open-door policy where other students could just stop on (assuming one of my roommates was around) and hop on the computer to play the game.

One of the things that made it stand out was that I included an editor that let anyone use the serial mouse and a little pixel graphic editor to create new monsters. You could assign stats to them such as HP, attack, defense, etc., and various other simple, typical Dungeons & Dragons traits. The game would calculate a challenge rating to determine their frequency within the world.

So one of the people in the dormitory, who was an artist, came in one day and laboriously recreated what looked exactly like a wall from the game itself. They then positioned it so that when it was placed automatically within the game, it would actually be physically indistinguishable from a normal dungeon wall.

So they’d be wandering the maze and then suddenly bump into this creature but since they set the attack damage to zero, it wouldn’t actually attack, which further deceived the player into thinking it was just an actual wall in the game.

And then they called the enemy a “dead end,” so that the game would say in the small text area, “you’ve encountered a dead end.”

The funny thing was that since the game spawns random monsters within the world, it would suddenly just appear like the dungeon was literally shifting around you and changing as you tried to map the maze. It drove a few of the more OCD players absolutely crazy before they figured it out.
Show HN: SquareFaceIcon – a tiny "protocol" for consistent square avatars
by nmr521521 | 2026-01-08 06:01:22+00:00
SquareFaceIcon is a super–simple “avatar protocol” plus a free web tool for generating consistent square face icons:
https://squarefaceicon.top/

Instead of every product/team reinventing avatar styles, SquareFaceIcon treats a face icon as a tiny, structured “packet”:
- fixed square canvas
- a small set of discrete layers (skin, hair, eyes, mouth, extras, background)
- finite, enumerable options per layer (IDs instead of pixels)

That gives you:
- *Deterministic avatars from a tiny config* – you can describe an avatar with a short JSON (or even a few bytes), then render it anywhere the “protocol” is implemented. No binary image assets needed.
- *Consistent visual language* – all combinations obey the same square-face “grammar”, so a community, product, or game can have hundreds of unique avatars that still look like one family.
- *Cheap to store and send* – configs can live in your DB/user table, be generated from a hash, or passed in URLs, then rendered on the client.

The hosted generator at squarefaceicon.top is one reference implementation:
- 200+ pre-defined parts across multiple categories.
- Pure HTML5/JS, runs fully in the browser, no sign-in and no server-side image processing.
- Exports transparent PNGs in multiple sizes (64–512px) for Discord, forums, games, etc.

Why this might be useful:
- Small apps or side projects get a drop-in avatar system without dealing with uploads, moderation, or external CDNs.
- Communities can standardize on a simple avatar spec and still let users fully customize their look.
- Devs can re-implement the renderer in any stack (Canvas/WebGL/SVG/native) as long as they respect the same part IDs and layout rules.

If folks are interested, happy to:
- document the “protocol” more formally (schema for the avatar config)
- publish a minimal open-source renderer
- add an API for server-side generation

Feedback welcome on:
- what you’d want from such a tiny avatar “protocol” (versioning? theming? accessories?)
- whether you’d use this in a product, and what integrations you’d need (React/Vue components, game engines, etc.)
by simondotau | 2026-01-08 06:01:48+00:00
As a reminder, the topic is Wayland, and the great great great great grandparents post was referring to rendering/compositing systems DWM and Quartz as architectural equivalents to Wayland in the major closed source operating systems.

The parent, misunderstanding the discussion on compositors, diverted to a discussion about user interfaces. It's an understandable point of confusion given that Microsoft chose to name their compositor “Desktop Window Manager”, when the term “window manager” is typically scoped to user interface.
by throwup238 | 2026-01-08 06:01:51+00:00
Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste). Most of the beef exported from NZ to the US goes to meat products like burgers.

Australia is more interesting because it’s 50% grass finished but I could never find a source on how much of that was exported to SEA or US and what products it went to.

Another country that predominantly grass finishes is Brazil but they export mostly to China. Again I couldn’t find a source on how much of exports to the US go to meat products (we source a lot of our hamburger meat and pet food from random countries). I remember in all three cases very little is exported to the EU.
by D-Machine | 2026-01-08 06:01:59+00:00
In literary and casual contexts, absolutely (though we'd probably say "he/she" instead of "it" here). As I said, "it" referring to the mat is the most natural and obvious reading, but other ones are perfectly logical and sound, if less likely/common.

Although the sentence is itself a bit awkward and strange on its own, and really needs context. In fact, this is because the sentence is generated as a short example to make a point about attention and tokens, and is not really something someone would utter naturally in isolation.

I mostly just wanted to playfully comment that original GP / top-level comment had a valid point about the ambiguity!
by adrr | 2026-01-08 06:03:08+00:00
What bank offers rewards and no fees to subprime(below 660) customers? There aren't any. Why no wanted the deal. Guaranteed to lose money. Its not like there's name recognition, i doubt most people could name the underlying bank for the Apple Card. Only place the bank is mentioned is the fine print at the bottom of the card details. Everything is branded "Apple Card"
by the_lucifer | 2026-01-08 06:03:52+00:00
> Yes, the complaints are common, here and in many other places.

If almost every developer-centric forum is constantly complaining about you have enough of a broad sampling of a userbase that there's something rotten underneath is it not? Another ref: See the Reddit thread, also rejoicing at StackOverflow's demise. There's definitely something that they did wrong, and to call it "incorrect" IMO is reductive especially when you have almost every developer practically breaking out champagne at the news.

Communities don’t lose goodwill at that scale by accident.

And full disclosure, I am one of those. I hate StackOverflow with a passion. The holier-than-thou attitude of the moderation playing a major role for sure (and the design that screams QA when they want to be a knowledge-base instead)

> I have been involved in this process for years

Maybe your proximity to the system has made the moderation decisions feel natural when you know the underlying rationale, you can argue that the site is "working as designed", but if the design no longer serves the community it depends on, correctness becomes beside the point, and that's not to say half of what decisions the overzealous moderators make are even correct.

> Or "how is my question a duplicate when actually I asked two questions in one and only one of them is a duplicate?" (n.b. the question is required to be focused in the first place, such that it doesn't clearly break down into two separate issues like that)

Or how about a valid question being closed as a duplicate for a completely different unrelated question? These styles of questions are not uncommon to see: "How do I get red apples?" Closed as a duplicate of "Here's how you make applesauce."
by elevation | 2026-01-08 06:05:01+00:00
You don't have to be communist, you just have to be selective about the capitalists you engage with.

An business mentor of mine bootstrapped a highly profitable enterprise software company, growing it to 400 employees. When it was time to sell/retire, he vetted buyers not just for the money they could offer, but for the impact they would have on his team and community. He accepted an offer from a conservatively-run competitor and proudly told me that 5 years later, 90% of the original staff were still happily employed with the new owner.

These arrangements are simply not an option if you're beholden to VC, or entertain offers from Private Equity. You cannot preserve what you do not own.
by vunderba | 2026-01-08 06:05:07+00:00
Nice job! I also did some pixel art experiments several weeks ago with grid-based constraints via Img2Img with Gemini 3.0 Pro that might be of some interest:

https://mordenstar.com/other/nb-sprites

FYI there are several nice tools for quantizing to a grid as well as reducing to a smaller discrete color palette that I recommend using as well (unfake [1] and pixel-snapper [2]).

[1] https://github.com/jenissimo/unfake.js

[2] https://github.com/Hugo-Dz/spritefusion-pixel-snapper
by antisol | 2026-01-08 06:05:52+00:00
There are a bunch of legitimate issues with X.

For example there's tons of legacy cruft in there intended for working with hardware that hasn't been in use since circa 1992. Things like monochrome 3D displays with weird resolutions like 1200x240 and non-square pixels. Having that stuff in there makes supporting more modern hardware more difficult than it needs to be (and is also part of the reason behind why e.g eliminating tearing is very difficult), and it adds huge complexity to the codebase for no benefit on modern systems, which makes it much more difficult (but NOT impossible, as some love to claim) to maintain.

There's also the wayland fanboy's go-to criticism: there are also some security shortcomings in the protocol. You can find details on this shortcoming which I have never in 30 years seen exploited in the opening paragraphs of every pro-wayland article on the internet. (it is a legit shortcoming. There have been multiple suggestions on how to address it over the decades without starting over from scratch. xlibre is working on one of these)

But over the years I've slowly become more and more convinced that the biggest issue people have with X is that it's not shiny and new.

I'm expecting them to announce a rewrite in rust any day now ;)
by Groxx | 2026-01-08 06:06:17+00:00
$139 (early Kickstarter price) feels surprisingly low if it works like they claim - a wacom with a display is significantly more expensive, lower display resolution, less portable, and totally different ergonomics (for good or bad). Though they are also a second screen.

Makes me wonder if it'll work on other computers. Not as slickly of course, but it'd probably still function, except maybe for the software (if any)...
by djha-skin | 2026-01-08 06:06:37+00:00
> Instead, just look at go.mod. It lists the precise version at which all dependencies are built.

No, it does not. Minimum version selection means that the libraries will at least be that version, but it could be substituted for a later version if a transient dependency asks for such.

That I'm reading this blog post at all suggests there is a "market" for a single checksum/version manifest, which data is currently housed in go.sum . This is sad, but, Hyrum's Law and all that.
by fogzen | 2026-01-08 06:06:37+00:00
The catch is ethical. I personally don't feel good profiting from financial distress. Cash-back benefits are primarily funded through interest on carried balances (not interchange fees). In other words, credit card cash back is funded via high interest on other people's debt. The strongest predictors of revolving debt are income volatility, lack of regular savings, irregular work hours, and unexpected expenses. Basically credit cards act as an extractive safety net for people with no other options. It's a business model that depends on financial distress.
by SkyPuncher | 2026-01-08 06:06:52+00:00
I’m married to a doctor. We both complain about the medical system. It’s terrible. One of my biggest complaints is doctors seem to have no clue how to get symptoms out of patients in a way that translates to diagnosis.

I’ve had longstanding GI issues. I have no idea how to describe my symptoms. They sure seem like a lot of things, so I bring that list to my doc and I’m met with “eh, sounds weird”.

By contrast, I solved my issues via a few sessions with Claude. I was able to rattle off a whole list of symptoms, details about how it’s progressed, diets I’ve tried, recent incidents, supplements/meds I’ve taken. It comes up with hypothesis, research references, and forum discussions (forums are so useful for understanding - even if they can be dangerously wrong). We dive into the science of those leading causes to understand the biochemistry involved. That leads to a really deep understanding of what we can test.

Turns out there’s a very clear correlation with histamine levels and the issues I deal with. I realize a bunched stuff that I thought was healthy (and is for most people) is probably destroying my health. I cut those out and my GI issues have literally disappeared. Massively, massive life improvement with a relatively simple intervention (primarily just avoiding chicken and eggs).

I tell my doctor this and it’s just a blank stare “interesting”.
by ksec | 2026-01-08 06:07:11+00:00
I would imagine Goldman want out. They were never a retail banking firm to begin with. And sell the current Apple Card division with debt and customer base packaged at a discount.

Consider the transition takes 24 months I wouldn't be surprised if the discount allow them to run three years with clause to terminate at later date. The downside and exposure should be limited with great upside on worldwide launch.

But judging from Apple's speed with their execution in Apple Wallet this will likely take a lot longer than expected.
by smaudet | 2026-01-08 06:07:30+00:00
Dairy/Meat are both inflammatory and overconsumption contributes to a whole host of medical disease.

Some protein is obviously desirable, but the ratios, like anything else in chemistry/biology, are paramount.

I don't think the USA has a problem with under consumption of meat and dairy. If anything, it has a long standing overconsumption problem.
by georgemcbay | 2026-01-08 06:07:59+00:00
> This seems... really good. As in, it's essentially free money. Am I missing a catch here?

2% cash back for "everything" and 3% with some limitations (on platform, types of purchases, etc) is a relatively common reward structure for these types of credit cards. So its... good, but nothing really special.

The money is "free-ish" as long as you don't carry a balance month to month.

Of course, the banks know that a lot of people will actually end up carrying a balance (they mentioned in the linked announcement that they are bringing in an estimated $20 billion worth of existing balances with this deal) so they are fine with giving out the 2-3% "free money" for a lot of chances to collect 17-28% interest.
by dijit | 2026-01-08 06:08:52+00:00
So, self-defence laws in Germany apply to property also.

But it seems like they're also very restrictive on what you're permitted to do. Hacking has no justification in law.

in 2021 there was new laws added to help security researchers, but that goes out of the window as soon as you release private information (which has no justification in German law and may get you 2 years of prison time).

So, at least in the context of this thread; committing a crime in the comission of stopping a crime is not legal.

Or were you referencing something else?
by mhb | 2026-01-08 06:09:20+00:00
That's overly reductive. I was hoping that the specific commodities weren't going to be the focus, but I guess that was naive.

If you're going to use "housing" as an umbrella for its substitutes, let me do the same. Instead of wheat, beef, pork, cocoa, sugar, etc, let's call that "food". So now food is as essential as housing. Why doesn't the housing complaint against speculators work for food speculators?
by mindslight | 2026-01-08 06:09:21+00:00
About fucking time. State governments need to be proactively protecting their citizens from these lawless terror squads running amok under the pretense of "immigration".

Also let's be clear here, most of these "ICE" jackboots are chickenshit gravy seals whose training amounts to weekend cosplay sessions while whining about Joebiden, which is why they're murdering women in cars. They won't be raising their weapons when soldiers who signed up to defend this country show up.
by celadin | 2026-01-08 06:09:28+00:00
Good memories! Played this back in the early 00's on a 12" iBook often far too late into the college nights. This was before their custom client, so everyone used something different. I remember using TinyFugue, it worked well on Mac OS X at least. MUDs are just text, and tinyfugue must have had something which made allowed for easy capture and scripting because I did a TON of that. Sure, had to learn "regular expressions", but that was fun too!

There was some random phoenix which used to spawn somewhere. You couldn't teleport to it, but you could teleport near it, and I somehow scripted up a seek and destroy phoenix button. Can't recall why, it dropped something useful but not that useful, so mostly it was just the fun of watching the rooms zoom by (textually) and the joy of seeing a code creation work, insignificant as it was.

Thanks, Lasher, for keeping it alive all these years. I still remember Aardwolf fondly. And I still love regex.
by sph | 2026-01-08 06:09:37+00:00
> shitty European country

I wish the crumbling of the empire will bring some humility to one of the most entitled and ignorant-about-the-world culture that ever had the chance to rule the world. Jesus, some of your comments are insufferable and it’s hard to feel pity for whatever is going on over there.

Also, the USA has stopped being the land of the free in the mid 70s for the rest of the world, but it’s clear that within your borders your post-war propaganda is still very effective to this day.
by iugtmkbdfil834 | 2026-01-08 06:10:32+00:00
<< Holding a random person to the same standards for judgment as the people we are entrusting the enforcement of law, sometimes with deadly force, is an insane thing to do.

Hmm. Sure and yet we ( as in people in US ) do it every day.

<< It doesn't matter if she was impeding an ICE smash and grab. It doesn't matter if she might have clipped the ICE officer

See.. this is where I am losing you. For all the talk about empathy and seeing the world through the other person's eyes, you are only willing to do it when it is the right party. You are unwilling to do the same for the apparent antagonist.

<<The expectations for someone given the power to enforce the law, detain people, and use lethal force when required to are, and should be, many times higher than that of an everyday citizen.

Zero disagreement. I think most reasonable people will agree that some calibration is needed.

<< Should she have tried to flee? No.

This is pretty much closes it for me. You don't get to choose your own adventure. More specifically, if you do, you also bear the consequences of it.

<< But it doesn't matter relative to the greater issue at hand here, which is that we should be able to trust our LEOs to not needlessly use lethal force - but we can't.

We have some common ground here, but.. uh.. well, not based on this case and the fact that you agree that she probably should not have been:

a: trying to flee
b: swiping the guy ( as unclear as that may be )
by magicalhippo | 2026-01-08 06:10:46+00:00
> So now it's super-expensive to rent

And as if it was ordered, a news story[1] on exactly that this morning. Last year alone the average price for a rental unit went up 6.3%, and simultaneously a record number of apartments were sold. So very unlikely to come down.

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/leieprissjokk_-nesten-20.000-kroner...