MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hnlmorg | 2026-01-11 12:08:49+00:00
From the article:

> A BBC spokesperson said: "These criticisms are factually incorrect; we have been covering the protests in Iran daily across all of our platforms, including our main news bulletins, in English and via BBC News Persian."

And this can be seen with examples like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqj2llkjv8vo

I’m sure you’ll then respond with some opinion piece about how you perceive the quality of reporting, but that’s a more nuanced, subjective, argument. One which I don’t see any value discussing given the clear biases and agendas behind your arguments (ie it wouldn’t be fair, rational, and balanced discussion)

However for the “facts” of your comment, they’re clearly and easily disproven.
by charcircuit | 2026-01-11 12:09:09+00:00
This is like trying to defend that you can't statically know the result of 1 + 2 because:

void foo() {
std::random_device rdev {};
auto dist = std::uniform_int_distribution<>(0, 1);
if (dist(rdev)) {
int res = 1 + 2;
}
}

I can tell you for sure that the result of 1 + 2 will be 3.
by gabriel666smith | 2026-01-11 12:09:57+00:00
If you're a Philip K. Dick-head, you might enjoy the episodes of the podcast Weird Studies which cover his life and work.

The hosts often focus on his Exegesis, mentioned in the article. It feels like a privilege to hear two very smart academics engage in longform discussion - in which they're unconstrained, and clearly having genuine fun - about Dick's work.

More broadly, the non-Dick episodes are also wonderful, and often cover the kind of art I typically see discussed here.

You can dip in for times they cover work you love already, to hear their interesting (and academically, often quite new) perspectives on your favourites, or listen from the start, chronologically, as a kind of curriculum in the weird. Which I found to be an incredibly useful thing.

I'm not associated in any way, just a fan, and think a lot of users here would enjoy it: https://www.weirdstudies.com/10
by shakna | 2026-01-11 12:10:05+00:00
JAWS user, here. It will read both aria-label and title, on a button, which is an interactive element. [0]

It does depend on the verbosity, if you dial that down, you'll probably lose the title element. But for images, which is what I was mentioning, it should pretty much always be read out.

[0] https://github.com/FreedomScientific/standards-support/issue...
by palata | 2026-01-11 12:10:33+00:00
Sure, it's not incompatible. There is a European culture, it's just a question of granularity. And there are subcultures in countries (some countries are even divided between different languages).

Still, Americans from everywhere in the US have this tendency to genuinely believe that the whole world believes the US are the best country in the world. That seems like a cultural trait in the US.
by INTPenis | 2026-01-11 12:10:37+00:00
No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.

I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I saved this in libreoffice".

The thing is that I'm a senior Linux specialist so people accept my excuses because they generally need my work.
by KarlVoit | 2026-01-11 12:11:20+00:00
I would ask you to read the article before writing a comment like that.

The whole point of the article is that there is no Markdown. At least not a single instance from it. So when you're referring to Markdown, you're actually referring to a few dozens of slightly different markup languages which are hard to identify and except for a few, very tedious to convert.

In my opinion, this is far from being "reasonable".

Orgdown is explicitly mentioned only as one LML that doesn't come with the listed downsides of Markdown. So if you think that my article tries to convince you to use orgdown instead, you've missed the part where I say that there are many good alternatives of Markdown that do perform better when it comes to real world processes. I just tried to use orgdown as one example among many to state my point by showing an alternative. If you think that orgdown is the only one, you did not read the article carefully enough.

YMMV
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-11 12:11:48+00:00
For a different professor, there's Dr. Bob Altemeyer, who wrote a book in 2006 (after 40 years of research) that includes a section on evidence-based deradicalisation[0] of authoritarian followers, pp240-245: https://theauthoritarians.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The... (for objections, see [1])

That's nonfiction, and anachronistic. As far as fiction in the correct setting goes, I'm drawing a blank, and I even had to read things like "At the Bridge" and "The Tin Drum" in school (as well as watch dokus like "The White Rose" and "Triumph of the Will"[2]).

Most stories I know are of the unrepentant[3]; maybe I can dig some repentant ones up later?

[0] dereactionalisation?

[1] some discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786278

[2] if I am overly paranoid, maybe it's because it's difficult to see anyone's GOAT propaganda these days and not compare it with Riefenstahl; she made the https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeCodifier ?

[3] including, but not limited to:

Oberleutnant (as he was then) "Kongo" Müller
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Müller_(mercenary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAUW1ZF2xI

Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen#Gehlen_Organiz...
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bnd-bundesnachrichtendienst-n...

SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#American_car...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcU85O82XE ("doctor were-ner von brawn")

(see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38759207, and elsewhere on HN, for wholesale vs retail sellers)

lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German, und Englisch, I know how to count down
Und 我学习中文!" says Wernher von Braun

EDIT: (haven't been using Gemini, sorry)

Schwarzenegger's neighbours retreated into the bottle[4]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck

[4] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85221-atticus-said-naming-p...
by smokel | 2026-01-11 12:12:19+00:00
Agreed, but I'd say these would be artists in the "grey area". They are capable of drawing furry art, for example, and have the choice to monetize that, even though they might have become bored with it.

I was mostly considering contemporary artists that you see in museums, and not illustrators. Most of these have moved on to different media, and typically don't draw or paint. They would therefore also not be able to draw commission pieces. And most of the time their work does not sell well.

(Source: am professionally trained artist, tried to sell work, met quite a few artists, thought about this a lot. That's not to say that I may still be completely wrong though, so I liked reading your comment!)

Edit: and of course things get way more complicated and nuanced when you consider gallerists pushing existing artists to become trendy, and artists who are only "discovered" after their deaths, etc. etc.)
by dividedbyzero | 2026-01-11 12:13:17+00:00
Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I buy if I want something as sleek and well-built and polished as Apple?
by conorcleary | 2026-01-11 12:13:46+00:00
Less a 'chain' or hierarchy than a lecture hall with cliques. Many of the 'influencers', media personalities, infamous, famous, anyone with a recognizable name - for the most part - was introduced to the tsunami wave of [new tech] at the same time. They may come with advantages, but it's how they get back to the 'top' (for your chain) vs. staying up there.
by menaerus | 2026-01-11 12:13:49+00:00
I am using Google Antigravity for the same type of work you mention, such as many things and ideas I had over the years but I couldn't justify the time I needed to invest into them. Pretty non-trivial ideas and yet with a good problem definition communication skills I am getting unbelievable results. I am even intentionally sometimes being too vague in my problem definition to avoid introducing the bias to the model and the ride has been quite crazy so far. In 2 days I've implemented several substantial improvements that i had in my head for years.

The world changed for good and we will need to adapt. The bigger and more important question at this point isn't anymore if LLMs are good enough, for the ones who want to see, but, as you mention in your article, is what will happen to people who will get unemployed. There's a reality check for all of us.
by FrankWilhoit | 2026-01-11 12:13:53+00:00
Like roaches: if you see one, you've got a million.

Also, here is one manufacturer, whom we never heard of, along with a citation of a handful of others, whom we also never heard of, who were afraid of reputational blowback from being blamed for spurious product. They are small. Probably they are right to fear. The major manufacturers, the ones we have heard of, do not share that fear.

Between my wife and I, we have now encountered at least three situations where generic drugs from one manufacturer were effective, from another manufacturer ineffective. Our doctor says that this is now a commonplace problem. Fewer and fewer pharmacies are willing to place special orders from specific manufacturers other than their supplier's default. And it was not so long ago that we learned that "turmeric" is now a euphemism for lead chromate. Think about what would be involved in enforcing quality control, and immediately it becomes obvious that it is not being and cannot be enforced.
by simonw | 2026-01-11 12:14:25+00:00
> Mostly because humans are made worse by using AI.

I'm confident you are wrong about that.

AI makes people who are intellectually lazy and like to cheating worse, in the same way that a rich kid who hires someone to do their university homework for them is hurting their ability to learn.

A rich kid who hires a personal tutor and invests time with them is spending the same money but using it to get better, not worse.

Getting worse using AI is a choice. Plenty of people are choosing to use it to accelerate and improve their learning and skills instead.
Show HN: UebGuard – Email Protection to Stop Phishing Before Users Click
by arlindb | 2026-01-11 12:14:42+00:00
Hi HN
I’m Arlind, founder of UebGuard.

Most security breaches we’ve seen didn’t start with zero-days or advanced attacks.
They started with one phishing email.

So we built UebGuard Email Protection — a simple way for startups and small teams to stop phishing and spoofed emails without complex configuration.

How it works:

You verify your domain
We analyze senders, headers, and links in real time
Phishing, spoofed, and malicious emails get blocked automatically

No agents.
No heavy rules.
Built for performance-first teams.

We just opened early access and I’d love feedback from the HN community — especially on:

False positives
Missing attack vectors
UX simplicity vs control

Link: uebguard.com

Happy to answer any questions
Recommended sources to read up on new tech and thinking
by wnscooke | 2026-01-11 12:15:42+00:00
So, I feel like what with all teh AI and LLM talk that many articles deal with the nitty gritty technical side, and not so much about the philosophical, social, or community aspect of this new tech, and to what sort of future we are heading for. I used to read Daring Fireball for its short, to the point approach, but the articles have become quite lengthy; I don't mind lengthy when it is more academic, just not so much for opinion-oriented. I'd love to hear suggestions of who to read, what sites to peruse, and even which (e)books to pour over, please.
by fzeroracer | 2026-01-11 12:15:51+00:00
> So why did I switch to Linux, and why am I writing this article about the experience? In a word: joy.

I think this is really what more people should take away from the switch. A lot of the time I see people not wanting to make the leap because they're afraid: Afraid of learning how to use the command line, afraid of asking other people for help, afraid of really using the computer. Learning how things work is how you learn to be free, and that holds true no matter your hobby. The cyclist with their repair kit, the driver with their beater car, the cook and their kitchenware. The more we give away for the sake of immediate convenience, the less control we have.

Linux is no longer in the realm of needing to be an expert to resolve issues, just a little bit of willingness to experiment. This isn't to say all issues are easily solvable, there's plenty of workflows that still require you to stay on Windows and some edge cases where things won't work as you expect. But I always encourage people to try, because why not?
by naiv | 2026-01-11 12:16:18+00:00
One of the lead developers is a friend of mine. In the mid 90s he was part of the Dust demo group, eg https://demozoo.org/groups/360/ so I guess then a lot of the algorithms were used for Max Payne then as well

Also interesting how his life changed after the game, he went a totally different route and left programming for good.
by quitit | 2026-01-11 12:16:40+00:00
You're right, it's difficult to get "left behind" when the tools and workflows are being constantly reinvented.

You'd be sage with your time just to keep a high-level view until workflows become stable and aren't advancing every few months.

The time to consider mastering a workflow is when a casual user of the "next release" wouldn't trivially supersede your capabilities.

Similarly we're still in the race to produce a "good enough" GenAI, so there isn't value in mastering anything right now unless you've already got a commercial need for it.

This all reminds me of a time when people were putting in serious effort to learn Palm Pilot's Graffiti handwriting recognition, only for the skill to be made redundant even before they were proficient at it.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-11 12:17:14+00:00
Depends on what you do. When I'm using LLMs to generate code for projects I need to maintain (basically, everything non-throw-away-once-used), I treat it as any other code I'd write, tightly controlled with a focus on simplicity and well-thought out abstractions, and automated testing that verify what needs to be working. Nothing gets "merged" into the code without extensive review, and me understanding the full scope of the change.

So with that, I can change the code by hand afterwards or continue with LLMs, it makes no difference, because it's essentially the same process as if I had someone follow the ideas I describe, and then later they come back with a PR. I think probably this comes naturally to senior programmers and those who had a taste of management and similar positions, but if you haven't reviewed other's code before, I'm not sure how well this process can actually work.

At least for me, I manage to produce code I can maintain, and seemingly others to, and they don't devolve into hairballs/spaghetti. But again, requires reviewing absolutely every line and constantly edit/improve.
by rjdj377dhabsn | 2026-01-11 12:17:22+00:00
What's so great about Huawei laptops?

I've been using an Asus EliteBook for the last 3 years. Despite taking a beating, the build quality has held up flawlessly and with 32 GB of RAM, 1 kg form factor, and great battery life, I have no reason to upgrade yet.
Show HN: A tiny free job application tracker so you stop forgetting follow-ups
by p-stanchev | 2026-01-11 12:17:58+00:00
What do you use to keep track of job applications?

I kept losing track of where I applied and when to follow up, so I made a very small web tracker for myself. It’s intentionally minimal: company/role, status, and a next-action date so I don’t forget follow-ups.

I’m mainly looking for feedback, not sales, what feels confusing, what’s missing, or what you personally use instead!!
by williamcotton | 2026-01-11 12:18:18+00:00
Lately I've been writing DSLs with the help of these LLM assistants. It is definitely not vibe coding as I'm paying a lot of attention to the overall architecture. But most importantly my focus is on the expressiveness and usefulness of the DSLs themselves. I am indeed solving problems and I am very engaged but it is a very different focus. "How can the LSP help orient the developer?" "Do we want to encourage a functional-looking pipeline in this context"? "How should the step debugger operate under these conditions"? etc.

GET /svg/weather
|> jq: weatherData
|> jq: `
.hourly as $h |
[$h.time, $h.temperature_2m] | transpose | map({time: .[0], temp: .[1]})
`
|> gg({ "type": "svg", "width": 800, "height": 400 }): `
aes(x: time, y: temp)
| line()
| point()
`

I've even started embedding my DSLs inside my other DSLs!
by ruszki | 2026-01-11 12:18:23+00:00
Generating also the tests happens a little bit too often for any kind of improvement. simonw posted here a generated “something” the other day, which he didn’t know whether it’s really working or not, but he was happy that his generated, completely unchecked tests are green, and yet some other root commenter here praises him.

It needs a lot of work to not be skeptical, when when I try it, it generates shit, especially when I want something completely new, not existing anywhere, and also when these people when they show how they work with it, it always turns out that it’s on the scale of terrible to bad.

I also use AI, but I don’t allow it to touch my code, because I’m disgusted by its code quality. I ask it, and sometimes it delivers, but mostly not.
by gabriel666smith | 2026-01-11 12:18:37+00:00
This is fun!

Given online is now bot-riddled, I half-finished something similar a while back, where the game was adopting and 'coaching' (a <500 character prompt was allowed every time the dealer chip passed, outside of play) an LLM player, as a kind of gambling-on-how-good-at-prompting-you-are game. Feature request! The rake could pay for the tokens, at least.
by onmax | 2026-01-11 12:18:41+00:00
I'm the author. I built this for npm package authors to bundle AI agent documentation directly with their packages.

The problem is that AI coding assistants (OpenCode, Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot) don't recognise your library's API unless you provide documentation manually.

Solution: Add an 'agentskills' field to your package.json file that points to your Markdown documentation. When users install your package and run 'npx agentskills export --target opencode', their AI will load your documentation automatically.

This uses the agentskills.io open format. Skills are exported to .opencode/skill/, .claude/skills/, .cursor/skills/, .github/skills/ (Copilot), and so on. All are project-local.

It works with any framework/runtime where npm works. There is a built-in Nuxt module for convenience, but the core is framework-agnostic.

I would love to receive feedback, especially from package maintainers, on whether this would be useful for their libraries.
by viraptor | 2026-01-11 12:19:17+00:00
Unless you need precise formatting because you will send someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be fine.

Excel really depends - if you're using it as a glorified document with a table, then libreoffice will do fine. If you need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no alternative. VM in that case.
by everdrive | 2026-01-11 12:19:26+00:00
I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to other manufacturers.

Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to see that they've neglected and regressed their desktop OS, however I don't think anyone can argue that macOS is anywhere near as bad as Windows 11.
by louthy | 2026-01-11 12:19:33+00:00
Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]...

[1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook-horizon

[2] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter
by rvz | 2026-01-11 12:19:45+00:00
> I have tons of examples of AI not committing secrets.

"Trust only me bro".

It takes 10 seconds to see the many examples of API keys + prompts on GitHub to verify that tweet. The issue with AI isn't limited to that tweet which demonstrates its probabilistic nature; Otherwise why do need a sandbox to run the agent in the first place?

Nevermind, we know why: Many [0] such [1] cases [2]

> CPUs are billions of transistors. sometimes one fails and things still work. “probabilistic quicksand” isn’t the dig you think it is to people who know how this stuff works

Except you just made a false equivalence. CPUs can be tested / verified transparently and even if it does go wrong, we know exactly why. Where as you can't explain why the LLM hallucinated or decided to delete your home folder because the way it predicts what it outputs is fundamentally stochastic.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1pgxckk/claude_cl...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1jfidvb/claude_tr...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=ai+deleted+files+site%3Anews...
by crote | 2026-01-11 12:19:45+00:00
Small brands put a lot of energy into their sales experience and aftersales support. They are trying to get repeat customers.

Amazon leads to one-off sales, with your product becoming indistinguishable from hundreds of different stores. There is no reason to return to your store, because the customer isn't even aware they bought from your store!

And it can get nasty real quick if you are the only seller and Amazon messes up. A negative review of your product due to bad handling by Amazon means you are now being held responsible, in the eyes of the community. A widely-spread "I bought a $500, it was packaged poorly arrived broken, and they refused a replacement/refund" can easily kill a small company - especially if they try to do aftersales and conclude that the complainer never ordered from them - who then of course shows pictures seemingly proving the opposite...
by onli | 2026-01-11 12:20:20+00:00
The article mentions that the author had a negative experience with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository. If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the package system - he might have had a bit of bad luck with the selection.
by tmtvl | 2026-01-11 12:20:34+00:00
I haven't had any issues installing AoE Gold under Wine. Furthermore, stuff on Steam is usually trivial to get running (just click and play). With Heroic same goes for stuff on GOG (and presumably Epic as well, IDK). PlayOnLinux and Lutris have good support for games you install from CD (I probably could have used either of them to install AoE Gold, but I've been using wine directly for so long I find it more convenient to do it myself).