MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by roenxi | 2026-01-03 07:36:19+00:00
V-Dem seem to be redefining the word democracy somewhere here to mean something other than the demos being in charge of things. I agree that all this stuff is bad news but they're using the wrong word. The term is "illiberal" and the problem is a lack of personal freedom. Democracy is a technical concept about how decisions get made and is capable of doing some really evil and illiberal stuff in a perfectly democratic fashion.

> A government panel has also started work on restricting entry into Japan by foreigners, a policy that could further spread xenophobia around Japan.

This was the part that really set me off. I mean, democracy is fundamentally a little xenophobic. Democracies tend to be militarily aggressive and the people on the receiving end don't get a vote. One of the best arguments for being a capitalist democracy, in my opinion, is that the only way to hold off a foreign capitalist democratic military is to deploy one yourself. Otherwise it is hot knife through butter time. They are unkind to foreigners.

> Populism that gains support through xenophobia and chest-pumping arguments is also spreading into Japan. This reflects the distortions in politics and society that fuel dissatisfaction among the public with their daily lives.

And I get that this is not a good thing, but how are they to argue that it makes a country less democratic? There seems to be some bizarre academic re-appropriation of words here where it only counts as democratic if the majority can't act, can't be persuaded of new ideas that haven't been approved by Sweden and some blessed minority is secured. All that probably would be nice, but words mean something!

It is hard to get much more democratic than populism. Mobs are very democratic organisations too, that is one of the arguments against going overboard with democracy. Too much of the stuff. It is good to have a few slow multi-year rituals to give people time to think over whether they want to do something really stupid.
by ordu | 2026-01-03 07:37:01+00:00
> it's not compiling the input program in any meaningful way, but simply writing hard-coded logic into executable memory that it already knows the program intended to perform.

The program reads the logic from stdin and translates it into machine instructions. I can agree that there is not a lot of a freedom in what can be done, but I think it just means that the source language is not Turing complete. I don't believe that compiler needs to deal with a Turing complete language to claim the title "JIT compiler".
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 07:37:02+00:00
> I would give anything for our leadership which is launching this illegal war to be sent to the Hague

Simpler: send them to prison at home. There is no world in which the Hague can enforce its law in America without the U.S. government's consent. At that point, skip the extra step and make war crimes actually illegal.
by peterspath | 2026-01-03 07:37:05+00:00
Add yourself to so called slashpage (https://slashpages.net) directories. I discovered a lot of personal blogs over the years from those.

Like:

- https://nownownow.com

- https://defaults.rknight.me

- https://aboutideasnow.com

- https://chrisburnell.github.io/interests-directory/

- https://bukmark.club/directory/

- https://uses.tech

I find browsing and discovering fun. So, after years of lurking I decided to make my own directory. It is called Top Four (https://topfour.net).

A /top4 page is a personal webpage where you can share your definitive ranked list of your top 3 favorites and an honorable mention. In a specific topic, such as movies, albums, snacks, games, or anything else you feel strongly about. Or read the announcement: https://peterspath.net/blog/project-top-four/
by immibis | 2026-01-03 07:37:14+00:00
Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history.

When it's appeared to work, that has one of two causes: either the government didn't really care very much to begin with, or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face. (See civil rights)
by fzeroracer | 2026-01-03 07:37:31+00:00
Considering your post history it's clear exactly what you're doing, but I don't think it's as much of an ideological gotcha as you might think because the answer is yes. We can throw Trump and what remains of the Obama administration in jail; I don't really give a fuck. We can work our way down the list as far as you want and I'd give it the thumbs up if it means we can ensure future presidents and politicians think at least four times before doing something.
Show HN: Square Face Generator – A Free Tool to Tell If You Have a Square Face
by ivanvolt | 2026-01-03 07:38:10+00:00
Hi HN,

I built Square Face Generator, a small free tool that helps people figure out whether they have a square face shape.

I noticed that most results for “square face” are long articles or videos, but very few tools actually help you decide. So I built a simple generator where you can upload a photo or follow guided steps to get an instant answer.

It’s completely free, no signup, and runs in the browser.

I’d love feedback on:
• accuracy and UX
• whether the results feel clear or confusing
• what face-shape features people actually care about

Thanks for checking it out.
by gck1 | 2026-01-03 07:38:24+00:00
I use multiple Google accounts to segregate the data that gets collected on each one - as I don't like having, say, TV logged in to the same account where I send my emails from. One of them, which I use exclusively for Gemini, was banned today (I violated no policies, Google just doesn't like the way I try to sanitize its access I guess).

Now, I can simply restart my router (or cycle airplane mode on mobile) and get a new IPv4 that probably was used by bazillion people before me, or even along with me, and get a new account. So Google has to be very careful here, with IP-linked bans in order to not just ban the whole load of unconnected people just because they used the same IPv4 as me.

With IPv6, they could just ban my entire family and any guests that might have connected to my WiFi, forever.

I like the limitations of IPv4, thank you.
by dmantis | 2026-01-03 07:38:46+00:00
We've seen only the world where everything has been adopted to IPv4. p2p technologies strive even under it, but they could really shine with the ability to connect directly between devices. Imagine BitTorrent on steroids, where you don't have peers with assigned IPv4 and seedboxes and everybody else. Torrents are generally faster than usual channels to download things, but with ipv6 it would be far faster than now.

Cloudless cameras streaming to your phone without Chinese vendor clouds, e2e encrypted emails running on your phone without snooping by marketing people and three-leter agencies, content distribution network without vendor lock-ins. The possibilities are impressive if we have a way to do it without TURN servers that cost money and create a technical and legal bottlenecks.

We can't say nobody wants that world because we've never tried it in the first place. I definitely would like to see that.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 07:39:11+00:00
> Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history

This is nonsense.

> or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face

Violence isn't needed. Protest is designed to tip the balance of power.
by asveikau | 2026-01-03 07:39:19+00:00
Back when I was there, part of my calculus was that cost of living in Seattle was cheaper than the bay. It was about 35% cheaper back then, according to regional CPI data I looked at at the time. Not sure what the difference is today. I believe housing is still substantially cheaper.

I think a few years after I left when more Big Tech opened offices in Seattle, competing companies started paying Bay Area salaries for Seattle living, removing this argument. I haven't watched this closely in recent years.

But fwiw, I was able to save and invest a lot in my Seattle days, despite a salary that was lower than in the bay.
by dagss | 2026-01-03 07:39:50+00:00
"the article still loses me because it defines transactions one way (the edges) and then seems to make this big switch that each edge/transaction is really two transactions suddenly (one on each side of the edge)"

Perhaps the word "transaction" should have been explained better. It doesn't mean an entry/record/action. It means a collection of several actions, all happening at the same time. Several actions that are interlinked and only can happen because of one another.

For instance, if I buy a house. "Ensuring the transaction" would be to make sure that a) I get registered as owner to the house and b) that the sellers gets my money. Either a)+b) should both happen (and those two things both happening is ONE transaction), or neither happens. (If I only give the money but don't get the house the transaction didn't complete/is invalid, but incomplete transactions are sort of out of scope for accounting systems)

Back to the article. An edge of 100 from X to Y means "move 100 from X to Y", which is the same as "subtract 100 from X and add 100 to Y, and those two entries belong together and should be done transactionally".

How else would you move money between two accounts if you did not subtract from one and add to the other?

Anyway: The edge is definitely not turned into 2 transactions. But, each edge causes two accounting entries, belonging to the same transaction.
by unethical_ban | 2026-01-03 07:40:35+00:00
I don't think HN leans MAGA. However, I think there are a nonzero number of people on this site which hold MAGA views, which can feel like too many for a site that respects facts and intellectual richness.

As a liberal in a blue gerrymandered district within a red state, I literally can only hope that the pain and destruction and illegal behaviors of this administration impact my friends who voted for Trump, so that their lack of empathy/attention to world events gets adjusted enough to sit out 2026/2028 or ideally to vote otherwise. - edit to be clear: Damage is being done to all of us; my point is not malice or Schaudenfreude but hope that something can open his supporters' eyes.

The sheer amount of illegal and quid-pro-quo behavior from the president and the justice department can only be described as a coup against our own Constitution and legislature.
by phs318u | 2026-01-03 07:41:41+00:00
So cheap questions where the answers could be readily had are not downvoted even though the answers to their question are right here in the discussion. Whereas because I did not do the legwork that my correspondent would not do, I am penalised. That’s what I’m hearing.

EDITED TO ADD:

> by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating

How could my respondent (presumably on whose behalf you are making the argument) possibly be doing me a favour when they asked the question? Is it each of our responsibility to go to some lengths to spoon feed one another when others don’t deign to feed themselves?
by syrek | 2026-01-03 07:41:44+00:00
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by ncallaway | 2026-01-03 07:41:51+00:00
> war crimes actually illegal.

To be clear, war crimes are illegal here. They can carry the death penalty.

I think there's a strong case to be made for Pete Hegseth to be executed for his crimes, according to US Law.

But you're right. There's no expectation that the Hague enforce international law without the consent of the US Government. Our government should either try our leaders in our courts, or hand them in manacles and chains to the ICC and The Hague.

But I agree, I don't expect the international community to be able to do this over our objections. It's something we must do.
by rzerowan | 2026-01-03 07:41:57+00:00
The closest i feel is with the swiss canton system where each region kind of runs its own affairs and the major ones get put to a referendum - so immigration stuff might be on the local regional level , while things that would impact everyone gets a referendum.

Of course theres the issue with voter apathy/fatigue.Hopefully a system where excluding emergency situations elections should select for implementors of already decided laws(via referendum) to reduce the stakes and possibility of corrupting influence once in power(since there would be limited to shaping not introducing new laws).

Unfortunately i doubt most of the current systems are reformable short of a revolution, so well proceed to stumlealong until the wheels fall off.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 07:42:09+00:00
> They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent

Chomsky was smart and influential. But he was a linguist. Not a political scientist. The manufacturing-consent hypothesis sort of worked under mass media. But even then, it wasn't a testable hypothesis, more a story of history.

In today's world, unless you're willing to dilute the term to just persuasion in general, I'm not sure it applies.

Instead, the dominant force here is apathy. Most Americans historically haven't (and probably won't) risk life, liberty or material wealthy on a foreign-policy position. Not unless there is a draft. (I'm saying Americans, but this is true in most democracies.)
by nunez | 2026-01-03 07:42:33+00:00
Ragebait or not, this post convinced me to delete my DoorDash account today.

I'm the weird contrarian that really likes tipping. I didn't know that DoorDash uses tips to offset hourly wages.

Abusing my wanting to give hard-working drivers extra is where I draw the line, and it's a damn shame that this is legal.

I hope this gets more air time and lights a fire under these food delivery companies like the sex scandals did to Uber (a service I'm also seeking alternatives for, though that's another reply for another post).
by smileson2 | 2026-01-03 07:43:01+00:00
I think it will be regarded as a poor move long term to so boldly put the us stamp on what will undoubtedly become a chaotic situation over the next decade or two

I'm admittedly somewhat ignorant of all the details but I don't see what the real benefit is

my only guess is that it's to disincentivize the Russians and Chinese from being more involved in South America but it feels like it could do the opposite and act as an annoying wedge
by OgsyedIE | 2026-01-03 07:43:08+00:00
Most topics develop into advanced rabbitholes that takes years of learning in just that one topic to assume proficiency, but for somebody looking to get a detailed overview Young and Freedman's University Physics with Modern Physics is the best introduction to a little bit of everything.

The mathematical prerequisites are essentially algebra, precalculus and basic calculus, all of which are excellently covered by the OpenStax series of free textbooks published by Rice University.
Hi, I'm Viktor.I wasn't a programmer. I didn't build apps. I didn't write code
by ViktorKuz | 2026-01-03 07:44:06+00:00
Hi, I’m Viktor.

I wasn’t a programmer. I didn’t build apps. I didn’t write code.

My path here was... different.

I was born in Russia, but moved to South Korea at 20, forced by political circumstances. For four years, I worked in greenhouses, on construction sites, in factories — I even dismantled mattresses for a living.

Later, I crossed the border from Mexico into the U.S. and applied for asylum. I worked in wardrobe assembly in New York, as a handyman in Chicago, and eventually as a cell tower technician — sometimes hanging 100 feet above the ground.

And then... five months ago, everything changed.

With zero programming background, I started building an AI memory system — one that helps language models think longer, remember better, and act smarter.

This is my story.

continies here...

https://github.com/vac-architector/VAC-Memory-System/wiki/5-months-at-war-with-Claude-CLI:-how-I-built-a-memory-system-(and-what-it-cost-me)
by asveikau | 2026-01-03 07:44:12+00:00
I was a unix head at the time and ran OpenBSD on my personal Thinkpad. I figured a stint on the Windows team would broaden my horizons and expose me to differences. It did that. I don't regret it. I did in the end feel that the company was not my vibe, but I respect and appreciate some of what came out of there.
by brimstedt | 2026-01-03 07:44:36+00:00
I do not agree fully with this article, but it does give food for thought and have some valid points:

- don't blindly jump into a new architecture because it's cool

- choose wisely the size of your services. It's not binary, and often it makes sense to group responsibilities into larger services.

- microservices have some benefits, moduliths (though not mentioned in the article) and monoliths have theirs. They all also have their set of disadvantages.

- etc

But anyway, the key lesson (which does not seem like a conclusion the author made) is:

Don't put a halt to your product/business development to do technician only work.

I.e if you can't make a technical change while still shipping customer value, that change may not be worth it.

There are of course exceptions, but in general you can manage technical debt, archtectural work, bug fixing, performance improvements, dx improvements, etc, while still shipping new features.
by ncallaway | 2026-01-03 07:45:06+00:00
18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

---

There are also provisions in the UCMJ that are applicable to members of the military

---

(I also had a consequential typo in my earlier post, which I've now edited. I originally wrote they "carry the death penalty", but I meant to write "they can carry the death penalty", and it depends on the specific circumstances of the war crimes committed.)
by Ekaros | 2026-01-03 07:45:28+00:00
Perhaps it is just population feeling that previously elected democratic leadership did not do their jobs very well. And I would tend to agree. When they then decide to instead vote for someone who promises to do better it is "populism".

I think lot stems from the reality that many don't see the "plenty" themselves that is spend in many cases spend on others. Or notice that somehow "plenty" comes from ever increasing debt...
by MikeyLi | 2026-01-03 07:46:01+00:00
You should never guess what you're spending money to eat.

I hate ordering blind. So many restaurants don't show pictures and use too many fancy food words. It's impossible to know what you're getting. In a different country, it's even worse. You're stuck translating complicated food words, hoping for the best, and half the time you end up with something you didn't even want.

I built FoodieLens – snap a photo of any restaurant menu, and AI instantly translates it (100+ languages), organizes it neatly, and shows real photos (or generates realistic ones) of every dish.

No more ordering surprises. Eat with confidence anywhere!

This is my new side project, I would love to see people trying this web app!

https://foodielens.app
by Kristopher1337 | 2026-01-03 07:46:37+00:00
I feel where they messed up is including modem hardware especially as they tout this as a secondary device.

I could definitely use a second device that is specific for work. I don't want MDM on my phone mostly because they can erase my phone at any time. I also would check work email and Teams constantly. My work is more than happy to get me connected to work services if I will accept the MDM terms yet they won't help pay for my phone bill nor pay for a phone.

All I need is a device that can easily connect to my smartphone hotspot or wifi when I choose to that will meet my company's MDM requirements, has email, and can use Teams. If Im making a phone call at work I 100% use Teams. All I need is data which I can get from my smartphone. The included modem is extra costs. If this was $200-$300 I would consider it which they could do if they didn't include a modem.
by ACCount37 | 2026-01-03 07:46:54+00:00
I'm saying that the kind of changes you propose aren't made by anyone, and might generally not be worth making. Because "better RLVR" is an easier and better pathway to actual cross-domain performance gains.

If you could stabilize the kind of mess you want to make, you could put that effort into better RL objectives and get more return.
by raincole | 2026-01-03 07:47:18+00:00
It's funny. LDP had been the ruling party for more than 50 years. By the standard of the west, Japan's democracy never work at all (Can you imagine the US or the UK being ruled by the same party for 50 years? Would people still call it them democracies?)

But only when LDP is falling and becoming a minority government and so-called alt-right is rising, it's "joining the trend of declining democracy."
by anonymous908213 | 2026-01-03 07:47:19+00:00
Combat footage is coming out by the minute. Watching it, I don't understand how Americans can be so fundamentally evil. Watching helicopters gun people on the ground down. What makes you so sick in the head that you would do this? How could you obey these orders and feel nothing as you slaughter innocent people? There isn't even any possible pretext to this invasion. They know what they're doing and still choose to do it. It's utterly incomprehensible.
by zekejohn | 2026-01-03 07:47:41+00:00
Sounds cool man! Open sourcing the core while offering a hosted service (like a PostHog model) would for sure build trust fast, and then monetize a hosted service for users who prefer a managed solution (most people).. i'd be happy to contribute if you go that route :)

Not exactly sure how big the market is but i would for sure always go the B2B route, imo most consumers will stick to whatever desktop tools they currently use.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 07:47:46+00:00
> Name some times protests worked

We're three days out from 2025 and Nepal and Madagascar have already been forgotten?

Like, there is criticism of the 3.5% rule [1] for being too narrowly based. But the hot take that protest never works is genuinely one I haven't seen yet.

Are you confusing protest and terrorism?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
by crusty | 2026-01-03 07:48:05+00:00
Just saying... you actually don't need JavaScript. I run NoScript, and unlike a lot of sites my HN client opens in-app without the ability to interact with the extension, I could read the site just fine. The only thing 'missing' were the fade-ins, which I found after your comment tempted me to open the site in the full browser and allow scripts from the site I want actually missing. Lovely design, just slightly lovelier without the js.