MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by khaledh | 2026-01-18 14:18:59+00:00
Several years ago we had a data processing framework that allowed teams to process data incrementally, since most datasets were in the range of terabytes/day. The drawback is that it's append-only; i.e. you can't update previously processed output; you can only append to it. One team had a pipeline that needed to update older records, and there was a long discussion of proposals and convoluted solutions. I took a look at the total size of the input dataset and it was in the range of a few gigabytes only. I dropped into the discussion and said "This dataset is only a few gigabytes, why don't you just read it in full and overwrite the output every time?" Suddenly the discussion went quiet for a minute, and someone said "That's brilliant!". They only needed to change a few lines of code to make it happen.
by fHr | 2026-01-18 14:20:04+00:00
This exactly, actual doers are most of the time not rewarded meanwhile the AWS senior sucking Jeffs wiener specialist gets a job doing nothing but generating costs and leave behind more shit after his 3 years moving the ladder up to some even bigger bs pretend consulting job at an even bigger company. It's the same bs mostly for developers. I rewrite their library from TS to Rust and it gains them 50x performance increases and saves them 5k+ a week over all their compute now but nobody gives a shit and I do not have a certification for that to show off on my LinkedIn. Meanwhile my PM did nothing got paid to do some shity certificate and then gets the credit and the certificate and pisses of to the next bigger fish collecting another 100k more meanwhile I get a 1k bonus and a pat on the shoulder. Corporate late stage capitalism is complete fucking bs and I think about becoming a PM as well now. I feel like a fool and betrayed. Meanwhile they constantly threaten our Team to lay it off or outsource it as they say we are to expensive in a first world country and they easily find as good people in India etc. What a time to be alive.
by qcnguy | 2026-01-18 14:20:32+00:00
Thinking that anyone who disagrees with you isn't real sounds concerning. You should see a psychiatrist about that, in case it gets worse.

Anyway. You say skeptics will vanish when we "really start" to feel the impact of it. When? Pick a date. Man up, commit. Because everyone who picked a date in the past had their beliefs invalidated. The skeptics win, every single time.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100113183137/https://www.indep...

March 2000. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event". "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

You ask why. How about, because truth matters. How about, because the mitigations climate Kool-Aid drinkers demand are economy-cripplingly expensive. Those two alone are good enough reasons for anyone.
by jeffbee | 2026-01-18 14:20:56+00:00
It is true though, in some cases. The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations. So you do have to exercise good judgement in which EV you choose. The category doesn't always win.

In my case I already own a hybrid that I only drive 2000 mi/yr and there is not yet an EV that I could buy with so little embodied carbon that it would make sense to do so. At the rate China is decarbonizing, presumably the embodied carbon of their EVs will soon be minimal, but not yet.
by docmars | 2026-01-18 14:21:36+00:00
When they started adding new hooks just to work around their own broken component/rendering lifecycle, I knew React was doomed to become a bloated mess.

Nobody in their right mind is remembering to use `useDeferredValue` or `useEffectEvent` for their very niche uses.

These are a direct result of React's poor component lifecycle design. Compare to Vue's granular lifecycle hooks which give you all the control you need without workarounds, and they're named in a way that make sense. [1]

And don't get me started on React's sad excuse for global state management with Contexts. A performance nightmare full of entire tree rerenders on every state change, even if components aren't subscribing to that state. Want subscriptions? Gotta hand-roll everything or use a 3rd party state library which don't support initialization before your components render if your global state depends on other state/data in React-land.

1. https://vuejs.org/api/composition-api-lifecycle.html
Ask HN: How to get a job after a career break?
by shivajikobardan | 2026-01-18 14:21:56+00:00
I left my job that I got straight out of college few months ago. Why? The main reason was I had conflict with teammate in standup meeting. Used foul words. I later apologized in front of my entire teammates and settled it down. But still I resigned later on because I felt being let go. For example: My department was changed and later I was deemed unfit for that department as I could not learn “what they wanted” in two weeks. So my manager (first department) would tell me “Since you are unfit for this role, how do we take you back?” He did take us back but promoted juniors and kept me in the first level support.

To be honest I did not like that job due to the following reasons (since the start)

The work was menial.

The pay was horrible.

The blame was most because we were the lowest hanging fruits in entire company.

I wanted to prepare for government computer engineer job.

I could not see myself in that role for long.

But the reality was I could not get crack any other private sector jobs in those two plus years. I landed couple of interviews but could not get through interviews. That was when I decided government would be a better fit for my nature.

If I keep the gap visible in my resume, I will receive many questions(I might not be screened at all to be honest).

Why could not you seek a different job instead while having your existing job?

Why could not you seek a different department in your previous company itself?

I was preparing for government job since I left my job.

So I am looking for ideas to cover that gap.
by AlexeyBrin | 2026-01-18 14:22:22+00:00
AFAIK there is no Rust compiler for Plan 9 or 9front. The project is using dialect of C and its own C compiler(s). I doubt adding Rust to the mix will help. For a research OS, C is a nice clean language and the Plan 9 dialect has a some niceties not found in standard C.

If you really want Rust, check this https://github.com/r9os/r9 it is Plan 9 reimplemented in Rust (no idea about the project quality):

R9 is a reimplementation of the plan9 kernel in Rust. It is not only inspired by but in many ways derived from the original Plan 9 source code.
by 1718627440 | 2026-01-18 14:22:39+00:00
> Experienced developers know what subsets of tests are critical, avoiding much work.

And, they do know this for the programs written by other experienced developers, because they know where to expect "linearity" and were to expect steps in the output function. (Testing 0, 1, 127, 128, 255, is important, 89 and 90 likely not, unless that's part of the domain knowledge) This is not necessarily correct for statistically derived algorithm descriptions.
by closewith | 2026-01-18 14:23:18+00:00
The EU average passenger car fleet age is 12.5 years.

> From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.

Only when compared to buying a new ICE, as it takes 1-2 years average mileage in the US and 2-4 years in the EU for a new EV to reach emissions parity with a new ICE. It takes well over a decade in the EU for a new EV to recover it's production emissions va driving an existing used ICE. It's never environmentally friendly to scrap an ICE for a new EV.
by rm30 | 2026-01-18 14:23:31+00:00
you need to consider that Italy from '50s to 1992 had the powerful communist party in western countries.

It wasn't a mystery a collaboration between Italian companies and Soviet Union. During '70s FIAT transferred know-how to a Soviet carmaker, even a city was named Togliatti (an Italian politician).

That's why Italy was always under CIA control, the period '60-'80s was called "strategia della tensione" (Strategy of Tension), even a Prime Minister was killed in 1978.

For those who likes history and spy stories is interesting to deep dive.
OpenAI appears to be moving toward ads in ChatGPT for logged-in U.S. users
by SRMohitkr | 2026-01-18 14:23:40+00:00
Even if ads are limited at first, this raises questions about UX, privacy, and long-term direction.

1.What do you think:

2.Would ads change how you use ChatGPT?

Are ads inevitable for consumer AI?

3.What would an acceptable implementation look like?
Ask HN: Can abstract systems admit stress–potential field equations?
by tgrrr9111 | 2026-01-18 14:24:27+00:00
In physics, stress tensors generate curvature or potential fields
(e.g. elasticity theory, gravitation, Poisson-type equations).

A very generic form is something like:

∇²φ = −∇·T

where T is a rank-2 stress tensor and φ a scalar potential.

This formalism is usually tied to physical matter, but mathematically it seems much more general.

My question is deliberately narrow:

Is there any mathematical obstruction to applying a stress–potential formulation to non-physical abstract systems?
For example: reasoning systems, information flow, symbolic dynamics, or other structured processes.
Are there known cases where such formulations provably fail outside physics?

I’m not claiming this should work, only asking whether the restriction to physical systems is necessary, or mostly historical.

Pointers to counterexamples, prior work, or reasons this is ill-posed are very welcome.
by briHass | 2026-01-18 14:24:35+00:00
More importantly, you have your data in a structured format that can be easily inspected at any stage of the pipeline using a familiar tool: SQL.

I've been using this pattern (scripts or code that execute commands against DuckDB) to process data more recently, and the ability to do deep investigations on the data as you're designing the pipeline (or when things go wrong) is very useful. Doing it with a code-based solution (read data into objects in memory) is much more challenging to view the data. Debugging tools to inspect the objects on the heap is painful compared to being able to JOIN/WHERE/GROUP BY your data.
by jrm4 | 2026-01-18 14:25:25+00:00
Weirdly, I couldn't disagree more.

By focusing strictly on software, we can argue that Stallman mostly won, and I think the mistake would be conflating software freedom with freedom freedom.

Freedom freedom will ALWAYS be hard, no matter what. People who want to take it away will use whatever tools are there to do it. Stallman et al saw that it was special to put guardrails around the very specific notion of "we have general purpose machines that can run any software, the ability to run ANY software must be protected."

And that, today, is overwhelmingly more true than false. You, or groups, can get a computer, hook it to the internet, and run whatever you want. Like "Linux," that doesn't GUARANTEE perfection, but it's an essential step.

AKA, I shudder to think what would have happened if Microsoft had developed AI in house.
Show HN: A 3D music website built with React Three Fiber
by __lerk | 2026-01-18 14:26:23+00:00
I built a 3D website for my music using React Three Fiber, where the album covers float in space as clickable 3D cd covers that open when the details for a release are shown.
The website also supports keyboard navigation, and tracks can be previewed in low quality (the logo also is a metronome while music is playing).
I would love feedback especially if you have any ideas on how to improve the performance and accessibility.

Link: https://kratzen-und-fauchen.com
by dangus | 2026-01-18 14:26:26+00:00
At this point most EVs are exactly the way you describe and Tesla is an outlier.

Look at Hyundai/Kia’s lineup. The Niro, EV6, and EV9 are essentially the three major segments of American car preferences. They aren’t particularly fast or exotic.

They don’t really cost a whole lot more to buy/own than alternatives in the same segment especially on a monthly payment or buying one used, they just aren’t chosen at a high rate compared to gas powered alternatives.

Tesla just used the neck-snapping acceleration to market EVs by cool factor rather than by economics. And that was a smart idea to get people in showrooms.
by fundatus | 2026-01-18 14:28:37+00:00
> It's worth noting that 450MHz was listed as one of the GSM bands, but apparently was never used

It's specified for 4G/LTE (Band 31, 72 & 73) and 5G (Band n31 & n72) as well! The bandwidth is pretty low though at just 5 MHz, but it's used for special purpose stuff like electricity meters. I'm not aware of any consumer devices that use this frequency.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-18 14:28:40+00:00
I went back because of course I could've just pointed out one picture but still wanted to give the whole picture.

my conclusion is rather the fact that this is a very high stakes project (both emotionally and mentally and economically) and AI are still black boxes with chances of being much more error prone (atleast in this context) and chances of it missing something to cause the -75 million and deaths of many is more likely and also that in such a high stakes project, LLM's shouldn't be used and having more engineers in the team might be worth it.

> I doubt you have a clue regarding my suitability for any project, so I’ll ignore the passive l-aggressive ad hominem.

Aside from the snark presented at me. I agree. And this is why you don't see me in a project regarding such high stakes project and neither should you see an LLM at any costs in this context. These should be reserved to the caliber of people who have both experience in the industry and are made of flesh.
by alexrp | 2026-01-18 14:29:03+00:00
I'm fairly sure I recall Fedora folks signaling that they intend to move to RVA23 as soon as hardware becomes generally available.

It is of course possible that Debian sticks with RV64GC for the long term, but I seriously doubt it. It's just too much performance to leave on the table for a relatively new port, especially when RVA23 will (very) soon be the expected baseline for general-purpose RISC-V systems.
by c0wb0yc0d3r | 2026-01-18 14:29:33+00:00
Isn’t that kind of like saying automated testing (for apps written without testing in mind) isn’t worth it because you have to spend time getting code into a state that is testable?

I do agree that it takes a lot of work to get something usable, and so I think we are a ways off from mainstream risc-v. I do also think there is a lot more value for low power devices like embedded/IoT or instances where you need special hardware. Facebook uses it to make special video transcoding hardware.
by chickenimprint | 2026-01-18 14:29:34+00:00
Because the US is the only country that defected from the Paris agreement. The US is the only country led by climate change deniers. Tons of countries are led by malevolent and selfish leaders, but none are as incompetent and unpredictable as the US.

Climate change mitigation is a collective action problem in the form of a prisoner's dilemma or a tragedy of the commons. If every agent (i.e. country) refuses to cooperate, every agent will suffer major damage from environmental disasters. If all agents cooperate, they only suffer minor damage from economic policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At first sight, this doesn't seem like much of a problem. The solution seems self-evident, before one considers countries adopting different strategies:

If one country defects, they benefit massively from hosting the world's carbon intensive processes, yet all countries will equally share in environmental catastrophe. Thus, the optimal strategy for any single self-interested agent is always to defect, no matter what the others do. Paradoxically, the optimal strategy for each agent in isolation leads to a catastrophically bad outcome for all agents if they all choose that strategy. Everyone wants to be the parasite, but if no one is the host, we all die.

It wouldn't matter if the US were a tiny island nation, but the US has the largest carbon footprint, the largest economy, and the most capable military. The US led the democratic world. They could have solved the prisoner's dilemma by enforcing global cooperation. If the US and its allies would threaten to sanction those countries who don't cooperate, the payout matrix would shift towards cooperation being a stable Nash-equilibrium. It would no longer be in a country's interest to screw everyone else over, so they'd stop. The US and the entire world would be better off.
by Saline9515 | 2026-01-18 14:29:35+00:00
Yes, the EU complained and regulated it in 2021[1], 2023[2], and nothing has been solved[3] since we don't control the imports nor ban them when importers don't act to reduce fraud and there is no enforcement when fraud happens.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/china-honey-xi-jinping-bruss...

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/olaf-report/2023/investigative-activiti...

[3] https://eng.lsm.lv/article/culture/food-drink/03.02.2025-bee...
by linsomniac | 2026-01-18 14:29:55+00:00
The maintenance factor seems to often be overlooked. The amount of time I've put into EV maintenance in the last decade is about the same as I've put into my two ICE cars, but I drive them 1/10th as much. It's really, really nice, and I don't think dealer service departments are ready for a massive switch to EV.
by solarexplorer | 2026-01-18 14:30:19+00:00
I don't know. I use a lot of Swift and C++ and while both are OK languages there is an absurd amount of complexity in these languages that doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. Just a lot of foot traps, really.
Coming back to Plan9 from that world is a breeze, the simplicity is like a therapy for me. So enjoyable.

If "modern" means complex, I don't think it fits Plan9.
by fifilura | 2026-01-18 14:30:28+00:00
No joins in that article?

The comments here smell of "real engineers use command line". But I am not sure they ever actually worked with analysing data more than using it as a log parser.

Yes Hadoop is 2014.

These days you obviously don't set up a Hadoop cluster. You use the cloud provider service provided (BigQuery or AWS Athena for example).

Or map your data into DuckDB or use polars if it is small.
by consumer451 | 2026-01-18 14:30:45+00:00
> I guess only people writing code manually will be "frontier".

I agree 100%. Ever since Sonnet 3.5 came out, my assumption has been that most devs will either need to become largely product people, or find a new career.[0] I mean, most devs have been implementing known patterns most of the time, right? That seems on track to be completely replaced by agentic dev tools, does it not?

The best terms for this new role I can think of are "Product Developer," or "Software Product Developer." This is a product-minded person who is able to create non-frontier software using agentic dev tools.

What I am really curious about is if devs at the frontier will be more, or less likely, to publish their work as open source in the future.

[0] I think there has been a clear divide here in excitement regarding agentic dev tools along these lines. Product-minded devs are really into the new tools. Non-product minded, more code-driven devs seems to be far less excited.
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-01-18 14:31:39+00:00
> Cue somewhat understandable, yet still perhaps annoying, discussions of "Stallman the person."

Arseholes can be correct, even if they're still an arsehole.

Would I want my teenage daughter using software developed using Stallman's ideology? Well, yes, obviously.

Would I want her anywhere within 100 metres of Stallman without a weapon? No.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-18 14:31:43+00:00
"I've seen startups burning $5k/mo on distributed compute clusters to process <10GB of daily logs, purely because setting up a 'Modern Data Stack' is what gets you promoted, while writing a robust bash script is seen as 'unscalable' or 'hacky'."

Also seen strange responses from HN commenters when it's mentioned that 1. (a) bash is large and slow compared to (b) ash and 2. (a) is better suited for use as an interactive shell while (b) is better suited for use as a non-interactive shell, i.e., a scripting shell
by neogodless | 2026-01-18 14:31:45+00:00
Mostly agree but own an EV. "No" maintenance is an exaggeration and it's not necessary to make your point.

My car's first set of tires were very bald at 25,000 miles. That's not unusual on new cars in general as they seem to come from the factory with low longevity tires, but it's still quite a short tire life.

Yes anything in a gasoline engine is gone, and brakes get less use.

But there are still maintenance items.
by rpdillon | 2026-01-18 14:32:25+00:00
Yeah, what's amazing to me is that they play with the icon so much in an environment where they expect people to find the application by its icon. I always set up my machines so that I use a launcher that allows me to type the name of the program and then press Enter because I hate searching through grids of icons to find things, especially when the icons change over time. But when the company itself is expecting people to find things visually and then constantly changes the visual landscape, it just seems egregious.
by telesilla | 2026-01-18 14:32:26+00:00
It isn't to make a composer out of a baby but to expose a growing brain to complex music. We have no proof it benefits brain development, but we also have no proof it does not.

I studied classical music and came from a challenged background which to be honest is a rarity in that field. Almost everyone I studied with has parents who specifically encouraged music education and had the means to help make that happen. I got mine from some gifted vinyl as a child and fell in love with the orchestra. If I was in this story I'd probably not have been recommended to be a Professional Composer (if social expectations were the equivalent of what Asimov is saying here.)

So yeah, I'm pro 'play Mozart to your baby' :)
by hdgvhicv | 2026-01-18 14:33:17+00:00
Certainly people would do that. And sending text messages in the 00s. People have been wearing headphones while commuting for a generation, and (not on the underground but certainly on trains) people in the 80s and 90s were far more obnoxious - get stuck on a busy train between people having conversations about inane stuff while smoking.

Public transport is far better today than it was 30 years ago, annoyances are far less than they were.
Show HN: Tiny Toy Network – a neural net to practice backpropagation
by dandelionv1bes | 2026-01-18 14:33:50+00:00
I’ve recently finished Math for Deep Learning and really enjoyed computing back propagation by hand. However, it’s one of those things where if you stop doing it for six months, you’ll just forget how (at least for me!). I put together this tiny neural network based on the example from Kneusel so I can practice my math regularly. Welcome any feedback / bug spotting, or similar tools to help with practicing these skills.
by ahartmetz | 2026-01-18 14:34:16+00:00
>16MB of RAM

Speaking of which, pretty sure that none but the earliest Pentium PCs had a chance of having less than 16 MB of RAM. The article says 8 MB were typical.

I got a 486 with 4 MB in mid 1994, which was shortly (months, I think) before 8 MB became the norm. Pentiums became the norm maybe in mid 1995. That was in Germany, but PC part prices have always been global and I suspect that all high income countries spent similar amounts on computers.