MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by primitive_beast | 2026-01-12 11:05:03+00:00
I strongly believe the (historic) widespread adoption of Hinduism is the reason India is in the horrible state it is in today. It is the root of most of India's problems. If India had become a buddhist country back in the day... things would have been much better. The reasons are plain to see.
Idiotic Caste system,
Hindus systematic oppression of minorities.
Crying about being in danger inspite of Hindus comprising about 80% of the polulation.
The list is endless.
by cowl | 2026-01-12 11:05:56+00:00
LLMs have read EVERYTHING yes. that includes a lot of not optimal solutions, repeating mantras about past best practices that are not relevant anymore, thousands of blog posts about how to draw an owl by drawing two circles and leaving the rest as an exercise to the reader etc.

The value of a good engineer is his current-context judgment. Something that LLMs can not do Well.

Second point, something that is being mentioned occasionally but not discussed seriously enough, is that the Dead Internet Theory is becoming a reality.
The amount of good, professionally written training materials is by now exhausted and LLMs will start to feed on their own slop.
See How little the LLM's core competency increased in the last year even with the big expansion of their parameters.

Babysitting LLM's output will be the big thing in the next two years.
by bamboozled | 2026-01-12 11:05:57+00:00
People who hold this viewpoint interest me because you always seem to display a certain confidence that because the changing climate is "just part of a natural cycle" it's going to be fine. Not all changes on earth have been "just fine" and quite the contrary.

Look at a chart and you will see just how quickly the climate is changing and how we've done almost nothing to improve the situation, then why do you think it's "ok" because its "natural"? Are you nor alarmed about the mysterious force making the earth hotter? Isn't that alarming to you that we're just going along with a hotter and hotter planet? At what stage does this natural cycle stop?

Clearly, thanks to science, we know it's because of human activity, and I guess you could argue that is "natural", like our behavior is part of nature, but to pretend it's just some unknown warming force that's making the climate change seems much more disturbing to me than actually know why it's happening and addressing the issue?
by lelanthran | 2026-01-12 11:06:06+00:00
> I'm envious of those true believer kind of people.

> My father is one of them and he's held absurd ideas as 100% facts and we've had many nasty quarrels about it,

I am not even able to fathom how this is possible; unless someone is trying to convince you to join them in their belief, how on earth does a quarrel arise from differing beliefs?

I'm a lifelong atheist surrounded by religious family (and friends, too, TBH), and the only problem is when they refuse to take subtle hints that I am not interested in reading their book and I have to be blunt with them. And even then, that is not sufficient to start a quarrel!
by torarnv | 2026-01-12 11:06:10+00:00
Awesome! Thanks for posting, I've been looking for exactly this kind of project that takes end to end pristine restoration seriously.

The FAQ states you back up the originals as plain images files in YYYY/MM/DD format, which is great for integration with other tools. What about metadata? Is it in a format that lends to integration with other tools, say if you stop developing/supporting your app for some reason?
by alentred | 2026-01-12 11:06:50+00:00
Modern interfaces are digging a bigger and bigger gap between UI and UX.

Let's face it, new "glass UI" is stunning - not for everyone's taste, like everything in art - but it has the "wow" effect. Fresh look, transparency, new colors, wow! Same goes to many, not all, web sites, apps, etc.

On the UX side, with some exceptions, it is a disaster, though. Why on Earth would I want an ill-readable text behind a semi-transparent panel? Windows that only use 90% of my OLED screen I paid for? Do I want every web app invent its own navigation? Not in my worst dreams.

I like the new UIs, designers do an excellent job. Now, we must also bring back the UX people! Real user-oriented UX, not "dark patterns UX" that optimize the "Sign up" button placement. Its a pity, the latter actually killed the UX domain I think.
by bregma | 2026-01-12 11:07:36+00:00
But what if the car was placed behind one of the doors by aliens? This would be proof that aliens had been visiting and maybe even influencing the production offices of daytime game shows, and possibly even those in prime time. The aliens would have been treated as gods by the producers, forcing them to give away valuable prizes to the contestants to prove their loyalty and worthiness.

Consider the possibilities.

Of course, there may be other explanations.
by jonplackett | 2026-01-12 11:07:37+00:00
And those screens were TINY so how can it now be worse?

I think one of the big issues is the autocorrect seems to make as many correctly typed words into random bullshit words as it does typos into correct words. So you feel like you’re walking on ice, just constantly monitoring what you last typed to make sure it didn’t make it into nonsense.
by tokioyoyo | 2026-01-12 11:07:47+00:00
> There's always more shady jobs than ethically satisfying ones. There's increasingly more jobs in prediction markets and other sorts of gambling, adtech (Meta, Google). Moral compromise pays.

I would say, this is not about the final product, but a way of creating a product. Akin to writing your code on TextPad vs. using VSCode. Imo, having a moral stance on AI-generated art is valid, but AI-generated code isn't, just because I don't consider "code" "art".

I've been doing it for about 20 or so years at this point, throughout literally every stage of my life. Personally, I'd judge a person who is using AI to copy someone's art, but if someone is using AI to generate code gets a pass from me. That being said, a person who considers code as "art" (I have friends like that, so I definitely get the argument!), would not agree with me.

> Most people with an informed opinion don't like the ways this tech is applied

Yeah, I'm not sure if this tracks? I don't think LLMs are good/proficient as a tool for very specialized or ultra-hard tasks, however for any boilerplate-coding-task-and-all-CRUD-stuff, it would speed up any senior engineer in task completion.
by lelanthran | 2026-01-12 11:08:02+00:00
> I sometimes give people the Monty Hall problem. When they get it wrong, it often falls into the category of staying with the initial pick increases chances or switching has equal odds. I then proceed to give them the example of N=100 doors, opening 98 others, leaving their pick and another closed and then asking them whether that makes a difference.

> If they insist that it makes no difference, I then start to play the actual game with them, writing down the prize door before the game starts and then proceeding with the game as normal. Only after a few rounds of them losing do they accept the proofs of what the optimal strategy is.

That is all way too much work. I draw a decision tree and let them fill in the fractions for each edge leaving a node (2/3 edges result in this outcome 3 nodes later while 1/3 edges result in that outcome 2 nodes later).

If that doesn't work, I'll just give up.
by crote | 2026-01-12 11:08:03+00:00
The parts library has a massive value.

For a lot of parts the exact details aren't crucial. If I'm using 4k7 0603 I2C pullup resistors I'm more than happy to swap them for 5k6 0402 if they just so happen to have a reel of those lying around and it means not having to wait two days for a restock.

Same with plenty of other parts. Maybe 10% is crucial, the rest can relatively easily be swapped out with whatever happens to be available. Transistor from a different manufacturer, generic level converter with two extra channels, LDO in a different package? If I know what is available, for a proto run I'm more than happy to make a few small changes!
by iknowSFR | 2026-01-12 11:08:04+00:00
I’m seeing vibe coding redefine what the product manager is doing. Specifically, adding solution execution to its existing strategy and decision making responsibilities. The PM puts solutions in front of a customer and sees what sticks, then hands over the concept to engineering to bake into the larger code base. The primary change here is no longer relying on interviews and research to make product decisions that engineering spends months building only to have flop when it hits market. The PM is being required to build and test dozens of solutions before anything makes its way to engineering resources. How engineering builds the overall solution is still under their control but the fit is validated before it hits their desk.
by DavideNL | 2026-01-12 11:08:37+00:00
I didn't expect Arch Linux to be so high in the list for Steam...:

- "SteamOS Holo" 64 bit: 26.32%
- Other: 17.67%
- "Arch Linux" 64 bit: 9.54%
- Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit: 7.85%
- "CachyOS" 64 bit: 7.20%

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
by ben_w | 2026-01-12 11:08:52+00:00
> That's a huge problem! A showstopper for many kinds of programs!

We have automated validation and automated proofs.

Proof is necessary. Do you validate the theorem prover, or trust that it works? Do you prove the compiler is correctly compiling the program (when it matters, you should, given they do sometimes re-write things incorrectly) or trust the compiler?

> We have properly abstracted away the physics of computation. A modern computer operates in a way where, if you use it the way you've been instructed to, the physics underlying the computations cannot affect the computation in any undocumented way.

You trust the hardware the code is running on? You shouldn't.

Rowhammer comes to mind, but it's hardly the only case. US banned some Chinese chips for unspecified potential that this was going on.

For some people it's OK to run a few simple tests on the chip's output to make sure it doesn't have something like the Pentium FDIV bug, for others they remove the silicon wafer from the packaging and scan it with an electron microscope, verify not just each transistor is in the right place but also that the wires aren't close enough to have currents quantum tunnelling or act as an antenna that leaks out some part of a private key.

Some people will go all the way down to the quantum mechanics. Exploits are possible at any level, domains where the potential losses exceed the cost of investigation do exist, e.g. big countries and national security.

Proof is necessary. The abstraction of hardware is good enough for most of us, and given the excessive trust already given to NPM and other package management tools, LLM output that passes automated tests is already sufficient for most.

People like me who don't trust package management tools, or who filed bugs with Ubuntu for not using https enough and think that Ubuntu's responses and keeping the bug open for years smelled like "we have a court order requiring this but can't admit it" (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-website-content/+bug/15349...)… well, I can't speak for the paranoid, but I'm also the curious type who learned how to program just because the book was there next to the C64 game tapes.
by haasiy | 2026-01-12 11:08:55+00:00
Greetings from Japan! Thank you for the insightful feedback.

I’m a Japanese developer with a 30-year design background. My English isn't perfect, but I want to share my vision.

The "hybrid mode" I mentioned is still my core philosophy for the future, not fully implemented yet. However, even now, VAM Seek can display thumbnails quite fast by processing everything in the browser. My goal is to make this even smoother.

I’m not trying to replace the 1D bar—it's part of our "muscle memory." In the future, I want VAM Seek to act like a silent assistant: building a cache in the background so that the 2D grid appears instantly the moment you need it.

Invisible until it's indispensable. That’s the "missing standard" I'm aiming for.
by kace91 | 2026-01-12 11:09:23+00:00
And there's a ton of human incentives here to take shortcuts in the review part. The process almost pushes you to drop your guard: you spend less physical time observing the code while you write, you get huge chunks of code dropped on you, iterations change a lot to keep a mind model, there's FOMO involved about the speed gain you're supposed to get... We're going to see worse review quality just by a mater of UX and friction of the tool.
by H_KM | 2026-01-12 11:09:27+00:00
We just published Deep Learning Crash Course (No Starch Press), a project based intro where you build modern models from scratch in PyTorch.
It goes from basic neural nets all the way to CNNs, transformers, diffusion models, GNNs, plus RL and active learning.
Free sample chapter here: https://nostarch.com/download/samples/DeepLearningCrashCours... and full free companion code here: https://github.com/DeepTrackAI/DeepLearningCrashCourse/
If you’re learning DL and want to build (not just read), this is for you. Looking forward to hearing what you think!
by morshu9001 | 2026-01-12 11:10:21+00:00
Most of these changes aren't that disruptive because they keep the fundamentals, but there are a few things Apple makes sure you never get used to like iTunes/Music or iPhone Photos.

What bothers me about Linux is that realistically your entire DE will change at some point if/when the one you're staying on becomes too unsupported. They did this kinda recently at work, not cause IT wanted a fresh new look but because of some compatibility issue.
Show HN: Notebooklm-Py – Unofficial Python API for Google NotebookLM
by teng-lin | 2026-01-12 11:10:49+00:00
Hi HN,
I’ve been using NotebookLM heavily, but the manual "drag-and-drop" workflow was a bottleneck. I wanted to build automated pipelines (like auto-generating podcasts from a folder of PDFs), but the lack of an official API made this impossible.
The Solution: By mapping the internal RPC endpoints used by the web frontend, I built a native Python client that interacts directly with the backend. This bypasses the overhead and brittleness of browser automation tools like Selenium.
Demo:
Watch Claude Code use the CLI to automate a workflow in the terminal: https://asciinema.org/a/767284
What you can do with it:
Deep Research & Content Automation: Automate the entire research loop. You can programmatically create a new notebook, import deep research on specific topics, and then trigger the generation of both an Audio Overview (podcast) and a Slide Deck, downloading the final assets in one go.
RAG Pipelines: Use NotebookLM as a grounded backend for agents (query a notebook -> get cited answers).
CLI for Humans & LLMs: The package includes a comprehensive CLI designed for both end-users and agents. It even features a command to auto-install itself as a "Skill" for Claude Code, letting you control NotebookLM via natural language in your terminal.
Stability & Testing:
Unofficial APIs are risky. To mitigate silent breakage, I treated this package like a production product. The repo includes a triple-layer test suite (Unit, Integration, and Daily E2E Cron tests). If Google changes their definitions, my CI fails immediately, and we’ll know before users do.
Auth Note:
The library runs on pure Python (ideal for headless servers), but it requires a valid session cookie to start. The CLI makes this easy: just run notebooklm-py login to perform the one-time extraction (it briefly opens a browser via Playwright). Once you have the token, you can deploy it anywhere without a browser.
Repo:
https://github.com/teng-lin/notebooklm-py
Happy to answer questions!
by barishnamazov | 2026-01-12 11:11:35+00:00
I don't use an Apple device so I can't see what's in the course content, but how do you make sure it's high quality and not just average AI generated crap? Watching those would be the same as doom scrolling for me.

To be clear, I think AI can generate reasonably high quality content if used correctly and edited by humans who are expert in relevant area. But things like copyright & quality need to be taken seriously.
by MonkeyClub | 2026-01-12 11:11:45+00:00
Yeah I'm also with GP saying

>> I don't see it as democratic or democratising. TBH the knowledge is stored in three giga companies

It can appear democratic while access is allowed, but if it can be revoked at any moment for any reason (it is private companies, after all, that own the AI playgrounds), then the illusion will shatter.

What is more, excessive reliance on AI creates skill deficit rather than skill surplus, and promotes dependence on AI. Wizards that are nothing without their magic wands, in a way.

This may not stand out today, but give it half or one decade, when the next generation won't have a pre-AI skillet to fall back to, and the seams will become all too apparent.
by theshrike79 | 2026-01-12 11:12:44+00:00
If I show you two "why" comments in a codebase, can you tell which one was written by an LLM and which was not?

Just like humans leave comments like this

// don't try to optimise this, it can't be done
// If you try, increment this number: 42

You can do the same for LLMs

// This is here because <reason> it cannot be optimised using <method>

It works, I've done it. (In the surface that code looks you can use a specific type of caching to speed it up, but it actually fails because of reasons - LLMs kept trying, I added a comment that stopped them).
by account42 | 2026-01-12 11:13:11+00:00
I think you are mixing things up.

3:2 pulldown (or other telecine patterns) is what was used to go from 24 FPS film to 30 FPS interlaced NTSC video. Your TV or video player needs to undo that (going back to the original 24 FPS) in order to fix a judder ever 5 frames. But that is not going to fix the inherent choppiness of fast camera movements with 24 FPS film and is also not relevant for most modern content because it is no longer limited to NTSC and can instead give you the original 24 FPS directly.
by dividedbyzero | 2026-01-12 11:13:14+00:00
They don't even really do that IME. If I ask Claude or ChatGPT to generate terraform for non-trivial but by no means obscure or highly unusual setups, they almost invariably hallucinate part of the answer even if a documented solution exists that isn't even that difficult. Maybe vibe coding JavaScript is that much better, or I'm just hopeless at prompting, but I feel a few dozen lines of fairly straightforward terraform config shouldn't require elaborate prompt setups, or I can just save some brain cycles by writing it myself.
by zkmon | 2026-01-12 11:13:28+00:00
If we are past the point of no return decades back, what are the current goal of talking about it now? Our social and economic structures, and life styles are also well past the point of no return. Energy and resource consumption is at vulgarity levels. We bring a 10 ton machine from 10 miles, to sweep a floor of 10 square foot area. That's us. The expectations are set, supply chains are set, global domination goals are set. Science is only a force to drive us towards these directions. That's our choice made.
Show HN: Skylet.ai – vibe-based search for hidden cafes and restaurants
by samieY | 2026-01-12 11:13:29+00:00
What if there was an app that collected every comment and review from across the internet and let you search for any personal preference you have in a cafe or restaurant?
I used to travel a lot and explore cities, but I spent way too much time trying to find hidden gems, local food, or must-go places. I'd end up with endless tabs, TikTok scrolls, and still land on the same touristy spots.
So I finally got fed up and built Skylet.ai – an AI that actually understands "hidden gem" and lets you search by vibe instead of generic lists.
Just type what you're feeling:

cozy cafe with great city views
wagyu burger hidden gem
quiet spot for a first date not too touristy
best pizza in town by vibe

It pulls real-time context, gets nuances like weekend atmosphere or business-meeting suitability, and each place has an interactive chat. You can ask things like "Is this good for photos at sunset?" or "How packed is it on Fridays?"
I'm starting small (focusing on a few cities right now, including New York and LA) to see if it's actually useful. I'll expand the cities and venues gradually if people like it.
Your comments and feedback will help a ton – tell me what works, what doesn't, weird searches that break it, or features you'd want.
Enjoy your next trip (or local rediscovery)!
by therealpygon | 2026-01-12 11:13:52+00:00
I feel like some of the frontier models are approaching run-of-the-mill engineer who does dumb stuff frequently. That said, with appropriate harnessing, it’s more like go-karts on a track; you can’t keep them out of the wall, but you can reset them and get them back on a path (when needed). Not every kart ends up in the wall, but all of them want to go fast, so the better defined the track is the more likely the karts will find a finish line. Certainly more likely than if you just stuck them in a field with no finish line and said “go!”.
by masfoobar | 2026-01-12 11:14:24+00:00
I have been a Linux user since 2005 or 06. It was one of the best decisions I ever made in the world of computers. I started with Ubuntu and went on a distro hunt such as Fedora, Mandriva, Mint, and others.

In the end, I have stayed with Debian for a good 10 years, now. Both for desktop/laptop and server.
(Maybe one day I will dive deeper with Arch.. but I also like the direction of Guix)

While I use Windows at work, I did have one machine at home dual-boot with Windows. I used it at times for games or work. Now, I cannot find a good reason to have it. My recent Debian install for my laptop + has Steam and Heroic (Epic) without issues.

Despite all the above, I am not someone who forces Linux on others - though I speak my truth and make jokes about it.. but I have little issues with my Linux installs. While I have an ATI card which installed without issue, I did not have much problems with nVidia cards in the past.

I dont hate Windows as a pure Operating System. If you remove all the fluff on top of it - especially with what is going on with Windows 11, you likely have a stable, reliable kernel + core applications.

I do not like the direction MS is going with Windows 11. I am expecting the next version of Windows to simply be named "Windows AI" but don't worry -- they will tell you AI is optional.

Boiling Frog Syndrome - little by little more features will be mandatory. :-)
by piqufoh | 2026-01-12 11:14:31+00:00
I'm working on something very similar, but I've found that if I'm not doing the work - I forget what has been set up and how its running a lot faster.

For example - I have ZFS running with a 5-bay HDD enclosure, and I honestly can't remember any of the rules about import-ing / export-ing to stop / start / add / remove pools etc.

I have to write many clear notes, and store them in a place where future me will find them - otherwise the system gets very flaky through my inability to remember what's active and what isn't. Running the service and having total control is fun, but it's a responsibility too
by eloisant | 2026-01-12 11:15:15+00:00
You can definitely use AI for non-trivial tasks.

It's not just about better prompting, but using better tools. Tools that will turn a bad prompt into a good prompt.

For example there is the plan mode for Cursor. Or just ask the AI: "make a plan to do this task", then you review the plan before asking it to implement. Configure the AI to ask you clarification questions instead of assuming things.

It's still evolving pretty quickly, so it's worth staying up to date with that.