MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by llmslave2 | 2026-01-07 03:02:11+00:00
Can we stop calling them "Microsoft"? That isn't their name anymore, it's Microslop. All you're doing is confusing people by calling them by their old name...

Seriously though, I know software quality has never been a strong suit of microslop but I have never seen such a steep and rapid decline in quality before in my life. At their current pace enterprises will eventually be forced off of their virtual monopoly in the enterprise space because nobody will even be able to run their software anymore.

Edit: -5 in one minute, I guess MS employees are active atm.
by Ancapistani | 2026-01-07 03:02:13+00:00
> Their thesis is that code quality does not matter as it is now a cheap commodity.

That's not how I read it. I would say that it's more like "If a human no longer needs to read the code, is it important for it to be readable?"

That is, of course, based on the premise that AI is now capable of both generating and maintaining software projects of this size.

Oh, and it begs another question: are human-readable and AI-readable the same thing? If they're not, it very well could make sense to instruct the model to generate code that prioritizes what matters to LLMs over what matters to humans.
by Tracy978 | 2026-01-07 03:03:13+00:00
I've worked on several 20-50m long LED strip projects (including CV + addressable). The issues you described—"brighter at the beginning, dimmer at the end, white turning yellow, flickering under heavy load"—are basically problems with power distribution, connections, and signal links. Below is my long-term, stable approach (leaning towards an "engineering model," prioritizing maintainability over minimal cabling):

1) Power Topology: Separate "voltage transmission" and "load power supply" into layers.

I generally don't gamble on a single-ended path. A more reliable approach is: zoned power supply (every 5-10m section) + star/tree topology, with clear fuse/open circuit protection for each section, allowing for quick fault location.

If site conditions permit, I prefer a higher voltage backbone (e.g., 24V/48V) + zoned step-down/regulation: lower backbone current, lower line loss, localized voltage regulation/power supply at zoned ends, and more intuitive maintenance.

Regarding the choice between "multiple small PSUs vs. one large PSU," I prefer multiple small PSUs (or a large PSU with multi-branch protection). The core reason is: fault isolation and maintenance without affecting the overall system. However, this requires a unified grounding strategy to avoid signal/noise issues caused by ground loops.

2) Constant current/segmented adjustment: can significantly improve "brightness and color consistency," but don't treat it as a panacea.

Constant current/segmented adjustment can indeed reduce visual problems such as "darkening at the end and white drift," especially in scenarios where linear consistency is desired.

However, it cannot replace fundamental aspects: PSU margin, zoned protection, wire gauge, connection reliability, and heat dissipation. Many "flickering" issues are actually transient problems caused by PSU triggering protection/voltage sag/increased connector resistance.

3) Addressable Signal Integrity: Design "data" as a communication link.

SPI/WS281x Class: My commonly used combination is:

Keep data lines as short as possible (controller close to the first segment).

Add buffering/reshaping if necessary (re-drive every segment).

Use differential transmission (RS-485, etc.) for long-distance traces and then convert back at the end.

Use a unified ground (single-point grounding/partitioned grounding strategy must be clearly defined), and avoid bundling data lines too close to high-current harnesses.

By the way, this article focuses on the differences and selection of DMX vs SPI:https://suntechlite.com/dmx-led-strip-vs-spi-led-strip/
by _ache_ | 2026-01-07 03:03:29+00:00
Snapdragon is already canceled so I guess, they just don't care about this device.
It's Microsoft on ARM. Sad to say, but don't expect full support or quality update on this.

Ref:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrA2Xe9f7e8
- https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/qualcomm-snapdragon-d...
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-07 03:03:30+00:00
> Tough week for Tesla

Tesla’s R&D has been shit for years. The value it brings to the table is mass-manufacturing expertise.

Tesla can bomb the robot for a while. As long as it keeps its plants online, it can buy or partner with one of these guys with its manufacturing platform (and political connections).

Not a bullish case. But also not a death knell.
by 6177c40f | 2026-01-07 03:04:18+00:00
I think we might make new jobs, but maybe not enough. I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get good at sharing wealth over the next few years. Maybe something like UBI will become so obviously necessary that it becomes politically feasible, I don't know. I suspect we'll probably limp along for awhile in mediocrity. Then we'll die. Same as it ever was. The important thing is to have fun with it.
by TZubiri | 2026-01-07 03:04:34+00:00
> but reading indictments to learn from others' mistakes.

Oh oh.

> It's about knowing where to buy estradiol valerate on the internet and how
to compound injections

Oh no.

This is 5 paragraphs in, and I already red-flagged out of this, not just because of the time it would take to read this, but because I don't want to go crazy reading this stuff.

In case it isn't clear, it's not healthy to read indictments thinking how to avoid being caught by law enforcement and buying grey market hormones. Politics aside, at least get a prescription, it's not like they are not giving them out.

Hacking is a huge spectrum I know, but if we have to decide on some limits to what is open to be modified and understood by the lay(wo)man, and what is closed and left to professionals, wouldn't we agree that law and medicine would be such fields? (and possibly military?) Trying to hack medicine or law is as extremist as arguing that you don't have the rights to plant the seeds of fruit you buy.
As far as rights go, sure people are given the rights to represent themselves pro-se and apparently to buy hormones online, but going beyond what's allowed, are you really willing to ruin your life just to stick it to the man or to exercise your right to do whatever?
by MohskiBroskiAI | 2026-01-07 03:06:16+00:00
> Tech CEOs and their breathless AI hype have demonstrated to everyone how dreadfully effective it is to weaponize anthropomorphization and pareidolia.

Read my paper, It's called "AI Consciousness: The Asymptotic Illusion of Artificial Agency—A Quantum-Topological Proof of Consciousness Non-Computability via Orchestrated Objective Reduction and Penrose-Lucas Arguments" You'll find it on Academia & Zenodo

It pretty much shuts that crap down into fantasy land where it deserves to stay.

Here's the abstract:

This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that computational escalation can bridge the ontological gap between artificial intelligence and genuine consciousness, presenting the "Asymptotic Illusion Thesis": simulation, regardless of fidelity, cannot transmute into phenomenal reality due to a fundamental topological obstruction.

We establish that neural networks operate within Class P (Polynomial) complexity—deterministic, syntactically defined systems—while conscious experience maps to Class NP (Nondeterministic Polynomial) complexity, possessing an interiority that resists algorithmic compression.

This is not a technical limitation but a geometric mismatch: the linear structure of computation fundamentally cannot access the high-dimensional manifold of qualia.

Our analysis demonstrates that organizational closure, not code, defines sentience.

Biological systems exhibit autopoietic constraint-generation in continuous thermodynamic struggle (f(f)=f), creating intrinsic necessity absent in artificial systems governed by programmed teleology.

We invoke Penrose-Lucas arguments and Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) theory to establish that genuine free will and agency require non-computable quantum processes in neuronal microtubules—a computational capacity Turing Machines cannot replicate.

Recent neuroscientific debunking of "Readiness Potential" signals vindicates top-down veto control as the locus of volition, supporting quantum indeterminacy models of free will.

The hard problem of consciousness—the explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experience—represents a topological barrier, not an engineering problem.

Current large language models represent "Stochastic Parrots" proficient in syntactic manipulation but devoid of semantic comprehension.

Our conclusion: the consciousness-computation boundary is physical and absolute, necessitating a reorientation of technological development toward preservation of biological consciousness rather than simulated existence.
by GranPC | 2026-01-07 03:06:22+00:00
Considering that you were seeing unpredictable behavior in the boot selector, with it randomly freezing, I would assume a hardware component (RAM?) kicked the bucket. If it were firmware corruption, it would consistently fail to present the menu, or wouldn't boot at all.

Microsoft's code quality might not be at its peak right now, but blaming them for what's most likely a hardware fault isn't very productive IMO.
by schmuckonwheels | 2026-01-07 03:06:43+00:00
Yeah they (probably) did not.

Almost certainly a soft hardware failure, likely the SSD.

I've run into a similar situation - except the culprit was Linux not Windows. Tossed the machine in a closet for a few months, when it miraculously started working again. Until it broke again a day and a half later. It's disk or RAM corruption.

Give it up dude, it's the hardware, but let not an opportunity to smash Microsoft go unfulfilled.
by gnodar | 2026-01-07 03:06:52+00:00
I found a path from Piano to Volcano with 40 generated topics!
Piano → Instrument (broader)
Instrument → Juilliard School (places)
Juilliard School → American conservatories (past)
American conservatories → Historic music conservatories (past)
Historic music conservatories → Paris Conservatoire (places)
Paris Conservatoire → European conservatories (broader)
European conservatories → Europe (broader)
Europe → Sicily (places)
Sicily → Mount Etna (similar)
Mount Etna → Volcanoes of Italy (similar).
by TZubiri | 2026-01-07 03:08:00+00:00
But wagies clock out at 5 and live that half of their lives, severance style.

Startups/entrepeneurs often don't even have that duality and live our single life entirely through work. I would identify with "wasting my twenties" in the sense that the life of the entrepeneur isn't really age specific, it would be quite similar to do business at 20 than to do it at 50. The only difference being experience. But there's not much use of my young body, or libido, strength, that is typical of youth experiences.
by whynotminot | 2026-01-07 03:09:08+00:00
> The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily understood way, in a way that's easily extensible.

You’re talking like in the year 2026 we’re still writing code for future humans to understand and improve.

I fear we are not doing that. Right now, Opus 4.5 is writing code that later Opus 5.0 will refactor and extend. And so on.
by ggm | 2026-01-07 03:09:19+00:00
Nobody has the time or energy to chase companies up for this stuff, and you know somewhere in the T&C they inserted a legal clause which is expensive to contest or un-contestable to liability.

But, that said, it saddens me we've normalised "oh well" when it comes to kit. even dev kit. If MS can't manage release engineering to keep dev/test things alive, then it's not helpful to the belief they can do it for production things either.

I inherited an IBM PC/RT back in the 90s. It was well outside what most people would consider its support lifetime. IBM could not have been more helpful working out how to keep it alive. I suspect this influences why when I later had some financial authority I was happier to buy thinkpad, than any other hardware we had available: I knew from experience they stood behind their maintenance guarantees. The device was configured to run BSD, not the IBM supported OS of the day, made no difference. It was end of life product line, made no difference.

This was before Lenovo of course. But the point stands: people with positive support stories, keep that vendor in their top-set
by pigpop | 2026-01-07 03:09:21+00:00
I don't see how "two years ago" is incongruous with having been using LLMs for coding, it's exactly the timeline I would expect. Yes, some people do just post "git gud" but there are many people ITT and most of the others on LLM coding articles who are trying to explain their process to anyone who will listen. I'm not sure if it is fully explainable in a single comment though, I'd have to write a multi-part tutorial to cover everything but it's almost entirely just applying the same project management principles that you would in a larger team of developers but customized to the current limitations of LLMs. If you want full tutorials with examples I'm sure they're out there but I'd also just recommend reviewing some project management material and then seeing how you can apply it to a coding agent. You'll only really learn by doing.
by arjie | 2026-01-07 03:09:28+00:00
These devices are nightmares. I'm sure things will pay off at some point but this feels like all those years where everyone was cursing Nvidia on Linux and praising AMD's dedication to open source but my computer would constantly lock up regardless until I switched to Nvidia. There was this massive disconnect between my experience and what everyone told me was best supported.

Similarly, I'm constantly hearing about Qualcomm's renewed interest in Linux and this and that and how the X2 Elite will be fully supported but I have never known them to be like this. A decade or so ago we were trying to work for a school project on one of their dev kits and the documentation was so sparse.

Then I see that the Snapdragon X Elite comes in this Ideacentre stuff but looking online no one has gotten Linux anywhere close to as good as Linux is on a Mac M2. That, for me, is the marker. If a Mac can run Linux better than whatever chipset you've released, it's just not hardware worth buying. If you're not Apple, you have to support Linux. Otherwise, to borrow Internet lingo, you're "deeply unserious".
by Havoc | 2026-01-07 03:09:33+00:00
Overall Codebase size vs context matter less when you set it up as microservices style architecture from the starts.

I just split it into boundaries that make sense to me. Get the LLM to make a quick cheat sheet about the api and then feed that into adjacent modules. It doesn’t need to know everything about all of it to make changes if you’ve got a grip on big picture and the boundaries are somewhat sane
by bflesch | 2026-01-07 03:09:43+00:00
They need to tell themselves that "data privacy" is a non-issue because otherwise they would have to take responsibility for feeding Facebook/Google all of their users for many years, which directly resulted in fake news laced political advertisements which micro-targeted voters in the presidential elections.

The book "careless people" clearly documents how Facebook engineers were embedded in the Trump campaign to run fake news advertisements micro-targeted to US voters.

It takes a lot of strength to resolve such a fundamental cognitive dissonance, especially if your self image is the talented techie who made money without hurting anyone.
by Redster | 2026-01-07 03:10:28+00:00
A good future-proof titling system is really helpful. Other than that, yes, the structure of everything is pretty organic.

I left out that for almost every note, I try to link to or from another relevant note. If it's not relevant, don't force it. That just adds clutter.

But knowing future me won't remember {$relevant-note} unless I link to it helps me decide whether to link or not. If there's a note that know is obscure, but very important, I will sometimes link to it more than necessary.

1. It depends. I almost never reread for the sake of rereading. But there are notes that I keep coming back to over the past decade because I find the thoughts there worth revisiting or worth further development.

2. Like anything, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. I don't find clutter generally to be a problem. I keep a couple of Junk Drawer or Scratch Pad notes for thoughts that might not deserve a note. If I create too many notes titled "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2", etc, I purge them or give them real titles. But clutter isn't a problem for me.

My biggest clutter problem has been including too many notes titled "{$DATE} - Meeting" or some other short, repetitive title ("Phone call with" or "Conversation with" are similar offenders). But I spend almost no maintenance on my notes unless I either can envision some specific usefulness or feel some specific pain point. And I rarely feel clutter in my thousands of notes.

3. I don't find that burden growing, no. I only alias or link if I see specific usefulness to future me. If I plan to write/think about a topic I might create a $TOPIC_NOTE and then I'll link all my relevant files to it, but again, those are often already linked to each other, so they're not hard to find and the effort remains small.

I don't have to maintain hardly anything. I spend almost zero time maintaining things and still use and can find notes going back to 2016 when I started taking notes in earnest and before I started using Obsidian.

4. I find full text search much more tedious than searching via filenames and links. Full text search is useful and necessary for very specific citations or numbers or names, if I'm not sure what note it is in. But for 95% of my usage, if search functionality disappeared from Obsidian, I would barely notice in my personal notes. I rely on search when I'm wading through other people's writing. I rarely need it for my own.
by eru | 2026-01-07 03:10:57+00:00
Mostly agreed.

> I don't think anyone is under the illusion that credit expansion itself creates wealth in the sense of more dollars moving around means more wealth.

Alas, lots of people have very weird, and very wrong ideas.

> I think the relavent point here is that this form of credit expansion does expand the numerical value of deposits ("create money") which has asymmetric advantages to the bank. Due to having a central bank, the banks are basically acting as arms of the federal government when they do this.

Yes and No. From the bank's point of view fractional reserve banking works pretty much the same way you have described it here under eg a gold standard as well.

> The payoff the banks get from this is capturing the interest differential on these expanded credits as well as benefitting from the Cantillon Effect whereby they usually have prioritized access to new money entering the economy.

I rather doubt the Cantillon effect in an economy made up of smart actors who anticipate that new money entering the economy. (Though experiment to illustrate: if the Fed announced today that they are going to double the amount of money in the economy in exactly 12 months, you would see prices going up today in anticipation. The Cantillon effect would require prices to slowly go up one by one starting at the earliest in 12 months as the money makes it way through the economy like some kind of hydraulic fluid.)

Btw, there are also plenty of shadow banks that provide similar services to the economy but are not regulated as banks. They serve as a release valve for the economy.

In a very loose sense my stock broker (IBKR) is a shadow bank: lots of people have uninvested cash in their brokerage accounts and IBKR lends some of it to me as a margin loan so I can buy more stocks. Money market funds are another sort-of shadow bank.
by ggm | 2026-01-07 03:11:38+00:00
I was interested to read that. Thanks. I think aspects of his personality came out in that, but also the horrible truth that "public intellectuals" become targets for many people. I have no doubt if some of the names I have catcalled on HN like Malcom Gladwell or Ray Kurzeweil were online in HN they'd be coming in for some flack, from people like me (with lesser chops, but a lot of opinion about them, as public intellectuals)

I saw this in the flesh at a book festival. Dale Spender, a notable feminist author who moved sideways into IT tech (she was involved with online learning systems) did a book talk and the majority of questions from the audience were "Gotcha" attempts about here philosophy and feminism, with nothing to do with the subject at hand.
by sreekanth850 | 2026-01-07 03:12:17+00:00
Same exist in humans also, I worked with a developer who had 15 year experience and was tech lead in a big Indian firm, We started something together, 3 months back when I checked the Tables I was shocked to see how he fucked up and messed the DB. Finally the only option left with me was to quit because i know it will break in production and if i onboarded a single customer my life would be screwed. He mixed many things with frontend and offloaded even permissions to frontend, and literally copied tables in multiple DB (We had 3 services). I still cannot believe how he worked as a tch lead for 15 years. each DB had more than 100 tables and out of that 20-25 were duplicates. He never shared code with me, but I smelled something fishy when bug fixing was never ending loop and my front end guy told me he cannot do it anymore. Only mistake I did was I trusted him and worst part is he is my cousin and the relation became sour after i confronted him and decided to quit.
by plastic041 | 2026-01-07 03:13:06+00:00
So, there are 3 offices now.

- Office(1): The office we know: Word, Excel, etc. The current version is "Microsoft Office 2024" with a one-time lifetime licence.

- Office(2): Similar to Office(1), but with a subscription model. This was renamed "Microsoft 365" in 2022.

- Office(3): 'Hub' app for managing Office (1), similar to Unity Hub. This was renamed the 'Microsoft 365 app' in 2022. This was renamed the 'Microsoft 365 Copilot app' a few days ago.

Too make it more confusing:

- microsoft.com/microsoft-365/get-started-with-office-2024 redirects to Office(1).

- microsoft.com/microsoft-365/microsoft-office redirects to Office(2), stating that "Office is now Microsoft 365".

- office.com redirects to Office(3).
by wk_end | 2026-01-07 03:13:46+00:00
To clarify what I meant, Marxism and its descendants (Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Juche, etc.) are the most “popular” forms of communism. By which I mean: they’re what was implemented in most (all?) countries that had communists seize power - the USSR, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and so on. In university we read Marx, not Bakunin; in Canada we have a Marxism-Leninism party, not an anarcho-communist party. Etc.

If you’re asking the latter question in good faith, I’d encourage you to consult Wikipedia; it has good articles on both the term “proletariat” and Marx’s phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
by analog31 | 2026-01-07 03:13:47+00:00
I've got two of those tap guides, one for US and one for metric. They're great. Also for drilling since I don't have a drill press at home.

I've examined cheap taps under a microscope. Maybe they are of varying quality, but the ones I got had burrs all along the cutting edges. A tap that I borrowed from a machine shop was flawless in comparison. So maybe the middle ground is caveat emptor.

Another trick for tapping is to use something pointy in the drill chuck to center the tap after drilling, assuming you've clamped down your workpiece in a drill press or mill. This works for really big taps when you don't have a guide for them. Likewise the tailstock of a lathe can be used for this purpose.