MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tianqi | 2026-01-31 09:33:54+00:00
Please allow me to share some of my views. I'm a native Mandarin speaker.

> I can guarantee that tones are not particularly useful and that you can communicate with native speakers with all the tones messed up, and that's perfectly fine.

Not at all. Tones are extremely important. If you have all the tones messed up, you can hardly communicate in Mandarin. It's true, as you said, that different regions of China have different dialects, and you'll find that people can communicate normally because: 1) The tonal differences in nearby regions are not too significant, and people can still try to understand based on context. And 2) In many cases, people switch to regular Mandarin when their dialects cannot communicate with each other. This is why Mandarin exists. It is an officially regulated dialect that all Chinese people learn, to solve the dialect problem among different regions. Chinese people may speak their own dialects at hometown, but when two Chinese people meet and find that their dialects cannot communicate, they immediately switch to Mandarin. Therefore, the tones in Mandarin are very important. To a considerable extent, Mandarin exists because of tones. You cannot communicate in it with messed up tones.
Ask HN: Do you still physical calculators?
by speedylight | 2026-01-31 09:34:02+00:00
I’ve noticed that most physical scientific and graphing calculators are easily outdone in terms of performance, capability and ease of use by the likes of Desmos and the default calculators on OS’es like the iOS, Android, and Windows.

It kind of makes me wonder whether people still use physical calculators from Texas Instruments, Casio, etc

If you do, I’d love to know why and how it is different/better for you than the ones I’ve mentioned and others like them and vice verse.

Cheers!
Show HN: Wkndr – A TikTok style feed for discovering local events
by wantrepreuneur | 2026-01-31 09:34:56+00:00
At the start of the year, I realized I had zero control over my weekends. Between kids' birthday parties and local events, our schedule was a mess. Shared calendars are useful for time slots, but they fail at logistics. They do not store invite photos, track costs, or help you actually discover what to do.

I built wkndr.app as a mobile-first web app designed for partners to sync their weekend plans in real time.

Key Features

TikTok-Style Discovery: This is a vertical feed of upcoming Melbourne events.

AI-Generated Visuals: Since many local events lack high-quality media, I used the Gemini model to generate lifestyle images that represent the atmosphere of the event.

Logistics First: You can add birthday invites as images and track estimated costs directly within the plan.

Deep Research: I leveraged AI agents to scrape and curate events specifically for the Melbourne area.

The Tech Stack

Frontend: Vite and React optimized for a mobile web experience.

Backend: AWS Serverless including Lambda and DynamoDB for scale and low overhead.

AI: Gemini for image generation and event data synthesis.

Roadmap

Multi-child support: I am adding color-coded flares to track which child needs to be at which activity.

School Calendar Integration: This will include automated syncing for Melbourne’s complex private and public school terms.

Public Holiday Optimization: I am building a feature to help families maximize long weekends by identifying the best days to take leave.

I would love for some feedback so I can add events for other cities in future
by nye2k | 2026-01-31 09:35:10+00:00
I love this absolute example of old systems interfering with new systems, rewriting old systems.

My old man started his tech work on hot rods, then mechanical typewriters, calculators, eventually continuing into mainframe electronics and nearly followed all the transitions up to today’s AI.

The number of times I’ve scratched my head at a problem and he had a clear understanding of where the logic broke… based on a historical decision that could not physically be undone.
by cyberax | 2026-01-31 09:35:37+00:00
Yes, but it happened in stages. The fertility fell each time people moved into higher density areas.

You can even see mild recovery when de-densification happens. It's very interesting to compare the fertility rate in Denmark and Netherlands:

https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...

https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...

You can see the dip and a recovery in Denmark and essentially no recovery in Netherlands (until post 2000, but that was due to immigration). Why?

Here's the answer:

https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/cities/2...

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21930/amst...

Denmark de-densified its cities during the late 70-s (that's why Copenhagen is the world's most liveable city, btw).
by tpoacher | 2026-01-31 09:39:12+00:00
I don't think the "producers" argument is true, and even so it really does depend on the profession and on current trends.

What was vital yesterday may be obsolete tomorrow (see hospital secretaries vs ambient scribes for instance). I assume when you think of people taking a potentially "destitution-risky" decision, you think "entrepreneur without savings or backup income", not "hospital secretary". Yet here we are.

Also, in many professions, "production" is multi-level. Who is the producer in a hospital, the nurse, or the hospital manager? Yet I can assure you nurses, as vital as they are, get fixed term contracts or get fired all the time. Same with teachers and academics.

So, no, the system rewarding the hospital manager and the university deans for the "vital" work of their nurses and teachers isn't "cleverly recursive"; it's exactly the failure mode both you and OP speak of, except it's somehow both systemic and personal, depending in what angle you're looking at.
by zelphirkalt | 2026-01-31 09:39:36+00:00
About the tones not being as useful ... I think there are cases, in which they matter. Take for example 熊猫 and 胸毛: "有 xiongmao 吗？" "Are there Pandas? " or "Do you have chest hair?". Another one: 时间 and 事件. Sometimes it gets comical, but natives can and some will be confused, when your tones are off by too much, and the conversation just started, so that the context is not as narrowed down. Context is key in the language. You can notice that, when you are trying to join a conversation between natives. Until you understand a phrase or most of a phrase, that gives you a hint for the topic they are talking about, you will usually have a hard time understanding anything.

I just tried the tool and it couldn't properly recognize a very clearly pronounced "吃" and instead heard some shi2. I think it needs more training data or something. Or one needs a good mic.
by chrisjj | 2026-01-31 09:39:36+00:00
> If the server is in the United States, it's not published in the UK.

"the Southern District of New York, where many copyright cases are decided, have held that merely posting a digital file on the internet does not constitute publication because the act of posting does not involve the statutorily required act of transfer of ownership, rental, lease, or lending.
"
https://dunnerlaw.com/copyright-office-to-clarify-how-to-det...

"Websites, whether they be .uk or .com or under any other country domain are effectively accessible from anywhere in world. As a result if they contain material offensive to any jurisdiction in the world the website proprietor could face legal action anywhere in the world."

https://www.warnergoodman.co.uk/site/blog/news/overseas-liab...
by moffkalast | 2026-01-31 09:39:48+00:00
I'm not sure if that is accurate, most of the funding they've got is from Tencent and Alibaba, and we know what happened to Jack Ma the second he went against the party line. These two are defacto state owned enterprises. Moonshot is unlikely to be for sale in any meaningful way so its valuation is moot.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshot_AI#Funding_and_invest...
by jeremysalwen | 2026-01-31 09:39:57+00:00
Does anyone know of a board state that doesn't involve arbitrary actions, but a specific finite setup, which would nonetheless require the solution of an unsolved conjecture in order to resolve who wins?

I am thinking of an example like constructing two incredibly large numbers (of the same sort as grahams number) where it is not known which is larger, and then e.g. doing x damage to a creature with y health. Ideally this happens in a way that nobody would object to the construction if x and y, since they are simple to describe and construct.

I understand that you can construct a turing machine to perform an arbitrary computation, but that defeats the spirit of this question. The question is whether there is a simpler way to construct such a paradox where you might follow along happily until you get to the end.
Ask HN: Why doesn't download default to upload origin?
by mathematicum | 2026-01-31 09:40:40+00:00
I upload paper.tex from ~/projects/anamnesis/. I get help from an AI, produce a revised version. It downloads to ~/Downloads/.
Every time. Every tool. For thirty years.
The browser knows where I uploaded from. The download could go back there. It doesn't.
This seems obvious once you say it. Am I missing something? Is there a technical reason this can't work, or has nobody built it?
A browser extension or desktop app could:

Capture upload origin path
Store it for the session
Default downloads to that path
User overrides if needed

The conversation itself becomes provenance metadata - "this file went to Claude, here's what happened, here's what came back."
Has anyone built this? If not, why not?
by catdog | 2026-01-31 09:40:48+00:00
> People talk about an AI bubble. What we actually have is a GPU bubble. NVidia makes really expensive GPUs for AI. Others also make GPUs.

Yes it is. I think even for multiple reasons. Competition in that space not sleeping is one but it's also a huge overestimation of demand combined with the questionable believe those GPUs and the Datacenters housing them can actually be built and put into operation as fast as envisioned.

> The reason that this 100B deal is apparently being reconsidered is that it is a bad deal for OpenAI. It was going to overpay for a solution that they can get cheaper elsewhere. It's bad news for NVidia, good news for OpenAI. This deal started out with just NVidia. But at this point there are also deals with AMD, MS, and others. OpenAI like the other hyperscalers is not betting the company on NVidia/CUDA. Good for them.

I think in case of OpenAI both may be true. While what you are saying makes sense, NVs first mover advantage obviously can't last forever, OpenAI currently does have little to no competitive advantage over other players. Combine this with the fact that some (esp. Google) sit on a huge pile of cash. In contrast for OpenAI the party is pretty much over as soon as investors stop throwing money into the oven so they might need to cut back a bit.
by jjav | 2026-01-31 09:40:50+00:00
> Urm, ime people frequently drive significantly over the speed limit in all these places, at all times of the day.

The focus on speed limit as some truth is not the best way to think about it.

It might be 15/20/25 (varies, but those are the most common values I've seen).

But in terms of what is safe, it varies far more.

There will be circumstances where driving double that limit is 100% safe in front of the school. (For example, small numbers of high-school kids standing around but far from the street, so even if they did a mad dash to the street (which that age kids will not do), they still couldn't get in a spot to be hit by the car.)

And there will be circumstances where even a one-tenth of that speed will be far too dangerous to consider. (For example, high density of elementary school kids on a narrow sidewalk with many visual obstructions.)

I have a hard time believing that you, or anyone, would drive the same speed in both scenarios without any consideration to the circumstances of the moment.

I know I most certainly would never. If there is obviously zero chance of an accident I'll drive the limit or above. If there are tons of tiny kids in brownian motion, I'll slow down to a crawl or even stop if I sense risk (like a kid disappearing behind a parked car and now I don't know where they'll pop up).
by rvz | 2026-01-31 09:40:59+00:00
It's almost as if everyone here was assuming that Nvidia would have no competition for a long time, but it has been known for a long time, there are many competitors coming after their data center revenues. [0]

> So which leading AI company is going to build on Nvidia, if not OpenAI?

It's xAI.

But what matters is that there is more competition for Nvidia and they bought Groq to reduce that. OpenAI is building their own chips as well as Meta.

The real question is this: What happens when the competition catches up with Nvidia and takes a significant slice out of their data center revenues?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45429514
by materialpoint | 2026-01-31 09:42:28+00:00
This should be compulsory for pitching architects and entrepreneurs. Prove that your design can withstand real weather and the washed out decay of time. Classical architecture withstands weathering and littering remarkably better.
Architects are even using corrugated steel sheets intended for ugly shacks as the fascade of new buildings intended for people to live in. It couldn't be worse.
by zelphirkalt | 2026-01-31 09:43:12+00:00
The point about being a beginner and having limited capacity to express oneself is an important point. When you can say more, you will also have learned more about the language's tendency to use words of 2 syllables, rather than 1 syllable words. Using 2 syllables instead of 1 already removes a lot of ambiguity, and people will understand you better.
by thomas-jamet | 2026-01-31 09:43:27+00:00
I built an open-source framework for creating consistent workspace structures when working with AI coding assistants. It supports Gemini, Claude, and Codex.

The problem: AI assistants are great at generating code but provide no organizational structure. After a few months of "vibe coding," you end up with inconsistent project layouts, AI agents repeatedly asking "where is this file?", and invisible technical debt.

The solution: A tiered scaffolding system (Lite/Standard/Enterprise) that creates predictable patterns for both humans and AI.

What it does:

> Creates provider-specific config files (GEMINI.md, CLAUDE.md, or CODEX.md)
> Sets up standardized directory structures
> Includes reusable skills and workflows
> Adds Makefile-based session management

Usage: python bootstrap.py -t 2 -n myproject --provider claude

Why this matters: Same structure across all projects means lower cognitive overhead. AI agents recognize patterns and act faster. Code is written once but modified many times—structure helps with the modifications.

Single Python file (~5K lines), MIT licensed.

Has anyone else thought about sustainable patterns for AI-assisted development? Most content focuses on "build X in 10 minutes" but ignores what happens when you maintain that code for 6 months.
by ben_w | 2026-01-31 09:43:59+00:00
This poster was in Schönhauser Alle Arkaden, in Prenzlauer Berg; in Prenzlauer Berg diskutiert man typischerweise, ob das Bio-Sauerteigbrot noch „authentisch“ genug ist, und die Hauptfragen am Straße sind nur "Haben Sie eine Feuerzeuge?" (or possibly "du", as I'm British, I have to think carefully about du/Sie, I don't naturally recall it).

In a word, "Egal". In two words, "Völlig egal".
by zty5678 | 2026-01-31 09:44:02+00:00
It's great. I tried using it to optimize a tweet, but it generated too many emojis. So I told it not to generate too many emojis, and this time the result was quite satisfactory.

It runs in a sandbox, each session lasting ten minutes, and the session is cleared after a page refresh.

However, after using it twice, it threw an error: "Failed to initialize sandbox: HTTP 500: Please refresh the page to try again."
Show HN: Gwt – conflictless AI sessions in parallel (terminal)
by slowmonkey | 2026-01-31 09:44:12+00:00
Opencode, claude code, aider and other terminal ai assistants are great! But I don't think they cover a case where I want to have several sessions working in isolation on separate features without changes/files conflicts.

So very often I create a separate git worktree and spin up claude code or opencode. But managing git worktrees and spinning up ai assistant is adding a bit of friction (I'm bad at remembering commands). This is why this little simple minimalistic tool was created.

It originally only supported claude code, but now you decide what ai assistant it should spin up.

Demo where I simulate running 2 sessions (quasar, quantum):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/slowestmonkey/gwt/51f6bc21...

Try and let me know. Feedback appreciated!
by throwaway132448 | 2026-01-31 09:44:39+00:00
I used to think along these lines. But now I think the truth is - does it matter if the economy grinds to a halt? Perhaps the ruling class can still keep enough Americans comfortable enough, and fearful of losing more, doing largely pointless jobs, to stay passive - and that’s all they need to do to completely bifurcate the society such that they face no threat to their own position.
by calgoo | 2026-01-31 09:48:29+00:00
No, he is referencing Google going after the Chinese company, not the Israel based one. That does not mean there is bias with the commenter at all, just that the companies operate differently and are treated differently. The country of origin is important as Israel based companies are more integrated into the western business world, and tend to at least try to show an effort in keeping spam and other things off their platforms.
Now I do agree that they are both bad companies that should not be allowed to operate the way they do. I would say the same thing about the other 1000 scrapers hitting websites everyday as well (including Google).

What they did not comment directly on, is how many apps / games they might have actually removed from the Playstore with the removal of the SDKs, which would be the actual interesting data.
by simonra | 2026-01-31 09:49:53+00:00
One can argue that the tax revenue losses would be uncomfortably noticeable without the interests extracted from the investments of the oil and gas money. However I’d say it’s more about Norways position on new cars being a luxury good and taxed as so. Which meant that the Norwegian government could make buying electric cars cost half as much as the alternative over night, simply by dropping retail taxes on them to zero. Add another subsidy in the form of reduced annual ownership taxes, and buying unused (electric) cars suddenly became obtainable to a large group. Not to mention simply a stupidly good deal for those without special needs, like living/operating in the less dense areas to the north where the sun doesn’t shine half a year at a time (and the temperatures follow accordingly).

You should be able to reproduce it most places though. Just declare new non-electric vehicles a luxury only for the rich and set taxes on new cars to 100%+. (Be sure to define businesses as rich and have popular agreement that they’re unviable if not.) Sell it to current owners as a massive boost to the used price they can get. Then drop the taxes on electric vehicles. After the transition to all new sales being electric, reintroduce the luxury taxation on all vehicles like what Norways government is currently doing, and you’ll get a small boost to the nations finances if you didn’t originally have it.
by scotty79 | 2026-01-31 09:51:47+00:00
> just put cash in a money market fund or something

So you are predicting everybody will escape into dollars. Which by themselves are extremely risky because the world is at the verge of ditching dollar as global currency.

There was already double digit inflation just because during the pandemics US overprinted dollars in relation to the size of the global economy. Imagine what the inflation will be if the dollar economic domain shrinks by half or more.
by cjfd | 2026-01-31 09:51:58+00:00
Whether or not a 'LIO' exists is not that interesting to me. What is interesting is what actually exists and what has happened in history. What actually exists is an enormous shock after, for instance, world war one where the question arose how it is possible that basically an entire generation of young men was slaughtered. E.g., every small village in France has a memorial of the fallen soldiers during world war one. For many decades after the war commemoration were/are still being held. It used to be that competing for territory was just the normal thing countries did. Then, it became clear that this has a potentially enormous cost in human lives. The obvious conclusion for people who are not sleepwalking through life and through history, is that any political leader who advocates for a change in country borders and does so much as hint to violent means of doing so is totally deranged and immoral. A similar shock has gone through the world after world war two, which, for instance, lead to the creation of the declaration of universal human rights. Among the decent public, it is also concluded that a violation of human rights is deranged in immoral.
by mschuster91 | 2026-01-31 09:52:11+00:00
> YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme.

One might also say it was unsustainable from the start, video is incredibly expensive to host and especially moderate.

All we're seeing right now is the beginning of the end of the ad-financed world. Someone has to pay the bills in the end and advertisement spending is on the way down, more and more of it is going to influencers/TTL instead of traditional ATL/BTL marketing.
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-31 09:52:37+00:00
Hot take: the author sneaks in a premise that synthetic mathematics is per se "reactionary", but this is itself pure reactionary copium for not getting it: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/synthetic+mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_mathematics . There's nothing wrong with wanting to pursue a "coordinate-free" approach to any mathematical field: the old geometers were quite right about this.