MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by WalterBright | 2026-01-01 05:25:18+00:00
I think you're referring to Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. I'm not aware of any that exist.

Banks do not store their deposits in a cash vault. They loan it out (except for a reserve percentage), and charge interest on the loan. That's how they make money. That's why they offer free checking - so they can loan your money out and charge interest. They will even pay you to deposit your money, so they can loan it out and make money on it.

Wealthy people know how to make money, which means putting the money to productive use creating goods and services that people want. If that money is confiscated from them, there's that much less money creating goods and services people want.
by docjay | 2026-01-01 05:26:03+00:00
True that there isn’t a firm definition for AGI, but that’s the fault of the “I”. We don’t have an objective definition of intelligence, and so we don’t have a means of measuring it either. I mean, odds are you’re the least intelligent paleoethnobotanist and cetacean bioacoustician I’ve ever met, but perhaps the most intelligent something_else. How do we measure that? How do we define it?

I was confusing in my previous message. Right now it would be terrible at driving a car, but I was saying that has more to do with the physical interface (camera, sensors, etc) than the ability of an LLM. The ‘intelligence’ part is better than the PyTorch image recognition attached to a servo they’re using now, how to attach that ‘intelligence’ to the physical world is the 50 year task.
(To be clear: LLMs aren’t intelligent, smart, or any sense of the word and never will be. But they can sure replicate the effect better than current self-driving tech.)
by aschla | 2026-01-01 05:26:24+00:00
Don't know about the others, but Illinois permanently shut down (and demolished or repurposed the land) the majority of its coal power plants over the past couple decades.

Illinois gets about half its power from nuclear (we have 6 plants and 11 reactors), followed by natural gas at around 20%, and then about equal amounts of coal and wind, at around 10-15%.

So Illinois is actually a pretty decent place to build datacenters, from a clean power generation perspective.

https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=IL
by alex1115alex | 2026-01-01 05:27:45+00:00
The QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission (what an Android app needs to see all the packages installed on your phone) is a little weird. The user doesn’t get prompted and explicitly grant permission for it like they would for something like MICROPHONE- having it in the app’s manifest alone is sufficient to query packages. However, Google Play Console does make you submit a video of how the permission is used in your app in order to publish on Google Play if they detect it in your manifest.

The acceptance criteria made sense for our app (it displays your phone’s notifications on your smart glasses HUD, and users need a way of selecting which apps can/can’t display notifications). I don’t know how HSBC justifies it though.
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-01 05:29:09+00:00
Sounds good. Except the reverify thing. The whole reverification is becoming a bit of a disease lately.

I've already had my bank AND my mobile provider demanding an updated scan of my ID. Which is completely BS, after all I'm still the same person. I didn't suddenly become someone else. It's ridiculous they demand it.

But these cards sound like a better solution than using government ID yes.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-01-01 05:29:42+00:00
> You really owe it to yourself to try them out.

I've worked at multiple AI startups in lead AI Engineering roles, both working on deploying user facing LLM products and working on the research end of LLMs. I've done collaborative projects and demos with a pretty wide range of big names in this space (but don't want to doxx myself too aggressively), have had my LLM work cited on HN multiple times, have LLM based github projects with hundreds of stars, appeared on a few podcasts talking about AI etc.

This gets to the point I was making. I'm starting to realize that part of the disconnect between my opinions on the state of the field and others is that many people haven't really been paying much attention.

I can see if recent LLMs are your first intro to the state of the field, it must feel incredible.
by PostOnce | 2026-01-01 05:31:30+00:00
"Might makes right" is an observation, not a profession of moral philosophy... In other words, the mighty will generally get their way, no matter how wrong that way is.

As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-01 05:32:06+00:00
And they can get porn from all those sites that don't obey laws anyway, like a gazillion torrent sites. So yeah what's the point really. You're not preventing anything.

Also I'm pretty sure we all watched porn when we were under age and didn't get anything from it.

When I was young internet wasn't accessible for consumers yet but I built a pay TV decoder so I could watch their porn at night. It was easy enough. Only did black and white and no audio but it didn't really matter for that purpose :)

Still, I never got the idea that this was normal sex and I've always treated women with the utmost respect.
by 578_Observer | 2026-01-01 05:33:03+00:00
I love the circus analogy! That made me chuckle.

You are right—if the carpenter just ran away, he would usually be sued.
But in this specific case, the client (publisher) agreed to let him go.
It’s more like: The carpenter said "I'm quitting to join the circus," and the client said, "Fine, keep the deposit, just leave."

In finance, we call this a "Write-off" to maintain relationships or avoid legal costs. It seems the publisher decided it wasn't worth fighting over.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-01 05:33:45+00:00
"The problem is that the word "privacy" is dialuted[sic] and mean different things to different people. Instead of "privacy" we really should be talking about "control"."

It's arguable that without control there can be no "privacy and security", including relief from data collection, surveillance and ads. The so-called "tech" companies that profit from data collection, surveillance and ad services are going to protect their own interests first, and if the the ad target (computer user) delegates "control" to these people, then he will also sacrifice some "privacy and security" as a result. When there is a conflict between the company's interest in profiting from data collection, surveillance and ad services and his interest in "privacy", his interests will be subjugated to theirs. He has sacrificed control

Personally I'm not really interested in "convenience" at the cost of control. For example, delegating control to a third party. I want control

Like "privacy", "control" could mean different things to different people

To me, it means control over a computer (via software)

For example, let's say a student at Harvard in the 1970's later becomes a hacker at MIT's AI lab in the 80's and dislikes not having the ability to study and modify the software he is forced to use

He writes a compiler and attempts to create an operating system

Arguably one could say he wanted "control"

Or let's say a student at University of Helsinki in the early 90s is using an operating system installed on the university's computers and wants to run the same type of system (UNIX) on his i386 PC at home

He writes an operating system kernel

Arguably, one could say he too wanted "control"

Let's say a www user in 2025 dislikes using software that automatically downloads, installs and runs code on his computer without his input or consent and automatically sends DNS, HTTP and other requests to allow so-called "tech" companies to perform data collection, surveillance and ad services^1

Arguably, one could say he also wants "control"

He compiles his own operating system from source and writes some simple programs to prevent the remote access installs and intercept the attempted automatic remote requests

1. Thanks to the work of the folks in the first two examples and others like them, source code for UNIX-like OS is readily available including a free compiler to produce software for it

Perhaps "control" in this context must involve some element of "DIY". The folks in the first two examples did not wait for or plead with third parties, e.g., so-called "tech" companies, to give them "control"

If one accepts that there can be no "privacy and security" without "control", then it stands to reason that delegating control to so-called "tech" companies is not going to produce "privacy and security"; it will always be compromised by the companies' own interests which include profiting from data collection, surveillance and ads services at the expense of "privacy and security"
by serf | 2026-01-01 05:35:48+00:00
whenever you see someone making the claim that a gun won't work on an aircraft, I urge you to look at our entire aviation history of vehicles with guns strapped on. Planes, helicopters, jet-packs, 'manned platforms', whatever your fancy.

we're not talking about glocks ductaped to DJIs here, and all of these mysterious engineer efforts that 'just doesn't work out' are hurdles that man has faced and conquered before.

What I would suggest is that if anyone trying to give you a technical reason that ends in "It just doesn't work" they are probably unprepared to accurately brief you on the topic.
by Nevermark | 2026-01-01 05:35:50+00:00
> You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever

> But you can do that without any money.

Well...

Material things can contribute to happiness, or detract.

Balancing the things we spend our life on, relative to an understanding of what makes us happy, is going to be an idiosyncratic exercise. Assuming that X won't contribute to the happiness of person Y is some deep projection.

There seem to be many kinds of happiness too. Would I remain happy if I lost my house? Yes. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that. But would I feel as fulfilled? No. I have gone through enough ups and downs to know that.
by timr | 2026-01-01 05:36:25+00:00
Perhaps there's some unmeasured influence, but this study was looking only at the difference between growth within subjects vs between subjects. If the subjects were all "newbies", then that doesn't explain the results.

They're essentially saying that individual genetics explain the majority of the variation seen as a response to muscle stimulus in their test subjects, not the mass used, because the variation within the test cohorts was greater than the variation between them. You can argue that, if they didn't test experienced lifters, the results might be different in that population, but you can't dismiss the results on those grounds.
by CamperBob2 | 2026-01-01 05:36:55+00:00
That's all very impressive, to be sure. But are you sure you're getting the point? As of 2025, LLMs are now very good at writing new code, creating new imagery, and writing original text. They continue to improve at a remarkable rate. They are helping their users create things that didn't exist before. Additionally, they are now very good at searching and utilizing web resources that didn't exist at training time.

So it is absurdly incorrect to say "they can only reproduce the past." Only someone who hasn't been paying attention (as you put it) would say such a thing.
by MostlyStable | 2026-01-01 05:41:50+00:00
In my opinion this is one of the under-rated advantages of sous vide. Most proteins have a very wide range of time in which they are appropriately cooked; often between 1 and 4 hours. Having the meat be ready to go, with at most a few minutes of searing time, at any point in a couple of hour window is really convenient.

Our go-to "we didn't plan a meal tonight" is to pull an already-seasoned-in-the-sous-vide bag chicken breast out of the freezer, throw some rice in the rice cooker (I agree with the original point about rice cookers), and microwave some frozen vegetables.

It's a pretty well balanced (if somewhat unexciting) meal that takes ~10-15 minutes of active work, is extremely flexible on timing, and has pretty minimal cleanup.

It does take a few different levels of prep though:

Packaging the chicken breasts (and having the freezer space to store them), and then realizing you are going to make this meal at least 2 hours, preferably 3, beforehand to start the sous vide
by Aurornis | 2026-01-01 05:42:02+00:00
NAC is in the category of supplements that sound unbelievably amazing on paper, but are frequently discontinued by people trying to take it long term. Some people seem to like it, but it’s common for people to take it for a while and realize it’s causing side effects like anhedonia, apathy, minor sleep disruptions, or other subtle negative effects. Not everyone, but it’s a common outcome.

It also doesn’t quite live up to a lot of the incredible sounding papers for many conditions. It’s really common to find papers or even small trials purporting to find amazing effects from supplements that fail to replicate at scale. NAC does have some legitimate applications and is even used medically for certain conditions. I’m a little more skeptical that all of the amazing positives for every condition under the sun will hold up.
by goku12 | 2026-01-01 05:42:08+00:00
Here are some quotes from an article [1] that directly addresses your point:

> The turbines spew nitrogen oxides, also known as NOx, at an estimated rate of 1,200 to 2,000 tons a year — far more than the gas-fired power plant across the street or the oil refinery down the road.

> The turbines are only temporary and don’t require federal permits for their emissions of NOx and other hazardous air pollutants like formaldehyde, xAI’s environmental consultant, Shannon Lynn, said during a webinar hosted by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce. The argument appears to rely on a loophole in federal regulations that environmental groups and former EPA officials say shouldn’t apply to the situation.

> Mayo and Lynn didn’t respond to calls and texts from POLITICO’s E&E News requesting comment and have not said publicly how much longer the “temporary” turbines will remain onsite. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

As you can see, xAI is being deliberately deceptive here and this has been known, but unaddressed for a while now. Remember that we are talking about a grave threat to the health and life of the entire population of a town. That too in a country where healthcare is deliberately unaffordable to ordinary folks. I don't know if you know how nasty formaldehyde and NOx smells.

How do you so casually trivialize and vilify such concerns as 'agenda pushing'? It's very sad that HN has too many apologists for these greedy serial violators and abusers. At the same time, the sheer lack of empathy towards the unprivileged is appalling! They're humans too!

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...
by refibrillator | 2026-01-01 05:42:26+00:00
Here’s a starting point:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5241507/#B1

TLDR: NAC is a derivative of an amino acid called cysteine, as such it is a precursor for one of the most important antioxidants in the body and it can modulate key metabolic pathways associated with good health across a variety of organs, notably for decades it has been a universally successful antidote for acetaminophen (Tylenol) overdose, it’s available over the counter but NAC is not naturally found in foods, eating cysteine-rich foods like chicken turkey yogurt etc is the next best bet.
by taneq | 2026-01-01 05:42:31+00:00
That matches what I've been told by various personal trainers. 6-8 reps if focusing on strength, ~12 for all round, and 16-18 for size/endurance. Do three sets, weight should be enough that the last couple of reps on the first set are a bit of a struggle. Subsequent sets just push through as far as you can.
by rendaw | 2026-01-01 05:45:27+00:00
I'm skeptical of the claim too. All the arguments are logical but there doesn't seem to be any evidence. Have there been any studies?

I googled around and the best I could find was https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23661/are-sharp... (11 years ago) which could only speculate that sharp knives reduce RSI.
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-01 05:46:16+00:00
Same here. I've never been carded in my life for alcohol. Neither in a bar nor store. Despite having lived in several countries (none the US though which is kinda weird about alcohol, where I am from we could drink from 16 not 21 like in the US)

When I was young nobody really cared about age verification yet and these days I'm clearly not a teen anymore.

If there would be a store here that cards everyone regardless of age then I will boycott them. It's ridiculous.
by shagmin | 2026-01-01 05:48:24+00:00
I guess that distinction in poor matters some to me, because when I read your original comment (budgeting to avoid staying poor) the first thing that came to mind was someone I know who often says things like poor people should just work harder and variations of that. And then I'm thinking like food deserts or people dealing with more pressing issues where there's probably a general inability to do any long term planning. And in that context it comes across as out of touch or like a naive solution to a complex problem, but then I guess you also have broke college students and others who could certainly heed this advice, not just necessarily low income people.
by Nevermark | 2026-01-01 05:50:31+00:00
We have been programming computers for 70+ years.

We still have to discover necessary information for small tasks, like it was a note buried in a stack of papers, in the spare room that has absorbed a decade's worth of clutter.

Another canary I notice, is the presence of "Please don't hit the back button" on web pages served by major corporations. Something bad might happen if you click/touch/return that button! Hands off your input devices, please!

On the progress front, we know how to topologically layer information, like never before. Huge appearing/disappearing header bars, over popup ads, over content. Such screen space efficiency.

In some ways we have come far. In a truly remarkable number of ways, not so much.
by throw10920 | 2026-01-01 05:51:52+00:00
> the former in licenses, the latter socially. You’re experiencing that process right now.

No, he's not, because there's no social contract on the internet. Making these analogies between real-world communities and "the Internet" is an obviously stupid thing to do if you think about it for five seconds.

And not only is there no social contract on the Internet, but because of its nature there cannot be, and attempting (futilely) to implement one is extremely harmful.

So, as a result, the license is all there is. If you publish it as open-source, users have zero obligation to contribute. If you want revenue, then use a commercial license and sell it.

It should go without saying, but the insane mental backflips that open source advocates go to in order to make wild claims like this harms their position, not helps it. Don't make absurd statements to try to ignore the fact that asking for money for your software with an actual license is the only reasonable way to get money for your software - it'll just cause normal people to take the entire movement less seriously.
by falkensmaize | 2026-01-01 05:52:06+00:00
Man, come on - what planet are you from, seriously? I got into this business because I enjoy programming, but I also wanted to for once in my life make a decent living and be able to save something. I have kids I'd like to send to college. I'd like to be able to retire someday. I have aging parents that need expensive care. This is one of the few professions that you can upskill into without years of expensive degrees.

People need to make money to survive, now more than ever. It seems incredibly selfish to wish for that to disappear just so you can "purify" the profession.
by jjude | 2026-01-01 05:52:26+00:00
I use predictions to prepare rather than to plan.

Planing depends on deterministic view of the future. I used to plan (esp annual plans) until about 5 years. Now I scan for trends and prepare myself for different scenarios that can come in the future. Even if you get it approximately right, you stand apart.

For tech trends, I read Simon, Benedict Evans, Mary Meeker etc. Simon is in a better position make these predictions than anyone else having closely analyzed these trends over the last few years.

Here I wrote about my approach: https://www.jjude.com/shape-the-future/
by MitziMoto | 2026-01-01 05:55:43+00:00
MCP isn't going anywhere. Some developers can't seem to see past their terminal or dev environment when it comes to MCP. Skills, etc do not replace MCP and MCP is far more than just documentation searching.

MCP is a great way for an LLM to connect to an external system in a standardized way and immediately understand what tools it has available, when and how to use them, what their inputs and outputs are,etc.

For example, we built a custom MCP server for our CRM. Now our voice and chat agents that run on elevenlabs infrastructure can connect to our system with one endpoint, understand what actions it can take, and what information it needs to collect from the user to perform those actions.

I guess this could maybe be done with webhooks or an API spec with a well crafted prompt? Or if eleven labs provided an executable environment with tool calling? But at some point you're just reinventing a lot of the functionality you get for free from MCP, and all major LLMs seem to know how to use MCP already.
by Sabinus | 2026-01-01 05:57:31+00:00
“The Israeli system is a slightly different approach technologically. So actually, it’s a nice complement because we’re kind of going down one path, they’ve gone down a slightly different one. So I think yes, there’s potential if theirs works well, it could be something we could think about leveraging for our needs in that space. So that’s really a benefit of that funding is … we can explore multiple paths here and see what works,” Bush said.
by noomer2 | 2026-01-01 05:58:06+00:00
Does anyone really think the country that spent millions of dollars building explosive-laden pagers that blinded and maimed children, then spent tens of millions of dollars gloating about it in public, gives a solitary thought to the cost-benefit ratio?

They have rules that say it's okay to kill 100 civilians as long as a single "operative" is also killed.

This is a country whose leadership cares only about executing terror. Just like the USA.
by falkensmaize | 2026-01-01 05:58:31+00:00
"I am not scared to go back flipping burgers again."

You should be - in all likelihood you'd have to work 3 burger-flipping jobs to make enough money to pay rent and buy food. Inflation and housing issues have hit a lot harder than most people who make 6-figure incomes realize. It's really tough out there right now. I am very, very grateful for the income I have and don't take it for granted.
by fdr | 2026-01-01 06:00:01+00:00
That's a lot of financial devices painted with a broad brush, and I think the charge that so may central banks are knuckled under with fiscal dominance is simply not sustainable. The ones that are, we tend to hear about.

Because there's a lot one could write about each of: equities, real estate, gold, silver, platinum (which have very different industrial exposures), and bitcoin, which have many price drivers.

So let's try something more parsimonious: what do you make of people, institutions, etc that bid on short and even long-dated sovereign debt around the globe, and come up the collective discovered price of, say...3.5%, annualized, for maturity in a month? https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-r...