MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Y-bar | 2026-01-02 10:09:04+00:00
Mostly believable. Even though I have never seen anything like it, I have worked with managers and product owners who have voiced a desire to do similar things. It is also clear that companies today (including the one I work at) often incentivise the dilution of responsibility so that nobody is cleanly attributable as the person who caused the system to be not just amoral, but actively detrimental to customers and other users in the long term.
by as1mov | 2026-01-02 10:09:22+00:00
Probably a dumb question, but how do you guys decide (and source) the book covers? I love how they look, but as a philistine can't put into words why.

Also thanks for doing this, I've read a bunch of stuff (GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett) that I wouldn't have otherwise if it weren't for this service.
by tlb | 2026-01-02 10:10:01+00:00
Nations have a tipping point where the violent minority can take power if there are enough of them. "Enough" might be only 10%. So a nation with 10% violent people is violent, while a nation with 9% violent people is peaceful.

It would be very hard to notice the difference between 10% and 9% by just meeting people. You'd have to meet and evaluate 1000s to measure it accurately enough. But you sure do notice the difference as a neighboring country when the tanks roll in.

So you do sometimes have to say things about nations despite it only reflecting a statistically small difference in people.
by exitnode | 2026-01-02 10:10:09+00:00
Last October, I had the honor of making such contact with the ISS. I posted about this on my website here: https://rz01.org/na1ss/

The ISS has radios on board that allow amateur radio operators to send and receive APRS messages, talk to other hams via their built-in FM repeater or to receive SSTV images. They also have amateur TV stuff on board but I have not explored this yet. Crew members with an amateur radio license can pick up the mic of the radio that acts as a FM repeater to make contacts with other hams on the earth.

You can contact the ISS via a handheld setup (FM radio and a yagi antenna in your hand) or with a stationary setup like mine: https://rz01.org/leo-sat-ground-station-v3/
by nilegreen | 2026-01-02 10:10:27+00:00
I noticed something while copying text: when you don't focus, you don't see words you see flow with breaks.

This led me to a broader observation: information doesn't exist in signals. It exists in interruptions.

- Morse code encodes meaning in silence between beeps
- DNA stores information in patterns of breaks (codons, genes)
- Computer code runs on transitions between 0 and 1
- Consciousness processes edges, onsets, changes—all breaks

The universe is continuous flow. We impose boundaries to extract information.

The Big Bang was every possible break tried simultaneously. Stable ones became physics.

Curious what HN thinks about this framework.
by vladms | 2026-01-02 10:11:52+00:00
I am using Arch and all the games I played on Steam (at least 20, not the ones mentioned above) worked perfectly.

One thing that I do though is get most games at least one year after release, when probably many issues are fixed. I had tons of issues many years ago, with buggy games bought immediately after release (on Windows back then), so now I changed strategy...
by IntelliAvatar | 2026-01-02 10:13:32+00:00
This makes a lot of sense. Recording execution + replay is exactly what’s missing once you move past simple logging.

One thing I’ve found tricky in similar setups is making sure the trace is captured before side-effects happen, otherwise replay can lie to you. If you get that boundary right, the prod → replay → fix → verify loop becomes much more reliable.

Really like the direction.
by sylware | 2026-01-02 10:14:13+00:00
Well, until it is a native elf/linux game, because the shabby compatibility, not reliable in time, zero official technical support (which is legally required for paid games), proton(wine), ewwwww...

The only sane ways: either a 'correct' set of native elf/linux binaries, or proton = 0 bucks (namely only free-to-play, with 0 cent in any micro-transactions).
by itsyonas | 2026-01-02 10:14:40+00:00
> Continental USA: 8 million square kilometer.

> Germany: 0.35 million square kilometer.

This does not matter much, since most people do not travel across states, countries, continents, etc on a daily basis. Most people probably travel within a 50 km (30 mile) radius (travelling to and from work, daycare, school, shopping, etc.).

iirc, the average is slightly higher in the US, but this is probably more due to how the US has approached urban planning over the last century or so than to the size of the country.

> But the answer is obviously (trigger warning for the libertarians...) taxes.

I think many people forget the huge societal cost of owning and running cars, including infrastructure maintenance, crash-related deaths and injuries, health conditions caused by crashes, air and noise pollution, climate change, resource extraction, and time lost in traffic. In other words, the savings from reducing these social, health, and environmental costs could easily finance the ticket. A study estimated that a modal shift of 10% to public transit could save Germany about 19 billion Euros a year (https://foes.de/publikationen/2024/2024-04_FOES_OEPNV.pdf).
by robin_reala | 2026-01-02 10:14:46+00:00
The historical criteria is fine-art style oil painting. These days we’re starting to use first-edition cover art a bunch for more modern productions if it’s good quality. We also tend to use abstract oil paintings for sci-fi.[1] Obviously, all art is sourced from the public domain too. We’ve also started a database of confirmed-US-PD artwork that we can use for future productions.[2]

[1] https://standardebooks.org/subjects/science-fiction

[2] https://standardebooks.org/artworks
by devinprater | 2026-01-02 10:15:00+00:00
Linux is even getting more accessible. I'm thinking of Elementary OS which not only posted about their accessibility work, but linked to the articles which really fired things up. I'm a Fedora guy, mainly because I want the latest Orca, AT-SPI2 and such, so I don't feel like an Ubuntu dirivitive would work as well.

So I installed Fedora on my work machine and find that I can still get all of my work done. Well except the parts that require testing accessibility on Windows screen readers or helping with Windows-related issues.

The only thing I miss now are the many addons made for NVDA, especially the ones for image descriptions. But if I can get something to work with Wayland, I could probably vibe code some of them. Thank goodness for Claude Code.
by WhereIsTheTruth | 2026-01-02 10:15:54+00:00
Actually, credible ESG ratings like thee ones from Sustainalytics or MSCI show BYD scoring above average for human rights governance in the automotive sector, not at the bottom

More importantly, this highlights a pattern of selective scrutiny:

- When Western companies (like Tesla) source batteries from the same regions (or use batteries from BYD or CATL), human rights concerns rarely drive mainstream criticism or policy actions

- When industries dominated by Western monopolies (eg: Big Tech's app stores or cloud services) face human rights allegations (like labor abuses in global supply chains or censorship complicity)= the backlash is often muted or just silenced

- But when a non Western competitor like BYD gains traction, human rights rhetoric suddenly intensifies, even without evidence matching the severity of claims against established Western companies

It's geopolitically convenient criticism, FUD against what threatens a western monopolistic ecosystem
by usrusr | 2026-01-02 10:16:45+00:00
The problem with that last paragraph is that through almost all those regime changes (I guess the time between the Soviet collapse and Putin's rise may have been an exception), Russia has continued a strategy of systematic displacement for accelerated "russification". Those provinces effectively do not exist, they don't have enough population that identifies with the region more than with the empire.

If you force a Tatar to somewhere close to the Chinese border he will be perceived as "Russian" by the indigenous community, and their rejection will eventually make him identify as "Russian" himself, to bond with his peer displacees from other corners of the empire, and with locals who accept the empire. The exact same mechanism works in all directions, e.g. when some of those locals are displaced to somewhere near the Finnish border. The most important weapon of the Russian empire isn't the tank or the AK-47 or hard winters or sheer distance or vast amounts of mineral resources, it's industrial scale deportation for eradication of regional identity.
by otterley | 2026-01-02 10:17:01+00:00
IAAL with experience interpreting Federal antitrust complaints. Allegation 16 is not a specific allegation that Apple deliberately withholds features from Safari in order to steer developers toward building apps. It’s a “narrative” paragraph that is intended to characterize Apple’s overall behavior. It alleges that Apple is self-serving, which, at the end of the day, isn’t really that surprising for an American business enterprise, and isn’t in itself unlawful.

I’m not a member of some Apple cult. There are plenty of things I don’t like about Apple; and no company is perfect. At any rate, name-calling one’s opponents isn’t allowed here, and when a discussion stoops to that nadir, I’m out. I’ll let the reader decide who has the better argument.
by michaelbuck | 2026-01-02 10:18:25+00:00
Other comments pointed out the semi-obvious use of AI due to em dashes.

I'm honestly at a point where every suspicious aspect of that post could as well be counted as a countermeasure to getting caught. Said engineer could still be working at the company or could've left years ago. In my opinion the mentioned financial adjustments could've been a discussion topic for higher ups far far earlier than 2025.

Considering how ruthless Uber has acted thorough the years[0] I am almost 100% sure other startups with similar opportunities have at the very least committed crimes on a similar scale to the linked Reddit confession.

Bonus option: The Reddit account starts astroturfing in a few weeks and this was just a run-of-the-mill bot automation to gain karma which happened to overlap with HN interests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2026-01-02 10:18:29+00:00
> If they are delaying the regular orders, then they are either a) having drivers sit idle or b) freeing up resources for the priority orders.

Delay would be easy. Just delay placing the order at the restaurant, or delay sending the order to the driver. That won’t introduce any NOP wait states.

This is all quite possible.

That said, I’m skeptical that this is a real story, but I guess time will tell.

I do have one prediction, though: this story will dive down, pretty quickly. I don’t think because evil. It’s just too insupportable.
by brailsafe | 2026-01-02 10:18:42+00:00
Yep, could be right. It might have only ever been a few stalwart professions that were expected to be constants. But I think the cost of life during the pre-2010 era absorbed the reasons those anxieties existed, whereas the severity of the rise in that cost of necessities since is the problem. As in, having an expectation of a volatile income-earning life is one thing if a house costs $80k or rent is $400, but having a volatile life with rent for the smallest serviceable apartment being $2-3k, and the same house costing $2m; that lack of stability isn't priced in by the markets
by ColinEberhardt | 2026-01-02 10:19:09+00:00
Nolan shares some interesting reflections at the end of this post. Here are a few direct quotes:

> "I’m somewhat horrified by how easily this tool can reproduce what took me 20-odd years to learn"

> "I’ve decided that my role is not to try to resist the overwhelming onslaught of this technology, but instead to just witness and document how it’s shaking up my worldview and my corner of the industry"

> "I have no idea what coding will look like next year (2026), but I know how my wife will be planning our next vacation."
by suryaelidanto | 2026-01-02 10:19:33+00:00
OP here. I spent 6 months engineering this video pipeline. It replaces Opus Pro/Vizard.

The Stack:
- Orchestration: N8N (Self-hosted) + Redis.
- AI: Gemini 2.5 Flash (Scoring) + MediaPipe (Face tracking).
- Engine: Custom FFmpeg build for auto-reframing & subtitle burn-in.
- Infra: Docker Compose (7 microservices).

It's running in production. I've decided to move on to other projects, so I packaged the entire architecture/source code as a starter kit for devs who want to study or fork it.
Show HN: Lock In – A goal Mac tracker controlled by typed commands
by TedOS | 2026-01-02 10:19:47+00:00
I built a task/goal tracker where the entire UI is one input field.

The idea: your goals live in four quadrants (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). Everything happens through commands. The app docks to the side of your screen.

Adding a goal:

/d 50 pushups

Chain them:

/d 50 pushups /w 3 gym sessions /m finish project /y learn piano

Updating progress:

Create an alias with /alias p pushups, then just type 25 p to add 25. Three characters.

Review your week with /review 7d. Rename goals, change targets, convert between quadrants—all through commands.

Each quadrant auto-resets at the right interval (daily at midnight, weekly on Monday, etc). You don't manage anything.

Why I built it this way: I kept bouncing between productivity apps looking for something faster. Nothing stuck because they all wanted me to click through menus and organise things. I just wanted to type and move on.

So I made something deliberately constrained. One input. Four quadrants. No settings screen. No integrations. The lack of features is the point.

Curious what the HN crowd thinks—especially if the command syntax feels intuitive or too obscure. Still iterating.
by breppp | 2026-01-02 10:20:12+00:00
During World War 2 it was believed that the Germans will never change and will always be a source of conflict in europe (or worse). There were wild ideas like the Morgenthau Plan to completely dismantle any German ability to wage war.

But it turns out a very militarized nation can become completely pacifist after suffering a complete utter defeat, suffering and destruction.

Culture can change, just like 1990s Russia was a break from past and future Russia. However the 1990s were a disaster and thus the culture changes went to the opposite side
by anticodon | 2026-01-02 10:20:13+00:00
Russia is anti-west because traitors Gorbachev and Yeltsin (who was indeed an alcoholic) sold the country to the West for nothing, for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept. As you can see in many comments here (and on other sites such as Reddit this is more prominent), West consider Russian people subhumans. Something that Hitler and others said openly before, and this wave of Nazism is becoming stronger now again.

Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands died in ethnical conflicts, hundreds of thousands died from hunger. It was all a huge mistake and I hope we'll never repeat it.
by qcnguy | 2026-01-02 10:20:50+00:00
Though, BSE was massively overhyped by the same epidemiologists who got COVID wrong. They said it could be a huge disaster that killed millions and in the end only fewer than two hundred people died of cjv over a period of decades. Although that's bad it's very far from being a good justification for banning everything pre-emptively.
by pastage | 2026-01-02 10:20:59+00:00
Do you think the things that makes an edition special goes missing while converting to e.g. Standard Ebooks. I remember both the The Castle and Das Schloss like they had typesetting that helped me in perceiving the feel of the book. Is there anyway to preserve that feeling and still keep within the bounds of standardisation you adhere to? (I did a quick look through my copy and it does not seem to be much that makes it unique really, just the size of the book, and the chapter heading graphics..)

Do you know if the project try to look at other languages at all?
by RamblingCTO | 2026-01-02 10:21:03+00:00
> You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.

Love the thought. But for me I wasn't able to commit to wanting to have children because I had to learn so much about dating and what I think I deserve and what I want. I just went with the "cool uncle" (which often times hides the "I think I don't deserve love and thus sabotage myself") narrative the last decade or so and had to have the bad experiences I've had 2025 to come to the conclusion that I want a wife and kids. Sometimes your life task dictates how it goes for you and a little less grip on this journey seems beneficial to me.

This article came at a perfect time for me and I will go full steam ahead to find someone to make kids with o7
by shevy-java | 2026-01-02 10:21:03+00:00
Matz is a great guy and epic language designer; and ruby is, for the most part (80% I'd say) a very well-designed language too. However had, ruby has a problem (or, several smaller ones, but also one big one: WHERE ARE THE NEW RUBY USERS! This is the big one, the other problems somewhat tie into this, but in part are also partially unrelated, e. g. python being successful means the share will be smaller for ruby, and JavaScript became so important because the browser is so dominating).

TIOBE is for the most part crap, but the tendency is also not completely fabricated. Ruby is at rank #25 with 0.67% right. Again, those numbers aren't that relevant, and they fluctuate WAY too much in suspicious ways - TIOBE has many issues, but ruby was doing better in the past there, so something changed. So, not only needs to be an unbiased analysis, but much more importantly so a contingency plan. I feel that in many ways ruby is also way too japanese centric. This is fine for a language that is only used in Japan, but a language should have no real country-focus per se, it should be usable everywhere without constraint. With a contingency plan I mean specific things to do. You can not solve this with single steps - that approach does not work. We saw this with the quest to make ruby faster. Ok, ruby is faster now, that's great, but then why aren't there more users? If ruby being much faster was the number #1 goal, why aren't older users returning for the most part? Why are new users hardly picking up ruby?

I don't want to make this sound too pessimistic per se, mind you. But ruby is now where perl was about 10 or perhaps even 15 years ago. Perl had the problem of perl5 versus perl6, but also python as stronger competitor. Perl5 failed to go against python. Ironically enough perl5 is more active than perl6 - that was also poor planning the perl folks did. (Version changes can be hugely problematic, Guido does not want python4 largely because python2 to python3 transition was problematic.)

Ruby really needs a plan with several items that work. Even more so as matz will sooner than later go into post-design stage (like Guido did with regard to Python though Guido is still somewhat involved with python, just not necessarily as sole decision maker now).
by Etheryte | 2026-01-02 10:21:08+00:00
The error most people make on this front is thinking that Russia is just another country with regular country goals like any other. Grow the economy, make lives better for its people over the long term, that kind of thing. But this is not the case. Russia has been run by thugs for centuries in, centuries out, and they want thug things. Make the head thugs richer and fatter while everyone else suffers, both at home and abroad.
by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 | 2026-01-02 10:21:33+00:00
<< Deluding ourselves here it's nice to think the day has finally arrived but it hasn't

Apart from systemd, tell me what isn't great. The whole benefit of the ecosystem is that you can pick and choose your system components and if you don't like any of then, build your own. I am not trying to be dismissive, if I use a windows these days, it is for work and some errant vm to run windows specific app ( hr block comes to mind -- I am just not willing to spend time to run it any other way ).
by rvz | 2026-01-02 10:21:47+00:00
> Was it cost effective when compared to hiring a developer? Yes. Was it value for money? NO.

Is your product making any money?

If so can it scale past the free trial period (Over 10K users a month) and still sustain costs?

Free trials are not forever and limits can change without notice. Maintenance still costs time and money.

So it is not actually $0.
by shevy-java | 2026-01-02 10:24:25+00:00
We are doomed in the AI age. :(

One disgust-moment I had was when AI narrated nature documentary on BBC or BBC-like channel and faked as David Attenborough. Now people may say "he got a great voice, even after he is gone we should have his voice" (he is old but not dead right now, thankfully - protect David at all costs), but I kind of changed my mind. I think AI should not fake stuff to us. So no fake-narrations either - what you see is what you get, at all times. On youtube this is now rampant; I need a minus AI version for youtube since AI just wastes my time.
by junon | 2026-01-02 10:24:57+00:00
> engineer the problem away: adjust our tooling and config mechanisms, less strings in our configs, less dynamically-typed scripting etc.

This benefits everyone. Give him the tools to be self-sufficient. Especially since he seems to be aware something isn't right, let him deal with that in his own way, with dignity. What action will he be able to take by pointing out he might have dyslexia? That's a difficult problem to solve on its own, let alone knowing that your team is proverbially glaring at you from across the code review table.

Pushing for more correctness in terms of automation sets a good example; either the code is correct for the intended functionality, or it isn't. The closer you get to enforcing that, the better it is for everyone.

In another comment you mentioned JSON configs. JSONschema validation is a must here, anyway. Even it's just part of the CI/CD process. If it's types, or variables, that requires patience. Just mark those with suggestions - one for wherever it's declared, not for each usage. Marking it at the declaration site means that all other usages will also have to be updated anyway.

Anyone on your team could make the same mistake, so see him as an unintended QA step; if his main class of bug is typos in config files, that's a reflection of your codebase, not him.
by brailsafe | 2026-01-02 10:25:23+00:00
I agree, but I do wonder if because those times were generally less specialized, urbanized, etc.. it would have been more possible to simply pivot to another non-specialized "job", because you were either uneducated and poor and needed to be able to do everything, or born rich and able to do the one special thing your whole life. Like when the buggy whip maker couldn't sell whips anymore, they just did 4 of the other jobs they had to do anyway.

The classic old person advice is to just walk in somewhere, give the owner a stern handshake, and you got a job, and if that job could pay your mortgage, then problem solved. Whereas now, to become a buggy whip maker (or whatever), we've developed yhe expectation that you go to school for 4 years and start out at the bottom of the income ladder. If the income we need to pay for the basics (which admittedly are different) requires a lifetime of experience, then it's impossible to pivot