MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wombatpm | 2026-01-09 14:54:34+00:00
Announcements and documentation can be found at pe.usps.gov and postalpro.usps.com

User guides on PostalPro are probably the best place to start. The Domestic Mail Manual is highly recommended if you have trouble sleeping.

This stuff gets discussed with industry via MTAC (Mailer’s Technical Advisory Committee) and the various special topic User Groups.
by luqtas | 2026-01-09 14:54:35+00:00
your generation never experienced putting your hands, as a kid, into a thin block of metal that can play all the movies and music and books ever produced (or most)

i installed a pirated copy of Windows XP through floppy disks and i had a CD walkman. i was still a teen when i got a ipod touch 2gen. the latter was much more magical to me. sometimes i stare at my android phone with the screen locked thinking how impressive the tech is. termux x11 can go a long way. i don't wear rose tinted glasses even though my childhood was a freaking blast
by bitshiftfaced | 2026-01-09 14:54:53+00:00
You're right.

> Weight regain data are expressed as weight change from baseline (pre-intervention) or difference in weight change from baseline between intervention and control for randomised controlled trials. When analysing and presenting data from all studies, we used weight change from single arm trials, observational studies, and the intervention groups from randomised controlled trials. When analysing data from randomised controlled trials only, we calculated the difference in weight change between the intervention and control groups at the end of the intervention and at each available time point after the end of the intervention. When studies had multiple intervention arms, we treated each arm as a separate arm and divided the number in the comparator by the number of intervention arms to avoid duplicative counting.19

https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304
by bikelang | 2026-01-09 14:55:17+00:00
Orion has come an extremely long ways on iOS and macOS. I daily drove it for a couple months maybe a year and a half ago and it had a lot of little rough edges and was slightly broken on a number of websites.

I’ve picked it up again as my daily driver as of the new year and haven’t had a single issue yet. It even blocks ads in YouTube now - only Brave did that previously.

For me - Brave was the best browser product. It’s ad blocking is truly phenomenal and nearly every site “just works”. But I don’t love the ethics of Brave and certainly not its founder. So I am extremely excited to have Orion take over that niche of the browser space that I most care about.
by paganel | 2026-01-09 14:55:29+00:00
> It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff.

TIL. Big fair-play to him, and I'm very sincere about it, he must of have left a lot of potential money on the table from possible investors as a result of his view on the genocide in Gaza. Again, fair play to him, we need a lot more people like him in our (pretty sad) industry from this point of view.
by LurkandComment | 2026-01-09 14:55:38+00:00
Where did I say it was cosmetic? At best you'll lose weight on it, but without forming good habits and lifting weights you're a candidate for muscle loss and related injuries (Example. Falling in tub and shattering hip). Once you're off ozempic, if you didn't form good habits, the weight gain is significant. You'll also put back on a lot of weight with a lower muscle mass. Again, I'm not sure where i said it was cosmetic.
by ericmay | 2026-01-09 14:56:17+00:00
I don't recall Israel threatening Arabs in the context of committing genocide or wiping, say, Iraq and Saudi Arabia off the map. Instead it's about getting Iran specifically to stop funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and other groups never mind ISIS/ISIL &c.

Israel isn't innocent either. Their actions in Gaza went beyond what was necessary, in my opinion, but I will never accept or entertain a discussion where all the blame just goes to Israel or just goes to the United States.

Neither Israel or the United States are doing what Iran is doing. Iran actively chooses to be belligerent because their authoritarian leaders, who also like to help Russia invade and bomb Ukraine mind you, need an enemy to try and maintain appearances.

I don't know but I don't doubt that Israel has a nuclear bomb. I also don't have a problem with it, because unlike Iran they don't go around threatening their neighbors with nuclear holocaust and destruction, like Iran does.
by breppp | 2026-01-09 14:56:58+00:00
The US only supported jawlani in the last year after he took control and shown himself as relatively pragmatic so I don't think this take aligns with reality.

Up until 2024 he had a 10 million reward on his head and it would be very plausible he will end up assassinated by a US UAV

https://2017-2021.state.gov/rewards-for-justice-reward-offer...
by xg15 | 2026-01-09 14:57:01+00:00
> Yeah, because millions of people are just stupid remote-controlled robotic zombies who will, upon a command of the CIA, go into the streets against Basij thugs who are willing to shoot at them.

Not the CIA anymore. Today, it's done by "semi-governmental" organizations such as the NED[1, 2] or RFE/RL[3] or in this case, its persian-language incarnation Radio Farda[4].

You can agree with their overt goal of strengthening pro-democratic forces in authoritarian countries, (though the question remain: with what authority and who sets the objectives they are promoting?)

Even then, the list of countries in which they don't operate should raise some questions: No activity in Israel, Argentina or the Gulf states, even though those countries are also generally regarded as autocracies (Gulf states) or are currently experiencing a massive slide towards authoritarianism (Israel, Argentina). It just happens that those countries are all allies of the US...

[1] https://www.ned.org

[2] https://socialism.com/fs-article/betrayal-from-venezuela-to-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda
by bamboozled | 2026-01-09 14:57:04+00:00
Didn't say we can do away with Industrial scale farming, just that I live in a part of Japan where people grow so much of their own food, they struggle to give it away by the end of the summer. So yeah, didn't mean to imply industrial scale farming is "naughty", just that Japan is notorious for smaller farming operations and I've seen a lot of food grown successfully here at small or micro scale. I think a healthy mix of both things is important.

Look at Australia, basically no one grows any food and they're completely at the mercy of insanely inflated food prices dictated by corporations like Woolworths. At least in rural parts of Japan, a lot of people can lower their grocery costs with supplemental, home grown food. I actually have notice a bit of a rebellious culture amongst farmers here. It's interesting but for a different topic I guess.
by JohnFen | 2026-01-09 14:57:23+00:00
> The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine).

Probably true in general. But for me, that's not a sticking point at all. I don't care if a browser supports media playback or not.

What I do care about is the ability to enable/disable embedded code execution (JS, at the very least) at a fairly granular level. Does Orion allow for that?
by Bridged7756 | 2026-01-09 14:57:31+00:00
I'm really dubious of such claims. Even if true, I think they're not seeing the whole picture. Sure, I could churn out code 10x as fast, but I still have to review it. I still have to think of the implementation. I still have to think of the test cases and write them. Now, adding the prerequisites for LLMs, I have to word this in a way the AI can understand it, which is extra mental load. I have to review code sometimes multiple times if it gets something wrong, and I have to re-generate, or make corrections, or sometimes end up fixing entire sections it generated, when I decide it just won't get this task right. Overally, while the typing, researching dependency docs (sometimes), time is saved, I still face the same cognitive load as ever, if not more, due to having extra code to review, having to think of prompting, I'm still limited by the same thing at the end of the day: my mental energy.
I can write the code myself and it's if anything a bit slower. I still need to know my dependencies, I still need to know my codebase and all its gripes, even if the AI generates code correctly. Overally, the net complexity of my codebase is the same, and I don't buy the crap, also because I've never heard of stories about reducing complexity (refactoring), only about generating code and fixing codebases with testing and comments/docs (bad practice imo, unlikely the shallow docs generated will say anything more than what the code already makes evident). Anyways, I'm not a believer, I only use LLMs for scaffolding, rote tasks.
by kburman | 2026-01-09 14:57:55+00:00
It’s the standard enshittification lifecycle: subsidize usage to get adoption, then lock down the API to force users into a controlled environment where you can squeeze them.

Like Reddit, they realized they can't show ads (or control the user journey) if everyone is using a third-party client. The $200 subscription isn't a pricing tier. It's a customer acquisition cost for their proprietary platform. Third-party clients defeat that purpose.
by MMAFRAZ | 2026-01-09 14:58:00+00:00
Most teams shipping marketing, product ideas, or campaigns still start with guesswork. They launch content, ads, and messaging first and only then see whether anything resonates — often after burning budget or time.
If you think differently — if you treat decisions as outputs with risk — this post is for you.
Vect AI (https://vect.pro) is used by thousands of power users — founders, agency owners, growth leaders, and marketers — to validate ideas before they commit budget, produce assets, or publish.
Instead of producing something and hoping it works, they look for signals that it will.
Core capabilities include:
Market Signal Analyzer — surface real demand signals before you create or write
Resonance Engine — estimate whether your message will land before publishing
Conversion Killer Detector — find where copy and flow silently reduce conversions
Campaign Builder — design full campaigns before cash or creative is spent
This is not about generating one more output.
It’s about reducing expensive mistakes before you spend real dollars.
For transparency, every public page is indexed here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:vect.pro
The full design and rationale are documented here:
https://blog.vect.pro/vect-ai-bible-guide
If you run acquisition, paid campaigns, creative budgets, or agency delivery, I’d like to hear:
What signals you trust before spending,
Where your current stack leaves you guessing,
And what would make a pre-execution validation system worth paying for.
I’ll be here to answer questions and dig into details.
by dtf | 2026-01-09 14:58:27+00:00
While "jab" is used almost universally across UK print and broadcast media to describe an injection, it's interesting to note the choice of accompanying adjective.

The Sun, The Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Times love to use "fat jab".

The BBC, The Guardian and The Mirror seem to prefer "slimming jab" or "weight-loss jab".

There's a lot to digest in those choices.
by Bad_Initialism | 2026-01-09 14:58:31+00:00
The link gets you into a morass of of confusing crap that fails to explain what "Kagi", or "Orion" or "Orion for linux is.

More than 80% of the time these days, I wander around links like this going "But what is it? What is it? WHAT IS IT?"

All of you need to have a paragraph at the beginning of the page entitled "WTF IS THIS!!!!????"

The top of the linked pages says "Orion for Linux Status
The alpha stage is an early, unstable version meant primarily for testing."

OF WHAT????? OF. FUNCKING. WHAT?

That's great that the alpha stage of Orion is ready for teating on Linux, BUT WTF IS IT???????
by geremiiah | 2026-01-09 14:58:47+00:00
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/09/eu-rejects-vio...

> The crackdown on protesters in Iran has prompted an outcry among European leaders, with High Representative Kaja Kallas denouncing Tehran for its "disproportionate" and "heavy-handed" response.

> The European Union has sharply condemned the crackdown on protesters in Iran who have taken to the streets to show their discontent over the Islamic Republic.
by yoavm | 2026-01-09 14:59:12+00:00
Don't get too excited about their views - they very much believe that the land belongs to Jews, they just think they should wait for the Messiah to give us the signal before going there.

It's funny how people associate their views with humanism: they are simply extremely religious and on this specific question, the current result of their extreme beliefs happen to align with yours.
by 46493168 | 2026-01-09 14:59:15+00:00
I’m not sure where the goalposts are in this discussion. My doctor assigned me a dietitian. My insurance company assigned me 12 weekly modules that cover diet, exercise, mental health and cooking before they would pay for it. The ads I see on the subway for Ro have the words “with diet and exercise” in bold letters on them.

So I just don’t know what to make of this “magic beans” deception claim.
by shibapuppie | 2026-01-09 14:59:59+00:00
20 years ago I'd be a brand new teenager with plenty of time, let alone energy to browse hundreds of random discord servers to dig through the mud to find the gold.

Fast forward a few life nut-busters, I now lack the time and energy to do such a thing. Is there a trick to break the cycle, or is this literally my first "old man yells at cloud" moment?
by IgorPartola | 2026-01-09 15:00:09+00:00
If you can tell me what phone can give me access to all the standard apps I would need, has good build quality, doesn’t funnel my data to Google, is backed by an entity capable of providing multi-year device support, has cloud storage integration that lets me keep my data securely offloaded from the phone’s storage, can handle modern apps and websites as far as performance, has a very good camera, and has the equivalent of AppleCare such that if/when I shatter my screen I can replace it for $30, I am all ears.
by ancarda | 2026-01-09 15:00:10+00:00
I think you're confused because this link is somewhat deep down: https://help.kagi.com/orion/misc/linux-status.html

If you go up to https://help.kagi.com/orion/ it has this description:

> Orion is a free, lightning-fast, privacy-focused, WebKit-based browser for Mac, iOS, and soon Linux that blocks ads and trackers by default.
by like_any_other | 2026-01-09 15:00:34+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/08/french-farmers... has more (but still very little) background on why EU farmers dislike the deal: because it opens EU to agricultural imports, but doesn't require those imports to meet the same standards EU farmers are held to. The Guardian article mentions allowing imports of crops grown with pesticides that are banned in the EU. Basically sabotaging EU farming.

There are probably other double standards, but I can only speculate, because the quality of reporting is abysmal. The Guardian gives scant specifics, DW gives none, just meaningless rhetoric like "bases that are too outdated" or "hails 'milestone' agreement".
by vorpalhex | 2026-01-09 15:00:56+00:00
Israel would much rather the people of Iran look like the UK or Germany - employed, safe, happy, free - than the reign of terror of both Iranians and non-Iranians being attacked directly and by proxy.

If your antisemitism runs so deep you are willing to sacrifice the Iranian people to hurt the Jews, you are not a friend of the Iranian people.
by mmooss | 2026-01-09 15:00:59+00:00
Agreed. As another example, many managers say their 'door is open', they welcome negative feedback, etc. Only a few are serious enough about it to understand how to do that (including managing their own emotional response).

> in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and oversight.

Often they are people with connections or money, or high technical skill and complete incompetence as a manager. That's one reason people go to flatter structures - the workers do better on their own.

Organizing people toward long-term goals is a challenge. There is no way to make bad performance, incompetent or malicious, into good outcomes; no organizational design will save you.
by thisislife2 | 2026-01-09 15:01:37+00:00
Nice. But I stopped using Orion on macOS when they stopped offering complete offline installers. They taut they are a zero-telemetry browser, as proof that they are privacy conscious about user data, and that was a good feature and overture. But then when they create technical avenues to (possibly) bypass that (like using online installers that can do all kind of data collection) it becomes harder to trust them as it follows the tried-and-tested path of other companies that have claimed to care about user privacy, to increase their user-base, and then betrayed their customer base by harvesting their personal data.
by JohnFen | 2026-01-09 15:01:42+00:00
Requiring it to be open source is not just about trusting the publisher. There are a bunch of other possible reasons, including wanting to support open source as a counterbalance to proprietary software.

For me, it's a big deal (although not a dealbreaker) for that reason. If I have the option of two different pieces of software, one being open source and the other proprietary, I'll choose the open source one every time unless there's something really exceptional about the proprietary one. But that's very rare.

I was just trying to think of any proprietary software I use outside of work (where I don't have a choice) or games. There must be at least one, but I can't think of what it is.
by loudmax | 2026-01-09 15:01:44+00:00
Today, we take the term "open source" for granted, but this wasn't always the case. There wasn't a single, universally accepted term to describe software that was freely shareable. "Free software" was one of the terms used, but it wasn't clear to non-programmers how this was different from proprietary software that was downloadable without having to pay for it. If you're not a programmer anyway, how should one type of "free software" be different from another?

Proponents of what we now call "open source" wanted to distinguish between two senses of the word "free". One sense is not having to pay for something, as in "Come over to my party, the beer is free." Anther sense is "I can criticize the government, because the country I live in is free." People in the free software and open source movement began to phrase the dichotomy in these terms to illustrate how one sense of the word "free" is much more important than the other. The fact that you don't have to pay for some piece of software is nice, but what's more important is that you aren't beholden to the company that developed it.
by PurpleRamen | 2026-01-09 15:01:45+00:00
> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)

That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?

> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?

The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.
by mindslight | 2026-01-09 15:01:59+00:00
Cell modems are their own SOCs, but are their application processors being used to implement the main functionality of the TV?

Maybe they are, with Android UIs and whatnot? I actually don't have any "smart" TVs (main TV is a 43 inch monitor driven directly by Kodi), so I'm still picturing the car model where there is a separate component that does WAN communications, and the software developers made the system tolerant of it being disconnected (for development ease and also resiliency to failures). But maybe my model is horribly wrong for TVs.
by Zambyte | 2026-01-09 15:02:42+00:00
It seems like their stance is more a matter of development resources rather than a deliberate decision.

https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l...

It is interesting that they don't mention future Android support anywhere on the website, but it does seem like they are (or at least were) open to the idea someday.
by 7777777phil | 2026-01-09 15:03:20+00:00
Sent you a message to the mail in your bio but I thought I also leave this here: Again, thank you for your comments. I went down a rabbit hole reading your essays Hacker News For Hackers and Classifying Hacker News Titles.

I've also been building an RSS reader with integrated HN success prediction – essentially trying to surface which articles from my feed are most likely to resonate on HN before I submit them. Your research directly informed several decisions, so I wanted to share what I've learned and ask for your insights.

V1 DistilBERT baseline: Started with a fine-tuned DistilBERT on ~15k HN titles. Achieved ROC AUC of 0.77, which felt promising. Clean architecture, simple training loop.
V2 Added complexity: Switched to RoBERTa + TF-IDF ensemble, thinking more features = better. ROC AUC dropped to 0.70. Precision suffered. Calibration was poor (ECE 0.11).
V3 Stacking meta-learner: Added LightGBM to combine RoBERTa + TF-IDF + 30 engineered features (domain hit rates, author patterns, temporal encoding, word-level stats). The model was "cheating" by memorizing historical domain/author success rates from training data:
- domain_hit_rate: 79.9% importance
- roberta_prob: only 18.6%
V4 – Return to simplicity: Pure RoBERTa, no stacking. Added isotonic calibration (your probability clustering problem, solved!). Current performance:
- ROC AUC: 0.692
- ECE: 0.009 (excellent calibration)
- Optimal threshold: 0.295 (not 0.5 – exactly as you documented)

What worked for me:
Isotonic calibration: Your observation that most predictions cluster below 0.2 was spot-on. Isotonic regression produces well-distributed, meaningful probabilities.
Aggressive threshold lowering: At ~10% base rate (posts hitting 100+ points), 0.5 threshold catches almost nothing useful.
Pure transformer, no feature engineering: Contrary to intuition, adding TF-IDF and engineered features mostly added noise. The transformer handles the semantics well on its own.

What didn't worked for me:
Focal Loss: Made the model too conservative (760 FN vs 219 FP)
Domain/author features: Feature leakage, didn't generaliz
Stacking: Added complexity without improving generalization

Your essay mentions achieving similar ROC AUC with logistic regression on bag-of-words features. A few things I'm curious about:
Do you still maintain this system? Has your approach evolved since 2017?
What was your experience with full-content vs title-only classification? I'm title-only currently, which has obvious limits.
Any insights on the non-stationarity problem? Topic drift (Apple launches, security panics) seems like a persistent challenge.
What made you choose logistic regression over neural approaches at the time? The simplicity seems to have served you well.