MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
by fnoef | 2026-01-27 13:14:52+00:00
I love technology. But I'm no longer optimistic about the future. It seems like AI is not going to go away, and instead of building reliable software, managers seem to push people to use AI more, as long as they ship products. Everything else is being destroyed by AI: art, music, books, personal websites. Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary? Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it? Why pay artists for music, when you can just generate endless amount of AI music?

And even things like "doing day to day chores" are being automated away with tools like ClawdBot. The only thing you are left to do is to eat and take a sh*t throughout the day. How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.

So my question HN: What's the point anymore? Why keep going and where to?
Show HN: An affiliate program that pays up to 20% for insurance referrals
by NIkMOkhn | 2026-01-27 13:15:14+00:00
Hi HN,

I'd like to share a project I've been working on – an affiliate program for EUROASIA Insurance, a major insurance company in Uzbekistan. The goal is to create a new income stream for content creators and individuals in the region.

How it works:

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Sign up: A quick, free registration process.

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Get a unique link: You get a unique affiliate link and promo code.

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Share: You share the link with your audience, friends, or clients.

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Earn: You get up to 20% commission for every insurance policy sold through your link.

We've tried to make it as simple as possible, with a transparent dashboard to track clicks, sales, and earnings. Payouts are processed within 3 business days.

Why this is interesting:

While affiliate programs are common in many parts of the world, they are still a relatively new concept in Uzbekistan. We're hoping this will provide a new way for people to monetize their online presence, especially in a market where traditional ad revenue can be unpredictable.

We're particularly interested in feedback on:

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The commission structure (is 20% competitive?)

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The user experience of the affiliate dashboard.

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How we can better support our affiliates.

I'm here to answer any questions you have. Thanks for checking it out!
by ninkendo | 2026-01-27 13:15:43+00:00
If the ability to release the storage on-demand works correctly (and this is a big if) there’s no reason to limit to 10%. What benefit will that have? If the system works well, deleting the data eagerly accomplishes nothing.

I think the actual system uses filesystem utilization as a form of “disk pressure”, to the point where once it’s above a certain threshold (say, 90% used), it should start evicting least-recently-used data. It doesn’t wait for 100%, because it takes some nonzero amount of time to free the cache. But limiting the cache size arbitrarily doesn’t seem useful.

It gets more complicated when there are multiple caches (maybe some third party apps has their own caches) and you need to prioritize who gets evicted, but it’s still the same thing in theory.

But yeah, if the system isn’t working right and cache isn’t seen as cache, or if it can’t evict it for some reason, then this all goes out the window. I’m only claiming it’s good in theory.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2026-01-27 13:16:13+00:00
When the person's Wikipedia page says that they "have won 10 Grammy Awards" then yes, I think it's fair to say that they are a public figure.

I mean, both are signals of celebrity - the presence of a Wikipedia page, and the awards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finneas_O%27Connell
by prodigycorp | 2026-01-27 13:16:38+00:00
Random aside about training data:

One of the funniest things I've started to notice from Gemini in particular is that in random situations, it talks with english with an agreeable affect that I can only describe as.. Indian? I've never noticed such a thing leak through before. There must be a ton of people in India who are generating new datasets for training.
by k_kelly | 2026-01-27 13:17:30+00:00
There's lots of suicide attacks in poorer African countries.

But the west by and large won the war on terror, it broke up all the state sponsored terrorist camps, and built a vast surveillance network capable of spotting people trying to build these devices. Israel was the flashpoint and they built walls and put cameras and AI everywhere and just flat out ignore human rights. It's just really hard to radicalise someone to that extent and not have them show up. Isis was also behind a lot of the attacks and they don't exist anymore. Afghanistan and Pakistan also don't shelter terrorists anymore because they might have kicked the US out but they don't want them back again.

Most of this is terrible from a civil liberties / human rights / sovereignty point of view, but if you wanted to stop suicide bombings it worked.
by fuzzfactor | 2026-01-27 13:17:58+00:00
>The lines between what I do professionally and where we are politically are blurring.

>In just the last 12 months, the links between the US government and AI, crypto, and big tech has deepened so greatly that well, let's just take stock of where we are

>Over the past 3 weeks especially, I have found it nearly impossible to sit down and make a video about some MacBook that I bought off eBay

>I almost felt like I was lying to you guys by talking about, you know, normal tech stuff while this is all happening.

For the most pure-tech focused and politically reluctant it's still possible to be overwhelmed by such stupid shit that it makes all your tech look pretty insignificant no matter the upside. Normally stupid shit comes about randomly from all directions naturally without anybody working against anybody else at all. But it can be really hard to ignore when the dark side "gangs up" and starts taking prisoners, and it can happen so quick it makes peoples' heads spin.
by fauigerzigerk | 2026-01-27 13:17:59+00:00
I agree. The article's logic is incoherent. It conflates the choice of tools with the decision what product to make and what level of quality to aim for.

If AI can be used to make bad (or good enough) software more cheaply, I have no problem with that. I'm sure we will get a huge amount of bad software. Fine.

But what matters is whether we get more great software as well. I think AI makes that more likely rather than less likely.

Less time will be spent on churning out basic features, integrations and bug fixes. Putting more effort into higher quality or niche features will become economically viable.
by setsewerd | 2026-01-27 13:18:05+00:00
I've noticed every airport is different, and major airports are usually more likely to have the big fancy looking scanners that help keep the crowd moving along, without taking everything out. Smaller airports seem to have less of that tech and are thus often more of a hassle.

And yet somehow, airport security staff frequently get impatient when people in line ask whether to remove their shoes, laptop, etc. As if the travelers are stupid for asking.
by filoeleven | 2026-01-27 13:18:12+00:00
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-27 13:18:22+00:00
Do you read a book just so you know what happens at the end, or because you like the journey there too? Do you read blog posts "just to know" or because you like reading?

Sure, if you don't like reading, then it's great you don't have to. But personally I like to read, and be taken on an adventure by writers, that's why I read, I don't read just so I "know what happened".

So everything remains the same, nothing has changed. Nothing been destroyed by AI, it only seems to have destroyed your own perspective.
by amiga386 | 2026-01-27 13:18:35+00:00
Nonetheless, I hope you recognise that incompetent idiots beget more incompetent idiots, if they think they'll get away with it. You don't want e.g. a spate of bank robberies, by idiots who've heard that rubbing lemon juice on your face makes you invisible to cameras. It doesn't matter that they'll get obviously get caught, the problem is a spate of idiots attempting bank robberies (because they're filled with confidence they'll succeed) could easily get people killed.

I don't like security theatre either, and clearly the whole thing is a job creation program and an excuse for vendors to sell flashy scanner devices. But you need visible deterrents, even if most people know they're theatre.

They also act as reassurance for idiots who wouldn't fly otherwise. Idiots' money spends just as well as clever people's money, and there's a lot more idiots out there than clever people.

Because we live in a society with a free press, we have the chattering classes asking "what can we do about this threat?", and government is expected to respond. People don't like to hear from the politician "you're idiots, we don't need that, you are no less safe if we do nothing", they like to hear "we're doing XYZ to address this threat, how clever and wonderful you all are, dear citizens, for recognising it. Your safety is my top priority", then we get the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
by rhdunn | 2026-01-27 13:18:59+00:00
VLC does not show up when searching for "music player" on nixpkgs [1] which is what was used. Searching for "media player" does [2].

[1] https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&query=mus...

[2] https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&query=med...
by JCattheATM | 2026-01-27 13:19:07+00:00
I mean all data points taken as a whole bar the polls. I listed some of them earlier, ever talk show, opinion column, podcast, influencers (bar Joe Rogan), people calling in to radio shows. Anywhere you can find people giving an opinion, not just paid professionals but random people calling or writing in, it's in support. Literally 'the word on the street'. I don't think that's worth nothing, and I think that can be more representative than polls, as 2016 showed.

Furthermore, there's a lot of people who I think voted R who are now embarrassed and trying to defend the party and paint the people who support what is going on as a minority view, when it isn't.
by lelanthran | 2026-01-27 13:19:16+00:00
> What's the midi? Or do you mean the Mini (Crossword)?

There's 3x sizeof of crosswords

1. Large Standard New York Times one (subscriber only)
2. Mini (subscriber only)
3. Midi - which is in-between the large and the mini.

Once a week, the Midi is available to non-subcribers for free. A link comes in via email if you are signed up for their games.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-27 13:19:22+00:00
>Yes, but also the ones on the way to authoritarianism, as was argued the Trump regime is.

Democrats/leftists/ANTIFA don't hate authoritarianism, They hate that they're not the ones in charge of dealing the authoritarianism on their opposition, as shown by the masked mob gestapo they set up in Minnesota doing "papers please, you're either with us or against us" on civilians passing by to confirm they hate ICE.

If Kamala-Walz would have won the election, they would have done the same to Trump and friends in republican states, and you would have called it "justice for Nazis", not fascism ,which is the justification ANTIFA use when they beat up innocent people.
Show HN: Doom rendered in OpenSCAD geometry, now playable in browser
by mikeayles | 2026-01-27 13:19:41+00:00
Creator here. Third in a series of running DOOM on engineering tools - KiDoom rendered walls as PCB traces in KiCad, ScopeDoom piped vectors through a headphone jack to an oscilloscope.

This one exports frame geometry to OpenSCAD, a parametric CAD tool. The browser version uses Three.js to render the same geometry the desktop version writes to .scad files.

The desktop version was stuck at slideshow framerates until I fixed OpenSCAD's WASM renderer for another project - the npm package is from 2022 and silently ignores the Manifold flag. Switching to the 2025 build took renders from 2 minutes to 2 seconds. (Writeup: https://phaestus.app/blog/blog0031)

But openscad-wasm isn't a renderer, it's a compiler. Each frame was compiling to STL then rendering - maybe 1fps sequential, better parallelized but with ~1s latency. Fine for previewing an item, but as a rendering pipeline it's no good for real time playback.

So I removed openscad-wasm entirely and wrote a custom parser that converts OpenSCAD code to an AST, evaluates it to geometry, and renders via Three.js. The scad code is the only input - what you see comes from the same .scad you can copy, download, and run in desktop OpenSCAD or the playground to validate.

Technical writeup: https://www.mikeayles.com/#openscad-doom

YouTube: https://youtu.be/l9nnV-mO4wY

Desktop version source: https://github.com/MichaelAyles/openSCAD-DOOM
Web version source: https://github.com/MichaelAyles/openSCAD-DOOM-web
by andy_ppp | 2026-01-27 13:19:57+00:00
The secret sauce about having good understanding, taste and style (both for coding and writing) has always been in the fine tuning and RHLF steps. I'd be skeptical if the signals a few GitHub repos or blogs generate at the initial stages of the learning are that critical. There's probably a filter also for good taste on the initial training set and these are so large not even a single full epoch is done on the data these days.
by Dev_Master | 2026-01-27 13:20:13+00:00
Open-source Python desktop app for generating grid-based tracing puzzle books with live preview.

Features include configurable grid size/layout, symbol styles, path complexity, colors, line thickness, and multi-puzzle pages. Exports print-ready SVG pages and automatically assembles PDFs (KDP friendly). Built with Tkinter + ttkbootstrap; rendering via svgwrite/Pillow/ReportLab.

Primary use case is rapid creation of activity books or printable worksheets (KDP/Etsy/Gumroad), but it’s also useful for prototyping grid/path puzzles in general.

Feedback welcome — especially on puzzle generation logic, UI/UX, and export pipeline.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-27 13:20:39+00:00
> Meaning, the people should be able to defend themselves against the violence directed to them.

Yes. But not just and not mainly from your government: you are way more likely to get killed by criminals and/or terrorists then by law enforcement officers.

To put things in perspectice in the US there are more than 20 000 homicides per year.

And for women rape and rape attempts are scary, here are the numbers for the UK:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283100/recorded-rape-off...

You cannot really compare 36 000+ people getting killed by an islamist regime that rules the country by sharia law with the number of people killed by law enforcement officers in, say, France or the US. Where the number of people being killed by officials, yearly, can be counted on one hand's fingers.

In the same vein, you cannot really compared terror attacks like the 2024 one in Russia where 145 people where killed in a theater or the 130 people killed by terrorists at the Bataclan in France or the 70 killed in Nice (my sister was there with her two kids that day and she saw the terrorist and her son is still, to this day, traumatized) with the number of people getting killed by law enforcement officers in a country like France or the US (I'm using these two as an example for they are country where, each year, a few people are killed by law enforcement officers).

Unarmed people vs terrorists with kalashnikovs: slaughter.

A great many are highly concerned, for example, that there are now sleeping islamists terrorists cells in the EU. Even mainstream media began reporting the concerns. There are regularly arrests and terrorists plots foiled. And Christmas markets and celebrations have been cancelled this year in many european cities because the risk of islamist terror attacks were too high.

When a country disarms its people, it doesn't just make them vulnerable to the governement's wrongdoings: it makes them vulnerables to criminals and terrorists too. Which, so far in the western world, is definitely a much bigger threat.

Now that said there are more than 10 billion ammo sold, each year, in the US, to civilians. If there's one country where either the government or the terrorists would have a problem should they go "all in", it's the US.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-27 13:21:45+00:00
India doesn't really have a position on Russia/Ukraine itself but wants peace within the region.

Yes, India does seek russian oil but that's because I feel like India and russian trade deals have been from the start of cold war where America supported pakistan.

If you actually observe our history, we were hesitant about joining any block but it was the fact that America started investing in Pakistan which made us closer to russia.

I feel like the average person is either Ukraine supporting/Neutral for what its worth.

That being said, I feel like India's just looking out for its own interests. (Ahem America's attacking venezuela for oil)

I feel like if this is such an non-starter, then India has made its stance clear that its always willing to co-operate to grow its country and if EU gives a more lucrative deal to India. I feel like India can slowly decrease its dependence on Russian oil as well.

The thing is, EU right now is in this position because it got so reliant on America. We had seen this during cold war and we have always kept our cards open while still maintaining peace. I feel like India should look after its own interests first and foremost and see when objectives align (something canadian's PM said recently too and Trump got so angry on him that he's again talking about raising 100% tariffs)

Honestly full support to Ukraine. I hope a peace deal can be arranged in Ukraine-russia.

That being said, if you feel like EU's gotten a better partner (Americas invading Greenland, China's authoritarian, which other country has the tech innovation close to India?) then sure, I hope EU does whats in best of its incentives as well.

But my honest bet is that India is EU's best bet to move from American techno-dependence given recent Greenland crisis.
by JCattheATM | 2026-01-27 13:21:50+00:00
No, they lost because much of the population is bigoted and did fall for misinformation. People started sharing the nonsense about Haitians eating cats and dogs, they fell for the transpanic ads...and many were still not comfortable with a woman in charge. Misinformation and bigotry, and it's not out of touch to recognize that.

The problem is with the people more than the party, and fighting that so we can actually progress the country out of the dark ages is an uphill battle.
by 1dom | 2026-01-27 13:22:06+00:00
> The model absolutely can be run at home. There even is a big community around running large models locally

IMO 1tln parameters and 32bln active seems like a different scale to what most are talking about when they say localLLMs IMO. Totally agree there will be people messing with this, but the real value in localLLMs is that you can actually use them and get value from them with standard consumer hardware. I don't think that's really possible with this model.
by stevage | 2026-01-27 13:23:56+00:00
Our Editorial Board has now obtained more detailed information provided by the IRGC Intelligence Organization to the Supreme National Security Council.

Other state institutions have also received differing figures from other security bodies. However, given the scale of the killings, deliberate concealment, and what appears to be intentional disorder in the registration and transfer of bodies – along with pressure on families and, in some cases, the quiet burial of victims – it appears that even the security agencies themselves do not yet know the precise final death toll.

In a report presented on Wednesday, January 21, to the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee seen by Iran International, the number of those killed was listed as at least 27,500.

According to sources within Iran’s Interior Ministry who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity, a consolidation of figures received from provincial security councils by Tuesday, January 20, showed the death toll had exceeded 30,000.

Two informed sources from the Supreme National Security Council also told Iran International that in two recent reports by the IRGC Intelligence Organization, dated January 22 and January 24, the number of those killed was listed as more than 33,000 and more than 36,500 respectively.
by 3guk | 2026-01-27 13:24:11+00:00
Yep - I've got the UGREEN FineTrack Slim G Wallet Tracker Card in my wallet and it's perfect.

Love the fact that it's rechargeable - although a little bit annoying that it's with a USB to proprietary connector.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Ultra-Slim-Rechargeable-Comp...
by wowzaa | 2026-01-27 13:24:20+00:00
I tried doing the same. Sometimes it made my understanding of things much clearer. However most fimes, I found it worked best when I had a clear idea on paper, either to validate the idea or when I needed to an opinion. Otherwise, ChatGPT in my case, built upon my idea that I hadn't thought through well and confuse the shit out of me.
by aebtebeten | 2026-01-27 13:24:33+00:00
Whether it was the movie or it be the rumours, I would've figured not just shoujo but even BL? (we were speaking of Mann earlier and I see Tadzio [DiV] makes it into WP as a bishie)

Talk about choose your own adventure; that short leads into a bubble I rarely overlap (seems to be sticky on my ad feeds; excellent!)

Same same but different? "it was the sort of ski resort where young women went looking for husbands — and husbands went looking for young women..."

No idea how the K's are, but I suspect JFK would not have been cancelled if he had been behind, rather than in front of, his IP. ("pioneers get arrows in the back" is a hoary Imker saying)

Will ruminate on the rotation, but axes I can think of atm are freudian id<->superego (NL confro: "Normaal doen"?) and emphasis on the dyadic links instead of their atomic endpoints (JP as a place where —if you are lucky— you later get feedback on your behaviour as having being so out of hand and everyone was already so ashamed that mentioning it at the time would only have made everything much, much worse?)
by throw310822 | 2026-01-27 13:24:38+00:00
> we could say that Iran is being starved as well, but we can't blame Israel for everything

Funny that you say that, because the reason Iran is under sanctions is that Israel wanted it. Obama had agreed to a lift on the sanctions in exchange for a strict control on Iran's nuclear program; Trump and his cohort of rabid zionists remote controlled from Tel Aviv reneged on the agreement and restored the sanctions.
by filoeleven | 2026-01-27 13:24:52+00:00
> as shown by the masked mob gestapo they set up in Minnesota doing "papers please, you're either with us or against us" on civilians passing by to confirm they hate ICE.

[citation needed]

Also even if true, there's a vast difference between a rando on the street asking those questions vs a government agent. That's assuming the government agent isn't too much of a pussy to identify himself instead of hiding behind a mask.