MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kriskrunch | 2026-01-21 03:40:27+00:00
Doheny was approved shortly after the Huntington Beach desal plant was killed. Update from last month: https://www.ocregister.com/2025/11/26/landfill-trash-could-h...

Poseidon currently runs a desal plant in Carlsbad. My understanding is that the water the plant releases into the ocean requires exemptions for how concentrated it is. Additionally, the plant draws plankton filled water. Not really what we want in California.

There are better desal solutions out there like OceanWell. They have a deep water desalination solution that solves many of the problems of conventional desal. They just signed a project in Nice, France in the past few days. Also, they are working with the city of Las Virgines over the past few years.

If I remember correctly, the new desal plant in Doheny has a slightly different approach to draw water in from beneath the sand, using the sand as a prefilter. But I'm not sure how that works better than drawing water in from near the surface. I can't imagine how the plankton can possibly escape the suction forces drawing them into the sand.
by zamadatix | 2026-01-21 03:42:38+00:00
For a quicker way to find near-alls you can go to https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/DataTables.aspx?state,... and select "All" at the bottom then sort D0-D4 ascending. It looks like 2011 had many dates 0.01 cumulative percent area!
by randomname4325 | 2026-01-21 03:43:48+00:00
Companies cut ~600K tech jobs since covid purely on AI hype. Now there is actually (some) utility. The bubble will burst at some point (they always do). I think companies cut to the bone at that point. No one knows when the top is but when it turns I don't think many of the cushy knowledge worker (white collar) jobs come back. It was a good run. 1975 - 202X?
by dlcarrier | 2026-01-21 03:44:17+00:00
Coming from an electronics design background, I'm even more amazed that Verilog can't gracefully handle multi-phase clocks, let alone two phases of a single clock. That's a big part of getting the most out of your power and timing budget. Also, it seems half the discussion around clocking in FPGAs are around the metainstability of communicating between logic on separate single-phase clocks. If even one clock used two phases, you'd have entirely stateful conditions.

I've found that the FPGAs themselves can handle multi-phase clocks in combinatorial logic. If you want to use the built-in clock routing and latches, I would recommend running the output of the PLL to a LUT input, then outputting that input as well as its inverse from the LUT, routing each to a global clock input. That will keep the phase right at 180°, let you drive directly off global clock fanout, and let you run the clock at the highest frequency that the fabric supports.
by AnotherGoodName | 2026-01-21 03:44:52+00:00
This is the cost of Anthropics pay by the token plan.

To give an analogy, Anthropics pricing is $0.10 per grain of rice (pay by the token) or;

$20 a month for quarter cup of rice each day (claude pro)

$100 a month for 10 cups of rice each day (claude max 100)

$200 a month for a sack of rice delivered to your door each day.

It's a rather insane pricing scale and here they are paying $50 there because they don't understand the pricing model (which is fair, Anthropics pricing model is crazy). Never pay by the token with Antropic! Only ever use the subscription plans.
by mmooss | 2026-01-21 03:45:27+00:00
Their teen content restrictions

> ChatGPT automatically applies additional protections designed to reduce exposure to sensitive content, such as:

* Graphic violence or gory content
* Viral challenges that could encourage risky or
harmful behavior in minors
* Sexual, romantic, or violent role play
* Depictions of self-harm
* Content that promotes extreme beauty standards,
unhealthy dieting, or body shaming

That wording implies that's not comprehensive, but hate and disinformation are omitted.
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-01-21 03:46:20+00:00
The Trump cabinet is explicitly determined to improve its trade imbalance (export / import) and has spoken about the US dollar’s relative strength as a weakness in trade imbalance.

There’s a delicate, fine line between dedollarization and a heavily weakened dollar, especially when the methods used are viewed as fickle and capricious (tariffs, threats). So it’s basically four choices:

- Dedollarization is not happening (#nothingeverhappens)
- Dedollarization is happening, but not because of anything the Trump admin is doing (lol)
- Dedollarization is happening and the Trump admin is either causing it or exacerbating it, despite not coming out explicitly favoring it (they’re idiots)
- Dedollarization is happening and it’s being orchestrated by the Trump admin (5d chess / malicious actors)
by rainonmoon | 2026-01-21 03:49:14+00:00
A society which took psychological safety seriously would never have created ChatGPT in the first place. But of course seriously advocating for safety would cost one their toys, and for one unwilling to pay that cost, empowering the surveillance apparatus seems very reasonable and easily confused for safe. When one’s children or friends’ children can no longer enter an airport because some vibe-coded slop leaked their biometrics, we’ll see if that holds true.
by jaynamburi | 2026-01-21 03:49:30+00:00
A $480M “seed” at a $4.5B valuation is extraordinary by any historical standard. It would be interesting to understand what’s being labeled as “seed” here whether this is effectively a late stage round with a seed label, or if there’s something fundamentally different about the company’s capital needs or traction. Metrics like revenue, customers, or defensibility would help ground the valuation discussion. Without that context, it’s hard to tell whether this reflects genuine step-change progress in AI or simply continued capital concentration around a small number of perceived winners.
by jorgemendes | 2026-01-21 03:51:05+00:00
From my point of view in Europe, the trail that Trump is following by persecuting opponents, disregarding and abusing law, deploying a pretorian guard and defending territorial expansionism is in the history books, and is a template followed by Hitler, but by no means only by Hitler. China has no track record of being an expansionist bully that threatens everybody except other bullies, like the USA is doing right now.
I never thought of seeing a comic book type dystopia unrolling before my eyes, but that's what I'm seeing and I'm worried because I have children.
by dostick | 2026-01-21 03:52:18+00:00
Coding agent is a perfect simulation of a junior developer working under you.
Developer that will tell you - “yes I can do that” about any language and any problem and will never ask you any questions trying very hard to appear competent.

Your job is to put them in constraints and give granular and clear tasks. Be aware that junior developer has very basic knowledge about architecture.

The good is that it does not simulate that part when developer tries shift blame or pin it on you. Because you’re to blame at all times.
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-01-21 03:53:14+00:00
I don't find litigating this to be useful or interesting. Debating what is needed could show us lots of things we could cut. But would that bring real gain?

SPA's have really nice performance characteristics. Code is all loaded. The page can transition between states rather than total redraw. A good SPA should offer the same capabilities too, ought have URL routing and good history support.

I do think the web would be faster and simpler without SPAs. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as capable, as interesting, and as loved.
by Nevermark | 2026-01-21 03:53:43+00:00
Simple is more likely than complicated, I would think. Given no law suites were involved.

It probably isn't a coincidence that a goodwill gesture was made in the context of a good corporate Christmas story already, around the generation of a new Christmas story. The company's story behind the story got better, while no doubt feeling like a genuine act of good by the decision maker.
by lifetimerubyist | 2026-01-21 03:54:19+00:00
The King of England is not our head of state, the King of Canada is our head of state. It's an important distinction because the Canadian and British monarchies are legally distinct offices. Canada is not subordinate to Britain like it once was as a colony, and our succession laws, royal titles and even the powers of our monarch are all determined by our law and constitution - not British law.

Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
by Joel_Mckay | 2026-01-21 03:55:14+00:00
"'Forbidden' AI Technique" (Computerphile)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx4Tpsk_fnM

"The Hard Problem of Controlling Powerful AI Systems" (Computerphile)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcwtV_bFp4

Attempting to guide statistical salience of LLM reasoning model procedures, usually just created an evasive interface facade in the output. =3
by chasil | 2026-01-21 03:56:17+00:00
I would find it so deeply enjoyable to see the homes of Verizon management equipped with paddlocks on their bathroom doors, refrigerators, garages, etc.

It would be my pleasure to announce to them that the terms of service dictate that the padlocks would never be removed, but the new subscription fees would be announced shortly.

It would be delicious to see such a delightful revenge sink deep into their lives.

Until such time, enjoy our esteem, you scoundrels!
by adrianwaj | 2026-01-21 03:57:00+00:00
I prefer dumb phones, and then prefer to not have to carry one 24/7.
Device lock-in is a whole other discussion. Why can't phones be switched off anyhow in terms of telco signal? Yet their Wifi and Bluetooth can be. Weird. What are they doing in stealth?

Look how cheap x402 transactions are (ie almost free) https://gemini.google.com/share/cbf1adb1570c It's a new thing - have business models adapted accordingly?
by somenameforme | 2026-01-21 03:57:05+00:00
The primary thing that matters with indexed values is self consistency - their values are independent. The primary reason that these values are drifting is because median wages are in no way whatsoever keeping up with GDP growth. You yourself just, perhaps inadvertently, demonstrated such with the labor share of GDP graph.

The reason that graph is so stable is because labor compensation includes all forms of compensation for all 'workers'. So for instance Elon hitting his milestones will result in direct stock compensation in the ballpark of $1 trillion - those 22 million years of median income (not even wages) are then counted as 'labor compensation.' That's obviously an extreme example, but there are countless smaller scale examples that collectively distort the figure even more than Elon.

This is a big part of the reason why I think lifestyle descriptions are so much more useful than numbers. The stories of the boomer generation sound like fairy tales now a days - somebody putting themselves through college, buying the first car, and even having enough squirreled away for the down payment on their first house - all on the back of a part time job that didn't even require a college degree. It sounds impossible, but you can indeed work out the math from wage and cost data at the time (okay kind of backtracking on the numbers don't matter aren't I?). It's real. But the fact it sounds impossible goes a long way towards demonstrating the soundness of the data I've shown.
by dfajgljsldkjag | 2026-01-21 03:57:09+00:00
I know exactly what I'm talking about, but I linked a trustworthy source so that it's not just "I told you so". But if that's what you want:

I'm Japanese and I understand this issue perfectly and you don't. It's exactly as I said it is. There I told you so. So go take a hike.
by qart | 2026-01-21 03:58:01+00:00
> For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.

As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar#Diplomati...
by lenkite | 2026-01-21 03:58:24+00:00
> But NATO was never going to expand to include Ukraine.

Agreed on all points but this. This is just factually wrong. Ukraine formally declared its intention to pursue NATO membership which was accepted by the NATO council.

The most significant early push occurred at the Bucharest Summit (April 2008). Ukraine (along with Georgia) requested a Membership Action Plan (MAP) - the standard preparatory program for aspiring members. NATO's declaration welcomed Ukraine's aspirations and stated that "these countries will become members of NATO". Ukraine's parliament repealed its non-bloc status and amended its constitution to enshrine irreversible pursuit of NATO (and EU) membership as a national goal. Then, NATO officially listed Ukraine as an aspiring member.

In the Vilnius Summit, NATO even declared that "Ukraine’s future is in NATO" and its path is "irreversible".
by jaynamburi | 2026-01-21 03:59:25+00:00
A native desktop UI for Kubernetes is an interesting angle, especially as clusters get more complex and distributed. Most existing tools lean heavily on CLIs, browser based dashboards, or cloud specific consoles, which can make cross cluster visibility and day to day ops harder than it needs to be. The key questions for me are how well this handles scale, RBAC, and multi cluster workflows, and whether it meaningfully reduces cognitive load compared to kubectl + existing dashboards. If it does, there’s real value here beyond just being a nicer UI.
by alex1138 | 2026-01-21 03:59:40+00:00
See, this is why I made a comment in that Apple thread (see my post history) about stopping Facebook doing things like this. I was told "Android can do it too". Yes but no. Apple may do evil things but they punished Facebook for their bullshit, revoking their certificate. The landscape of contact info (phone numbers, email addresses, social media services, people just submitted it, they trust me, dumb f-) means you can't have bad faith actors like Zuckerberg Zucking about. Whatsapp is such a clear case of antitrust just for starters
by no_wizard | 2026-01-21 04:00:10+00:00
The funny thing is it’s all cultural. It’s not legal, the path to fixing all this has been available for a long time. It’s a well studied domain with practical solutions abound.

But enough of the US citizenry that I share the nation with seemingly can’t see beyond their own horizons. No matter how bad it is, there is still enough people who can’t possibly see the value of the government doing anything useful. Government is exclusively the enemy. And in turn those who seek to ransack the system do so under the guise of pushing back against so called “government overreach” (a deliberately vague term) and continue to give the general public the raw deal
by adastra22 | 2026-01-21 04:00:51+00:00
There are two opposing philosophical viewpoints here. Some view mathematics as a model for understanding the real world. Some see the real world as instantiation of mathematics.

Is an array a function? From one perspective, the array satisfies the abstract requirements we use to define the word "function." From the other perspective, arrays (contiguous memory) exist and are real things, and functions (programs) exist and are something else.
by bonsai_spool | 2026-01-21 04:01:50+00:00
> rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance

I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.

I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.

The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.

So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.

(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
by gnabgib | 2026-01-21 04:01:57+00:00
Reduce dementia (42 points, 2024, 14 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41073127

Reduce risk of heart disease (18 points, 8 months ago, 3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977085

Slow aging (10 points, 11 hours ago, 1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694829
by mindslight | 2026-01-21 04:02:18+00:00
> prevent federal agents enforcing federal law

Why is it that every normalizing "this is fine" commenter inevitably drops into nonsense about "enforcing federal law" after a few short comments? The problem in Minnesota isn't federal law enforcement enforcing federal law, rather it's federal law enforcement "officers" abusing their immunity to act as lawless terror squads, including attacking protestors, backed up by a demented chief executive who has no respect for our American ideals of individual liberty or limited government.
by vee-kay | 2026-01-21 04:02:19+00:00
The Roman Dodecahedrons were discussed on HN before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565806

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39102069

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24332244

Several theories on their purpose, most plausible (IMHO) is that that they were used for knitting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/17a17ju/roman_...
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-01-21 04:02:25+00:00
> Nobody sane would believe that invading a country promotes regional stability.

Then you should read about some of the biggest influencers in US foreign policy since WW2. There’s one guy whose entire career was spent essentially trying to convince the president / military brass to bomb enemies into submission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

I’m sure you’ve also heard of Henry Kissinger.

Anyway, pretty strong history of US political figures dehumanizing foreign populations, justified by some western moral superiority. Direct through line to the Bush presidency (last of the neoconservatives).
by Dagger2 | 2026-01-21 04:02:41+00:00
You should read my other comments on this post. I've attempted, multiple times (but apparently without much success) to make the point that NAT is not a security feature because it does not, without a firewall, protect against an attacker.

You don't need a qualifier like "on the WAN subnet". It just doesn't do anything to protect you from inbound connections at all.
by gruez | 2026-01-21 04:03:25+00:00
>It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won.

Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.

>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-india-sikh-separatis...
by Spivak | 2026-01-21 04:04:50+00:00
With NAT your device does not have a publicly routable address. Attackers have no way of contacting you at all. Without NAT you have a publicly routable address and attackers can try reaching out to your device. You rely entirely on your device's and your router's firewall.

So it's not really about NAT although it ends up being a consequence—it's about having a truly private network "air gapped" from the public internet.
by remarkEon | 2026-01-21 04:04:52+00:00
Your initial claim was that some States are merely "not assisting" the Federal government with their immigration duties, which is actually not a choice they get to make since the controlling caselaw (again, Arizona v. United States) prevents them from doing this even if they wanted to. Local cops cannot investigate immigration status, full stop. I point it out that some states actually go further, and passed laws that bar their police from doing the following.

Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.

Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here

And now we get.

Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.

Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.

You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.

I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
by bandrami | 2026-01-21 04:06:06+00:00
One weird thing I've found is that it's incredibly difficult to get an LLM to generate an invalid syllogism. They can generate false premises all day, and they will usually call a valid syllogism with a false major or minor premise invalid. But you have to basically quote an invalid syllogism to get them to repeat it; they won't form one on their own.
by JimDabell | 2026-01-21 04:07:31+00:00
I think it’s more instructive to look at providers like AWS than to compare with other AI labs. What’s the incentive for AWS to silently subsidise somebody else’s model when you run it on their infrastructure?

AWS are quite happy to give service away for free in vast quantities, but they do it by issuing credits, not by selling below cost.

I think it’s a fairly safe bet AWS aren’t losing money on every token they sell.
by foxes | 2026-01-21 04:08:00+00:00
The analog of a dot product of vectors is an integral over the product of functions.

The matrix multiplication of vectors - or a row and a column vector - which is then just taking the dot product is called an inner product. So for functions the inner product is an integral over where the functions are defined -

< f, g> = \int f(x) g(x) dx

Likewise you can multiply functions by a "kernel" which is a bit like multiplying a vector by a matrix

< A f, g> = \int \int A(x,y) f(y) g(x) dx dy

The fourier transform is a particular kernel