MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jackhuman | 2026-01-05 15:36:34+00:00
One of my favorite features with zed is the really nice keyboard and window management shortcuts. I can have my terminal just be another tab, easily switch between em and the file explorer

But to the authors note, one might find a single behavior in zed really annoying. Mine is how zed appends a new line at the end of files on save. Used to be able to disable this in settings but an update broke that long ago. Maybe some can tell me its fixed but seems like I’ll need to journey down git hub issue fix but did not find one while back.
by iainmerrick | 2026-01-05 15:36:35+00:00
You know he designed the horrible ios7 as well?

I don't think that's fully accurate, unless you have a link that confirms it? That Dye designed it, I mean, not that it was horrible...

Jony Ive was the head of design at that point (both hardware and UI). Wikipedia says Dye "contributed greatly to the design language of iOS 7" but Ive would have had final say. Certainly at the time as I recall it, iOS 7 was seen as Ive's baby.

Also, I'm not defending iOS 7, but I reckon its visual design was a lot more influential than it gets credit for. Think of those ubiquitous Prime bottles, with their bright saturated color gradients; the first place I remember seeing that style was iOS 7. I bet they picked that style for Prime because kids liked it, and kids liked it because kids like iPhones.

Edit to add: "bright saturated colors" goes back a long way to Fisher Price toys and the like, of course, but it's the gradients specifically that I think iOS 7 popularized.
by mattbee | 2026-01-05 15:36:53+00:00
I've been happy with the solution of switching off notifications from apps that interrupt me with promotions - one strike and they're out.

The remaining notifications are _still_ frequent enough that no single app can expect to get my attention with a single buzz.

It's not like apps don't upsell to when I _open_ them and have to swipe away ads before I can use them. So why give them another channel?

25-years ago me is going to roll his eyes so hard, but you know where I don't mind slightly-targeted ads? My email & my doormat. Send me a catalogue, I love a catalogue.
by yvdriess | 2026-01-05 15:36:53+00:00
I agree on the part of the opportunity cost and that given the transistor budgets of the time a simpler design would have served better.

I fundamentally disagree on putting the majority of the blame on the object memory model. The problem was that they were compounding the added complexity of the object model with a slew of other unnecessary complexities. They somehow did find the budget to put the first full IEEE floating point unit on the execution unit, implemented a massive[1] decoder and microcode for the bit-aligned 200+ instruction set and interprocess communication. The expensive lookups per instructions had everything to do with cutting caches and programmable registers, not any kind of overwhelming complexity to the address translation.

I strongly recommend checking the "Performance effects of architectural complexity in the Intel 432" paper by Colwell that I linked in the parent.

[1] die shots: https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/110231910098167742
by rjh29 | 2026-01-05 15:36:58+00:00
Memorization focuses on the set of things you want to recall, but don't use often enough to naturally remember.

This is most peritent for language learning because you need to 'bootstrap' a large set of words and grammar, and you can't use all of them often enough to put them in long-term memory (at first).

Aside from foreign languages, I also use flashcards for English - more difficult words that show up rarely enough that I can't remember their definitions - and country flags.

For general learning too, if you need to keep looking something up over and over but can't seem to remember it, flashcards will bootstrap that into your brain and make future learning smoother. Obviously Internet/AI can help - but LLMs can't explain 100% of a topic in their reply, they always assume some level of abstraction, and the higher-level it is the faster you can absorb a topic.
by pingananth | 2026-01-05 15:36:59+00:00
I actually ran this specific 'Backchannel VP' scenario through raw GPT-4 before building the hard-coded version, and the results were surprisingly 'meh.'

The missing piece wasn't intelligence, but statefulness and emotional memory.

A human manager (or VP) remembers that you embarrassed them in a meeting three weeks ago, and that hidden state dictates their reaction today. LLMs—currently—are too 'forgiving' and rational. They don't hold grudges or play power games naturally.

Until AI can simulate that messy, long-term 'political capital' (or lack thereof), I think we still need humans to navigate other humans. But I agree, for pure PR review and logical feedback, I'd take an AI manager any day!
by Ukv | 2026-01-05 15:37:04+00:00
> No. They'd be agnostic of the alleged nefarious meaning just like [...]

It's entirely possible that some interpreted it as only the literal meaning and still disagreed with it.

My point is "You can disagree with making that statement without thinking it's not okay to be white", and that the poll's poor design does not allow us to distinguish the two, which was answering your question ("How is [the poll's results] not a red flag for "hate" against another racial group?").

If a poll asks people whether they identify as "pro-life" and the majority of liberals say no, it's not a sound argument to say that then implies the majority are admitting to being pro-death, or that it's a red flag for them being some kind of death cult. The term "pro-life" has meaning (relating to abortion) beyond its literal reading (and in this case I'd expect far more to pick up on it). Maybe there genuinely are some pro-death misanthropes in the sample answering no, but the poll's design does not allow you to conclude that.

> [...] you're dismissing all those accepting as being unaware.

Those that answer in support may be unaware of its usage, or aware but choosing to interpret the poll as asking about its literal meaning, or even aware and agreeing with the implicature/associations.

> For your view to be true, you're saying the other 49% of blacks polled are clueless [...]

I'm not sure how you've drawn this conclusion.
by publicdebates | 2026-01-05 15:37:42+00:00
I don't trust such books and research. The fundamental thing in question here is what makes Beauty beautiful, which I think is indefinitely mysterious and perpetually elusive. If anyone claims to have grasped at a few concrete conclusions or tangible expertise, I think they're just trying to sell it. The concepts of beauty apply equally to all forms of art, which includes GUIs.

I do agree that Steve was somewhat revolutionary in this, bringing his personal quest for beauty into early GUIs through his (overly) perfectionistic command. I remember a decade or more ago being struck by just how genius it was for him to bring professional typography into personal computers, complete with kerning and everything.
by stuffn | 2026-01-05 15:37:50+00:00
> What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning

Your entire political statement aside manufacturing was always a good job. I’m not sure if you realize what kind of skilled labor went into manufacturing:

1. Machining
2. Tool and Die
3. Welding
4. Etc

Hell when I was working in construction I was making 20 dollars an hour at 18. That’s good money, and at the time if I would’ve stuck to it I would’ve been able to afford a decent life. My stint as a machinist while backbreaking at times was a good highly rewarding job.

Now, to address your political point. Yes, jobs should pay a living wage. Unfortunately even with such “wage suppression” America is still one of the most expensive countries to live in. We subsidize global food, drugs, etc. I can only agree with your point if we simultaneously become an export economy, and reduce or remove all global subsidy. But the party who supports raising wages also supports near limitless spending on the less fortunate countries. You cannot have both.
by triceratops | 2026-01-05 15:37:53+00:00
> We had healthy people before the recent weight lifting craze

Most people did manual labor. Even if they didn't, everyone walked more, or rode horses, chopped wood, drew water from wells, and did a hundred other things that required using their muscles in a way that's just not necessary today.

> my strength training is rock climbing

That's weight lifting too. Bodyweight is still weight.
by jjice | 2026-01-05 15:38:02+00:00
> You are asking me about implementation difficulty, difficult implementation doesn't mean idea is not worth it.

I can agree with that idea, to an extent. If something is near impossible (not saying this is), then it does become not worth it.

The other questions the parent posed are more interesting to me:

> How would you determine the worth of rare, illiquid or intangibles? What about wealth held in trusts or companies? How does the accounting work if I borrow against my wealth? What happens when things change value dramatically in a short period of time?

Another I wonder is that (ignore all specifics of the values, just the concepts matter here), let's say you own a private business that then becomes valued at 1.5 billion dollars and this individual has 20 million dollars liquid. How do you tax that? The government can't take one third of the business, at least not without a lot of issues (in business dealings and individual rights), and the 20 million liquid wouldn't come close to what this plan would value. What do we do then? Plenty of billionaires don't really have liquid cash and forcing liquidation of assents in such a way seems like it would be very difficult.

I'm all for more taxes on higher net worth individuals, but I think there's a lot of talk to be had on how one can implement this. It's going to be really difficult to find a way that makes sense.
by bell-cot | 2026-01-05 15:38:10+00:00
Speaking as a regular HN downvotee, I'd say "don't like your facts" accounts for at most 25% of downvoting.

Sure, you can always make a moderation system more complex. At best, that will somewhat reduce the complaints. At the cost of both the added complexity, and all the new-and-undesirable ways in which humans users can interact with that shiny new complexity.
by louthy | 2026-01-05 15:38:14+00:00
Fair enough :)

By the way, I happen to agree on the general point, in my blog teaching Monads in C# [1], I wrote this:

"I often see other language ecosystems trying to bring monads into their domain. But, without first-class support for monads (like do notation in Haskell or LINQ in C#), they are (in my humble opinion) too hard to use. LINQ is the killer feature that allows C# to be one of very few languages that can facilitate genuine pure functional programming."

So, yeah, regular fluent method chaining isn't really enough to make monads useful.

[1] https://paullouth.com/higher-kinds-in-csharp-with-language-e...
by gn4d | 2026-01-05 15:38:39+00:00
>I'd long heard of abusive moderation but... experiencing it first hand is something else. Anecdote of one, but I know I'm never going to ask there again.

And it was a real gut punch when this would happen (or getting suspended/banned) to long-time users, as well. They largely precipitated their own demise, so I say good riddance.
by pingananth | 2026-01-05 15:39:07+00:00
Hey, Thanks! I'm really glad the 'game' mechanic landed well. I wanted to avoid the 'video lecture' fatigue.

On the niche size: You make a great point. I targeted 'Transitioning' specifically because that’s usually the moment of maximum pain (and imposter syndrome).

Established managers often feel they've 'figured it out' (even if they haven't!). The transition window is where people are actively looking for a lifeline.

But you're right—at the Staff/Principal IC level, a lot of this just becomes 'Managing Up.' Dealing with a Backchannel VP is a survival skill whether you manage people or just manage architecture!
by bluGill | 2026-01-05 15:39:11+00:00
Yes, but I'm comparing a specific factory with a specific data center that I happen to know enough about to compare. There are larger factories that have more people.

The factory I'm thinking of had 2000 people in 1950, and around 250 today - while producing the same amount of product. Automation is continuing to come to that factory - there are number of things that could be automated but their volumes are not quite high enough today to justify the upfront costs.
Show HN: SnapConfig – Superfast config loader for Python, powered by Rust
by scottydelta | 2026-01-05 15:39:12+00:00
I built snapconfig because loading large configs across AI worker processes was too slow.

Inspired by uv's use of rkyv, snapconfig compiles JSON/YAML/TOML/INI/env files to a binary cache, then memory-maps them for zero-copy reads. Cold loads are slower than Python's json module, but cached loads are 10-1000x faster. Benchmark results are available on github repo.

Perfect for Celery workers, serverless functions, AI workflows, or any setup where multiple processes read the same config.
by ur-whale | 2026-01-05 15:39:28+00:00
Funny how HN is usually ripe with folks crawling out of the woodwork to defend IP ownership as a fundamentally important principle, both on moral and economic grounds.

Yet, as of 08:37:36 MST Monday, 5 January 2026 there isn't a single comment on this thread complaining about Anna's IP theft.

Don't get me wrong, that makes me VERY happy, I am a firm believer that the very notion of IP ownership needs to die a horrible death, something that AI may very well make happen in short order, yay.

But still, I can't help but wonder why the "this is IP theft" crowd is completely silent when it comes to the like of pirate bay and Anna.
by xfil | 2026-01-05 15:39:41+00:00
Not Helene for me, but another ISP frustration anecdote from living in a forested area (line damage from tree limbs is common enough) with imperfect cellular data connection:

- the Comcast Xfinity app is extremely bloated and runs into error after error on a poor connection, yet the only time I ever use it is when I have connection problems. Most other apps I use run smoother under similar circumstances. Boggles the mind why one of the US's largest ISPs wouldn't make their primary customer support portal be lightweight and reliable on spotty cellular data.
by badcryptobitch | 2026-01-05 15:39:41+00:00
> Unexplainable security features are just marketing materials.
I feel this way about a lot of hardware-based security solutions like TPMs, and TEEs. These are actually useful solutions that can help solve problems that we have (as evidenced by this article) but unfortunately, these solutions tend to be poorly publicly documented. As a result, we rely on academics to do the work for us in order to learn how to better contextualize these solutions.
by Hendrikto | 2026-01-05 15:39:44+00:00
> aren't these the people that would want the ability to disseminate information in the face of fascism?

Everybody wants free speech — but only for opinions they agree with. And they are against censorship — unless the "right people" are censored.

Recently, the left has been far more authoritarian, labeling everything they don't like as "far right hate speech", pushing to make dissent illegal, and demanding censorship. I guess the pendulum will swing the other way eventually.

It's not really a left VS right issue, but an authoritarian one. Free speech can be uncomfortable, that is the point. "Free speech, but…" does not work.
by css_apologist | 2026-01-05 15:40:04+00:00
LLMs are really showing how different programmers are from one another

i am in your camp, i get 0 satisfaction out of seeing something appear on the screen which i don't deeply understand

i want to feel the computer as i type, i've recently been toying with turning off syntax highlighting and LSPs (not for everyone), and i am surprised at the lack of distractions and feeling of craft and joy it brings me
by munchbunny | 2026-01-05 15:40:16+00:00
This is cool. It feels a lot like business school cases where you get a packet of context and need to think about how to navigate the many factors at play, though with more direct practice, much less of the social dynamics of a class discussion, and less of a main character storytelling vibe, which are all good things IMO.

If there was a way to combine this with coaching sessions, I think this could be a very effective way to train IC's that are stepping into leadership roles (managers, staff/principal IC's, PM's, etc.). It could also be interesting to have a variant of the exercise where you ask the student/user to write their own message.
by anandb71 | 2026-01-05 15:40:28+00:00
I built Arbor because standard RAG-based AI tools are "architecturally blind." They see code as text snippets, but they don't understand the graph of your logic.

Arbor uses Rust and Tree-sitter to index your AST locally and maps it into a 3D Logic Forest. It’s an MCP server, so you can plug it into Claude Desktop and watch the camera "fly" to the code the AI is talking about.

Key features: 100% Local-First: Your code never leaves your machine. Sub-100ms Sync: Real-time indexing even on large repos. Cinematic Visualizer: Built in Flutter with custom GLSL shaders for a high-fidelity experience.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on using graph-based context vs. traditional vector embeddings for AI coding assistants!
by scott_w | 2026-01-05 15:41:00+00:00
I like the demo.

For people looking to transition to management, one thing I’ve learned is that a big part of my job is getting everyone to do only one thing at a time. Every stakeholder (including engineering managers) are obsessed with the idea of “sneaking a bit more work in,” and I’ve never seen it work. I will actually go as far as to refuse to estimate work if I have something more important for the team to focus on. After all, estimation is work and we have a higher priority!

The benefit is that you’ll often find nobody actually estimated the business value/priority before asking for the work estimate, so you end up wasting less time overall. The hard part is resisting the pull of your boss asking you to do something.
by gpderetta | 2026-01-05 15:41:13+00:00
I think seamless persistent storage is also bound to fail. There are significant differences on how we treat ephemeral objects in programs and persistent storage. Ephemeral objects are low value, if something goes wrong we can just restart and recover from storage. Persistent storage is often high value, we make significant effort to guarantee its consistency and durability even in the presence of crashes.
by hardmaru | 2026-01-05 15:41:31+00:00
Hi HN,

We are the team at Sakana AI. To give some context on the difficulty here, an OpenAI agent placed 2nd in the AHC world tournament last August, so taking 1st place against 804 humans in this contest is a significant milestone for us. Our agent approached the production planning problem by running its own experiments during the contest. It independently discovered a Simulated Annealing strategy using a "virtual power" heuristic which ended up outperforming the greedy solutions that the problem setters anticipated.

We used inference-time scaling with GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro Preview to make this happen. The agent ran parallel code generation loops to iteratively refine the algorithm, costing about $1,300 in total compute for the 4 hour event. We published the full logs showing the agent's analysis and code evolution at the link in the post.

Happy to answer any questions about the architecture!

Blog Post with details: https://sakana.ai/ahc058

For more technical detailed information, including the logs and analysis output by ALE-Agent during the contest, see: https://sakanaai.github.io/fishylene-ahc058/
by talkingtab | 2026-01-05 15:41:56+00:00
There is the smoke part - worth seeing, the shader part - well worth exploring (shaders make you see the world in a different way , then there is the learning part. The site is very interactive so it allows you to see one, do one and maybe teach one.

Many people are stuck in html land. I was. Webgl, threejs, @react-three/{fiber/drei} provide another dimension and shaders are the gateway.

Very highly recommended as a skill worth understanding (at least).
by Workaccount2 | 2026-01-05 15:41:56+00:00
The easiest surefire way to lift the bottom of the economy right now is to go on a mass home building spree.

If people had their rents cut in half, it would solve most other money problems they complain about (shy of those who will just inflate their lives into being money constrained again).

Of course this will come mostly at the expense of regular middle-class homeowners, who will see the enormous paper gains of their properties in the last 5-10 years be decimated. Red or Blue, I don't care who, hates losing money and will emphatically vote against this happening.
by racl101 | 2026-01-05 15:42:00+00:00
Same here.

As long as you're organized and quantify every line item and have proof of sign off on things that increase scope and have emails to back them up, you can usually established your ethos as someone that is honest and doesn't try to fleece them, then companies are fairly reasonable.... that is, unless they are in a bad situation where they probably can't pay their vendors or contractors.

And that is something that is a burden on the contractor. Don't agree to work for a company if there are red flags present from the get go. Even if the promise of pay looks good.

The best are boring large to mid size companies.

I tended to avoid start ups that just needed a specialist for a few days. The issue of money was always a sticking point. Let's just say if they could barely pay their own or themselves then how would that bode well for you?
by claudiulodro | 2026-01-05 15:42:02+00:00
Interesting.

For Hurricane Helene specifically, my team at Newspack actually worked with Blue Ridge Public Radio and a number of other news organizations in the affected area to set up text versions of their websites for low bandwidth readers[1] and get info to 10s of thousands of people[2].

In fact, it was so successful (maybe not at reaching you specifically though), that we got a grant to roll out a general purpose plain text web solution for breaking news situations to news organizations across the country![3] So I think there may have been a mismatch in that you didn't know about all of the plain text versions of news sites available in your area during the disaster -- that's something we'll have to keep in mind.

[1] https://text.bpr.org/

[2] https://awards.journalists.org/entries/hell-or-high-water-bp...

[3] https://opennews.org/blog/press-forward-release/
by awaaz | 2026-01-05 15:42:14+00:00
> I've been happy with the solution of switching off notifications from apps that interrupt me with promotions - one strike and they're out.

I have exactly the same policy. But in my case I am forced to keep notifications enabled from apps like MyGate (since nobody would be able to visit me without it) and I have no say in the matter - my gated society uses it and my only way out is to pay for the app itself.
by SunshineTheCat | 2026-01-05 15:42:15+00:00
One of the arguments I keep seeing from people churning out AI video is that the tech is enabling people "creative freedom" that's been made possible now even without the technical know how.

However, 99% of the the "creativity" from what I've seen is done by the AI (how it should look, where the cuts need to happen, the tone, color grading, etc). Which is to say, it's taken from other people's (creative) work.

While a big part of being able to create a good video has much to do with storytelling, the craft of shooting and editing a video is a big part of the creative process as well.

AI video isn't "enabling people to be more creative," it is quite literally removing creativity from the process all together.