MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by coronapl | 2026-01-12 17:47:27+00:00
While queues definitely play an important role in microservices architecture, I think it’s worth clarifying that they’re not unique to it. A queue can fit perfectly in a monolith depending on the use case. I regularly use queues for handling critical operations that might require retrying, for having better visibility into failed jobs, ensuring FIFO guarantees, and more. Queues are such a useful tool for building any resilient architecture that framing them as primarily a microservices concern might cause unnecessary confusion.
by dist-epoch | 2026-01-12 17:47:38+00:00
> Not to mention the logical fallacy at the core of your point

Yes, it's a logical fallacy. Another one is saying "I don't see any viable business model, therefore there is no viable business model".

Blast from the past:

> YouTube is a content paradise though. There's tons of value there and you can sell ads against it or even charge for premium services.

> Where's the money in Instagram? The content is practically worthless and their only real value is in their userbase. Even though I use the Instagram client, most of the time I see photos, they come through Twitter. So that also reinforces for me that any value is in the users and not the actual content, which is mostly crap.

> I'm more convinced that we're in a 2nd bubble now more than ever.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818037

Another one:

> Does anyone else think this valuation is insane? It's like $300/registered user. The company doesn't have a business model. No way the handful of employees are worth $1B. My mind is blown.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817930
by sodafountan | 2026-01-12 17:48:06+00:00
Can someone explain to me how this was allowed to happen? Wasn't Siri supposed to be the leading AI agent not ten years ago? How was there such a large disconnect at Apple between what Siri could do and what "real" AI was soon to be capable of?

Was this just a massive oversight at Apple? Were there not AI researchers at Apple sounding the alarm that they were way off with their technology and its capabilities? Wouldn't there be talk within the industry that this form of AI assistant would soon be looked at as useless?

Am I missing something?
by cjs_ac | 2026-01-12 17:48:11+00:00
Regarding the quote about the British East India Company, it's worth noting that employees of the company had notoriously poor pay and were half-expected to set up their own personal ventures while in India to support themselves. The company was also poorly administered, and there was almost certainly a great deal of embezzlement going on (in response to the poor pay). So while the expected mathematics was probably comparatively simple, the numbers probably didn't add up (which is the kind of thing we'd expect a Commons committee to inquire into).
by cush | 2026-01-12 17:48:14+00:00
> Gemini is objectively a good model (whether it's #1 or #5 in ranking aside) so Apple can confidently deliver a good (enough) product

Definitely. At at this point, Apple just needs to get anything out the door. It was nearly two years ago they sold a phone with features that still haven't shipped and the promise that Apple Intelligence would come in two months.
by margalabargala | 2026-01-12 17:48:28+00:00
I don't think the parent said that Siri wasn't bad, on the contrary it sounds like they agree.

Their point is that if Apple totally scraps the current, bad, product called "Siri" and replaces it with an entirely different, much better product that is also named "Siri" but shares nothing but the name, people's perceptions of the current bad Siri will taint their impressions of the new one.
by doug_durham | 2026-01-12 17:48:48+00:00
Most Europeans do not bike daily. Most drive cars where they need to go. You are not losing 5 to 10 pounds in 10 days (unless you are dehydrating yourself). 5 pounds would be a 17,500 calorie deficit or 1,750 per day. The base metabolism for a male is around 1800 calories. That means that you'd be eating 1/10th of a banana every day to get that type of loss. For me a century bike ride (100 miles with 5,000ft of climbing) consumes about 2,900 calories. Are you doing century bike rides every day while only eating 1,200 calories while in Europe?
by Joker_vD | 2026-01-12 17:49:05+00:00
From what I can see in the codegen, defer is not implemented "properly": the deferred statements are only executed when the block exits normally; leaving the block via "return", "break", "continue" (including their labelled variants! those interact subtly with outer defers), or "goto" skips them entirely. Which, arguably, should not happen:

var f = fopen("file.txt", "r");
defer fclose(f);

if fread(&ch, 1, 1, f) <= 0 { return -1; }
return 0;

would not close file if it was empty. In fact, I am not sure how it works even for normal "return 0": it looks like the deferred statements are emitted after the "return", textually, so they only properly work in void-returning function and internal blocks.
by weinzierl | 2026-01-12 17:49:10+00:00
This is a slippery slope. I could agree if the OS would load it. Maybe the OS shouldn't load it.

But as long as it is good enough for the OS it should be good for the malware scanner as long as it is not real malware. If we start punishing everything that deviates just a little but from the norm we will end in no good place.
by jmyeet | 2026-01-12 17:49:17+00:00
Oh I couldn't disagree more. Europe is on the verge of full-blown fascism. Europe has Reform (UK), AfD (Germany) and National Front (France) as well as Hungary.

Europe created the Russia-Ukraine problem by giving their energy security to Russia. Interestingly, this is a (super) rare win for the first Trump administration: forcing Europe to build an LNG port in 2018 [1] and warning against the dangers of dependence on Russian natural gas. This warning has been completely vindicated.

Europe has stagnant wages, a declining social safety net (eg raising the retirement age in France), a housing affordability crisis in most places (notably exlucding Vienna and there needs to more attention on why this is), inflation problems and skyrocketing energy costs. It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time.

Europe has the same rising anti-immigrant rise in response to declining material conditions that the US hass. In Europe's case it's against Syrians and North Africans. In the UK this also included Polish people.

France is really a perfect example here. Despite all the economic problems you have Macro siding with Le Pen to keep Melenchon and the left out of power.

All of this is neoliberalism run amok and it comes from decisions in WW1, WW2 and post-WW2, most notably that Europe (and the US) decided the biggest threat was socialism and communism. And who's really good at killing communists? Nazis. Just look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger, an early NATO chair [2].

Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO. And NATO is on the verge of collapse. There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO, as many in his administration want to do, but NATO could well splinter if Trump takes Greenland.

What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee?

Many Europeans (rightly) look down on the insanity that's currently going on in the US but at the same time they don't realize just how dire the situation is in Europe.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-ln...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
by superjan | 2026-01-12 17:49:26+00:00
Maybe the following helps: if you have a an analog signal where there are no frequencies above 22.05 khz, it is in principle possible to sample it at 44.1 khz and then perfectly reconstruct the original signal from those samples. You could also represent the same analog signal using 48 khz samples. The key to resampling is not finding a nice looking interpolation, but rather one that corresponds to the original analog signal.
by dpark | 2026-01-12 17:49:41+00:00
> Humans do the same thing by the way.

But this is exactly why it is philosophical. We’re having a discussion about why an LLM cannot really ever explain “why”. And then we turn around and say, but actually humans have the exact same problem. So it’s not an LLM problem at all. It’s a philosophical problem about whether it’s possible to identify a real “why”. In general it is not possible to distinguish between a “real why” and a post hoc rationalization so the distinction is meaningless for practical purposes.
by dmurray | 2026-01-12 17:49:43+00:00
There hasn't been a debate. The headline is not reflective of the facts. There hasn't been any agreement to fast track this bill, but the politician sponsoring it has said in a radio interview that (surprise!) he thinks it should be fast tracked.

The Dáil record can be found here, but there's nothing of interest in it:

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/search/?searchType=debates&deba...
by habinero | 2026-01-12 17:50:11+00:00
Yeah. I know. The point is there is no Chesterson's Fence when it comes to LLMs. I can't even start from the assumption that this code is here for a reason.

And yes, of course people should understand the code. People should do a lot of things in theory. In practice, every codebase has bits that are duct taped together with a bunch of #FIXME comments lol. You deal with what you got.
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-12 17:50:17+00:00
All the data you need is in the bullshit that comes out of the White House, daily. Companies are not pulling out yet because nobody is certain, but the writing has been on the wall. Tech sector froze hiring and did layoffs specifically after the insane tariff policy when everyone realized that its no longer just memes anymore.

For example, today, Jerome Powell just got indited. Its pretty clear that end of central bank independence is coming. Remember, higher up execs dgaf if US economy fails, they have their money bags. Once 2026 elections get cancelled and US goes full fascist, you are gonna see the shitstorm happen real time. On top of that, if US is in Tumroil, China will most likely invade Taiwan, since NATO wouldn't be able to respond, and bye bye all the stock market gains.

Save this comment if you think im being extremely hyperbolic, and make sure to read it again in 2 years.
by cptcobalt | 2026-01-12 17:50:39+00:00
> Notably, about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period.

This isn't always the patient's choice—my insurance/PBM (CVS Caremark) dropped coverage for the GLP-1 that I was taking (Zepbound) and had several rounds of prior-authorization shenanigans over a few months before they approved the previous-generation GLP-1, Wegovy. Now I've had to start the ramp-up of a different medication again, which hurt and stalled progress. Evil.
by ibizaman | 2026-01-12 17:51:11+00:00
What about self-hosting as a service? You get a server in your home which you own with your open source software and data in it. And you pay a subscription to have a remote sysadmin take care of maintenance for you and can train you on the software? What happens if you don’t pay anymore is you keep everything. But like a good insurance, you’d keep the subscription because of top notch customer service.
by LegionMammal978 | 2026-01-12 17:51:11+00:00
I do find it annoying how the Temporal API, just like ~all other datetime APIs, has 0 support for querying leap-second information in any shape or form. Suggested workarounds like temporal-tai all require plugging in a leap-second file and keeping it updated, which is especially painful for client-side JS, where you can't just download a leap-second file from someone else's site thanks to the SOP. Meanwhile, browsers update on a cadence more than sufficient to keep an up-to-date copy, but the datetime APIs refuse to expose leap-second info because they're too committed to "only UTC is in-scope for this project".

(The context is that I want to write some JS tools for astronomical calculations, but UTC conversions need leap-second info, so this trend makes it impossible to write something that Just Works™.)
by epistasis | 2026-01-12 17:51:26+00:00
I use Tailscale for exactly those reasons, plus the easy SSL certificates and clients for Android and iOS.

From this thread, I've learned about Pangolin:

https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin

Which seems very compelling to me too. If it has apps that allow various devices connect to the VPN it might be worth it to me to trial using it instead of Tailscale...
by cassepipe | 2026-01-12 17:51:29+00:00
Hoping this might help you find a way to reach to the young people you have to work with:
I remember my young self being primarily concerned with being right about the world rather while also believing nothing I could do at my level could matter. Maybe it's just me but something about small incremental betterment was uncredibly unsexy to me. I would rationalize voting as "participating in the system" that was rigged anyways.

Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos
by carlmr | 2026-01-12 17:51:31+00:00
The question is how you calculate or define excess. For one, excess calories aren't 100% stored as fat. We're not that efficient.

Additionally the fatter you are the more calories you use at rest. So there's a point where if you consistently eat too much you'll stop gaining weight.

The biggest source of error here will be the calories in the garbage bin though. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is stored in the waste disposal, not the waist disposal.
by jacobthesnakob | 2026-01-12 17:52:01+00:00
Why do we need to try anything? This comes down to individualism versus collectivism.

Besides, the logical consequence of the portion of my comment you highlighted is that the majority of GLP-1 patients will need to be on these drugs forever to maintain these benefits long-term. We have precisely one trial of 5+ years of patients taking liraglutide, and ~2 years for semaglutide. Some side effects and long-term consequences could be entirely unknown.
by menaerus | 2026-01-12 17:52:37+00:00
You're making some strong assumptions about other industries which are incorrect. All of that exists elsewhere and is not so unique to software as you may think. Things are never that simple. Your argument reads more as a justification to the status quo and gatekeeping rather than being objective. I'm sure the doctors would have said something similar for their profession too but it doesn't necessarily mean it is true. Software engineering is a demanding profession but it is not that special as we like to think it is.
by plorg | 2026-01-12 17:53:24+00:00
I have a 20-year-old hard plastic gaming mouse pad I use at home and it's terrific. At work I have some promotional neoprene covered pad with a terrible Qi charger on one side. The mouse pad similarly works great. The biggest annoyance I have with these things is that I have replaced the switches on all of them, the process of which tends to destroy the skates. None of the replacement skate kits ($10, highway robbery) on eBay or Amazon or whatever include the thick adhesive like the originals, and all the foam tape I can find is too thick, so I've taken to building up layers of double sided tape until they are both even and proud of the recesses in the mouse. This isn't exactly a criticism of Logitech except that they could absolutely sell repair parts for their peripherals and they don't.
by derangedHorse | 2026-01-12 17:53:29+00:00
I don't support Trump but I see the reasoning him and Bessent have. They want to lower the interest rate so that they can also drop the rate at which they issue debt/treasuries. They seem to think they are too financially constrained but will bankrupt themselves even faster if they hold big treasury auctions at today's rates.

It'll also lead to the general public feeling inflationary impacts. I think the government would cut relief checks to mitigate this and stir public sentiment their way, but it probably wouldn't be enough to maintain current standards of living.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-12 17:53:48+00:00
I agree. Here in Argentina we have at least two alternative methods for instant transfer, mostly scanning a QR:

* Modo: It's like an alliance of the banks or something, I'm not sure. (Perhaps it's Visa with the layer of white paint of top.)

* Mercado Pago: It's the we-are-not-a-bank service of Mercado Libre, that is the local version of Amazon

* Direct transfer in the app of the bank.
by al_borland | 2026-01-12 17:53:53+00:00
This can happen by accident as well.

In an effort to help improve the range of tickets first level server support could handle, we made knowledge base article for everything and the manager was rather dogmatic about telling people to following the KB. If something went wrong, and someone deviated from the KB, they were in trouble.

Prior to this, most people on the team had some decent skills, and new people could grow as they encountered different issues, learned from others, and did some troubleshooting of their own… and some mistakes would inevitably be made along the way.

After a while, skills stopped developing, and even people who had skills seemed to regress. This seemed to hurt the team, and the potential for the people on it. Not good. It led me to question how we could have good documentation to get people up to speed quickly, without limiting them to never knowing more than the documentation told them. Maybe part of that was how the manager enforced this, creating a learned helplessness, but I don’t know for sure.

This all to say, that the intent was to help people handle more types of issues. Some people would learn one thing and were scared to do anything else, so those things sat around and wouldn’t get handled. We also had a lot of new hires and needed to be able to handle 80% of issues with relatively little training. Without the KBs, it could take a year or two of work for self-sufficiency with that 80% level, from what I’d seen. The goal wasn’t to dumb anyone down for control, even if that may have been the net result.

Unintended consequences are still consequences.
by Melatonic | 2026-01-12 17:54:04+00:00
Both those drugs are also known to suppress appetite in many people - to the point that some used them solely as appetite suppressants.

They also do have significant risk of side effects (not trying to say anything about their used for ADHD which is well proven). Probably not a great idea to be prescribing tons of stimulants to people who don't need them (especially because these are drugs which are in large shortage often)
by BugsJustFindMe | 2026-01-12 17:54:18+00:00
I wish the order of presentation were different, because it starts with incorrect or incorrect-without-missing-context claims and then only later fixes its trajectory.

It starts with...

> MIT says these are history's most important people. Wikipedia says the internet disagrees.

Importance of the sort it is _eventually_ clearly talking about and attention are not the same thing.

> This peer-reviewed metric synthesizes Wikipedia presence across 25+ languages, article length, and sustained view counts over time to measure lasting global influence.

Influence of the sort it is _eventually_ clearly talking about and attention are not the same thing.

> Some of history's most consequential figures are practically invisible online

Wikipedia traffic and invisibility are not the same thing. Wikipedia and online are not the same thing.

It then continues though...

> Not because they don't matter, but because pop culture has moved on.

> Note how modern political figures dominate attention while foundational thinkers fade

> The gap reveals something uncomfortable: we've built an internet that amplifies controversy over wisdom.

Yeah, ok. This is what they should lead with. It's an important message.
by rafalgawlik | 2026-01-12 17:54:55+00:00
Hey HN, creator here.

I've been running my own homelab for 4+ years (2 Linux servers, 15+ services).
After helping friends set up theirs, I noticed the same pattern: weeks spent
piecing together random tutorials, debugging YAML, and giving up before getting
anything running.

What's included:
- 12-lesson Docker fundamentals (from zero to docker-compose)
- 15 tested configs (Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Gitea, Grafana, Vaultwarden, etc.)
- 6 remote access methods (Cloudflare Tunnels, Traefik, WireGuard, Tailscale)
- All tested on x86 and ARM/Raspberry Pi

I know there's tons of free content out there. This is for people who value
having everything organized and tested in one place over spending weekends
on Stack Overflow.

Happy to answer questions about the configs or tech stack (Next.js, Vercel, Stripe).
by claytongulick | 2026-01-12 17:55:07+00:00
One option that didn't seem to be discussed in TFA is turning away from AI.

There's an implicit assumption in the article that the coding models are here to stay in development. It's possible that assumption is incorrect for multiple reasons.

Maybe (as some research indicates) the models are as good as they are going to get. They're always going to be a cross between a chipper stochastic parrot and that ego inflated junior dev that refuses to admit a mistake. Maybe when the real (non-subsidized) economics present themselves, the benefit isn't there.

Perhaps the industry segments itself to a degree. There's a big difference in tolerance for errors in a cat fart app and a nuclear cooling system. I can see a role for certified 100% AI free development. Maybe vibe coders go in one direction, with lower quality output but rapid TTM, but a segment of more highly skilled developers focus on AI free development.

I also think it's possible that over time the AI hyper-productiviy stuff is revealed to be mostly a mirage. My personal experience and a few studies seem to indicate this. The purported productivity boost is a result of confirmation bias and ridiculous metrics (like LOC generated) that have little to do with actual value creation. When the mirage fades, companies realize they are stuck with heaps of AI slop and no technical talent able to deal with it. A bitter lesson indeed.

I think the most likely outcome is that the massive central models for code generation go away due to enormous costs and increased endpoint device capabilities. I think it settles at an improved intellisense running locally. The real value of the "better search engine" that LLMs hold today fades as hard economics drive up subscription fees and content is manipulated by sponsors (same thing that happened to the Google search results).

For end users, I think the models get shoved into a box to do things they're really good at, like giving a much more intuitive human-computer interface, but structured data from that is handed off to a human developer to reason about. I think that over time market forces will balance between AI created content and apps and we'll value human crafted things more. McDonalds vs a 5 star steakhouse.
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-12 17:55:16+00:00
Related:

21GW of Solar for California Land That Can No Longer Be Used for Agriculture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488648 - January 2026

Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501605122 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2501605122

New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest. - https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa... - April 25th, 2025

Impacts of agrisolar co-location on the food–energy–water nexus and economic security - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01546-4 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01546-4

(~60M acres of land in the US are in production for biofuels via corn and soybeans, arguably unnecessarily)