MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jfvinueza | 2026-01-16 07:06:49+00:00
Typing this on a X1 gen 6 on my home; paid $230 for it a couple months ago. My impression is that it's a modern, perfectly adequate notebook, if a bit unexciting. But maybe that's because I'm an spoiled child, because I haven't thought for _one second_ how is it that they've made a multicore processor, several gigabytes of random access memory, a fairly decent well-lit keyboard and such a nice matte screen fit into this light, rather elegant device. I mean, for a laptop. I understand Lenovo, those greedy bastards, are the ones who assembled it in interest of achieving their own quarter projections, but now that I think of it, I'm sure there _several_ soulless corporations involved on it running the way it does! Intel is inside, that's for certain, but just ponder about the conditions, and for what financial purpose was tht wireless chip manufactured? What about that screen, huh! How was the lithium in the battery mined? Where? By whom? They weren't doing it _for me_, that I can acknowledge, and yet here I am. Typing on it. Hot garbage. Actually kind of liking it? Is it because I feel more at home here, in Void Linux, than on the Mac OS, even if it's so absolutely unnatural for mammal to "feel" such things in regard to, uh, process supervision and package management? Look, I'm not going to go full-on zen and start rambling about "you" being no more than a mundane abstract construct, but insofar as we agree on our individuation I can very much assure you that this Thinkpad, right now, exists for my benefit, and even though I have set boundaries on myself on developing a sentimental relationship with it (which kinda happened with an X220, I was younger then), even though its assamblage has required thousands years of avarice, violence and rapaciousness (as well of bits of love and care, for how they were all these person fed?) as an end product, for two hundred bucks, it is pretty fucking miraculous, and I myself am especially grateful for all those saccharine videos narrow-mindedly expressing their praises for it.
by Jensson | 2026-01-16 07:07:22+00:00
> 3) LLMs are explicitly designed and trained to mimic human capabilities in fully general sense.

This is wrong, LLM are trained to mimic human writing not to mimic human capabilities. Writing is just the end result not the inner workings of a human, most of what we do happens before we write it down.

You could argue you think that writing captures everything about humans, but that is another belief you have to add to your takes. So first that LLM are explicitly designed to mimic human writing, and then that human writing captures human capabilities in a fully general sense.
by bryanrasmussen | 2026-01-16 07:07:37+00:00
When I first read it I thought wait, 3% of 6 is 0.18, but then I realized no I'm a dork because 6 is the age of the kid, whereas the number 100 is written as a word hundred, hence I decided to write "HN poster responds:" with quotes around my first non-coffee aided thought because I thought it was funny. I guess I should have just made that full statement, but I do have a tendency to rather oblique communication strategies.

on edit: basically because I thought hah, this is the kind of mistake I always see poor tired folks make on HN and making the dumb comment and here I am making it!! This is a classic moment!
by EbNar | 2026-01-16 07:07:46+00:00
I'm at my second E-series ThinkPad right now. My "old" one, from 2018, is still rocking and my son is happily using it.

Reason for the E-series: cheaper than T, good keyboards, easily serviceable/expandable and the feeling that it's build quality is a bit better than that of other laptops of similar price. Overall, very happy with them.
by brunkerhart | 2026-01-16 07:07:51+00:00
This discussion presumes the laws would be obeyed, but we see the laws being openly bended by nations wanting to.

For a small/medium business in EU ESC is an overkill. Their data has no strategic value. Just use whatever infrastructure you want.

For any large company working at global level, owning cutting edge technology ESC is not a protection.

US just stolen a president of foreign country, do you really believe they would hesitate to do this with anybody else if they want?
by robocat | 2026-01-16 07:08:23+00:00
Apple could afford Intel, and could get past antitrust by arguing military security. Who's mobile phone can politicians trust?

Then again, Microsoft should have bought Intel: MS has roughly $102 billion in cash (+ short-term investments). Intel’s market value is approximately $176 billion. Considering Azure, Microsoft has heaps of incentive to buy Intel.

I would guess Google are more likely to greenfield develop their own foundry rather than try and buy Intel.
by rented_mule | 2026-01-16 07:08:28+00:00
> In my experience, most people don’t know what should be developed. Even users don’t know if you ask them.

That's also my experience. The most productive use of coding agents I've found so far is rooted in this.

I wanted to build a tool, for my own use, to let me specify a simple 2D geometry using a textual representation that looks like a simple version of the geometry itself. I'm the user and the implementer, so it should be easy right? I had some ideas for the basics of the textual representation, but the details were far from obvious.

I spent ~10 hours having AI give me suggestions and refinements for the textual representation along with evolving code to parse the representation. It turned out to be a highly productive way to explore the space of trade-offs. This representation looks really good, but it's ambiguous in some cases. That one is not ambiguous, but parsing is tricky. That one is too annoying for the user. It was all about quickly gathering the knowledge and therefore understanding what to build.

When I finally settled on a representation that had a good set of trade-offs, the code was pretty ugly. It worked, but it was about 1,200 lines of code, with weak tests. I tried to have the AI refactor it, and even restart from the final representation choices. Its best version was 1,000 lines of code that were difficult to understand.

I was getting on a plane with no internet the next day. So, armed with all the gathered knowledge, I decided to see what I could do with the code on the plane. It was too complicated to refactor as I went. So I rewrote it from scratch, employing the knowledge I'd built up. In 2-3 hours, I had a complete implementation that was simple to understand and less than 300 lines of code. ~40% of those lines of code were tests that were quite robust.

That amount of iteration in the knowledge gathering step would have taken me closer to a couple of weeks without the AI. And, by employing Fred Brooks' "build one to throw away" (a concept that I think is largely about the same thing as the article), I had a solid implementation without much more work.

I'm sure this workflow is not for everyone. But it (accidentally) leaned into the topic of the article, and I think that's exactly why it worked so well for me.
by aperturecjs | 2026-01-16 07:08:45+00:00
Try this! It works going the other way, just use esbuild to target ES2020 before you run in it. If you want to transpile to Go that's also interesting, probably tsgo's ast parser can be leveraged to do that. See: https://github.com/aperturerobotics/go-quickjs-wasi-reactor
by f4stjack | 2026-01-16 07:09:16+00:00
As technical people we tend to have a technical outlook to this. However, after a certain threshold - say $1M - these projects become political things rather than a simple technical issue.

From a creator's standpoint, a software project exists to solve a problem - or at least make the lives of the software users easier. But the moment a company bigwig clique decides to make money out of company, "bad" projects pop up.

To my chance, I experienced this for three times. The signs are nearly the same. The company has a lot of workflows - usually handled by excel and/or internally developed apps that actually reflect those workflows. Then comes the buzzword team proclaiming miracles, snake oil and an app that will even cure the dandruff - just sign here. Of course, the clique has their cut - that's why they say yes or advice the board to say yes.

Then begins the grueling process of "analyzing workflows". Do they contact the actual users who are doing the work? Hell. No. What they do is, create a "Project Team" - usually hired anew, with no information about how the company does its work - and they try to "understand" the workflows. Then it becomes like that game, user says one thing, project team understands another and says a different thing and the outcome is a different product that solves a problem but not the user's problem.

Of course, this process burns money. You gotta do development, you gotta have a server to run the app, you have to book meeting rooms in hotels to train the users, you have to create fliers internally to promote the app - and create pdfs, many many pdfs to make the users understand how the app works. And no one asks "hey, if this app is reflecting our workflows... why are we getting this training?"

Because at the end of the day, this app only exists to make some people money. And after a certain point, no one dares to say anything because of all the money spent. An ambassador who says "the app we spent $10M does not work" will be get shot. People get retired with the f-you money they gained and the company tries to work with the app they "built" usually it ends up hiring an internal team and do it from the zero - and the expensive shit becomes a thing nobody talks about, a company omerta so to speak.
by aaravchen | 2026-01-16 07:10:36+00:00
That was Bridgefy that required initial online access to setup. Briar doesn't and never has.

Traceability of Briar users, if not the actual content, is certainly potentially worse than something like what Bitchat claims (don't use Bitchat it's provably not secure or private at all) with it's traffic obfuscation and multihop. However, the lack of multihop also makes it less promiscuous, so someone would have to be monitoring when you came in contact with the transfer source or destination, unlike multihop that just broadcasts to anyone so they can hopefully relay it.
by aperturecjs | 2026-01-16 07:11:01+00:00
Hi all,

This uses a "reactor" mode I added to quickjs recently which exposes quickjs as a wasi library instead of a traditional main() loop. This allows the host environment to call loop_once() to step once through the JS event loop, and poll_io() to check for I/O. This way, if there's nothing available to do (VM is idle), the Go host environment (or js) can sleep until some I/O arrives. This is a lot more efficient than having Js poll for I/O.

Check it out: https://github.com/aperturerobotics/go-quickjs-wasi-reactor
by 827a | 2026-01-16 07:11:45+00:00
The 9950X3D has a TDP of 170 watts. M5 has an estimated TDP of around 20 watts.

The comparison point was for single core performance, which certainly makes the TDP comparison unfair if interpreted together. The numbers are ballpark-correct.

No one else is remotely close to Apple. Apple could stop developing chips for four years, and it’s very likely they would still ship the most efficient core architecture, and sit in the top five in performance. If you’re quibbling over the semantics of this particular comparison, you are not mentally ready for what M5 Ultra is going to do to these comparisons in a few months.
by hagbard_c | 2026-01-16 07:12:07+00:00
> If the MacBook is the AR-15, the ThinkPad is the AK-47.

You can get parts to customise an AR-15 to the hilt, field-strip and assemble it in minutes, replace any worn-out parts at will and if so desired assemble one from scratch using parts from many vendors. This sounds far more like working with ThinkPads than with those other machines you mentioned. I recently replaced a keyboard in one of the latter, it was a close approximation of one of the punishments Dante describes in the Divine Comedy. On a ThinkPad the same repair takes a few minutes and you get a better keyboard. Nope, this comparison does not make sense.
by hulitu | 2026-01-16 07:12:52+00:00
Not so harsh. A bit more nuanced like in this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_East_L.A._(film)

Chong:)
Look here el fago, watch my lips
Where were ya born?

(Cheech:)
I was BORN IN EAST L.A.
Man, I was BORN IN EAST L.A.

(Chong:)
Oh yeah, you were BORN IN EAST L.A.
Let's see your green card

(Cheech:)
Huh? Green card?
I'm from East LA
by aaravchen | 2026-01-16 07:13:52+00:00
It's a manual for setup (in Farsi, you can click to other languages) that needs to be as accessible as possible to the least technology a literate people in the world as well as the ultra techy. Often people that have extremely limited data connection or no data connection as well. It has to be as simple as possible, and as clear as possible.

Check the main landing page and you can see it's a relatively modern site, they just gave a very restricted target audience the manual needs to be available for.
by aperturecjs | 2026-01-16 07:14:00+00:00
There are many environments that don't support WASM yet. Plus, JavaScript is a lot lighter weight for some things - particularly if you just need to register a bunch of callbacks that process data when events come in. I'm using WASM too quite a bit, though! Try out tinygo, gopherjs, or Go's built in wasm/wasi support for that.
by eschaton | 2026-01-16 07:14:40+00:00
My point is that as long as OpenBSD can boot like Linux, you just have to tell whatever VM front-end you’re using that you’re booting a Linux but give it an OpenBSD kernel and RAM disk.

Traditionally BSD has booted very differently than Linux, because Linus adopted the same boot process as MINIX when he first developed it (since he was actually using the MINIX boot blocks at first).

BSD has historically used a bootstrap that understands V7FS/FFS and can load a kernel from a path on it. MINIX takes the actual kernel and RAM disk images as parameters so it doesn’t need to know about filesystems, and that tradition continued with Linux bootstraps once it was standalone.
by aragilar | 2026-01-16 07:14:58+00:00
I think there's a fair amount of variability in experiences. I switched to AMD after getting fed up with multiple Nvidia cards having odd issues (though I'd use Nvidia if I were doing ML work). Mac hardware as a general rule has always been at least decent (if not good or better), but Mac software has generally been going downhill, so if for whatever reason Mac OSX/MacOS was not appropriate, it's easier to set up what you need on a non-Apple machine (of sufficient quality) than install a different OS on the Mac.
Show HN: AI agent that joins Google Meet/Zoom to give live product demos
by ajabhish | 2026-01-16 07:15:09+00:00
Built an AI agent that can join video calls and present demos using Google Slides. Customer can interrupt, ask questions, jump to specific sections, basically interact like they would with a human.

The idea: instead of waiting days/weeks to book a demo with a sales rep, you get one instantly.

Demo video: https://youtu.be/6Sft2Cu38CM

Would love feedback from HN. What's broken? What use cases would you want this for beyond sales demos?
by avaj03 | 2026-01-16 07:15:23+00:00
Hi HN,
I spent some time reconstructing the iconic Square Face Generator, a minimalist pixel avatar maker that was a staple of early 2010s internet culture (originally by Japanese artist h071019).
With the death of Flash, many of these creative "toy" sites vanished or became inaccessible. I wanted to bring this experience back using modern web standards while keeping the original charm.
Key features:
Digital Preservation: Runs the original assets via Ruffle (Flash emulator) integrated into a modern Next.js/React stack.
Privacy First: There are no server-side uploads. All image generation and customization happen entirely in the client's browser.
No Friction: No sign-ups, no tracking, and 100% free. I hate forced registrations as much as you do.
Modernized: Unlike the 2013 original, this version is mobile-responsive and exports high-res PNGs.
I built this primarily as a nostalgic archival project. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the UI or if anyone remembers using the original version back in the day!
by EMH12 | 2026-01-16 07:15:24+00:00
Create a highly realistic 3D isometric cutaway view of a 40-ft High Cube shipping container used for industrial crane component transportation.

The container doors are open, showing the interior loading arrangement clearly.

Loading details:
• At the front (nose) of the container, place two heavy non-stackable industrial components on wooden skids:
– One component sized 3300 × 1700 × 700 mm, 1800 kg
– One component sized 1900 × 1700 × 800 mm, 1500 kg
These items are on the floor only, with nothing stacked on top.

• In the center of the container, place large square wooden crates (1600 × 1600 × 700 mm) arranged in a grid, stacked 3 layers high, showing clear vertical stacking.

• Along both side walls, place long narrow steel components aligned lengthwise:
– Items sized 5600 × 400 mm
– Items sized 3300 × 300 mm and 3100 × 300 mm
These are floor-mounted and neatly secured.

• Near the door end and upper layers, place smaller boxed items (1900 × 200 × 300 mm) stacked 2 layers high on pallets.

Visual style:
• Professional industrial logistics visualization
• Clean wooden floor, steel container walls
• Neutral lighting, realistic shadows
• Clear spacing between items
• No people
• No clutter
• Engineering-accurate proportions

Optional text labels:
Add subtle labels showing item dimensions and weights for clarity.

Render quality: high-resolution, sharp, realistic, technical illustration suitable for operations planning and dispatch reference.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-16 07:18:07+00:00
If anyone told me that they are good at everything, it would show a lack of self awareness if they have only been working for three three or four years and would be an immediate red flag.

But your real issue is that you have a generic experience that really doesn’t stand out and the software development field is saturated. Yes I know everyone has to start somewhere. The market just really sucks right now and there really isn’t any reason for companies to hire junior developers when they can find their perfect match.
by aaravchen | 2026-01-16 07:18:13+00:00
Briar mentions "mailboxes", where you can stick up collectors wherever you want. It's not as nice as repeaters that would build a multihop mesh network for you, but one advantage of not doing multihop is that you get at least initial insecure identification before any identifiable secure communication is attempted so even if the Military Police are watching you, they won't be able to tell you even have Briar unless they can spoof a device for someone you have as a contact and have a waiting message for (or the BLE device ID of one of your mailbox devices). Those aren't hard to spoof, but learning what they are can be more difficult than if you're broadcasting to anyone that will listen like multihop requires.
by culebron21 | 2026-01-16 07:19:44+00:00
I live in a completely different city, a post-soviet one, with dense streets, 9-storey apartment buildings. But still it's hard to socialize. It's the same both in the center, and on the fringe with large micro-districts, where the density is the same, but people are less in haste, and there are less strangers. Same way, people are avoidant.

Like in subway you pretend that others don't exist, and it's hard to get closer with people. It can take months or years to start saying hello to a kiosk salesman you recognize. It's hard to get past by hello with the house neighbors. If you make steps forward, people are unease. Sometimes others are too quick with their steps, you get unease.

The most compelling theory I know is that you need to meet people occasionally, without intention, to deepen the relationships. If all your communication with someone is intentional, I guess, this feels awkward for both sides. I can confirm this from experience: living in a 80K town, I'd walk down the main street to the little shopping mall with a local supermarket for groceries, and would meet people I knew, or friends, and sometimes we'd go walking by the streets, with groceries bag in my hand :) or we planned to meet in 15 minutes. Or go to each other's home. This is hard to replicate in a big city, where even if you see a friend, he/she is usually in a hurry.

Near apartment blocks, there's no porch or garden or park, and even where there is one, I don't see locals sitting there regularly. People are very cautious, even suspicious of benches, because if there's a busy street nearby, once in a year there'll be a group of noisy young people sitting late at night, or one drunkard in a year, and everyone will get pissed off and want the bench removed. (If they allow to install it at all.)

Looking at some places, I theorized that maybe there should be a place where you could sit and let's say play board games _near_ those who come in and out. And of course, it should be indoors, because winters are long and cold. But But I'm not sure of a communal place indoors either. It could become a magnet for homeless, it can be a magnet for just the slacker drinking old men, and repel the rest of people. I've seen too many communities become place repulsive for "normies". Maintenance is a big question too.
by prmoustache | 2026-01-16 07:19:47+00:00
The key is: have a conversation starter.

It can be any other activity that requires more than one person. For example I started going to dance classes with my partner in november and what was just awkward "hello there" interactions before the holidays when we had to swap dance partners is now a bit more comfortable and we exchange a bit much and even have a chit chat after class at the door. It is waaaaaay too early to know if it will create new long term friends but the dynamic is here and after just a few weeks I can already spot the people I have absolutely no wish to know more about and those that I feel natural chatting with.
by Agent_Builder | 2026-01-16 07:20:39+00:00
Isolation at the infrastructure level makes sense, but in our experience it doesn’t solve the whole problem.

While building GTWY.ai, we noticed most real failures weren’t from agents escaping sandboxes, but from agents being allowed to do slightly too much across multiple steps.

Even inside strong isolation, step-level authority boundaries mattered more than heavier runtime isolation.

Curious whether you’ve seen similar issues where the bug wasn’t the environment, but the workflow itself.
by socalgal2 | 2026-01-16 07:21:58+00:00
See https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017715/Humanity-s-Last-Game-T... from 1hr and 17 second mark for ideas on how to make something survive.

honestly though, no one know how to make your "website" exist for 100years. Websites have only existed for ~35 years.
by koverstreet | 2026-01-16 07:21:59+00:00
I towed heavily loaded trailers - stuffed with books, tools, furniture, the trailer was loaded to the roof and I couldn't get up steep San Franscisco hills - to and from Alaska, and across the entire United States.

With an Impreza.

That included highways in the Yukon that were more river rock than gravel, backwoods of Montana and Wyoming, you name it.

It was totally fine. Especially in a Subaru, with AWD and a low well centered center of gravity. I'd do it again.