MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by voidhorse | 2026-01-16 15:34:11+00:00
Ok sure, that's fine, but not everyone agrees with those definitions, so I would suggest you define the terms in the README.

Also your definition is still problematic and circular. You say that a system has a self if it performs "recursive self modeling", but this implies that the system already has a "self" ("self-modeling") in order to have a self.

What you likely mean, and what most of the cyberneticists mean when they talk about this, is that the system has some kind of representation of the system which it operates on and this is what we call the self. But things still aren't so straightforward. What is the nature of this representation? Is the kind of representation we do as humans and a representation of the form you are exploring here equivalent enough that you can apply terms like "self" and "consciousness" unadorned?

This definitely helps me understand your perspective, and as a fan of cybernetics myself I appreciate it. I would just caution to be more careful about the discourse. If you throw important sounding words around lightly people (as I have) will come to think you're engaged in something more artistic and entertaining than carefully philosophical or technical.
by mrweasel | 2026-01-16 15:34:20+00:00
Most of the "AI" features added in Firefox makes no sense. They provide very little value to most people, but they are unreasonably hard to disable. Other than jumping the AI bandwagon, I have yet to understand why Mozilla keeps pushing AI features.

Microsoft and Google I can understand, they have AI products they desperately need to monetize or push to as many users as possible, because management bonuses are tied to CoPilot or Gemini adoption.

I don't see it as hating on AI, just because it's AI. It's not wanting pointless AI features in products that don't need them. I've pretty much disabled anything in the ml namespace in about:config in Firefox, because the features are distracting, but provide absolutely no value to me.
by alephnerd | 2026-01-16 15:34:21+00:00
1. American state minimum wage supersedes the national minimum wage [0]

2. The median household income in Japan is significantly below the US ($25,000 [1] versus $83k [2]), let alone other OECD members.

[0] - https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage...

[1] - https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/mro/2029703?display=1

[2] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
by diogenescynic | 2026-01-16 15:34:49+00:00
Honestly, this conflict has been brewing for decades. The federal government controls immigration law, not cities. So when a city declares itself a 'sanctuary city' they are flouting the law. I feel like Trump is going to end up arresting the mayors of these sanctuary cities if it keeps going like this.

I also think it's entirely hypocritical for democrats to just bring in tens of millions of illegal immigrants then cry when the next president goes in the opposite direction.

Also, when Obama deported 3M+ illegals, the sanctuary cities helped and the media didn't cover it like it was Nazi Germany. What changed? Why can't we just go back to having a rule of law? Why can every other country in the world have borders except ours?
by floatrock | 2026-01-16 15:34:55+00:00
from the article:

> But the restaurant industry fights to limit food trucks. On average, food trucks must handle 45 separate regulatory procedures and spend $28,276 on associated fees.

Lets napkin-math this. If we assume a food truck has margins at the upper end of the fast-casual industry of 9%, then each $18 burger-and-fries nets 1.62 in profit.

$28,276 / 1.62 = 17,454 burgers-and-fries.

If you were open every day of the year and assume no seasonality, that means your first 49 orders every day go just to regulatory fees.

And that doesn't cover any of the other fees and expenses a food truck might have.

Those are brutal economics. I'm impressed it's only $18!
by botanrice | 2026-01-16 15:34:58+00:00
https://concourse.codes - personal site (HTML/CSS, as minimal JS as possible)

https://borice.exposed - enigmatic mysterious artist website :P B)

--
various works in progress, maybe someone will find neat or helpful or dumb as hell and want to say as such lol:

https://colors.concourse.codes - crowdsource color palettes for music (wip)

https://arena.concourse.codes - fine tune nano banana from any are.na channel (pass is arena)

https://rej.concourse.codes - is MassSave environmentally just? (Massachusetts energy efficiency program)

https://newsdash.concourse.codes - latest climate news sourced across the web by gemini. lil experiment to recreate a perplexity capability for myself.
by troyvit | 2026-01-16 15:35:06+00:00
That's a good idea from the user perspective. I jumped on the aider bandwagon and am now dealing with its relative abandonment and deciding if I want to invest time in a fork.

As a movement though it might be something else. To me, Claude is trying to build a moat around tooling, but due to the nature of their own core product that moat is becoming easier and easier to bridge. What does that mean for them?
by haizhung | 2026-01-16 15:35:20+00:00
This apparent conundrum breaks away if you consider who holds the wealth now vs. in the 60s. In the 60s-70s, there was a wealth tax in Germany. Shortly after WW2, a law was drafted to redistribute wealth: All individuals and companies whose assets remained largely intact were required to pay 50% of their net wealth (as assessed on the day of the 1948 currency reform).

This means that the working class had immense wealth and so simple jobs could support a family on a single income, buy a house, etc.

Compare that to today — the two richest families in Germany hold more wealth than the bottom 50% COMBINED.

It is no wonder that normal families cannot afford to buy property anymore; and are forced to rent. This further exacerbates the wealth gap.

Another nice statistic is the productivity VS wage VS pensions curve: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KDug!,f_auto,q_auto:...

(Black line - GDP, blue line - avg comp; red line - avg pension)

In short - the productivity increased; but ordinary people are being squeezed out of the gains regardless. No wonder that everyone turns sour at some point.
by observationist | 2026-01-16 15:35:34+00:00
Locks are not security, in the sense that you're using. A sledgehammer goes right through 90% of them, or the hasps or latches secured by them. A competent lockpicking enthusiast will take two or three minutes to go through almost any of them. Someone motivated to get in with foreknowledge of the lock type can simply use a $200 camera and photograph your keyring from a couple blocks away, then 3d print all the keys on the ring and walk right in.

Law enforcement can use pick guns, which will open a large majority of door locks, if they don't want to just use a battering ram for some reason.

There are a ton of legitimate reasons to use lock picks, though - being able to use a pair of paperclips, or office supplies, can get you into network cabinets in a pinch, or if you lock your keys in your house or car and have a pick kit in your wallet. If a friend has an emergency and they know you can do it, it can save locksmith fees. Kids can lose keys in astonishing ways.

And the hobby is fun - it's manual dexterity, skill, obscure technical knowledge, and you gain an appreciation for all the lockpicking content out there, and get to see the brazen plot devices when movies portray lockpicking in ridiculous ways. There are engineering attempts at creating unpickable locks with some awesome youtube videos, with engineering geeks creating elaborate locks and shipping them to the lockpickinglawyer or other content creators.

It's also important from an educational standpoint. Knowing how secure you are is important, because assumptions can lead to tragic results. If you have a glass door, it doesn't matter if you've got a million dollar unpickable lock. If you know how trivial it is to open most padlocks, and what form factors of locks are most susceptible, you can make better decisions about securing storage units, trailers, outdoor gates, bikes, and so forth.

A device like this is a novelty, not a serious security threat, and I'd argue the threshold for building it exceeds the threshold for which there are a thousand other trivially accessible ways of bypassing a given lock. There are tools similar to this device in spirit, in which you set pins for a key type manually with the key inserted, and with a little practice, will get you through a door in under a minute.

Start here and enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ
Show HN: Spent 2.5 years building better job search (now using it to find a job)
by KernelPryanic | 2026-01-16 15:35:43+00:00
Hello HN! After 2.5 years of development, I'm sharing Job Search Assistant (https://jsa.works) - even though I still don't feel quite ready. It's an open alpha of a job search platform that actually matches positions to your resume properly.

The problem: Major platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. have terrible search despite huge resources. Search for "senior backend engineer" and you'll get frontend internships in the top results. They optimize for engagement, not relevance.

My solution: JSA uses LLMs for resume/job parsing and semantic vector search for matching. Upload your resume, set filters, get jobs that actually fit your profile. Clean interface, no noise. Only fresh jobs (15-day retention) to avoid stale listings for now. Freemium model - essential search/filters are free with reasonable limits, paid tier adds kanban-style application tracking.

Tech stack: ~78k lines of Go backend organized as microservices (scraper, indexer, searcher, etc.) communicating via NATS. Qdrant for vector search, PostgreSQL for relational data. HTMX frontend (shoutout to my friend @romshark who introduced me to HTMX - I'm not a frontend expert, so this is where AI agents helped to finish it). Scraping with go-rod. Self-hosted on a mini-PC in my utility room with scrapers running on Raspberry Pi - no cloud, just bare metal. Only SSO via Google/Microsoft for now.

The scraping challenge: Modern job boards have sophisticated anti-bot measures. I built a simple deterministic fingerprint generator (https://github.com/chinese-room-solutions/fakebro) using Wave Function Collapse-like generation to create coherent browser profiles from a seed - matching user agents, Client Hints, and WebGL renderers that correspond to real hardware. The platform scraper rotates Chrome versions with unique fingerprints and handles Cloudflare challenges.

Current status: Amsterdam and Paris only (data collection is expensive). If there's demand, I'll expand to EU and beyond. I'm using it myself right now to job hunt in those cities.

Open alpha means bugs are expected, but I'm actively improving stability. The codebase is mostly pre-2025 human-written code, though AI agents helped me push through to completion in late 2025 after I went through the literal hell, mentally, and managed to stay alive and almost recover by the end the year.

Fun story: Google suspended the project's GCP account citing "policy violations" with zero details or successful appeals, so I'm running Google SSO from my personal account for now. Classic cloud provider experience these days.

Would love feedback, especially from folks in Amsterdam/Paris who could use this!
by linsomniac | 2026-01-16 15:36:56+00:00
>I don't see any good [skills] examples out there

`/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills`

https://github.com/anthropics/skills

2 days ago I built a skill to automate a manual workflow I was using: After Claude writes and commits some code, have Codex review that code and have Claude go back and address what Codex finds. I used this process to implement a fairly complete Docusign-like service, and it did a startlingly good job right out of the gate, the bugs were fairly shallow. In my manual review of the Codex findings, it seems to be producing good results.

Claude Code largely built that skill for me.

Implemented as a skill and I've been using it for the last 2 days to implement a "retrospective meeting runner" web app. Having it as a skill completely automates the code->review->rework step.
by bflesch | 2026-01-16 15:36:56+00:00
Google has carte blanche to lie to foreigners for national security purposes, it's not even illegal for them. The data is fed into the mass surveillance systems.

IP, user agent, language headers and network timings are enough to fingerprint and associate you with any other accounts at US tech companies. The visited website is linked via Referer / Origin headers to your browsing history.

All of this tracking is passive and there is no way to check for an independent observer.

Yet here you are defending the most privacy invasive company on the planet.
by al_borland | 2026-01-16 15:37:03+00:00
I've been using Kagi for several years and find it much better than Google. I've not been tempted to go back, like I always was with DuckDuckGo and others.

It seems like Qwant is ad supported[0], yet I don't see any ads in my first couple searches. I wonder if this is a, "the first hit is free", situation, or my ad blocker just took care of it. I do wonder how this will play out long-term.

Qwant did bring up a page when I tried the second search to make me slide something to verify I'm human. That was enough of an annoyance that I will stick with Kagi.

[0] https://help.qwant.com/en/docs/overview/how-does-qwant-make-...
by throwaway2037 | 2026-01-16 15:37:08+00:00
I love comments like this. You pop out of your (presumably New Zealand) prepper bomb shelter to get enough WiFi signal to make a post. I will bet against people like you all day long and make lots of money. How much are you willing to bet that there will be civil war in the US in 2026? Let's meet on PolyMarket!
by fakedang | 2026-01-16 15:37:29+00:00
Actually, it seems China has given up on the feasibility of BRI because they don't control all the variables in their partner countries. Which is why Xi has been super focused on creating an autarkic economy dependent on domestic demand and encouraging production for the native population, as a back up. Failures in helping industrialize countries such as Pakistan and those in Africa due to systemic and unavoidable issues have soured on the Chinese. That autarkic vision hinges strongly on a solid renewables energy production base.
by tech_tuna | 2026-01-16 15:37:33+00:00
There's a crazy amount of hype, fear and blatant lies in the mix. And the pace is absolutely bonkers. The pace of announcements is even more bonkers. Maybe things will settle down to a new normal at some point.

You might think that everyone has FOMO or is an anti-AI Luddite when of course there are a LOT of us somewhere in the middle, just trying to get our work done and trying to figure out what our careers will look like in 5-10 years.

One big thing that no one seems to talk about - GenAI is unlocking many new (and oftentimes "small") business ideas that were not practical just a few years ago. I have witnessed this firsthand. . . however, it will also take away jobs. How many, who knows?

tl;dr everyone is full of shit or selling something or terrified to the point where they can't think straight. And no one has a crystal ball.
by MontyCarloHall | 2026-01-16 15:38:00+00:00
Of course it's much better, Schongauer was ~25 when he did the engraving. Michelangelo was 12 when he copied it. Likewise, it goes without saying that Haydn's symphonies circa 1765 were much better than Mozart's from the same time, since Haydn was ~30 years old and Mozart was ~10 years old.

The remarkable thing about the painting/symphonies isn't the absolute quality of the work, it's that they showcase the artists' intrinsic talents.
by csomar | 2026-01-16 15:38:43+00:00
Nextjs doesn’t really work on cloudflare with the latest versions. There is an adapter but it’s buggy as hell. The direction is also likely to continue: https://omarabid.com/nextjs-vercel

Source: I use cloudflare and used to run my app there (nextjs) and had to do a migration to vite.js. So the way I see it, this is cloudflare response to vercel.
by vablings | 2026-01-16 15:39:12+00:00
You make stuff like this too easy

>Real quackery is allowing people to go to the supermarket all the time but disallowing them to exercise in the park. Or telling people not to talk to their neighbors over the fence but allowing international flights to continue.

Supermarket is critical for food, not exercising in the park for a couple of weeks is NOT going to kill you

>I remember walking on a local government run public golf course once so that I could exercise well away from people, only to have someone come within two metres of me telling me I was endangering them. Yet my local supermarket had dozens of people wandering around inside it. I'm told those kind of contradictions were normal.

The government response in hindsight was probably overblown in terms of risk management but for the most part in the UK the actions taken reduced the spread until the vaccine and other infrastructure was in place so I would say it succeeded. All of the rules, regulations and laws have been rolled back/unwound and society is back to normal.

>You know fine well that many places encouraged their citizens to download apps onto their phones for QR codes or tracking their location. That was publicly advertised in many of them by TV.

https://transform.england.nhs.uk/covid-19-response/nhs-covid...

"The app has been designed with user privacy in mind, so it tracks the virus not people, and uses the latest in data security technology to protect privacy. The system generates a random ID for an individual’s device, which can be exchanged between devices via Bluetooth (not GPS). These unique random IDs regenerate frequently to add an extra layer of security and preserve anonymity. "

There was no legal requirement to download the app and use it just FYI
by jmathai | 2026-01-16 15:39:24+00:00
> when Obama deported 3M+ illegals, the sanctuary cities helped and the media didn't cover it like it was Nazi Germany

Perhaps it has to do with the method used?

I don't think most people are in favor of illegal immigration. That would be an extremist view. Most people are probably somewhere in the middle and I don't think that band is too wide.
by Ray20 | 2026-01-16 15:39:37+00:00
> I like rule of law and due process.

Many people like this. It's just that the choice, as far as I understand, is not between rule of law and authoritarian dictatorship.

> I like the Constitution and its balance of powers.

And here, frankly speaking, I'm unfamiliar with the American Constitution in these aspects. How does it work? Does it only protect citizens? Or residents too? Does it protect illegal aliens too? Does it protect everyone in the world? Or does it operate on territorial principles, and begin to protect any person who sets foot on American soil, but does not protect everyone else?
by newyankee | 2026-01-16 15:39:37+00:00
Honestly, at this point, may be someone can collect a bunch of like minded individuals and build a city from scratch that ticks all the boxes instead of fighting existing vested interests. Then, hopefully it can be a model for others to review and check.

The problem with US or any other country is that too many things that should not be ideological become ideological. So many people would be happy to live in a 1400 sq ft 3 bedroom house over 2500 sq ft single family homes if a lot of other things were provided.
by mothballed | 2026-01-16 15:39:42+00:00
Having lived in 3rd world I do find food safety regulations to be a bad thing. You can get sick as rarely as you do in regulated countries by following some simple rules in places without regulations. I go to places where I can watch the food being prepared. And make sure it is hot when you eat it. Simple things like this.

I have not gotten sick in places like Syria, Iraq, Philippines, etc any more than I do in the US by following simple rules. Yes you have to pay attention but to be honest, you should be applying these rules in USA too, because food inspector and zoning mostly there to protect big business through barrier of entry; they don't actually do that good a job of inspecting or enforcing the rules.

The plus here is in places without these regulation the street is full of these tasty food vendors, even more than Japan. It is well worth the lack of safety regulations.
by groby_b | 2026-01-16 15:39:47+00:00
> GP said 'open bar with 2 bartenders'. I.e. commercially priced drinks, and staff.

GP here, and no, that doesn't mean that.

It means you hire 2 bartenders to make the drinks, and you buy the supplies they use.

And, no, if you want a cocktail party, you don't "plonk a few cases of drinks on the table". That's also a fun party, but a different kind.
by kamaal | 2026-01-16 15:40:23+00:00
Before personal computer revolution, compute time and even development/test time on a large computers back then was rationed.

One can imagine how development would work in a ecosystem like that. You have to understand both the problem, and your solution, and you need to be sure it would work before you start typing it out at a terminal.

This the classic Donald Knuth workflow. Like he is away disconnected from a computer for long periods of time, focussed on the problems and solutions, and he is working them out on paper and pen. Until he has arrived solutions that just work, correctly. And well enough to be explained in a text book.

When you take this away. You also take away the need to put in hard work required to make things work correctly. Take a look at how many Java devs are out there who try to use a wrong data structure for the problem, and then try to shoe horn their solution to roughly fit the problem. Eventually solution does work for some acceptable inputs, and remainder is left to be discovered by an eventual production bug. Stackoverflow is full of such questions.

Languages like Prolog just don't offer that sort of freedom. And you have to be in some way serious about what you are doing in terms of truly understanding both the problem and solution well enough to make them work.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-01-16 15:40:30+00:00
By default, the mobile app continually tries to connect to "updates2.signal.org"

Perhaps manual, user-controlled updates is not part of the design

If the source code is available^1 then surely someone has modified it to remove the phone number requirement, not to mention other improvements

1. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

It seems like Signal may be another example of "read-only" open source, where there is no expectation anyone will actually try to _use_ the source code. Instead, there is an expectation that everyone will use binaries distributed by a third party and allow remote installlation of any software on their computers _at the third party's discretion_. In other words, all users will cede control to a third party

NB. This comment is not referring to the "Signal protocol". It pertains to _control_ over the software that implements it
by diogenescynic | 2026-01-16 15:40:40+00:00
>Perhaps it has to do with the method used?

It was different because the sanctuary cities turned over lists of the students whose parents weren't citizens. It made it a lot easier. Also no media coverage. You won't know if the tactics were any different because democrat cities actually complied with the law. Again, it goes to democrats being hypocrites and selectively caring/enforcing issues when they think people are paying attention.

>I don't think most people are in favor of illegal immigration. That would be an extremist view. Most people are probably somewhere in the middle and I don't think that band is too wide.

Yep, I live in California and we require immigration for a lot of jobs and industries. I'm not against immigration... in a past life I worked in immigration law. I am against this selective enforcement of the law depending on who is the President. You can't run a country like this.