MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bikenaga | 2026-01-27 16:46:59+00:00
Abstract: "Rapid and high-impact journal publications are pivotal for career advancement in the current 'publish or perish' academic climate. In geosciences, such publications often follow catastrophic events like asteroid impacts, global tsunamis, and supervolcanic eruptions. One notable event, the explosive eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) volcano on January 15, 2022, led to six rapid publications in Nature and Science submitted within 2.5 months of the event, and over 200 papers indexed in Web of Science Core Collection in 2022 and 2023. This study quantifies their bibliometric variables and compares them to the bibliometric variables of other catastrophic events like global tsunamis, meteorite impacts, and climate extremes published in 2022. Additionally, survey of corresponding authors assessed opinions on various aspects of publication strategies. Findings reveal that HTHH-related articles experienced significantly faster evaluations and higher citation rates than on other topics, even in top-level letters geosciences journals such as Geophysical Research Letters. Most surveyed researchers viewed rapid publications as beneficial for career advancement but acknowledged the heightened risk of research misconduct. This study highlights the need for balancing the pursuit of knowledge dissemination and career progression with maintaining research integrity and advancing the understanding of Earth systems."
by heliumtera | 2026-01-27 16:47:07+00:00
Everyone (not really, but basically yes) associated with $current_thing is a rent seeking scammer.

Even if Blockchain has tremendous impact, even if transformers are incredible (really) technology, even if NFTs could solve real world problems...you could basically say the same thing and be right, rounding up, 100% of the time, about anything technology related (and everything else as well). This truly is a clown world, but it is illegal to challenge it (or considered bad faith around here)
by kube-system | 2026-01-27 16:47:35+00:00
Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology.

The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I would just walk in with my own bag, and put items directly from the shelf into the bag, and walk out the door. It was extremely convenient and fast once you got over how weird it felt.

I think they could have done a lot more in giving social clues on both the way in and way out.
by mmooss | 2026-01-27 16:47:40+00:00
Last I knew, the 3.3 mya evidence from the site Lomekwi 3 in Kenya was debatable, though a serious possibility, and the 2.58 mya evidence from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania was considered the sure thing.

Also, more than primates use tools: Many corvids (crows, ravens, etc.) do, as do other animals. Look up New Caledonian Crows in particular.

But don't take all this from HN commenters debating each other; find some authoritative sources. A recent review article in a scientific journal would be a great start. Google Scholar lets you search for review articles.
by agar | 2026-01-27 16:47:52+00:00
Because there is a law against people impeding or trying to influence people within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. Her admitted goal was trying to influence people entering. Will her defense be that she does not believe prayer has an influence on the world?

Most would agree that 150 people standing in front of the abortion clinic would obviously an attempt to impede or influence people. What if someone stands there "praying" but really noting faces and license plates for future harassment? Where does the law draw that line?

The ADF is a discriminatory, corrosive organization that has done real harm to millions by rolling back civil rights in the US, and now they have taken their agenda internationally.

The hypocrisy of calling this a "thought crime" is stunning. ADF is the same organization that brought a case against a Colorado law that banned discrimination against LGBTQ businesses, because a baker was worried she may have to bake a cake for a gay wedding - which she was never asked to do. So some thoughts are legally protected (prayer) while others (concern) are justifications to roll back civil rights. But the thoughts of others (terror and shame while entering an abortion clinic, feelings when discriminated against, love for a same sex partner) are irrelevant and not worthy of protection.

Their stated purpose is "advancing every person’s God-given right to live and speak the truth" - but only "live" and speak the "truth" that they deem to be correct, based on their evangelical and politically-charged interpretation of Christianity. And they want that legislated.
by abetusk | 2026-01-27 16:47:57+00:00
As others mentioned, tool use wasn't restricted to homo sapiens. I think this makes sense, no? We didn't spontaneously use tools, it must have evolved incrementally in some way.

I think we see shades of this today. Bearded Capuchin monkeys chain a complex series of tasks and use tools to break nuts. From a brief documentary clip I saw [0], they first take the nut and strip away the outer layer of skin, leave it dry out in the sun for a week, then find a large soft-ish rock as the anvil with a heavier smaller rock to break open the nut. So they had to not only figure out that nuts need to be pre-shelled and dried, but that they needed a softer rock for the anvil and harder rock for the hammer. They also need at least some type of bipedal ability to carry the rock in the first place and use it as a hammer.

Apparently some white-faced Capuchins have figured out that they can soak nuts in water to soften it before hammering it open [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFWTXU2jE14

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7sJq2XUiy8
by lenerdenator | 2026-01-27 16:48:34+00:00
That's... not what I'm saying?

The US has traditionally had at least some counterweight to the state, in the form of a free press, free speech, opposition parties, checks and balances in branches of government, and an armed populace. The effectiveness of these measures has varied over time but there has never been a point when any single institution had control over the United States to the point that the CPC has control over mainland China.

People are concerned that the US is taking an authoritarian bent under Trump, and many of the tactics being used would lead to a state far more similar to the PRC than the historical US.
by Moldoteck | 2026-01-27 16:48:37+00:00
There are some very recent arsenic spills events in copper mines...

Nuclear fuel can be recycled, just like renewables. It's mostly not done because it's cheaper not to, just like in renewables

The danger was known based on multiple data points. Japanese govt ignored them. And they acknowledged evacuation was not necessary in the way it was implemented

Capacity factor is important to understand how much firming you need
by benterix | 2026-01-27 16:48:43+00:00
Yes, the USA did the same with Assange. The same with Chelsea Manning - she was accused of treason and basically faced capital punishment at some point. I'm grateful to Obama that he basically saved her life.

But in Russia, this is on a completely another level. Especially if you started the business in the 90s, there is no way they couldn't dig up any dirt on you.
by kipchak | 2026-01-27 16:48:43+00:00
Given the details mentioned (9 guard deaths) the "unconfirmed reports" is probably referring to the x post[1] mentioned in the peoplenewstoday.com article. Personally word not somehow getting out of dozens of people being shot seems hard to believe, though not impossible.

[1]https://x.com/ShengXue_ca/status/2015122407736963455
by storystarling | 2026-01-27 16:48:44+00:00
I ran into this exact trade-off when migrating a legacy inventory system to event sourcing. The refinement mapping concept is elegant, but implementing it as a live SQL view over the event table killed our read performance once the volume picked up.

We eventually had to materialize the view to keep latencies acceptable, which introduces its own complexity with lag and invalidation. It seems like you always pay the tax somewhere—either in the query cost or in managing the state of the read model.
by mrexcess | 2026-01-27 16:48:48+00:00
>It isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see.

If your prosperity depends on using technocracy to deny 1.3 billion people the ability to communicate and share ideas with your citizens, a few things are true:

1) You have created a digital iron curtain

2) You are doomed because information wants to be free

3) If you succeed the result will be war, the only thing left when communication breaks down
by roflcopter69 | 2026-01-27 16:48:52+00:00
Also, let's not forget he's the one who brought Swift to the Godot engine https://github.com/migueldeicaza/SwiftGodot

Related, for everyone interested into Godot + Swift, check out https://github.com/johnsusek/SwiftGodotBuilder I think Swift might soon be a crazy ergonomic language to make Godot games.
by 6stringmerc | 2026-01-27 16:50:01+00:00
In my view the people, no matter walk of life or education level or societal class, who ask “AI” systems mental or physical health questions are modern day incarnations of customers who went to palm readers, tarot card sessions, or used to rely on televangelists for hope and meaning.

I strongly dislike the author conflating HIPAA with PHI but this is a losing battle for me. And clearly editors don’t spot it, neither do AI systems - where is Clippy?! It simply serves as an indicator the author is a pretty ignorant medical consumer in the US, and this case study is stunning. Some people really should not be allowed to engage with magic.
by GregarianChild | 2026-01-27 16:50:27+00:00
There are some issues arising from size inconsistencies (AKA Cantor's Paradox) if / when you try to fit the representation of all internal choices (this could be infinite) into a small universe of a theorem prover's inductive types. The ChoiceTree paper solves this with a specific encoding. I'm currently wondering how to port this trick from COq/Rocq to Lean4.
Show HN: Kalibr – Autonomous Routing for AI Agents
by devonkelley | 2026-01-27 16:51:09+00:00
Hey HN, we’re Devon and Alex from Kalibr (https://kalibr.systems).

Kalibr is an autonomous routing system for AI agents. It replaces human debugging with an outcome-driven learning loop. On every agent run, it decides which execution path to use based on what is actually working in production.

An execution path is a full strategy, not just a model: model + tools + parameters.

Most agents hardcode one path. When that path degrades or fails, a human has to notice, debug, change configs, and redeploy. Even then, the fix often doesn’t stick because models and tools keep changing.

I got tired of being the reliability layer for my own agents. Kalibr replaces that.

With Kalibr, you register multiple paths for a task. You define what success means. After each run, your code reports the outcome. Kalibr captures telemetry on every run, learns from outcomes, and routes traffic to the path that’s working best while continuously canarying your alternative paths. When one path degrades or fails, traffic shifts immediately. No alerts, no dashboards and no incident response.

How is this different from other routers or observability tools?

Most routers choose between models using static rules or offline benchmarks. Observability tools show traces and metrics but still require humans to act. Kalibr is outcome-aware and autonomous. It learns directly from production success and changes runtime behavior automatically. It answers not “what happened?” but “what should my agent do next?”

We’re not a proxy. Calls go directly to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. We’re not a retry loop. Failed paths are routed away from, not retried blindly. Success rate always dominates; cost and latency only matter when success rates are close.

Python and TypeScript SDKs. Works with LangChain, CrewAI, and the OpenAI Agents SDK. Decision latency is ~50ms. If Kalibr is unavailable, the Router falls back to your first path.

Think of it as if/else logic for agents that rewrites itself based on real production outcomes.

We’ve been running this with design partners and would love feedback. Always curious how others are handling agent reliability in production.

GitHub: https://github.com/kalibr-ai/kalibr-sdk-python

Docs & benchmarks: https://kalibr.systems/docs
by dkarl | 2026-01-27 16:51:37+00:00
The latter can be applicable to the former. Traditionally the connection was acknowledged, with Socrates the prototype of the philosopher who believed that happiness, ethical living, and philosophy were inextricably linked. Obviously philosophy has come a long way since Socrates, but academic philosophers continue to give lip service to the idea that philosophy can be valuable in everyday living, if not in ethics then in processing information, critiquing arguments, and understanding the origins and limitations of ideas.
by dehrmann | 2026-01-27 16:51:51+00:00
There are a few distinct things here. Learning 6502 assembly is straightforward, and you'd be better learning about simple (not modern) assembly languages at a high level--opcodes, registers, noop, branch, jump, compare, accumulators, program counters, and clock cycles. From there, start writing 6502 in an emulator and seeing what happens. That's where you're going to learn, and the feedback will be a lot faster. Programming for an Apple II will be more about learning how to interact with devices through memory.
by Bluecobra | 2026-01-27 16:51:58+00:00
Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with their nonsense is that some of their prices are insane and they have easy returns, for example $0.85 for a box of Barilla pasta. They actually don’t accept returns in store and just refund you automatically in the app (Returnless returns). It’s pretty silly and rife for abuse.

I also found a loophole with the Amazon.com return grocery credit. The systems are separate for the $10 off $40 coupon and you just scan a QR code in the store to get it. It turns out you can just take a photo of their QR code and reuse it over and over again.
by amazari | 2026-01-27 16:52:24+00:00
You know that all the Wayland primitives, event handling and drawing in gnome-shell are handled in C/native code through Mutter, right ?
The JavaScript in gnome-shell is the cherry on top for scripting, similar to C#/Lua (or any GCed language) in game engines, elisp in Emacs, event JS in QtQuick/QML.

It is not the performance bottleneck people seem to believe.
by throwaw12 | 2026-01-27 16:52:29+00:00
> because they see Mullah’s regime as one of their biggest allies when it comes to attack West/Israel/Free market

you are looking it differently, I disagree, I am one of those who supported Palestine.

Reason we are silent, because our governments already did what's needed from our side: heavily sanctioned the Iran, if I go and protest, what do I ask? To sanction Iran? They would laugh at me. Obviously, I am not going to protest and ask our government to go to war with Iran, which kills even more people.

Why is it different for Israel? Because our government supported it, we didn't sanction them, that was what we were asking for, while brutality was even higher than Iranian regime.

Not trying to downplay casualties, but just looking at relative numbers and methods, I don't see Iran bombing own people or killing 10% of its own population
by LexiMax | 2026-01-27 16:52:32+00:00
> This will sound crazy but this is why I still use 4chan. Everyone is anonymous, there is no voting, and the only moderation is to remove illegal things or flagrant rule breaking.

The problem with 4chan is that the loudest voices are the ones that have no lives, and can flood the board with their bullshit. You could be having a conversation with someone in one thread, meanwhile they're busy posting about the same damn thing in 3-4 other threads at the same time.

And that's assuming the person on the other end is real. These days, there are bot armies of paid shills or AI to worry about, flooding the zone with their narrative to the point where your voice gets drowned out.

You cannot have a decent social space without some form of active moderation and some protection against sockpuppeting. Not every place with both of those gets it right, but without both you're guaranteed to fail, and 4chan has neither.
by MikeTheGreat | 2026-01-27 16:52:59+00:00
I don't know what your life/lives are like, and far be it for me to tell you how to live, but if your schedule allows it try shopping later at night.

I show up at CostCo, on weekdays, like 30 minutes before closing time and it's _wonderful_. Few people, nobody blocking lanes while they consider their choices, etc. Same goes for Safeway, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, etc.

It doesn't work so great if you've got young kids, or you want to come home from work and just stay home (reasonable), but it's worth considering :)
by wduquette | 2026-01-27 16:53:10+00:00
The article has a graphic contrasting a "Random" distribution vs. a "Universal" distribution vs. a "Periodic" distribution. I'm guessing the "Random" distribution is actually a Poisson distribution, as that arises naturally in several cases.

But the big question is, does this "Universal" distribution match up to any well known probability distribution? Or could it be described by a relatively simple probability distribution function?
by Uehreka | 2026-01-27 16:53:34+00:00
I would not call this “basic automation”. I’m also not saying “this dude cracked the orchestration code” (you’re free to be mad at people who are, but I feel like it’s more interesting to engage with the people who aren’t).

I will say that Gas Town is the most maximalist approach I’ve seen to accounting for the myriad flaws of current generation agents, essentially treating them as cattle and seeing if something of worth can be gained from a sort of brute force approach. I think that’s interesting, and I’m glad that someone built a (somewhat) working system to show what happens if you do that, because no one has built something like this (in public) before.

Overall I think it’s way better to think about this as a big gift basket full of ideas. Take the ones you like, regift the almonds to your cousin if you don’t like them. If someone sees me eating Gas Town banana cream truffle and goes “ZOMG, I NEED TO BUY $GAS NOW.” then that’s their problem, as neither Steve Yegge nor I are telling them to do that.
by vel0city | 2026-01-27 16:53:36+00:00
I saw these in several different airports. It usually had multiple people staffed at the gate to get in and out meanwhile most of the other snack vendors often only had a single person employed.

So you spend a few hundred thousand dollars extra on all the cameras, many millions on all the design, pay all the overseas contractors to manually review the transactions, and you still end up with twice the in-person staff than the average store in the airport.
by vidarh | 2026-01-27 16:53:39+00:00
I think the human + agent thing absolutely will make a huge difference. I see regularly that Claude can totally off piste and eventually claw itself back with a proper agent setup but it will take a lot of time if I don't spot it and get it back on track.

I have one project Claude is working on right now where I'm testing a setup to attempt to take myself more out of the loop, because that is the hard part. It's "easy" to get an agent to multiply your output. It's hard to make that scale with your willingness to spend on tokens rather than with your ability to read and review and direct.

I've ended up with roughly this (it's nothing particularly special):

- Runs a evaluator that evaluates the current state and assigns scores across multiple metrics.
- If a given score is above a given threshold, expand the test suite automatically.
- If the score is below a given threshold, spawn a "research agent" that investgates why the scores don't meet expectations.
- The research agent delivers a report, that is passed to an implementation agent.
- The main agent re-runs the scoring, and if it doesn't show an improvement on one or more of the metrics, the commit is discarded, and notes made of what was tried, and why it failed.

It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right (e.g. "it's the test suite that is wrong" came up early, and the main agent was almost talked into revising the test suite to remove the "problematic" tests) but a division sort of like this lets Claude do more sensible stuff for me. Throwing away commits feels drastic - an option is to let it run a little cycle of commit -> evaluate -> redo a few times before the final judgement, maybe - but it so far it feels like it'll scale better. Less crap makes it into the project.

And I think this will work better than to treat these agents as if they are developers whose output costs 100x as much. Code so cheap it is disposable should change the workflows.

So while I agree this is a better demonstration of a good way to build a browser, it's a less interesting demonstration as well. Now that we've seen people show that something like FastRender is possible, expect people to experiment with similarly ambitious projects but with more thought put into scoring/evaluation, including on code size and dependencies.
by usrbinbash | 2026-01-27 16:53:50+00:00
> Spending 4 years evaluating something that’s changing every month means almost nothing, sorry.

No need to be sorry. Because, if we accept that premise, you just countered your own argument.

If me evaluating these things for the past 4 years "means almost nothing" because they are changing sooo rapidly...then by the same logic, any experience with them also "means almost nothing". If the timeframe to get any experience with these models befor said experience becomes irelevant is as short as 90 days, then there is barely any difference between someone with experience and someone just starting out.

Meaning, under that premise, as long as I know how to code, I can evaluate these models, no matter how little I use them.

Luckily for me though, that's not the case anyway because...

> It’s about “if you last tried it more than 3 months ago,

...guessss what: I try these almost every week. It's part of my job to do so.
by Groxx | 2026-01-27 16:53:56+00:00
Definitely agreed. I find them most useful for self-review before submitting: I have enough context to quickly reject a lot of the noise, and the rare instances when they find something significant saves multiple people a lot of time.

Which doesn't work very well when the llm wrote it in the first place, of course - then everything is hard to check. Which is just one small part of why I don't generally use them for anything not trivial, where they can be simply a faster boilerplate-type or pattern-aware find-and-replace.
by augusteo | 2026-01-27 16:54:00+00:00
The irony of a site about AI opt-outs getting hammered by AI scrapers is almost too on the nose.

trollbridge's point about scrapers using residential IPs and targeting authentication endpoints matches what we've seen. The scrapers have gotten sophisticated. They're not just crawling, they're probing.

The economics are broken. Running a small site used to cost almost nothing. Now you need to either pay for CDN/protection or spend time playing whack-a-mole with bad actors.

ronsor hosting a front-page HN project on 32MB RAM is impressive and also highlights how much bloat we've normalized. The scraper problem is real, but so is the software efficiency problem.