MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by observationist | 2026-01-28 21:56:20+00:00
There's this notion of software maintenance - that software which serves a purpose must be perennially updated and changed - which is a huge, rancid fallacy. If the software tool performs the task it's designed to perform, and the user gets utility out of it, it doesn't matter if the software is a decade old and hasn't been updated.

Sometimes it might, if there are security implications. You might need to fix bugs in networking code, or update crypto handling, or whatever, and those types of things are fine. The idea that you can't have legitimately useful one-off software, used by millions, despite not being updated, is a silly artifact of the MBA takeover of big tech.

Continuous development is not intrinsic to the "goodness" of software. Sometimes it's a big disappointment if software hasn't been updated consistently, but other times, it just doesnt matter. I've got scripts, little apps, tools, things that I've used, sometimes daily, for over a decade, that never ever ever get updated, and I'd be annoyed if I had to. They have simple tasks to perform that they do well; you dont need all the rest of the "and now we have liquid glass icons! oh, and mandatory telemetry, and if you want ads to go away, you must pay for a premium subscription"

The value is in the utility - the work done by the software. How much effort and maintenance goes into creating it often has nothing to do with how useful it is.

Look at windows 11 - hundreds of billions of dollars and years of development and maintenance and it's a steaming pile of horseshit. They're driving people to Linux in record numbers.

Blender is a counter example. They're constructive and deliberate.

What's likely to happen is everyone will have AI access to built-on-the-fly apps and tools that they retain for future use, and platforms will consolidate and optimize the available tools, and nobody will need to vibe-code or engage in extensive software development when their AI butler can do all the software work they might need done.
by Ugyen_Tech | 2026-01-28 21:56:37+00:00
Hi HN,

Most AI agents are currently "tested by vibes." You change a prompt, run it 5 times, and pray it doesn't break a core workflow in production. We’re building Hopeless to close the loop between testing and production for agentic AI.

What we have:
1. Real-time Monitoring: See where an agent’s logic actually diverged.
2. Simulation Sandbox: Replay production failures against new prompts before you ship.
3. Fast Iteration: We’ve shipped 3 versions in 4 weeks based on dev feedback.

My Request: We are looking for 2-3 design partners building B2B AI agents (support, legal, sales). We aren't looking for a check—we want to help you solve your messiest reliability issues in exchange for your feedback.

If you’re stuck in "pilot purgatory" because you don't trust your agent to scale, I'd love to help you build the guardrails to fix it.

Email me at boss@hopelessapi.com.
by dimas_codes | 2026-01-28 21:57:48+00:00
I feel like this is the core issue that will actually stall LLM coding tools short of actually replacing coding work at large.

'Coders' make 'builders' keep the source code good enough so that 'builders' can continue building without breaking what they built.

If 'builders' become x10 productive and 'coders' become unable to keep up with unsurmountable pile of unmaintainable mess that 'builders' proudly churn out, 'bullders' will start to run into impossibility to build further without starting over and over again hoping that agents will be able to get it right this time.
by ben_w | 2026-01-28 21:58:01+00:00
When you wrote "the 3 large countries", I must confess my first thought was "why, what has India done?": While Russia has a large land area, and are a potential threat if they were to take over Ukraine, until recently the EU's limited financing of Ukraine has been the geopolitical equivalent of loose change found behind the sofa, and that only really changed with the deal that kinda-is-kinda-isn't giving Ukraine the frozen Russian assets.

For specific weapons:

I believe Rheinmetall is currently on target to make more shells than the USA by 2027: https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/Germanys-Rheinme...

The differential outcomes for Iran (no nukes) vs North Korea (nukes), then the Russian attempt on Ukraine with nuclear sabre-rattling, and now Trump's plans on Greenland, have all made it increasingly desirable for nations to join the nuclear weapons club.
by stouset | 2026-01-28 21:58:01+00:00
Speaking of animations, it’s shocking to me how bad they are.

I turned on hiding the taskbar the other day. I don’t think they’ve changed it since Windows 95. I have a modern gaming laptop, and the animation is linear, no acceleration. It feels so unnatural. Even worse, it’s not smoothly animated! I have a 120Hz monitor but it seems to be animated at 5fps.

Nobody on the Windows team seems to give a single shit at all.
by germinalphrase | 2026-01-28 21:58:25+00:00
The fraud in Minnesota is upsetting. Fraud also appears to be nationally prevalent:

“New federal data released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) shows the overall rate of improper payment in Minnesota’s Medicaid program is far below national averages.

In the review released this week, CMS found an error rate of slightly over 2.1%, compared to a national average of 6.1%. The data for the review was compiled before the Minnesota Department of Human Services began implementing new strategies to minimize the risk of fraud and harden its systems against bad actors.”

https://mn.gov/dhs/media/news/?id=1053-720779
by properbrew | 2026-01-28 21:58:28+00:00
If you read the article you'll see it's not about generating AI slop images:

> Take a freeform query (like ‘sfo->jfk’) and turn it into a ‘place’

> Build a database of ‘places’ -> pictures

> Build a software system that can take a ‘place’, look it up in a database and spit out the right picture – even if that ‘place’ isn’t in the database
by crazygringo | 2026-01-28 21:58:50+00:00
I work a lot with Photoshop. I studied digital signal processing. Believe me, I will perceive ringing when it's there.

You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding. Yes, raster scaling is how it works. I haven't disputed that anywhere.

I'm saying the ringing artifact specifically that you're complaining about is not happening on my setup, nor does it seem to be widespread. You were complaining about the specific Lanczos algorithm, I'm saying that's not the algorithm being used on mine, nor is there any documentation that's the algorithm Apple uses. Your criticism is based on wrong information, even if something like it seems to happen on certain (but not all) external displays.

If you somehow missed my other comment, please read it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801536
by bicepjai | 2026-01-28 21:58:51+00:00
When you’re as high profile as OpenAI, you don’t get judged like everyone else. People scrutinize your choices reflexively, and that’s just the tax of being a famous brand: it amplifies both the upsides and the blowback.

Most ordinary users won’t recognize the smaller products you listed, but they will recognize OpenAI and they’ll recognize Snowden/NSA adjacent references because those have seeped into mainstream culture. And even if the average user doesn’t immediately make the connection, someone in their orbit on social media almost certainly will and they’ll happily spin it into a theory for engagement.
by ericmcer | 2026-01-28 21:58:57+00:00
Seriously as someone who grew up in the Bay Area. I am here for the weather, family and friends. I don't care if billionaires leave and real estate prices normalize at the cost of a bunch of tech jobs.

That said I wish we would take a look at spending before we just keep raising taxes and then a year later saying "how are we gonna get even more money?". California has an insane amount of wealth per person and one of the highest state tax rates. Can they really not figure out how to operate with their current budget?
by ActorNightly | 2026-01-28 21:59:03+00:00
> gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig,

If you are spending 2000 for a gaming rig, a pro windows is like $200. Makes no sense.

Also, Apple is no better than Windows, so your post doesn't make sense.
by Etheryte | 2026-01-28 21:59:16+00:00
None of this changes the actual real amount of data you have at the end of the day though after all is said and done, that's what I mean, so long as you don't botch it and capture too little. In computing terms, the amount of real data in a compressed archive and the uncompressed original is the same, even if the file size is larger for the latter.
by maxbond | 2026-01-28 21:59:45+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_limit#On_Twitter

> In November 2017, Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 characters. In 2023, Twitter boosted the character limit for Twitter Blue subscribers. In February, it was increased to 4000. In April, it was again increased to 10,000, and in June, to 25,000.
Show HN: Yet Another Status Page FYI – Without Selling Your Kidneys
by SteveChurch | 2026-01-28 22:00:17+00:00
Hey HN!

I've been running side projects for years and every time I needed a status page I set up one of the many ones out there, before long I am paying more than what I believe it's worth for something as simple as it is.

So as a serial side hustler... I thought why not just smash one out.

StatusPage (https://statuspage.fyi) does uptime monitoring + status pages + incident management in one place.

There's a free tier. Actually free. Not "free for 14 days then we guilt you" free. Yeah ok it's not huge, but still 2 monitors, 1 status page, forever, it's a start, then a pricing that scales. I believe most people like me who run the odd little hustles wont break out past the $3 tier, and for those more serious companies that do have some cash and have a serious subscriber list can help cover the cost of us indies.

Still adding features (incident response/on-call is coming soon™), but it's been running my own stuff reliably for a while now.

Would love feedback. Roast my pricing. Tell me what's missing. Or just say hi.

Peace out fellow nerds.
by jacquesm | 2026-01-28 22:00:41+00:00
Spot on. That's why so far all of the supposed solutions to 'the programmer problem' have failed.

Whether this time it will be different I don't know. But originally compilers were supposed to kill off the programmers. Then it was 3G and 4G languages (70's, 80's). Then it was 'no code' which eventually became 'low code' because those pesky edge cases kept cropping up. Now it is AI, the 'dark factory' and other fearmongering. I'll believe it when I see it.

Another HN'er has pointed me into an interesting direction that I think is more realistic: AI will become a tool in the toolbox that will allow experts to do what they did before but faster and hopefully better. It will also be the tool that will generate a ton of really, really bad code that people will indeed not look at because they can not afford to look at it: you can generate more work for a person in a few seconds of compute time than you can cover in a lifetime. So you end up with half baked buggy and insecure solutions that do sort of work on the happy path but that also include a ton of stuff that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place but that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the test set (which is a pretty good reflection of my typical interaction with AI).

The whole thing hinges on whether or not that can be fixed. But I'm looking forward to reading someone's vibe coded solution that is in production at some presumably secure installation.

I'm going to bet that 'I blame the AI' is a pattern what we will be seeing a lot of.
by extraduder_ire | 2026-01-28 22:00:47+00:00
Has this happened to you before?

I can't imagine anyone spamming in such low quantities that they'll notice a pattern like company@<domain> and act on it.

I have regularly gotten spam emails without a to, cc, or bcc field though. So I can't tell which email they were sent to. (my host doesn't bounce/drop them for some reason)

I do regularly do misspellings of the company name though, since that often trips the "invalid email" check on signup. e.g. twitter.
by vel0city | 2026-01-28 22:01:07+00:00
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I kind of thought this was an American ideal, something we'd put on one of our most notable national monuments. Nah, sounds like some libtard crap I guess.

> But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. - 1 Chronicles 29:14

> Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:19-21

> John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” - Luke 3:11

> Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. - Luke 12:33

Back to your statements...

> They have contributed next to nothing.

And neither did you when you were born, and yet you got citizenship right off the bat. Should we have some kind of requirement that one must pay in enough money in taxes to qualify for citizenship? Maybe bring back poll taxes?
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-28 22:02:11+00:00
> I may just try to load ChromeOS on it.

If you wife would be OK with ChromeOS, basically all she needs is a browser. I just installed Linux on the computer my wife is using. For a while she was on Ubuntu and then once she got used to it, I replaced Ubuntu with Debian (because I use Debian everywhere: NUCs, laptop, dekstops, servers, hypervisor (Proxmox, which is debian), etc.). It's easier for me to just slap Debian everywhere but YMMV.

People have no idea the amount of people who nowadays only need a browser (and working sound/microphone: but that nowadays Just Works [TM] on Linux).

It's never been easier to switch people to Linux than it is today.
by jajuuka | 2026-01-28 22:02:11+00:00
Yep, the tax comes from using the Patreon's in-app purchase system. Using a browser on an iPhone/iPad or any other device will not be taxed. Seen many creators putting in their bios suggesting people use the browser instead of the in app purchase.

Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
by michtzik | 2026-01-28 22:02:13+00:00
> I explained that anything less than a progressive tax was going to make the poor pay more and the wealthy pay less.

Here's a formally-verified proof in Lean that with a flat tax, if you have more income, then you pay more tax: https://live.lean-lang.org/#codez=JYWwDg9gTgLgBAWQIYwBYBtgCM...

The theorem uses one important assumption: that the flat tax rate is positive.
by pcarroll | 2026-01-28 22:02:25+00:00
The way we did it, roting is not a problem. Any Netrinos client (Windows, Mac, or Linux, including the free version) can act as a gateway. It assigns a unique overlay IP to devices on the local network that can't run software themselves, like cameras, NAS units, or printers, and handles the NAT translation.

Think of it like a router's DMZ feature, but inverted. Instead of exposing one device to the internet, each device gets a private address that's only reachable inside your mesh network.
by joshstrange | 2026-01-28 22:02:59+00:00
Sometimes yes but this not apple-to-apples unfortunately. Shipping and support are two places where Amazon _currently_ reigns supreme. Getting an item fast and returning an item easily are often lacking in alternative marketplaces.

I do try to buy stuff directly but so many times I order it and then it comes 10+ days later and often very little info upfront or during about when I will receive the order. I ordered from a website the other day where it said Dec 22nd delivery, it came mid-January and support was unhelpful (parroting the FAQ, might have been a LLM).

Now, I've head great experiences purchasing directly as well. The Smartest House [0] is where I buy everything I can smart-home-related. Their pricing is excellent, their shipping is fast, and their support is top-notch. I had a problem with 1 device, they got on a call and tried to fix it, then when that didn't work, they shipped me a replacement.

So I agree, there are great alternative out there and I also like B&H. I just wish it was easier to be (more) sure about how quick something will ship or how easy returns will actually be. Finding consistently good merchants online sometimes feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

[0] https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/
by romanhn | 2026-01-28 22:03:03+00:00
A different perspective: https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2016375397131420005

TL;DR: What London actually built is Europe’s most efficient farm system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky work of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving product-market fit. American companies wait until the risk is de-risked, then buy the winners at discounts enabled by London’s shrinking public markets.
by kbolino | 2026-01-28 22:03:05+00:00
I can get a mild form of it on my M4 MBP's built-in display at "1800x1125"* but it's not nearly as noticeable as it was on the 4K external display at "2560x1440" and honestly I needed my cell phone camera zoomed in to definitively identify it, so that was more of a fishing expedition than a real problem. However, I have tried 2 different Macs, 2 different 4K monitors (both LG UltraFine also, though they differ in firmware version and color reproduction because of course they do), and 2 different interfaces (HDMI, Thunderbolt), and I can reliably replicate it under all of those combinations. I think that exact scaling factor probably has a bad interaction with the scaling algorithm. I do agree that a lot of other scalings do not produce the ringing/halo/bloom effect.

* = You have to go click "Advanced...", enable "Show resolutions as list", then when back on the main Displays page, enable "Show all resolutions", to get this and many other options -- but this is only necessary on the internal display, the external display offers "2560x1440" as a non-advanced choice
by jacquesm | 2026-01-28 22:03:06+00:00
Sure, but the reason why this is the case is simple: writing software is easy. Writing good software is stupendously hard. So all those manyears that went into maintaining software were effectively just hardening, polishing bug fixes and slow adjustment to changing requirements and new situations. If you throw it all out whenever the requirements change you never and up with something that is secure or as bug free as you can make it.
by glenstein | 2026-01-28 22:03:12+00:00
And I say it as a Linux user. My story is breathing life into old hardware back in the 2010s without having to spend any money, and just enjoying the No Man's Sky style freedom of exploring a whole new world of how a desktop operating system could look in feel and work, unmoored from the background sickness of thinking everything I do is channeled into Microsoft telemetry.

If you're the type of person who's capable of falling in love with software and software ecosystems, there's nothing like a first jump into Linux and understanding it as a world ready and waiting for you.
by simonw | 2026-01-28 22:03:24+00:00
That's definitely a pattern people are already starting to have good results from - using multiple "agents" (aka multiple system prompts) where one of them is a security reviewer that audits for problems and files issues for other coding agents to then fix.

I don't think this worked at all well six months ago. GPT-5.2 and Opus 4.5 might just be good enough for this pattern to start being effective.
by tkp-415 | 2026-01-28 22:03:32+00:00
Curious to see how you can get Gemini fully intercepted.

I've been intercepting its HTTP requests by running it inside a docker container with:

-e HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:8080 -e HTTPS_PROXY=http://host.docker.internal:8080 -e NO_PROXY=localhost,127.0.0.1

It was working with mitmproxy for a very brief period, then the TLS handshake started failing and it kept requesting for re-authentication when proxied.

You can get the whole auth flow and initial conversation starters using Burp Suite and its certificate, but the Gemini chat responses fail in the CLI, which I understand is due to how Burp handles HTTP2 (you can see the valid responses inside Burp Suite).
by mkw5053 | 2026-01-28 22:03:44+00:00
I'm currently hiring engineering roles in SF for my startup. I am in the middle of closing my $1.5M pre-seed this week so I don't have job descriptions posted yet. But, here's a short pitch:

AI agents are about to orchestrate trillions in commerce, but today they shop on thin data: product specs, studio photos, and text reviews. Agents need evidence, not marketing. Today, the most influential product evidence lives on TikTok and Reels, outside the surfaces brands control and agents can use. Vidably puts verified buyer video directly onto e-commerce product pages through a lightweight widget. We capture that video post-purchase and link it to real purchasing outcomes. Every video is SKU-linked and structured so shopping agents can reason over it. The widget is the wedge, the dataset is the moat.

We're already live with brands and are seeing pull from both brands and creators and I would love for anyone interested to DM me!

Edit: I'm an idiot, HN doesn’t have DMs. Email me at hn at vidably dot com.
by tempestn | 2026-01-28 22:04:21+00:00
From the comment you're replying to:
"Windows does it better than my mac or Linux boxes by a mile"

So I wouldn't assume they've only used Windows. FWIW I also primarily use Windows 11 currently, but have also used other OS'es. I've experienced frustrations with all of them. Just because it's fast for you doesn't mean it's fast for everyone, and vice-versa. I could certainly buy that more people are having problems with 11 than they did with 10, though it hasn't been my personal experience. Just saying we shouldn't assume our own experiences are universal.
by giancarlostoro | 2026-01-28 22:04:34+00:00
I think at some point we will need a "PEP-8" for LLM / AI code contributions document that is universally reusable and adoptable per project, call it an "Agent Policy" or what have you, that any agent worth its Salt should read before touching a codebase and warn the user that their contributions might not be accepted or what have you, depending on project policy, just like we have GPL, BSD, MIT, etc it would probably make sense to have it, especially for those of us who are respectful to a projects needs and wishes. I think there's definitely room for sane LLM code / vibe coded code, but you have to put in a little work to validate your changes, run every test, ensure that you understand the output and implications, not just shove a PR at the devs and hope they accept it.

A lot of the time open source PRs are very strategic pieces of code that do not introduce regressions, an LLM does not necessarily know or care, and someone vibe coding might not know the projects expectations. I guess instead of / aside from a Code of Conduct, we need a sort of "Expectation of Code" type of document that covers the projects expectations.