MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by somenameforme | 2026-01-06 17:25:28+00:00
Like you're indirectly acknowledging, the nukes had no real impact on their decision. Half their way cabinet wanted to fight to the last Japanese, half wanted to surrender. This was both before and after the nukes. The Emperor wasn't like a super-politician - he was seen as a [literally] living deity who was above politics. So the cabinet called upon him to make the final decision, which he had made long before the nukes - which was to surrender. There was no danger to him. Even the plots to undermine his decision involved destroying his announcement of surrender and leaving him under house arrest. And that plot was stopped by a speech from another officer, leading to most of the plotters to commit suicide for their dishonor.

And I don't think there were any real lessons learned. We nearly nuked ourselves during the Cold War multiple times. And today, with bombs that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like primitive weapons, you have people acting like nuclear war isn't something 'that' fearful. We killed hundreds of thousands of people largely for the sake of trying to get a slight geopolitical edge over the USSR. And that's far better than the alternative of there being no reason at all. In no world are the arguments about it saving lives valid, even if you attach 0 value to the life of the Japanese for having audacity to be born in the wrong country.

----

Leo Szilard was a critical scientist in the story of the atomic bomb, and he's also full of just amazingly insightful quotes. [1]

- Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

- A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb.

- Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.

[1] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd
by pixl97 | 2026-01-06 17:25:34+00:00
>but the forum doesn't want that

Who is the forum exactly?

>But it's currently designed for mass-appeal and engagement.

Are you talking about hacker news? Your description confuses me in relation to the site you are on.

I'd like to see you expand on how one would remove the artificial limitations without massively increasing the administrative/moderative workload.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-06 17:25:36+00:00
The preferred style for titles here is something like "Sweeper: A fast, cross-platform disk cleanup utility built with Zig and raylib." If you use "accidentally" in the title, most people will just avoid the post. I'd also drop "fast" unless you have some good benchmarks. "Sweeper: A cross-platform disk cleanup utility built with Zig and raylib."
by rayiner | 2026-01-06 17:25:43+00:00
> Dense cities in other parts of the world rely on mass transit to move people

But they don’t solve the fundamental problems with mass transit: comfort, convenience, and trip times.

I was just at Disney World and joking to my wife that the park is propaganda to get people to use public transit because Walt loved trains. (You can’t get into the parks by driving. Only the train, bus, or gondola. If you drive you have to park at this giant lot and take the train from there.)

But even within that self contained environment—where land for transit infrastructure is basically free because Disney bought it all decades ago—public transit still isn’t great. Trying to get three kids and all their shit out the door to catch a bus or train, having to fold up strollers, etc., just sucks in comparison to throwing them into a car.
by jimmytucson | 2026-01-06 17:25:57+00:00
> Safe languages insert additional machine branches to do things like verify that array accesses are in-bounds. In correct code, those branches are never taken. That means that the machine code cannot be 100% branch tested, which is an important component of SQLite's quality strategy.

Doesn't the language compiler write the code that checks if the array access is in-bounds? Why would you need to test the compiler's code?
by culebron21 | 2026-01-06 17:26:03+00:00
Not surprising, sadly. In 2022, a friend who did trekking, asked how to view files with national parks borders on a map. I recommended installing QGIS desktop (geospatial viewer/editor of files/database tables). He replied: "1 GB of download?! Seriously?!" I was surprised, because last time I had paid attention, maybe in 2016, it was ~200 megs. I checked, and indeed, it weighed 1 gig. I checked in 2025, and it's beyond 1,3 gig now. And it's FOSS, not commercial bloatware you might think. I have no idea what they stuff it with.

Just yesterday, I wanted to generate a GeoTiff on a macbook. To do it in a simple way, you need libGDAL, a geo-spatial abstraction library that exists since maybe the '90 and supports all thinkable formats. Under Linux, you just install it together with QGIS as a dependency. Mac is still unix, so you may think, a 3-decades old library, with few patches to support modern formats, should be just a couple of megs, right? Brew suggested downloading ~2 GB of ~100 packages!!!! Half of them were aws-* (yes, AWS tools), and 1 GB of LLVM!!! (is it their whole GIT repo with 10M SLOC?)

For geotiff, I ended just using standard Tiff library, inserting my 4 geospatial tags with a few lines of code.
by HendrikHensen | 2026-01-06 17:26:05+00:00
Well, something fishy is going on because there is literally no way that Safari, in its entirety, is 5.1 MB. The numbers for the others app seem similarly off.

It would be really hard to believe that somehow Apple has found some magic formula to make their apps 100x smaller than Google and Microsoft.

Much more likely is that the reporting by the OS is off somehow (probably most of the app functionality is tied up in shared resources counted towards system files, and not counted towards the app's size).

With respect, I would expect more from articles posted on Hacker News. More thorough research, and in fact an answer to the question.
by lxgr | 2026-01-06 17:26:30+00:00
I think this might be closer to the truth than you might think.

Due to the absence of (cross-app) shared libraries on at least iOS, developers often end up building big company-internal libraries that then have to be shipped with all of their apps.

Tree shaking isn’t perfect, and the result are these > 0.5 GB monstrosities.
by Hasz | 2026-01-06 17:26:34+00:00
I think the job titles (Tax #3) are particularly damming. As the post mentions, H1B Specialty Occupations require Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.

The jobs titles many WITCH firms are submitting for are just not specialized at all -- Developer, analyst, whatever. I personally fail to see how this could possibly qualify for a H1B visa when there are 10s of millions of employees in the US matching these vague descriptions.
by yieldcrv | 2026-01-06 17:26:43+00:00
When I doing mobile app development a decade ago, I found that many interviewers and clients were evaluating my experience more like an artist's portfolio, alongside a couple of arbitrary metrics to determine app scope

One of those arbitrary metrics was bundle size, how many megabytes on the app store was the app. The bigger the better and more serious it was.

At the time I was knee deep in optimizations, using SVGs, doing compression, even bitshifting, to make apps smaller for the companies I worked for. Reducing how many people would be bounced from downloading or installing the app.

And yet, that impressive 12MB app from a venture backed company with hundreds of thousands of users was getting me penalized for taking up so little space

I literally started putting dummy files in the app bundles and it worked for my professional goals. All kinds of premium marketing has similar fictions in them to convey value

so I can emphasize how its the difference between $50/hr upwork gigs inconsistently, and $500,000/yr at Google
by flusensieb | 2026-01-06 17:27:02+00:00
I don't think that the day of the week matters that much. But the correct way to rise prices is clearly:
- announce the new prices and the day from which on they are valid.
- ensure that your customers have time to react based on your announcement.

Based on the article it seems like the only information before the change was "some day in january we will change prices" which would not be enough for me as a customer...
by eigen-vector | 2026-01-06 17:27:11+00:00
Beta open now. The files are local and everything stays in your machine and limited context get sent to LLMs, you can read the security notes and threat model on the site. Commands API supports only anthropic for now. You can bring your own API key or use the demo key with limited usage. Plenty to get a feel for it.

A quick 30 second experiment to run:

1.Paste a small “Key Features” section

2.Type /// tabulate the features below into a recap table

3.Keep writing while it runs → output appears in preview → click “Insert into source” if you want it persisted

What Margin does today:

• /// commands that run asynchronously while you keep writing

• Generates structured artifacts (recap tables, Mermaid diagrams, charts)

• Clickable command status (running/done) + rerun/copy/insert/remove

• Export resolved markdown / copy rich HTML

I’d love feedback on: (1) does the “doc compiles into artifacts” mental model click? (2) what’s the first command you’d want as a writer?

Stack is react + tauri. Thanks!
by dieggsy | 2026-01-06 17:27:25+00:00
I think you're not wrong, but it's not necessarily a problem? I might argue that's actually part of the main point the article is making. The software is already written in C, well understood and optimized in that language, and quite stable, so they'd need very compelling reasons for a rewrite.

I think the "lingua franca" argument for C and the points at the end about what they'd need from Rust to switch do go beyond merely justifying a decision that's already been made, though.
by vladms | 2026-01-06 17:27:32+00:00
While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits.

The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap.

I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the problem".

I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I look for example for open source libraries/programs for a task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex that it is never easy.

My personal preference would be a network recommendation system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my extended network) are using and like - being it restaurants, clothes or open source software. I have 90% of friends (or friends of friends) satisfied with something - maybe I should try. Of course it is not a perfect system, but seems much better than what we currently have...
by tarentel | 2026-01-06 17:27:33+00:00
It is dependencies but not from the GUI. As someone who has worked on several very large apps I can tell you 99% of the bloat is garbage. Someone somewhere wants this SDK from their friend's company in the app. Some manager wants to track X using this very specific framework. Some designer decided to add in animations in one screen that requires another framework to run and also 10mb in assets. etc, etc, etc. If your app is 10+ years old this all adds up and no one ever cleans any of it up. There's probably like 100mb of crap you can delete that doesn't even work anymore but who has time to remove that?
by throwaway2037 | 2026-01-06 17:27:34+00:00
I find the most emotionally negative content on HN is about public education. There are so many people who were personally affected by poor schooling in their youth and cannot resist to add their (usually unhelpful and uninsightful) two cents to the discussion. So many of these negative comments are paint with a very broad brush, like: "Public schools are terrible in state X." It is so general as to be useless.

Years ago, when I was young, I noticed a trend watching local TV news: Whenever they would interview people on the street, past a certain age, their comments become so much more negative. Example: "So, how is traffic in your part of town? Oh, it's never been worse." "How are the public schools? Oh, it's never been worse." Ad nauseam. Whenever I feel any conversation in my life is drifting into "Oh, it's never been worse.", I tune out.
by matthewsinclair | 2026-01-06 17:28:01+00:00
I've often wondered what would happen if we _taxed_ advertising [0]. The same rationale applies: it'll never work, and it'll never even be tested, but I agree, it was fun to think about.

[0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...
by PaulHoule | 2026-01-06 17:28:25+00:00
I'll grant that.

I am active on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Tumblr but not X. On all of those platforms I am selective about who I follow (e.g. said anything about Trump in the last 20 posts I won't follow you, posted an image with angry text in it, I won't follow you) and quick with the block button. In the case of the first two I get a feed which is really cozy, the third has way too much AI slop (fake cat videos!) which would get the smackdown on the other too.

I really enjoy sharing photos on that kind of platform as well as the kind of links I post to HN. I did have an image that was a breakout hit the other day which got me a burst of follows and it was really depressing that 95%-ish of those new followers are people who are apoplectic about #uspol. There are just so many of those people and they post so much and they always say the same things and I find it emotionally contagious.

I am bothered less by the right wing equivalent of those people because I don't go on X, I live in one of the most liberal towns in America. They bother me less because I can easily dismiss the people who are bleating "free speech", "free speech", "freespeech" as NPC minions of Peter Thiel [1] whereas I agree with the followers of Heather Cox Richardson about the problem but think their solution is so wrong and actually destructive to their cause that they are effectively working for the Koch Organization for free and for me that stings.

[1] ... although I know I shouldn't.
by codebyaditya | 2026-01-06 17:28:31+00:00
The data shows it’s a structural feedback loop. Even comparing identical job titles in the same city, the $50k gap persists. The gap widens because citizen workers can leave staffing firms for raises at any time, while H-1B holders face 'mobility friction' (60-day rule/backlogs) that keeps them locked into lower-paying tiers longer.
by deng | 2026-01-06 17:28:39+00:00
Can confirm everything. PLA is completely unusable for this as it quickly deforms under constant pressure, so it is impossible to have a stable press fit with it. ABS would be the obvious choice (since Lego is ABS), but it's difficult to print. Generally, a press fit with ABS that can be handled by kids (so easy enough to create and remove), but still being sufficiently stable so that it can be handled, requires extremely tight tolerances which you will not be able to achieve with an FDM printer. Even very good FDM printers with small nozzles will have dozens of micrometers in tolerance, which is too large - pieces will either be almost impossible to fit, or they will just fall apart at the slightest movement. Resin printing is better, but again, the material is too soft and will not be able to withstand the pressures long-term. Even if you use special durable resin, it will deform quite quickly under constant pressure.
by conception | 2026-01-06 17:28:59+00:00
I get 10-20x done but that’s because most of what I need to get done isn’t particularly difficult.

E.g. I have an aws agent that does all my devops for me. It isn’t doing anything insane but when I need to investigate something or make a terraform change, I send it off and go do something else. I do similar things 20-100 times a day now. Go write this script, do this report, update this documentation, etc.

I think if you are a high level swe it takes a lot of effort to get “better than doing it myself”. If you have a more generalist role, AI is easily a 10x productivity booster if you are knowledgeable about using it.
by randycupertino | 2026-01-06 17:29:05+00:00
> The ‘Pizza Meter’ is based on a simple causal relationship: during national emergencies, staff at defense or intelligence agencies work overnight, and delivery pizza becomes their only meal option. The term gained prominence in the early 1990s when Frank Meeks, a Domino’s Pizza franchise owner in Washington, revealed, “Pizza orders are more accurate than news in gauging Washington’s political climate.”

> Historical cases confirm the ‘Pizza Meter’s’ high accuracy. On August 1, 1990, just before Iraq invaded Kuwait, CIA headquarters saw pizza orders surge more than fourfold. The day before the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) began in January 1991, White House orders jumped sixfold, while the Pentagon’s rose more than tenfold. The pattern extended beyond military actions: during the Soviet hardliners’ coup in August 1991 and the Lewinsky scandal impeachment phase under President Bill Clinton in 1998, pizza shops near the White House and Congress operated all night. A similar surge was reported ahead of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran in June of last year.
by simplicio | 2026-01-06 17:29:12+00:00
Think the best argument against it is that it makes advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many "paid for with advertising" services will be available and how good those services will be.

Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to pay for such things is going to be limited, that will presumably deprive some margin of the population of media/services that are currently ad supported.
by jjav | 2026-01-06 17:29:14+00:00
Wealth, at the top end of the scale, is not money, it is power.

Between two people who make 100K vs 1M a year, there is a lot of difference in purchasing power, but there is basically little-to-none difference in power. They're still working class people, neither of them can buy favorable laws or supreme court judgments.

But when you concentrate most wealth into a few people, those people have inordinate power to influence government, legislation, laws and courts. They get whatever they want, which of course is even more concentration of power in their hands.

You can't have a functional democracy when a handful of people are far more equal than most of the population.
by i_am_jl | 2026-01-06 17:29:23+00:00
I've seen these advertisements too, also only when my phone had been playing unattended for some time.

I have a (unsupported, unsubstantiated) theory that YT detects phones of "sleepers" and pushes more profitable content with the understanding it won't be skipped.

I've got a few spare phones, maybe I'll run an experiment.
by samothrace | 2026-01-06 17:29:24+00:00
I don't think either of you have made your point very well. "It's not okay to ... appreciate ... pictures..." Isn't nonsensical, but it doesn't really convey the meaning that I'm assuming was intended (so I guess it's incoherent to some degree). That assumed meaning being that it's not okay to support people that support evil regimes. Even if that support is minimal and indirect.

Would you buy an art book by a Nazi officer in 1942? After all, the officer would only receive a very small portion of the proceeds of the book, in reality providing an infinitesimal benefit to the Nazi party itself. Would you recommend said book to people you know? After all, you wouldn't be providing even that tiny amount of material support. And after all, it's simply the creative work of another human, unrelated to the war or atrocities, not representing the interests of the Nazi party itself.

I'm sure that there are plenty of people that will show up to argue that actually, yes, they would gladly buy the book if they liked it and they would recommend it. And some will have the logical devices to show that there are no moral obligations involved. I disagree. Generally speaking, each of us only have tiny levers to pull, and we should pull them.
Show HN: Loanwise – I built this app to simplify loan calculations
by og-tech | 2026-01-06 17:29:34+00:00
I found myself in a bit of a muddle while contemplating an apartment purchase. Navigating loan terms, calculating monthly payments, and figuring out the long-term financials was surprisingly confusing. I scoured for tools that could help but found none that fit the bill – understandable and reliable. So I decided to create a solution myself.
Loanwise is specifically designed to simplify complex financial calculations involved in loans, most saliently mortgages. Being available on both Android and iOS platforms, it can assist users in understanding their fiscal commitments clearly.
What sets Loanwise apart is its focus on simplicity and accuracy. No extra complexity — just clear numbers in an easy-to-understand layout. It aims to bridge the chasm between finance jargon and everyday understanding.
Loanwise functions by feeding raw data into pre-set financial formulas, encapsulating things like interest rates, principal amount, etc., to deliver easily understood results. While the underlying computations are complex, the interface itself is streamlined for straightforward use.
And yes, Loanwise is free. I wanted to make sure anyone who needed to make informed financial decisions could do so conveniently.
I'd genuinely appreciate any observations, constructive criticism, or queries regarding Loanwise. It's a venture rooted in a personal pain point, so I'm curious to see how it's perceived or could be improved.
For iOS: https://og-tech.short.gy/H5Vz4L
For Android: https://og-tech.short.gy/uFSY0k
by proprietario | 2026-01-06 17:29:42+00:00
I feel like this an interesting angle and I want to approach the discussion in good faith..

So why should it be morally ok to show support/better the public image/engage with a party that is supporting/purporting some huge morally bad things?

My reasoning is as follows, I wonder where you wouldn't agree:

A: You shouldn't support people doing morally bad stuff

B: Someone supporting morally bad things is morally bad

B.2: Sharing/Engaging with them shows support and betters their public image

C: Kaspersky is an oligarch supporting stuff that is morally wrong

D: So you shouldn't support him by driving engagement to his site
by miki123211 | 2026-01-06 17:29:48+00:00
There's actually a bit more to it than that. A lot of what Apple apps actually do is hidden in frameworks made for that one specific app, which, unlike with 3rd-party applications, are part of the system, not of the app itself.

Compare the size of Safari.app versus Safari Technology Preview.app (which actually ships all the frameworks it needs).
by VLM | 2026-01-06 17:29:49+00:00
The car has to be scrapped when the UI hardware fails.

You can live a LONG time without a working ... radio tuning knob, if the other 99.9% of the controls work. Or if the right passenger door lock button fails, really who cares. But when the central control of the entire car fails, its scrap.

Very profitable for the manufacturer.