MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tbocek | 2026-01-07 18:39:14+00:00
That's a valid concern. I took a more constrained approach for web searches for exactly this reason. Instead of giving the LLM full browser control, I built a Firefox extension that only handles web search client-side.

When my local LLM (llama.cpp) needs to search, it opens DuckDuckGo in a new window, loads the result pages in tabs, extracts content with Readability.js, and feeds it back. You stay in the loop - can see what's loading, solve captchas if needed. Less autonomous than Comet/Playwright, with a narrower use-case, but also less risk.

Its still a prototype though: https://github.com/tbocek/llm-local-web-search
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-07 18:39:40+00:00
"You should learn how to vibecode and ship whatever works enough, as fast as possible, to get bought for a wildly disconnected from fundamentals valuation." This may sound flippant, or low quality, but it I assure that it is not intended to be. It is derived from observations of the current tech macro. Quality does not appear to matter, ethics do not appear to matter, sustainability and engineering rigor do not appear to matter; it appears that all that matters is "Start up. Cash in. Sell out. Bro down."

I would love to be proved wrong, truly, because this is a path to death of craftsmanship, deep knowledge, and to some extent, curiosity, in the domain.
by ssteeper | 2026-01-07 18:40:28+00:00
Very simply, meditation is an attempt at single-pointed concentration. It involves cultivating awareness of the mind's contents and the ability to let thoughts pass without fixation. "Zoning out in the shower" probably means something more like daydreaming, where any and all thoughts are permitted to exist without active control. Focusing intently on a difficult cognitive task ("flow state") is more akin to meditation than zoning out.

A lot of beginners are so bad at this that some amount of guiding back to the goal is helpful. Many can only go a few seconds without getting fixated on passing thoughts.

Practicing one's ability to focus on a single thing and reducing mind-wandering will improve one's capability for concentration.
by jimmar | 2026-01-07 18:40:36+00:00
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7598063/

> Carbohydrate overfeeding produced progressive increases in carbohydrate oxidation and total energy expenditure resulting in 75-85% of excess energy being stored. Alternatively, fat overfeeding had minimal effects on fat oxidation and total energy expenditure, leading to storage of 90-95% of excess energy.

Also, it's just not true that consumed fat must be turned into sugar before entering the bloodstream. See https://med.libretexts.org/Courses/American_Public_Universit...
by morleytj | 2026-01-07 18:40:47+00:00
For the US, it's not too out of the norm historically speaking. Up until relatively recently tariffs were very popular in the US despite the clear understanding by academics that they were incredibly damaging to the economy. Political movements based around protectionist economic arguments have a long history in the US.

For an example, take a look at the 1888 US presidential election, which largely revolved around tariffs. Grover Cleveland lost re-election due to being part of the pro-business wing of the Democrats, and he came to the conclusion that tariffs were a negative to the economy overall, while his opponents were strongly protectionist. After McKinley's Republicans won the election on a protectionist platform, he instituted the McKinley tariffs (average import duties of around ~50%), which were devastating to the economy despite being extremely popular with the nation in the election. It led to massive price increases which led to the re-election of Grover Cleveland in 1892 (only other non-consecutive term president aside from Trump). Despite expert opinion being fairly solidified against tariffs even at the time, the idea of "protecting American business" and "punishing other countries for their unequal trade deficits with the US" was pretty popular with specific interest groups!

Parts of this sound rather familiar, do they not? I would then argue that it points to a cultural element, out of the two options of a failure of education or a culture of rejecting it. History certainly rhymes on this point.
by lukev | 2026-01-07 18:40:49+00:00
It's really depressing how the popular discourse around these topics so consistently fails to address any kind of bad-faith reasoning on topics like this.

Politicians complaining about free speech almost uniformly are referring to speech they don't like. Just like when they say they want to be "moral" its their morals, and when they say they want safety it's safety for a certain kind of person.

But the media (institutional AND social) ends to just accepting their stated motivations at face value. And at this point it's making us all look like idiots.
by jandrese | 2026-01-07 18:40:57+00:00
Prolog is great because when it works it feels like magic. You give it some pragmas and it tells you the answer. The downside is when it doesn't work it also feels like magic. It's not easy to reason about the amount of work it needs to do. If your Prolog program is taking a long time to run it is hard to figure out if it is going to take 2 hours or 4,000 millennia.
by Panoramix | 2026-01-07 18:41:13+00:00
I've been to the Mediterranean several times. They eat a ton of (delicious) super oily food, sausages, meats, eggs, fish (often fried or deep fried), salty cheeses, greasy stuff, tons of white bread, lots of wine. Fat chance to find someone eating avocados, kale, or quinoa, and proteins are not at all minimized.

The Mediterranean diet is like a Californian wellness type of person's idea of what the actual Mediterranean diet is.
by slg | 2026-01-07 18:41:21+00:00
>For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed important but it would readily discard short or nonsensical input. That is really difficult to do in traditional software but is something an LLM could do with low effort. The end result is I only have to deal with that annoying popup when I really am glad it is there.

The funny thing is that this exact example could also be used by AI skeptics. It's forcing an LLM into a product with questionable utility, causing it to cost more to develop, be more resource intensive to run, and behave in a manor that isn't consistent or reliable. Meanwhile, if there was an incentive to tweak that alert based off likelihood of it's usefulnesss, there could have always just been a check on length of the text. Suggesting this should be done with an LLM as your specific example is evidence that LLMs are solutions looking for problems.
by iamsamwood | 2026-01-07 18:41:26+00:00
Debugging at scale is simplified architecturally by separating the integration/glue from the core process logic, where the platform handles that integration glue for you. This decision focuses all the debugging efforts on a single Common Operating Script (as code), which decouples your high-level busines flow from the underlying integrations and infrastructure.

We also provide native distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry) across the entire distributed stack, with hooks to let you trace individual functions. This allows you to follow a single transaction through the Connector Hub and the Common Operating Script, correlating errors and tracking performance, across the various layers without manual log stitching.

Out of the box, we also include a centralized APM suite with Prometheus & Grafana (amp, and amq) with real-time app and infra metrics, and CloudWatch Logging attached to all the services, for centralized logs, to make this even easier.
by didibus | 2026-01-07 18:41:27+00:00
This is one of those where you need to be able to discern nuances in your brain as multiple things are happening.

First, identifying cause and effect of CVD is super hard, and there are lots of studies with various level of indications and in reality we're still far from understanding most of it. Even just the effects of fat and sugar on it isn't clear, and our understanding of fat itself, and all its types, and of sugars and all its types, even that's incomplete. And this makes it a perfect battle ground for grift and financial interests, because you can paint various narratives and cleverly build a case for it, since in reality so many possibilities are still on the table.

I think the conclusions that are on the stronger side are those that relate to medication and surgery. Blood pressure pills, statins, antiplatelet, coronary artery bypass, aortic valve replacement, etc.

When it comes to nutrition and other lifestyle changes, things are muddy. So instead you have "school of thoughts" and belief systems forms that often tie up with personal identity.

Second, you have financial interests meddling with research and messaging. A financial interest might want to mingle even if the research supports them, just not to take any chances. And if we found two cases of it, that's just those that were caught and proven, it's likely there's many more mingling then just that. Even if it doesn't end up proving things their way, you can assume all this mingling slows things down and makes figuring out the truth much harder and slower, which maintains the state of uncertainty for longer and that state is good for financial interests.

Lastly, it's not that we know nothing at all, and everything is just beliefs. There are a few things that have strong evidence repeatedly. We know that smoking, high blood pressure, plaque buildup, high lifetime LDL, clots, and diabetes/insulin resistance are all bad and lead to increase risks of CVD. And avoiding or lowering those, no matter how, helps reduce that risk. But it's not enough for most people that want to feel in control and believe they're living in a way that CVD won't happen to them. Which makes them vulnerable to grifters and various influencers.
by Alex2037 | 2026-01-07 18:41:41+00:00
>and he's being honest

oh, come the fuck on. it's "AI made us do it" drivel that companies began to justify layoffs with in 2023 (!!!).

Tailwind is just another FOTM frontend thing. I saw dozens of them come, gain some popularity, then abruptly disappear once the marketing budget ran out.
by legitster | 2026-01-07 18:41:54+00:00
We already have a agreement with Denmark that essentially lets us do whatever we want with Greenland. We get the milk for free - why buy the cow?

Obviously there is the hubris of the current president, but who even fed this to him as an idea? The only thing I can think of are geopolitical weirdos who fantasize about future wars with Europe. An outcome that they are willing us to closer every passing day.
by Terr_ | 2026-01-07 18:42:00+00:00
It doesn't need to be the species' spore-stage per se, as long as it occurs somewhere in the lifecycle before bad-stuff-humans-care-about happens. Can we encourage any (microscopic) conditions that trigger germination that turns out badly for the fungus?

Kind of like how there are plant seeds we don't eat directly, but we trick them into opening up and eat the sprouts.
by zahlman | 2026-01-07 18:42:06+00:00
No, questions that don't meet the site's standards must be closed as quickly as possible, and it actively harms the site to ignore this duty.

Please read "How long should we wait for a poster to clarify a question before closing?" (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260263), especially my answer (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/425738/523612), and "Why should I help close "bad" questions that I think are valid, instead of helping the OP with an answer?" (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/429808).
by PaulHoule | 2026-01-07 18:42:34+00:00
Around a Uni I think a lot about what students are good at and what they aren't good at it.

I wouldn't even think about hiring a student to do marketing work. They just don't understand how hard it is to break through people's indifference and lack the hustle. I want 10-100x more than I get out of them.

Photos in The Cornell Daily Sun make me depressed. Students take a step out the door, take a snap, then upload it. I think the campus is breathtakingly beautiful and students just don't do the work to take good photos that show it.

In coding it is across the map. Even when I am happy with the results they still do the first 80% that takes another 80% to put in front of customers. I can be really proud of how it turned out in the end despite them missing the point of the design document they were handed.

I was in a game design hackathon where most of the winners were adults or teams with an adult on them. My team won player's choice. I'll take credit for my startup veteran talent of fearlessly demonstrating broken software on stage and making it look great and doing project management with that in mind. One student was solid on C# and making platformers in Unity. I was the backup programmer who worked like a junior other than driving them crazy slowing them down with relentlessly practical project management. The other student made art that fit our game.

We were at each other's throats at the end and shocked that we won. I think I understood the value everybody brought but I'm not sure my teammates did.
by Venn1 | 2026-01-07 18:42:34+00:00
Getting Quake Brutalist Jam III running on Linux using Quake from my Steam library took a bit of research.

The -nosteam flag in ironwail is needed.

./ironwail -nosteam -basedir . -game qbj3

Outlined the process here: https://interfacinglinux.com/community/linuxgaming/quake-bru...
by cyberpunk | 2026-01-07 18:42:55+00:00
Well, disclaimer — I am a practicing zen buddhist, but it’s something I came to myself, we aren’t recruiting like religions, and there is no dogma or origin myth to believe in.

You’re unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if you’ve heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner ;)

My point was simply that, at least in my personal experience, if i had found zen as a tool to achieve something, e.g it was sold to me as having some effect other, it would not have worked.
by tsimionescu | 2026-01-07 18:42:58+00:00
At the same weight, fat contains way more calories than sugar, so the difference in difficulty of digestion is irrelevant at this level. It's true that if you were to consume 1000 Cal worth of sugar vs 1000 Cal worth of fat, you'd get slightly less fat from the fat - but this should be seen simply as one of many limitations on the "calories in" measurement. The same kinds of differences likely exist between different sugars, different fats, different proteins - and may well be affected by other aspects of how the food containing these nutrients is consumed; and it almost certainly varies a lot between people or even for the same person based on various factors such as age, activity level, time of day, etc.
by ashleyn | 2026-01-07 18:43:08+00:00
It boggles my mind that, not only do people do this, but it's common. I've seen managers at work with hundreds of tabs open, with an uncanny ability to know exactly where the thing they need is.

I've been using tabbed browsers for 20-something years and I never really have more than 1, 2 at a time. If I need to call something back, I either bookmark it or I open up the history and search for it.
by rootusrootus | 2026-01-07 18:43:16+00:00
I had surprising success vibe coding a swift iOS app a while back. Just for fun, since I have a bluetooth OBD2 dongle and an electric truck, I told Claude to make me an app that could connect to the truck using the dongle, read me the VIN, odometer, and state of charge. This was middle of 2025, so before Opus 4.5. It took Claude a few attempts and some feedback on what was failing, but it did eventually make a working app after a couple hours.

Now, was the code quality any good? Beats me, I am not a swift developer. I did it partly as an experiment to see what Claude was currently capable of and partly because I wanted to test the feasibility of setting up a simple passive data logger for my truck.

I'm tempted to take another swing with Opus 4.5 for the science.
by OptionOfT | 2026-01-07 18:43:18+00:00
When I moved to the USA I always thought it was interesting in how many ways you can just walk out a store without paying.

I'm from Belgium, and at least where I grew up at, the stores are much more corralled. One way in, one way out.

But this forensics is also why I don't use self-checkout. Not that I steal stuff, but I don't want to end up in a situation where I forgot to scan something and get in trouble.

I've had it happen to me that something was missed at Costco, you just walk back and pay.
by palmotea | 2026-01-07 18:43:19+00:00
> Labeling something as “libertarian” isn’t an argument.

The label wasn't an argument. You're repeating the same tired old shit, like it's new and no one's ever heard of it. We've all heard it, it's old. It sounded good in the 90s, but it ain't the 90s anymore. It sounded plausible when the competitor was the Soviet economy, but that's not true anymore, either. Been there, done that.

> But a tariff is a tax.

Taxes aren't bad. You're talking about taxes like I'm expected to recoil from them in horror.

> Which means you are proposing to take money from others to subsidize people who aren’t able to compete on their merit. Why should they be subsidized?

What do you mean merit? Do you mean giving the best deal to the wealthy who'd just as well sell their countrymen up the river for an extra buck in their pocket? Being totes ok with a lower standard of living to make that deal happen?

If you think "the market" is the only judge that matters, or a fair judge, you've got problems.

> But vilifying Indians and Chinese and other immigrants, who have made our companies and economy strong, all over a small 60k visas a year, is irrational.

If you think that's mainly what's going on, you're either blind or playing the misdirection game.
by B56b | 2026-01-07 18:43:29+00:00
This hits the nail on the head. There's a marked difference between a JSON parser and a real world feature in a product. Real world features are complex because they have opaque dependencies, or ones that are unknown altogether. Creating a good solution requires building a mental model of the actual complex system you're working with, which an LLM can't do. A JSON parser is effectively a book problem with no dependencies.
by st0ryteller | 2026-01-07 18:44:10+00:00
I started this library in 2013 when the Web Audio API was still pretty new. It's been through a few iterations over the years, but v5 is a complete rewrite — React with Tone.js — that I built starting in November using Claude Code.
It's a browser-based multi-track audio editor: drag/trim/split editing, 20+ real-time effects, AudioWorklet-based recording with live waveform preview, and WAV export with offline rendering. The API is simple React hooks, fully themeable, with annotation support for transcription or podcast workflows.
Using an LLM for a rewrite of this scale was an interesting experience — happy to talk about that or any Web Audio API quirks.
GitHub: https://github.com/naomiaro/waveform-playlist
by trentnix | 2026-01-07 18:44:13+00:00
> In fact, the labor cost component of a fast food burger is minimal

Only if you are considering the wages of the employees at the fast food restaurant. But when it extends to employees involved in the logistics, processing, and farming its no longer minimal.

Tangentially, calling the rise in wages a "living wage" in SF/DC/NYC/etc. is folly to begin with and reveals minimum wage laws are based on sloganeering and not an economic analysis.
by mrguyorama | 2026-01-07 18:44:40+00:00
>subway can reheat ok bread but they will never have scale to make their own or make great bread

They uh, literally did, 25 years ago. Breadmaking at Subway scale requires a single large mixer, some countertop space, some proofing racks, an oven, and a few hours at certain times.

Like, lmao bakeries are tiny! They have been premier examples of small business for basically all of human history! It's something you can just drop into the morning setup if your food business has any interest at all in "fresh" ingredients or higher quality like the vast majority of small businesses try to focus on. It scales down extremely well, which is why Kitchenaide does great business in their "Pro" series of mixers.

In fact, 25 years ago, the New England grocery store chain Hannaford also had a fully functional and running in house bakery, including in their small stores. Fresh baked bread and pastries and cakes and baked goods every single day.

Both companies have switched out the process without actually switching out or removing the required hardware (they both still have the racks and ovens and still install them in new locations!) to one where the bread is made in a distribution hub and sent out frozen.

It was an easy service to offer when Americans could afford to pay for that kind of thing because most Americans had fine jobs. But Subway can't afford the labor rates for someone who genuinely knows how to make fresh bread, because they have to/want to pay absolute bargain basement labor rates. Their business cannot survive if they priced their sandwiches in line with how much they were 25 years ago, with the same quality of ingredients they had 25 years ago.

Americans can't afford to pay american labor, which means fewer americans end up getting paid good labor rates, which means those americans can afford less, which means etc etc etc.

Meanwhile executive compensation has only ballooned. Gee whiz.
by pbronez | 2026-01-07 18:44:43+00:00
Fascinating!

=====

htmx CEO

At one point there was a hostile takeover attempt of the htmx CEO position and, in a desperate poison pill, I declared everyone CEO of htmx.

Turk created https://htmx.ceo if you want to register as a CEO.

If someone emails hr@bigsky.software asking if you are CEO of htmx, I will tell them yes.

You can put it on your LinkedIn, because it’s true.
by falcor84 | 2026-01-07 18:44:43+00:00
> how many billions of dollars has Microsoft lost, in R&D, legal fees, and damage to reputation, because they decided that not only do they have to make a web browser, but they have to give it away free?

Microsoft made many mistakes, but I don't see how integrating a browser into Windows was one. I still can't fathom that we live in a world where that got Microsoft in such trouble, but acquiring Activision Blizzard was deemed ok.