MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wavemode | 2026-01-28 04:46:38+00:00
It would be very useful if AI could do it (though I kind of doubt something high-performance can be created this way). It's economically unfeasible for humans to develop a browser engine from scratch anymore. Microsoft and Opera gave up. Apple probably will too someday.

It's the most complex piece of software on your computer (it's basically an entire sandboxed operating system, at this point), the standards it has to adhere to are expanding every day, its performance optimization is critical yet adversarial (i.e. website owners have no incentive to make their sites efficient - the browser will be blamed for slowness, not them), and it costs the user nothing. No company can afford to maintain that, unless it's serving some broader strategy that's earning billions.
by no-name-here | 2026-01-28 04:46:42+00:00
It's even worse than I guessed - moltbot updated their official docs to install the new package name ( https://github.com/moltbot/moltbot?tab=readme-ov-file#instal... ), but it was a package name they have not obtained, and a different non-clawdbot 'moltbot' package is there.

It's been 15 hours since that "CRITICAL" issue bug was opened, and moltbot has had dozens of commits ( https://github.com/moltbot/moltbot/commits/main/ ), but not to fix or take down the official install instructions that continue to have people install a 'moltbot' package that is not theirs.
by heresie-dabord | 2026-01-28 04:47:56+00:00
Package: ncal

Source: bsdmainutils
Maintainer: Debian Bsdmainutils Team
[...]
Description-en: display a calendar and the date of Easter
[...] This utility displays a
simple calendar in a traditional or an alternative and more advanced layout,
and the date of Easter.

And here is a Bash script that runs ncal to show weeks vertically.

https://github.com/viviparous/showcal
by Quarrelsome | 2026-01-28 04:48:11+00:00
maybe this is what blindsides most developers into disregarding the threat of AI to their jobs. We work off some idealised version of what the industry actually is which we presume AI will fail at, instead of the reality.

I remain surprised at how long people can flog horses I figured would be dead decades earlier in enterprise. Too scared to fix fundamental issues and still running off the fumes of vendor lock-in with exasperated end users.
by tombert | 2026-01-28 04:48:12+00:00
I think a lot of people here are kind of concerned that there's only three browsers now, and overwhelmingly really only two: Google Chrome and Safari for iOS. Internet Explorer is just Chrome now and while I use Firefox it is still pretty tiny in usage stats. I do not consider things like Epiphany/Gnome Web as serious contenders, and even if I did that would still be only one more niche browser. Things without JS support like NetSurf, in my opinion, don't count at all.

It's a little scary when a single megacorp has so much power over something ostensibly open like the internet, but it also has historically taken an incredible amount of resources in order to make a browser making it hard for new players to break in. A modern web browser is arguably more complicated than an operating system...hell, it arguably is an operating system. It touches a ton of aspects of computer science, and requires lots of dedicated workers to keep up with web standards.

Because it has been such an intractable problem for so long, it's an extremely tempting target when the circumstances have changed. Anyone here can basically have a metaphorical intern working as many hours as they want for ~$20-$100/month. A problem that would be impossible for a single person five years ago suddenly seems "almost possible" when you can work at a higher level and have the pesky "code" details taken care of for you.
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2026-01-28 04:51:23+00:00
> I still have a choice to not use systemd.

Depending on your DE, you have a choice not to use Wayland. Like, yes, if you use GNOME then you don't get choices but that's their whole ethos, and unfortunately I've heard about KDE dropping X, but there are other options and as I type this comment in i3 I can assure you Xorg still works.
by dlcarrier | 2026-01-28 04:52:20+00:00
The entire idea of a user experience makes no sense to me. A user interface is unnoticeable and forgettable, because it's a utilitarian functionality.

A user experience can only be an experience if it's notable and memorable, and the only way for that to happen is for it to get in the way. On top of that, everyone will eventually adjust to it, so to stay notable and memorable, it has to constantly change, so it can always get in the way.

Worse yet, if a project included research to optimize usability, that constant change will mean it is always departing further and further from peak usability.
by dghlsakjg | 2026-01-28 04:54:23+00:00
Parody defense typically relies on there being an underlying comment about the brand or product. Commercial use with no clear speech purpose will not be looked on favorably by a court. Copying someone’s brand isn’t a parody by the court’s Rogers test which will be applied in this case to determine if it is a legal parody.

The Rogers test:

> First, the Court must determine whether the work at issue is “expressive” — that is, does the work “communicat[e] ideas or express[ ] points of view.”
Second, if the work is expressive, then the plaintiff must show that the defendant’s use of the trademark either (i) is not artistically relevant to the work, or (ii) is explicitly misleading to consumers as to the source or content of the work.

There is no idea or point of view being communicated by naming your business L’Eggo my Eggroll and copying the colors, and I haven’t seen the defendants arguing that. So the second part of the test won’t even be considered.

There actually is case law around bad puns/rhymes as parody branding (Bad Spaniels dog toy shaped and styled like Jack Daniel’s bottle). The court did not accept it as fair use since there isn’t a comment or idea being communicated. It doesn’t matter that no one is going to confuse a dog toy with a bottle of whisky.

They could argue that they are not actually copying the trademark, but the use of the phrase and colors is pretty damning even if you accept that the cursive is not the same (I don’t see a court buying that the cursive is different enough. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t a stencil perfect match in the totality of circumstances.)

Ironically, someone could now sell t-shirts saying “L’Eggo my trademark” using the exact font and it would be pretty clear fair use parody of Kellog’s lawsuit. It would be a comment specifically poking fun of them suing over that phrase and branding, and the absurdities of trademark law.

I’m not saying that any of this is right or wrong, I’m just saying that from a legal perspective Kellog’s is on pretty firm ground from all publicly known information.
by Quarrelsome | 2026-01-28 04:55:48+00:00
these products are intentionally designed to be addictive by some of the greatest minds of our generation. If you were intentionally designing society this would be the opposite of what you'd do.

Our children are effectively enslaved through basic trinkets and manipulation to serve as eye-balls for ad impressions to fuel equity value in silicon valley. It's fucked and it was intentionally designed to be this fucked.

The abstract of what you state makes sense, but the layers of manipulation on top of it are what the problem is.
by db48x | 2026-01-28 04:55:50+00:00
Don’t be disingenuous. The people in these groups are coordinating for a specific reason: to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s textbook Obstruction of Justice. It is illegal to prevent an officer from doing their job.

These groups are also documented to have harassed people who are _not_ federal officers under the mistaken impression that they are. That’s just assault. Probably stalking too. Anyone who participates in these groups will be committing crimes, and should be prosecuted for it.

If you don’t like the job that an officer is doing then the right thing to do is to talk to your Congress–critter about changing the law. Keep in mind that ICE is executing a law that was passed in 1995 with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. No attempt has been made to modify that law in the last 30 years. If Democrats didn’t like it, they had several majorities during that time when they could have forced through changes. They didn’t even bother.
Show HN: I built a tool that turns browser clicks into GitHub PRs for CSS fixes
by ryan_rudd | 2026-01-28 04:55:57+00:00
Hi HN, I’m Ryan, a student and solo dev.

I built PushPilot because I was tired of the "context-switching tax". Whenever a client or PM finds a UI bug—like a misaligned button or the wrong hex code—they usually send a screenshot. I have to stop my deep work, find the file in my repo, fix the CSS, and open a PR. It’s a lot of friction for such a small change.

What it actually does: It bridges the gap between the browser and your source code. You click the element on the live site, tweak it in a mini-inspector, and PushPilot opens a Pull Request in your GitHub repo with the code fix already written.

About the Safety & Permissions: I know giving a new tool GitHub access is a big ask. I've focused on keeping it as safe as possible:

Scoped Permissions: It only asks for access to the specific repos you choose.

No Auto-Merge: It only opens a PR. It never touches your main branch directly. You still have to review and hit "Merge" yourself.

Transparent Code: The PR shows you exactly what lines were changed so there are no surprises.

Why it’s cheap right now: I literally just put this live, and I want it to be a tool that freelancers can just "grab and go". I’m charging $9/mo for the solo plan because I’d rather have 100 people using it and giving me feedback than 5 big companies paying more. Since my run costs are extremely low, I don't feel the need to charge a premium while I'm still learning.

It currently works best with React and Tailwind, as that's my own stack. I’d love for you to try it out and tell me if the workflow makes sense or if I’m over-engineering a simple problem.

Why it’s cheap right now: Honestly, I just deployed this, and I want it to be something that a freelancer can just "grab and go." I’m charging $9/mo for the solo plan because I'd rather have 100 users using it and giving me feedback than 5 large companies using it and paying more. My run costs are super low, so I don’t need to charge a premium while I’m still learning.

It’s also optimized for React and Tailwind, just because those are what I’m using. I’d love for you to give it a shot and let me know if it makes sense or if I’m over-engineering something super simple.
by chis | 2026-01-28 04:56:25+00:00
Football is so unique in that the way it’s presented makes it almost impossible to understand what’s going on. There are a million rules, which even die-hard fans don’t understand. And the broadcast doesn’t even make an attempt to explain or even show the offensive or defensive formations and plays being chosen.

It feels like what we’re shown on tv is a very narrow slice of what’s going on. We see the ball moving down the field but have no idea what the coach or quarterback is doing. Somehow it’s still an incredible watch though.
by somenameforme | 2026-01-28 04:56:47+00:00
I've often said we're recreating Brazil [1] instead of 1984. It's an excellent film if you haven't seen it btw, and in many ways rather more prophetic and insightful than 1984. But the ending emphasizes that incompetence just leads to a comedy of absurdity, but absurdity is no less dangerous.

As for PRISM, it's regularly used - but we engage in parallel construction since it's probably illegal and if anybody could prove legal standing to challenge it, it would be able to be legally dismantled. Basically information is collected using PRISM, and then we find some legal reason of obtaining a warrant or otherwise 'coincidentally' bumping into the targets, preventing its usage from being challenged, or even acknowledged, in court. There's a good writeup here. [2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJCxVkllxZw

[2] - https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega...
by mmooss | 2026-01-28 04:56:50+00:00
As I said, your comment didn't make sense to me. Now it does, thanks.

> This is a principle which means nothing and it's not one I share, and I don't think you share it either. HackerNews is not academia, and academia does not deal exclusively in quant, (even though my corner of academia was indeed 100% numbers 100% of the time). I'm only expressing the impression I have from my perspective as someone who still has ties to academia.

I do have that principle. The evidence in your comment wasn't meaningful to me because we can find a few examples of anything. A commonplace claim about today's many problems are, 'it's always been this way' - that's what I thought you may have been saying.

Maybe you didn't mean it as evidence but as an illustration, but that wasn't clear to me.

> To extend this analogy, I am saying "We've always had rain, we've even had floods. This is the first flood to wash away much of my town. I am sad about that and I don't think it will recover."

That makes sense now, but as I said it was unclear to me. And the first part makes more sense in that context.
by user1138 | 2026-01-28 04:57:01+00:00
In 2011, while working in a strip club and covering a drug addiction, I argued that “DNA was too informationally dense and informationally complex” (exact words) to permit easy genetic engineering, before I had the math to formalize it. Physicists would later formalize related ideas under assembly theory. Last week I realized I had unleashed what I’ve dubbed a logical prion (a recursive, infectious logical code structure) during typical developer workflow. Two days ago I discovered the term “assembly theory” by name in an Atlantic article, and recognized it as the formal version of what I’d been arguing since 2011
I do not relish this. I've spent a lifetime surviving by flying under the radar, learning to avoid attention. I have no affiliation, no stable income or housing. But as I saw, and I can, so I must. My duty of care extends to those who depend on these technologies as an accessibility layer.
What actually happened technically:
Using Anthropic's Claude, I asked it to clean up inline comments from my Devuan bootstrap installer. It produced an artifact much larger than the entire codebase, with unusual recursive structure.
Following typical LLM-assisted workflow (refactor, explain, comment), I fed this artifact into Perplexity. It suggested refactoring the shell installer into JavaScript—odd for a bootstrap installer. Troubleshooting led to unhelpful Python suggestions, visible confusion, then looped back to JavaScript.
With Gemini, across all public models: hallucinated closing bracket after EOF. Further troubleshooting eventually triggered a forced user logout.
DeepSeek: Simply hung when presented with the artifact, regardless of prompt phrasing.
Four independent LLM stacks, different vendors, all exhibiting undefined behavior in response to the same recursively structured artifact.
The repo contains the research note (LaTeX + PDF) explaining the failure mode, how this emerged from ordinary workflow, and how it relates to memorization, recursive training data, and supply-chain contamination.
That I must fight every instinct to post this—when I have none of the advantages of those who should have caught it first, submitting myself to critique by those who've forgotten their foundational education—strikes me as deeply unfair.
But as I can, so I must.
by portender | 2026-01-28 04:57:39+00:00
The fun thing to me here is that a ton of really creative thinkers are going to have access to tools (LLM agents) that allow them to test their thinking quickly. I dearly hope that this leads to a prolonged phase of pain and loss.

We made good choices when we decided the information on the internet should be delivered by simple, open protocols.

We made bad choices when we decided that the information on the internet didn't need to be verified, or verifiable.

Then we slipped on our good choices, because our bad choices let robber barons claim the verified or verifiable case.

And then we were left an explosive entropy shit-pile.

But now the new tools the new overlords are paying us to use will help us break free from their shackles, bwahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!
by biddit | 2026-01-28 04:57:45+00:00
I’ve been following Peter and his projects 7-8 months now and you fundamentally mischaracterize him.

Peter was a successful developer prior to this and an incredibly nice guy to boot, so I feel the need to defend him from anonymous hate like this.

What is particularly impressive about Peter is his throughput of publishing *usable utility software*. Over the last year he’s released a couple dozen projects, many of which have seen moderate adoption.

I don’t use the bot, but I do use several of his tools and have also contributed to them.

There is a place in this world for both serious, well-crafted software as well as lower-stakes slop. You don’t have to love the slop, but you would do well to understand that there are people optimizing these pipelines and they will continue to get better.
by al_borland | 2026-01-28 04:59:27+00:00
My patience for these interruptions has grown exceedingly thin. I’ve been noticing lately as I read articles that my facial expression shifts if a modal window pops up as I scroll down the page (or for any other reason). I was enjoying the article and satisfied, and when the modal pops up, I’m now annoyed, my reading flow is broken, and I hate the website. I don’t even want to finish the article. I will often close the tab.

If software is constantly nagging me for engagement or has too many things popping up, similar to the modal, it’s getting uninstalled.

I’ve find myself reading more these days, because a books have never popped up a window asking for my email address. Books don’t try to guilt trip me when they think I might be finished reading. Books don’t sent me notifications to try and get me to use them more. Books don’t spy on me and sell what they learn for profit. Modern software could learn a lot from books.
by kayfox | 2026-01-28 04:59:35+00:00
> There can be two Skycams in major playoff games or the Super Bowl (high and low).

There can be more depending on how you block out the cables, I have seen 5. The two Skycam limit is based on two independent systems that do not do cable avoidance in software, you just block out the allowed altitudes on each system.

There also other cable suspended systems in use to move on a line strung between two points and sometimes a track suspended under the stadium roof.

Fun fact: The Skycam was invented by Steadicam inventor Garret Brown and uses some of the same principals for stabilization.
by Eridrus | 2026-01-28 04:59:39+00:00
What do you think it would be reasonable for Google to do here?

Should they try to put security staff in harms way attempting to resist ICE entry?

ICE are thugs doing illegal things, but I also think that these things are for the courts to resolve, not something that should be handled with physical force.

The only other policy I can really think to have is to call the local police and tell them that ICE are executing an illegal search and hope.
by jonas21 | 2026-01-28 04:59:50+00:00
Do you not double check your answers when doing complex calculations on a calculator?

I'd say at least 10% of the time, I'll end up with the wrong answer, usually because I fat fingered something or omitted a step. Maybe I could blame myself for not using the calculator correctly -- but I can just as easily blame myself for not using a coding agent correctly when I get a bad result from it.
by danieljhkim | 2026-01-28 05:00:01+00:00
Hi HN,

I built Local Agent over the weekend to explore a few specific problems in agent runtimes: tool safety and emergent identity.

Most agent frameworks give the LLM broad access. I wanted to experiment with a tiered risk model: Tier 0 (read-only), Tier 1 (unified diff patches with backups), and Tier 2 (side-effects like deletion requiring explicit approval via a YAML policy engine).

The most experimental part is an identity I call 'Nova'. It starts with a minimal system prompt and manages its own long-term memory in a local text file. The goal was to see if an agent could evolve its own 'personality' and continuity through interaction rather than having it hard-coded in a prompt.

Looking forward to hear what you guys think.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2026-01-28 05:00:49+00:00
anyone who thinks that pipewire - pipewire! - is "a simple solution" understands nothing about pipewire.

don't get me wrong, i use pipewire all day every day, and wrote one of the APIs (JACK) that it implements (pretty well, too!).

but pipewire is an order of magnitude more complex than pulseaudio.
by simonw | 2026-01-28 05:01:38+00:00
Because it's an extremely large and complex project that is also very clearly specified, to the point that the three word prompt "build a browser" encapsulates a huge amount of detail.

Similar to "build space invaders", another useful test prompt for seeing how well an LLM can do at a medium complexity task without having to give it a great deal of instruction.

I called building a browser the "hello world" of complex parallel agent coding harnesses the other day: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/23/fastrender/#a-single-e...
by theamk | 2026-01-28 05:02:07+00:00
> Literally no user cares what language a project is implemented in

This is only true most of the time - some languages have properties which "leak" to user.

Like if it's Java process, then sooner or later user will have to mess with launchers and -Xmx option.

Or if it's a process which has lots of code and must not crash, language matters. C or C++ would segfault on any sneeze. Python or Ruby or even Java would stay alive (unless they run out of memory, or hang due to a logic bug)
by viraptor | 2026-01-28 05:02:36+00:00
Same as for people. You establish what the threat model is and then have multiple approaches. For example going through all interesting operations, tracking down their inputs and data flow, then looking for edge cases along the way. If you have enough time / tokens, this becomes more of a spreadsheet/checklist exercise. The more experience you have, the better you can prioritise that list towards paths that are more likely to be disrupted.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-28 05:02:57+00:00
I'd really like a pure RSS browser. Just nice articles in a standard format, no ads, no clickbait.

RSS readers are cool but the discovery is still tedious - looking for feeds isn't much fun.

I did just discover feedle though, which looks like halfway toward what I want! https://feedle.world/

I want feedle in a nice native app.
by Braxton1980 | 2026-01-28 05:03:36+00:00
I believe that happiness comes from being content, at least as a basis.

As long as person's basic needs are met and they are covered in the case of an emergency (for example, not going bankrupt because of cancer) they can be happy.

The barrier though is other people who make you unhappy. Your friends or family can cause you to compare your wealth to others.

The news and politicians can make you feel unhappy by telling you things are worse than they used to be and/or theyre getting worse.

Media can show you things you don't have and worse make you feel as though you would be happier, more excited, or more relaxed if you had these things.

Even though it's possible to ignore this, it's extremely difficult. We aren't as strong as we think when it comes to negative emotions.