MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by devlovstad | 2026-01-05 14:16:12+00:00
I've read through most of the first paper mentioned.

Here, the authors have taken set up two synthetic experiments where transformers have to learn the probability of observing events from a sampled from a "ground truth" Bayesian model. If the probability assigned by the transformers to the event space matches the Bayesian posterior predictive distribution, then the authors infer that the model is performing Bayesian inference for these tasks. Furthermore, they use this to argue that transformers are performing Bayesian inference in general (belief-propagation throughout layers).

The transformers are trained on thousands of different "ground truth" Bayesian models, each randomly initialized which means that there's no underlying signal to be learned besides the belief propagation mechanism itself. This makes me wonder if any sufficiently powerful maximum likelihood-based model would meet this criteria of "doing Bayesian inference" in this scenario.

The transformers in this paper do not intrinsically know to perform inference due to the fact that they're transformers. They perform inference because the optimal solution to the problems in the experiments is specifically to do inference, and transformers are powerful enough to model belief propagation. I find it hard to extrapolate that this is what is happening for LLMs, for example.
by rvz | 2026-01-05 14:16:14+00:00
There are billions of computers, but only a few computers can run very large local LLMs.

So instead, imagine billions of laptops (or phones) available in store that have local LLMs installed which allows you to have intelligence-like chatbot features available with the equivalent performance of Claude Opus or GPT-5 if not better and they are far smaller.

Thank you for telling us know that efficient + performant multi-modal local AI models is the endgame; a bonus if they are smaller to fit in phones.
by freedomben | 2026-01-05 14:17:10+00:00
Indeed, this was one of the first things I thought of too. I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views. I'll never forget talking with an educated Perot voter (a friend of mine) at the time and actually being confronted with the real views, not a shallow strawman, and realizing I didn't have any good answers because I hadn't actually thought about it. That was a good maturation point for me when I started realizing the power (and danger) of bubbles.
by casey2 | 2026-01-05 14:17:42+00:00
Fatten up the pig, then carve it can you fatten it up again?

American leaders lost hope in Americas ability to build the future. They decided this was as good as it's going to get and squoze the people at every level with unproductive IT, bureaucracy, consumerism. This country doesn't have a workforce capable of building the future anymore, it's dropouts and druggies the lot of them.
by randall0001 | 2026-01-05 14:18:33+00:00
Location: Montréal, Canada

Remote: Yes (North America), or hybrid/onsite in Montréal

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: AI (NLP specialty), TensorFlow, RAG, Embeddings, LLM, spaCy, Python, Flask/FastAPI, JS/TS, Node, SvelteKit, Tailwind, Postgres, Neo4j, Docker, some Kubernetes. Willing to learn your stack.

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ZIr4kHDcR42bcDsGZhPC4Gqai9...

Email: In CV (not today, web scrapers!)

Technical ex-founder looking to sink my teeth into a new problem. NLP expert with experience training discriminative and generative architectures, working with embeddings, and implementing RAG systems. Adept with the full-stack, and a proven track record of designing, planning, and developing software systems.
I am seeking an engineering or leadership role where I can build interesting tech, preferably AI solutions that drive real-world impact.
by xpe | 2026-01-05 14:18:52+00:00
> Power is all that matters in the end.

This can mean different things to different people, such as:

(A) Power dynamics determine outcomes i.e. a claim about how the world works

(B) Might makes right i.e. rejecting ethical notions of right and wrong

I'm pretty sure you mean (A). Fair? Are there other meanings you want to endorse? Some form of nihilism perhaps?
by xvxvx | 2026-01-05 14:19:21+00:00
There are approx. 17,000 homeless people in Ireland, currently. The highest on record.

At €325 per week for rent, Ireland could house all 2,525 currently homeless families recorded in emergency accommodation, with some budget left over even after accounting for single adults.

So, either subsidize 2000 artists or house 2525 homeless families. Where are the priorities?
by freedomben | 2026-01-05 14:19:44+00:00
I don't know about Jensen specifically, and I can't remember the guy at the moment, but there have been a few tipped hands including one where the guy on national TV said something about "Americans should be gluing the iPhones together in the factory, not Chinese" and it really made a lot of this stuff click for me: they want to provide low-paying American jobs in American factories. That's probably not the whole vision, but it is a big part of it IMHO. I'll try and find the quote or video but if someone else remembers this, please share a link
by hexbin010 | 2026-01-05 14:19:56+00:00
To finish my review: there are a lot of rough edges and questionable defaults, but ultimately, KDE is impressive. It's extremely snappy, full of useful features. I can live with it

I think fast + full of features gets KDE a LOT of mileage in terms of what users put up with. But it doesn't help anyone denying that there are crashes and bugs all over.
by yoava | 2026-01-05 14:20:06+00:00
ADRs are similar, yet the important point is not the format of the design log entry, but it's usage with AI.

with design log, we ask the AI to create the ADR or log entry, but unlike ADR we
1. require the AI to ask question and we answer.
2. require the AI to update the design log after implementation with any drift from the original design.

Both of the above help to make the AI more precise and prevent context drift.
by necovek | 2026-01-05 14:20:23+00:00
In my opinion, I can be a worst UX expert in the world, and I still reserve the right to criticize bad UX elsewhere: the fact that you are a bad "creator" does not mean that you are a stupid "user".

Yes, it is a bit hypocritical, but you can look at the content of the message and judge it without judging the presentation of the message, even if it talks about usability of interfaces in computer software.
by richardblythman | 2026-01-05 14:20:59+00:00
Thought people might be interested in how I've been using Claude Code to plan my meals, track my nutrition, and analyze symptoms.

Building a meal database: I add meals to a directory using whatever's convenient: photos from a cookbook, or copy-paste from PDFs or websites. I modify the recipes as needed (e.g. scale 2x for lunch leftovers, swap out ingredients that are hard to get, add more information for soft boiling vs hard boiling an egg). The agent scrapes the nutritional information for the recipe automatically via the USDA API and stores it.

Weekly planning & Nutritional analysis: When it's time to plan my week, I can either select from my meal library or let the agent suggest combinations. It then generates a shopping list broken down by category (dairy, vegetables, etc). The agent creates detailed nutrition reports showing my daily protein, micronutrients, etc. Currently, I am still manually filling my shopping cart online from the generated list (but working on automating that too).

Micronutrient tracking: I was recently researching whether I needed to invest €100/month in AG1, but after analyzing my current meal plan, it turns out I'm already getting most of my vitamins. The agent suggested a few strategic tweaks (adding sunflower and pumpkin seeds to my bowls for Vitamin E and Zinc, and a kiwi after dinner for vitamin C) to get me where I need to be. I realized I probably do need to take some Vitamin K2 supplements as it's hard to get from food here.

Symptom investigation: I've always struggled with digestive issues but could never narrow down the cause. I've been tracking symptoms using the Bristol scale (so-called log agent!) along with eczema flare ups, and from 2 weeks of data our first hypothesis is that tomatoes are the issue. Apparently tomatoes are a "nightshade" (hadn't heard of it). Starting Monday, we're running a structured elimination diet and the agent has me on plain salmon/chicken, rice and spinach until we kick off.

Here's a demo of how I interact with it (via an editor we made for non-coding claude code agents). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShcYuV7Evvw

Still early, but AI allows me to use the time I used to spend on planning meals and creating shopping lists for higher level analysis. I'm still very much in the loop. It's no good at data analysis without me, but with it my capabilities reach much further.
by fouronnes3 | 2026-01-05 14:21:07+00:00
A life hack I'm trying for 2026 is to stop setting an alarm clock in the morning, and set a bed time alarm instead. Yes, even when I have an important meeting in the morning. This does two things:

- provide a strong incentive to go to bed at the correct time for my body every day because that's the only way to not over sleep

- enjoy the joy of waking up without an alarm every day

- provide some of this clear thinking time. Either at night when I'm sitting in bed not quite super tired yet, or in the morning when I woke up a bit early before everyone else
by badsectoracula | 2026-01-05 14:21:33+00:00
Sorry but that makes no sense, there is nothing in "Microsoft's kingdom" here, Wine -as you certainly know- is independent. The most Microsoft can do is change the API in backwards incompatible ways - but that'd affect Windows too, so there is little incentive to do that (and attempts such as Metro/UWP/etc to change the core ways of working with Windows didn't prove popular with most gamedevs).

And even if Microsoft does that, it isn't any different than the 2394923th time a library breaks its API on Linux - Linux as an operating system isn't some monolithic project, it is a combination of hundreds of separate projects that for the most part work together like -sometimes misshapen- bricks on a wall. Wine/Proton is just another of those bricks (and history has shown that it tends to be among the more stable ones).
by metalman | 2026-01-05 14:21:35+00:00
My grandfather worked in the aleganey forge running the tempering ovens for very large metal forgings.
Raised a family,4 kids, kept the farm, retired and lived 30years more, and there was some money left for everybody.
He bemoned the selling off?, out, of american manufacturing that began in the 1970's.
He was the kind of american who was comfortably unaware of the rest of the world, perhaps ever so slightly embarassed by his unworldlyness, only having a high school educatiin, but also completly untroubled by anything, anywhere, ever bieng a real concern.He had worked on the 16" guns
that are still to be seen on the decks of WWII battleships.
But instead of an enduring world peace and prosperity he got to see the errosion of the american dream, and the desruction of americas strength from within.
As a further illustration, granpa and grandma, used to go visit "uncle kieth"in
NYC, St.marks place, 6th st, between 2nd and 3rd ave, manhatten, in the 70's ,80's and early 90's, stayed in the truck camper, parked on the street,an unspoken,unwritten imunity convieghed by that little bit of mud in the fender wells.
by johncolanduoni | 2026-01-05 14:21:42+00:00
Look, it’s not that complicated. If you just build your software with gcc or whatever in a docker container with pinned versions, put the binary on your website, and call it a day, 5 minutes later someone is going to complain it doesn’t work on their 3 year old Linux Mint install. The balkanization of Linux is undeniable at this point. If you want to fix this problem without breaking anything else, you have to jump through hoops (and glibc is far from the only culprit).

You can see what the best-in-class hoop jumping looks like in a bunch of open source projects that do binary releases — it’s nontrivial. Or you can see all the machinations that Flatpak goes through to get userspace Mesa drivers etc. working on a different glibc version than the base system. On every other major OS, including other free software ones, this isn’t a problem. Like at all. Windows’ infamous MSVC versioning is even mostly a non-issue at this point, and all you had to do before was bundle the right version in your installer. I’ll take a single compiler flag over the Linux mess every day of the week.

Do you distribute a commercial product to a large Linux userbase, without refusing to support anything that isn’t Ubuntu LTS? I’m kind of doubting that, because me and everyone I know who didn’t go with a pure Electron app (which mostly solves this for you with their own build process complexity) has wasted a bunch of time on this issue. Even statically linking with musl has its futziness, and that’s literally impossible for many apps (e.g. anything that touches a GPU). The Linux ecosystem could make a few pretty minor attitude adjustments and improve things with almost no downside, but it won’t. So the year of the Linux desktop remains illusive.
by botanrice | 2026-01-05 14:21:49+00:00
As a fan of pictograms in general and very much a visual learner, I don't mind Tahoe icons or menu icons in general. By default I look to those first and then the text, it works for me.

That said, Apple's Liquid Glass is really poor UI. It works okay on my Macbook but feel like it's basically broken a couple features of my second gen iPhone SE, which is kind of untenable imo. Apple also clearly seems to design for larger devices now, which I get but... am I any less of a customer because I use an older device? why should I be de-prioritized?

Lastly, speaking of UI/UX - this blog's website was really bad! Ironic that a blog on UI/UX would have bubbles floating down the screen interfering with text readability and no way to turn them off!
by Workaccount2 | 2026-01-05 14:23:08+00:00
People love the abundance of cheap affordable stuff more than they love their neighbors having work.

It's also a positive feedback loop, where the less money people have from a lack of good jobs, the more they will choose cheap foreign goods to buy. Never mind that if you are in an economically productive sector, this whole cheap shit bonanza is just pure upside for you (with a touch of dissonance to maintain moral purity, of course).

Bringing jobs "back" probably isn't going to do much. We need a cultural shift away from Temu, Shine, Amazon, Walmart, Dollar General and towards spending more money for less goods.

Which is going to be about as popular as proposing we go back to land lines.
by imtringued | 2026-01-05 14:23:48+00:00
This is probably the worst possible way to implement a processor.

Instead of just bumping the instruction pointer by one or an offset, you now need to have code labels in your processor and a way to efficiently look them up.

goto "exit" means the processor needs to have a lookup table of all the possible nodes in the computational graph. Calling a function requires a global look up table.

How is that table implemented? Obviously you can't just have an array of code labels, because using a linear data structure would kind of defeat the point.

Instead you need to build hardware that can store a graph and its edges directly and each hardware unit also has a label matcher so you can load a particular node and its edges.

This seems like an absurd amount of effort for moving from one instruction to the next. You know, something that could have been done by doing a single IP+1 or IP+jump_offset.
by rssoconnor | 2026-01-05 14:24:40+00:00
> I think the answer to the question “how do we stop technology X from destroying us?” lies in licensing and regulation enacted through legislation.

In the golden age of the 90's we were able to ban CFCs, but I'm skeptical we could do that today. We no longer have that political ability, and I doubt we will get it back any time soon.
by chuckadams | 2026-01-05 14:24:45+00:00
I rather like the skeuomorphism ... on the buttons anyway. The distortion effect on the glass is simply annoying, and the overall effect on an already-cramped UI like Safari on a phone is just ... ugh. There's now basically three blobs of mystery meat at the bottom of the screen. So if Liquid Glass was made for mobile first, it's an even bigger failure. It's actually more tolerable on desktop, though the double-border effect on things like the control panel stick out pretty badly.
by WackyFighter | 2026-01-05 14:24:50+00:00
It is a constant source of confusion. I see it constantly discussed in various freelancer whats-app and freelance groups.

I used to get contracts checked to see if they were Outside IR-35 and I knew I wasn't the only. So it isn't straight-forward as you suggest.

It can also scare companies off, I have personally experienced this. As a result there are far less Outside IR-35 work. Almost every contractor I know has had to go back perm.

I understand there were many Contractors that basically milked forever contracts, but it kinda screwed over loads of freelancers.

I personally hate being perm. I used to work about 6-9 months a year and I found it relatively easy to find another contract. I had plenty of free time. Now I get the standard 1 month and bank holidays. Really pissed off about the rule changes.
by dmantis | 2026-01-05 14:24:58+00:00
They work on that, https://geti2p.net/el/blog/post/2025/10/16/new-i2p-routers

The current focus are new rust and go implementations, but embedding lib for applications is also in the roadmap.

I also agree on hindrance. I don't understand why they don't provide a simple docker-compose at least for daemon deployment for immutable management with controlled scopes. There is an image in the dockerhub, but no proper instructions. People have to spend several hours to ensure that everything works correctly.
by vladvasiliu | 2026-01-05 14:25:09+00:00
Right, and 27" 5k is 218 ppi, which isn't that much more than the 24". But don't forget that viewing distance plays a big role in this, and my 14" laptop is much closer than a 27" monitor. Bonus points for our specific model having an absolutely ridiculous viewing angle, so if it's too close the outer border are noticeably dark.
by Fnoord | 2026-01-05 14:25:14+00:00
Thanks for the perspective. I was looking for it in the comments.

The thing with a café is. OK, it exists. But it just isn't for me. I like being on my own, and you don't go to a public place for that. I got coffee at home (not as good as in a half decent café). If I really do need coffee on the go it is while travelling, and then I don't sit inside (no, not on a crowdy terrace either).

I could write you a post about the the unbearable joy of listening to hypnotic music while on a train or bus ride.

I could write a post about sitting stoned in a squat with everyone going to bed slowly but surely, and this girl still playing her guitar smiling friendly at me, and eventually guiding me to a place where I could sleep. Cause at this point, I had no clue where to go.

But in the end, it boils down to mindfulness and meditation.
by ecshafer | 2026-01-05 14:25:22+00:00
One of my main arguments for a universal health care scheme in the united states is how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is. Lets totally ignore efficacy, moral arguments, expense for the patient, etc. If you are a company in the US a large percentage of the effective compensation of employees is healthcare. A moderately good PPO is like ~$10k+ a year per employee. You can pay workers in some other countries less than just the cost of paying for health insurance for a US employee.
by moogly | 2026-01-05 14:25:37+00:00
That was Howard Lutnick. He's said a lot of, let's say "out-of-touch", things. He's not living in the real world, though.

Motorola tried that not too long ago. Didn't go well. If you want to decimate American wages, you could do it, but if you at the same time deport people who were the most ready to work for a pittance, it's going to be hard to do this without riots. Then again, Stephen Miller wants those riots, so maybe you're right.

The crux of the matter is that those workers won't be able to afford the iPhones they're assembling, however.
by jerkstate | 2026-01-05 14:25:46+00:00
I'm very sorry, I should have phrased my original post in a kinder, less dismissive way, and kudos to you for not reacting badly to my rudeness. It is a cool repo and a great accomplishment. Implementing autograd is great as a learning exercise, but my opinion is that you're not going to get the performance or functionality of one of the large, mainstream autograd libraries. Karpathy, for example, throws away micrograd after implementing it and uses pytorch in his later exercises. So it's great that you did this, but for others to learn how autograd works, Karpathy is usually a better route, because the concepts are built up one by one and explained thoroughly.
by ktut | 2026-01-05 14:26:05+00:00
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Remote: Yes or hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Typescript, Vue, React, Tailwind, HTML / CSS / JavaScript, Adobe Creative Suite (well-versed in multiple programs), Claude/Cursor, Jest/Playwright/CI/CD, AWS, Google Analytics

Résumé/CV: https://www.rkdvis.com/

Email: ramzidreessen [at] gmail [dot] com

Experienced Frontend Engineer currently working at a major US company in a senior role. Just shipped a major product with thousands of users as the sole frontend developer. 7 years of web dev experience and 5 years of professional design experience. Expert at bridging design and engineering to deliver high-performance, accessible solutions. Product experience across fintech, traditional media and gaming. Currently seeking frontend engineering, design/engineer hybrid roles or a frontend team lead role for a small team.
by SJMG | 2026-01-05 14:26:15+00:00
It's the standard for mobile. That said, in server-side enterprise computing, I know no one who uses it. I'm sure there are applications, but in this domain you'd need a good justification for not following standard patterns.

I have used DuckDB on an application server because it computes aggregations lightning fast which saved this app from needing caching, background services and all the invalidation and failure modes that come with those two.
by johncolanduoni | 2026-01-05 14:26:38+00:00
Yeah, and that’s my point. The problem is not technological, you can make a super readable HTML site by just putting text in <p> tags, and RSS readers for blogs that didn’t rug-pull their content still work fine. People lost interest in giving out something for nothing, so now the web is an ad-infested mess.

If someone makes a new tech that makes that impossible, 10 principled FSF-enjoyers will write content for it and nobody else. Web standard bloat is bad, but it didn’t cause this problem, and you can’t fix it by creating a new spec.
by Surac | 2026-01-05 14:27:01+00:00
I think all the icon „bloat“ is from the designers that needed to stay relevant. They learned to use pictures instead of text from some professors and wanted to show how much they are worth. The picture for text pattern is valid if you want to replace one or two words in a commercial but not if you have about 200 icons on your page. Also the trend to a flat black and white design makes the icons just to blend together
by alnwlsn | 2026-01-05 14:27:03+00:00
Not sure how familiar you are with KiCad but its project files are just text. With a little bit of rearranging you can get things like:

"Component U1 is 74HCT02, has 14 pins"

"Component R2 is 4.7K resistor, has 2 pins"

"Signal +5V connects U1 pin 14, U2 pin 9, R1 pin 2, R7 pin 1...."

"Signal /RESET connects U1 pin 2, U4 pin 3, U7 pin 8...."