MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by socalgal2 | 2026-01-05 19:55:24+00:00
I don't hate CSS. In fact I love the fact that I can make a website and with relatively little work it runs everywhere, including mobile. Though I do have to check.

That said, I'm not a pro. I asked ChatGPT for some layout primitives which it gave me and I then I probed for things that stood out as strange to me and it gave me lots of background and why things are as they are as well as why they can't automatic.

One that stood out was this:

Me: No native UI framework in existence has the equivalent of min-width: 0. Somehow they all get by with just layout primitives

ChatGPT: native UI toolkits do not expose anything equivalent to min-width: auto (intrinsic min-content) as a default constraint. They get away with pure layout primitives because they made a fundamentally different architectural choice than CSS.

This isn’t accidental, and it explains exactly why CSS feels broken here.

The core difference (one sentence)

Native UI frameworks treat content as flexible by default; CSS treats content as authoritative by default.

Everything else follows from that.

What native UI frameworks assume (and CSS does not): Across Cocoa, UIKit, WinUI, Android, Qt, etc., the default assumptions are:

1. Text is allowed to truncate

2. Containers decide layout

3. Content adapts to constraints

4. Overflow is normal

5. Intrinsic size is a preference, not a hard constraint

In other words: Layout constraints dominate content.

What CSS assumes instead: CSS’s default assumption is the opposite:

1.Text must remain readable

2. Content dictates minimum size

3. Overflow is an error

5. Intrinsic size is a hard constraint

In other words: Content dominates layout.

That single inversion is why min-width: auto exists — and why no native toolkit needs it.

After that I asked it could it give me CSS primitives that work like native layout. It did, and it came with all of the issues brought up.
by platevoltage | 2026-01-05 19:55:27+00:00
Disagree. I'm someone who thinks in pictures, which might sound like a great skill for a visual artist to have, but I can't draw for crap. I'm not even very proficient with digital art tools. Through some trial and error, I found that music was a much better creative output for me. If generative AI was around during my formative years, I might have just been satisfied creating slop art and stopped there.
by SilentM68 | 2026-01-05 19:55:36+00:00
When I generate content on most AI's including Grok, I ask it to fashion a prompt first of the subject I want and ask it to make sure that it does not violate any TOS or CSAM policies. I also instruct it that the prompt should be usable by most AIs. It fashions the prompt. When I use the prompt, the system complains that the prompt violates the TOS. I then ask the AI to locate the troubling aspect of the prompt. It says that it has and provides an alternative, safer prompt. More often than not, this newer prompt is also flagged as inappropriate. This is very frustrating even when the original intent is not to create content that violates any public AI policy. From my experience, both users and the technology make mistakes.
by semiquaver | 2026-01-05 19:56:04+00:00
> The Verge put the original 586-word Reddit post through several free online AI detectors, in addition to Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The results were mixed: Copyleaks, GPTZero, Pangram, Gemini, and Claude all pegged it as likely AI-generated, but ZeroGPT and QuillBot both reported it as human-written. ChatGPT played it down the middle.

Why does anyone, let alone a journalist, trust these? They are worse than useless.
by mrguyorama | 2026-01-05 19:56:06+00:00
And yet they never lobby for nationalized health care.

Because "Deal with our illegal, immoral, or stupid work requests or literally lose your healthcare" is such a massive bargaining chip for them.

They would rather spend more money and have more docile and controllable workers, but not spend that money on paying workers more to be docile and controllable.

It's not about the money.
by yousif_123123 | 2026-01-05 19:56:13+00:00
> By the way, I would wager that 'long-form'-users are actually the users that pay for the service.

I think it may be the case that many of these people that commit suicide or do other dangerous things after motivation from AI, are actually using weaker models that are available on the free versions. Whatever ability there is in AI to protect the user, it must be lower for the cheaper models that are freely available.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-05 19:56:16+00:00
”From 2013–2014 through August 2021–August 2023, the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity did not change significantly, while severe obesity prevalence increased from 7.7% to 9.7%” [1].

What fraction of America’s severely obese are being treated for it? (What fraction refuse treatment?)

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db508.htm
by chaps | 2026-01-05 19:56:26+00:00
I do a lot of IL criminal courts research and it's really, really fucking bad out there.

Transcripts: Multiple dollars per pages. Want that expedited? Multiply that amount by four. Don't know the court date? Can't get your transcript. Clerks put in the wrong date? Tough luck. Payment for those transcripts? Over Zelle because the court reporters themselves are contractors and get paid independently.

FOIA: IL Judicial system isn't FOIAable. There's a "data request" process that you can go down, but last time I tried by requesting through the chief judge of Cook County, they told me to request the data from the Clerk of Courts. The Clerk of Courts told me I need to speak to the chief judge's office. That went on for 6 months. The docket-level data I've seen from them is... beyond indecipherable. Literally never seen a dataset so indecipherable in my life -- a combination of esoteric codes, hidden encoding schemes, and length-delimited lines.

Court docs: Gotta go downtown if you're not a lawyer or if you're not a "criminal justice partner" to get any, then you have to print them (don't print past 4 or you'll get yelled at). Some journalists have access, but the IL Supreme Court's policies disallow journalists from getting it. So we have a system where only some journalists get access to court documents and fuck everyone else, I guess.

Civil Asset Forfeiture cases: the courts and state's attorneys do everything in their part to separate it from the initiating criminal case. So peoples' cars are being taken by the cops under dubious constitutional grounds and they can't get it back until the criminal case is over. And I've yet to find a consistent way to figure out the initiating criminal case tied to a civil asset forfeiture. I've yet to find anything like a policy doc that says it's intentional to obfuscate the criminal case from the civil case, but I can't think of any reason why it would be like this if it wasn't intentional. FOIA through the State's Attorney? Nah, they don't respond, or they give nonsense denials that require litigation.

I could go on, but. Fuck. It's bad out there and it hides so much suffering. I highly encourage folk to give court watching a try. You'll be shocked how much you'll learn.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-05 19:56:31+00:00
Is Grok simply a tool, or is it itself an agent of the creative process? If I told an art intern to create CSAM, he does, and then I publish it, who's culpable? Me? The intern? Both of us? I don't expect you to answer the question--it's not going to be a simple answer, and it's probably going to involve the courts very soon.
by randdotdot | 2026-01-05 19:56:43+00:00
I wish society would stop being triggered by PDF files for 2 seconds to let some science happen on this issue. The current climate makes rational discussion impossible.

Would AI generated CSAM 'saite' the abuser's need? Would it be actually a net good for real children? Don't any dare ask that basic question because it makes them a PDF sympathizer (or PDF).

PDFiles are the most stigmatized group of people on the planet, with (according to the research) no choice and (according to my perspective) zero resources for help.

AI generated CSAM brings to the surface the sheer insanity of how irrationally we treat this important issue. Won't anyone think of the children and do some fn science to find out how we can make PDFiles offend less?

[throwaway account, don't want to be associated with this controversial topic]
by spacemarine1 | 2026-01-05 19:57:13+00:00
I think it is possible to be successful in games without being predatory. Humble Bundle was a demonstration of that.

I don’t believe that ultra-predatory mechanics are long-term sustainable. They usually yield a “ring of fire” effect that creates a growing ring of users for a while but really you’re burning out all your core users and will implode. This is how many describe the original Zynga model.

Supercell (founded around the same time) has cultivated longterm ecosystems and IP by respecting their players.

EGG takes a similar long-term perspective.
by wizzwizz4 | 2026-01-05 19:57:17+00:00
In principle yes, but in practice no: the models don't just learn the abstract space, but also memorise individual people's likenesses. The "child" concept contains little clusters for each actual child who appeared enough times in the dataset. If you tried to do this, the model would produce sexualised imagery of those specific children with distressing regularity.
by imp0cat | 2026-01-05 19:57:49+00:00
I too have a Roomba with a camera (the 980) and I am mostly satisfied with it (after ten years I guess I got used to its quirks).

I have also recently set-up the LIDAR-equipped 705 for my parents and let me tell you, there is no comparison.

The navigation speed is greatly improved which means cleaning tasks take a lot less time. Furthermore, it works in complete darkness with no problems! The camera-equipped model just bumps into stuff randomly and then gives up when it's too dark.
by dujuku | 2026-01-05 19:57:50+00:00
> Every metric I can find online says that MySQL/MariaDB is more popular than PostgreSQL

What are those metrics? If you're talking about things like db-engines rankings, those are heavily skewed by non-production workloads. For example, MySQL still being the database for Wordpress will forever have a high number of installations and developers using and asking StackOverflow questions. But when a new company or established company is deciding which new database to use for their custom application, MySQL is seldom in the running like it was 8-10 years ago.
by amluto | 2026-01-05 19:58:00+00:00
I would pay an extra tiny bit for the LLM to stop telling me how brilliant my idea was when I ask it questions. (Getting complemented on my brilliance is not in any respect indicative of a particular idea being useful, as should be obvious to anyone who uses these tools for more than two minutes. Imagine is a hammer said “great whack!” 60% of the time you hit a nail even if you’re wildly off axis. You’d get a new hammer than would stop commenting, I hope.)

Heck, I can literally prompt Claude to read text and “Do not comment on the text” and it will still insert cute Emoji in the text. All of this is getting old.
by bluGill | 2026-01-05 19:58:30+00:00
You always have liability. If you put something there you tell the court that you see the problem and are trying to prevent it. It often becomes easier to get out of liability if you can show the courts you did your best to prevent this. Courts don't like it when someone is blatantly unaware of things - ignorance is not a defense if "a reasonable person" would be aware of it. If this was the first AI in 2022 you could say "we never thought about that" and maybe get by, but by 2025 you need to tell the court "we are aware of the issue, and here is why we think we had reasonable protections that the user got around".

See a lawyer for legal details of course.
by Someone1234 | 2026-01-05 19:58:35+00:00
Indeed; there is a MASSIVE market demand for pills since few like needles and or the storage requirements of injectable Semaglutide. HOWEVER, this pill is ineffective both in terms of medicine and cost, unfortunately.

Several GLP-1 pills are in the pipeline, and there is near bottomless R&D budgets being spent on the area currently, but it isn't here yet and this isn't "it."

I'd strongly suggest people ignore this release, and keep using injectable Semaglutide/Tirzepatide.
by ebbi | 2026-01-05 19:58:50+00:00
What makes you think they can't?

From my knowledge (albeit limited) about the way LLMs are set up, they most definitely have abilities to include guardrails of what can't be produced. ChatGPT has some responses to prompts which stops users from proceeding.

And X specifically: there have many cases of X adjusting Grok where Grok was not following a particular narrative on political issues (won't get into specifics here). But it was very clear and visible. Grok had certain outputs. Outcry from certain segments. Grok posts deleted. Trying the same prompts resulted in a different result.

So yeah, it's possible.
by bigbadfeline | 2026-01-05 19:59:04+00:00
HTML5 is the HTML of today, that's what I meant originally. I'm not sure what you're afraid of, nobody is attacking you, I'm simply explaining what I had in mind, and why it's not unreasonable to use words in a more inclusive, close to contemporary practice meaning.

The fact is, JavaScript is ubiquitous in web programing and the web is unthinkable without it, it's so pervasive on the front end that it's been repurposed for backend use precisely because it makes a lot of sense to use one programming language for one project. Pure HTML is unsuitable for backend use and it sticks like a sore thumb in the front end.

Younger developers are likely missing on the history of the entire web endeavor but in order to get a feel for it, I'd recommend to focus on practical meaning rather than on trivial semantics.

The big point I was driving at is this: The damage has been done, instead of a clean rendering API we've got this hybrid monstrosity which locked us to a couple / triple browser rendering engines which, due to cutesy BS, are complex beyond comprehension, beyond security analysis or normal competition. This is what an obsession with fancy names leads to.
by A_Duck | 2026-01-05 19:59:15+00:00
I expect a second-order effect of cheap GLP-1s ending obesity will be to relieve the pressure on food manufacturers to make their products actually healthier

There are many other risks* than obesity from consuming UPFs, and we may find we've just removed the main stop-loss on worse outcomes

*Diabetes, all the biome/gut stuff which is getting better understood, colon cancer, etc etc
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-05 19:59:19+00:00
> Think of all the small differences when a CEO shows up to work vs a temp worker (or even a middle-manager). All of those differences are luxuries, and many of them are informal and thus hard to tax.

But businesses are incented to remove the most expensive disparities, lest they impact the company's market performance. Or maybe they keep the different treatment but expect to pay the CEO less as compensation. Either way it's win-win.
by shinycode | 2026-01-05 19:59:41+00:00
Actually with AI the music is made for you. I don’t have to learn how to play the piano the guitar or anything. I just prompt what kind of instrument I want to. Is that still « making music » ? Idk, for me it’s not the same. In the end I’m not a musician. I just enjoy music. But I can understand that the reality of some people is different from mine as regards to what is « making music ». My view or use of AI does not invalidates theirs.
by simianparrot | 2026-01-05 19:59:52+00:00
So let me get this straight. When people use these tools to steal artist’ styles directly to generate fake Ghibli art, then it’s «just a tool, bro».

But when it’s used to create CSAM, then it’s suddenly not just a tool.

You _cannot_ stop these tools from generating this kind of stuff. Prompt guards only get you so far. Self-hosted versions don’t have them. The human writing the prompt is at fault. Just like it’s not Adobe’s responsibility if some sick idiot puts bikinis on a child in Photoshop.
by move-on-by | 2026-01-05 20:00:01+00:00
I like this. It seems obvious, but I’ve seen many different teams struggle with it. There is a lot of difficulty clearing the brush in a way that doesn’t break existing paths and is also repeatable. It takes a team with a vision and dedication to pull it off correctly, not to mention robust tests to ensure reliability.

One thing not mentioned, is that it’s still incredibly slow. There will be a lot of time pressure and bad optics no matter your choice, this is a lose-lose situation without the proper support. The pressure can also make it difficult to not create new brush in the process.
by bombcar | 2026-01-05 20:00:31+00:00
I think the sales of books is pretty much uncoupled from the supply or price, as piles and piles of great books are available for free online or at the local library.

More recorded shows exist than any one man can watch in a lifetime, and yet there are multiple concurrent series ongoing right now.

I think the real kicker is that IP law was built around things like books, that don't suddenly stop working or need to be maintained, etc. Modern laws should take software into account and deal with it differently.
by 8note | 2026-01-05 20:00:49+00:00
with code in good shape, i think i prefer having unnamed tests and instead you read the test to see that its an important function.

however, ive also done code archaeology, and same thing, old inaccurate comments were one of the few remaining things with any idea what the code was supposed to do and got me enough pointers to company external docs to figure out the right stuff.

wiki links, issue links, etc all had been deleted. same with the commit history, and the tests hadnt worked in >5 years and had also been deleted

the best comments on that code were about describing Todos and bugs that existed rather than what the code did do. stream of consciousness comments and jokes

what Ive left for future archaeologists of my code is detailed error messages about what went wrong and what somebody needs to do to fix that error
by zwnow | 2026-01-05 20:00:53+00:00
HN is a shithole with tons of pretentious people so I'll avoid HN for any opportunities. I am resentful of people with a lot of money who use it for temporary amusement over making the world a better place. Far from jealous though, as I am content with my income. I couldn't care less about good-to-know tech bros.
by dado3212 | 2026-01-05 20:01:06+00:00
I would've expected that uptake was only beginning in 2022 and still vastly increasing through 2023 (plus the compounding loophole that allowed telehealth companies like Ro to really expand the target audience). 2024 and 2025 data are likely to be better telltales of the impacts of GLP-1s.
by 2001zhaozhao | 2026-01-05 20:01:15+00:00
Wayland just has the best multi display support hands down. (I am using Cosmic DE but KDE is similar)

Windows:

- Per-display scaling can be set to multiple of 25%
- Windows across monitors with different scaling look weird
- Mouse cursor movement across monitors based on actual pixels rather than scaled, which is inaccurate
- Under the hood handles all monitors with one rectangular logical monitor, which renders a lot of unnecessary pixels in some multi monitor setups
- All monitors use the underlying refresh rate of the primary monitor for everything other than the mouse cursor (for example, if you have a secondary 60Hz monitor, timings on it will look odd unless your primary monitor refresh rate is a multiple of 60)

Wayland:

- Per-display scaling can be set to multiple of 5%
- Windows do not span across monitors. This can be a downside in case you want to span a window across multiple monitors with the same scaling, but is mostly an upside
- Each monitor can have its own refresh rate, and windows in each monitor actually update at the refresh rate of that monitor
- Each monitor is logically separate, no unnecessary pixels rendered

MacOS:

- Similar to Wayland but per-display scaling is much more restrictive for external displays, sometimes there isn't any way to set a scale between 100% and 200% without blurring the screen
- Apple Silicon hardware also limits number of total monitors supported, so it is impossible to use big multi-monitor setups on all but the most expensive hardware
by renewiltord | 2026-01-05 20:01:21+00:00
I think platforms that host user-generated content are (rightly) treated differently. If I posted a base64 of CSAM in this comment it would be unreasonable to shut down HN.

The questions then, for me, are:

* Is Grok considered a tool for the user to generate content for X or is Grok/X considered similar to a vendor relationship

* Is X more like Backpage (not protective enough) than other platforms

I’m sure this is going to court, at least for revenge porn stuff. But why would anyone do this to their platform? Crazy. X/Twitter is full of this stuff now.
by mrguyorama | 2026-01-05 20:01:29+00:00
>The United States medical industry is one of the highest paying in the world.

Which the industry views as a historical accident, and now that they basically own all the hospitals and other companies, you can expect them to fix it.

I would expect neutering Doctor labor power will happen soon. This admin will get a small donation or two, and the republicans will insist that letting doctors have high wages is the sole cause of our expensive healthcare. They've never really cared about the truth, seeing as they have often claimed "Medical tort" is the cause of healthcare costs, even though places like Texas, which have limits of Medical tort payout don't have cheaper healthcare.
by pphysch | 2026-01-05 20:01:39+00:00
> Part of my problem is that the ecosystem is big. There's too much to learn: OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Zipkin, Micrometer, eBPF, auto-instrumentation, OTel SDK vs Datadog Agent, and on and on. I don't know, maybe I'm biased by the JVM-heavy systems I've been working in.

We've had success keeping things simple with VictoriaMetrics stack, and avoiding what we perceive as unnecessary complexity in some of the fancier tools/standards.
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by TheRealPomax | 2026-01-05 20:02:12+00:00
It sounds like you don't actually know how a real organ works, which literally has different instrument groups all over the place behind the walls, with your stops controlling which instruments sound out, and your separate decks giving you additional control over which sections to play.

You'll want to give https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To a watch, where Rob Scallon takes us on a trip to discover how incredible these instruments are, and should highlight just how little an organ is like a piano (not even "four pianos") and how much it really is an entire orchestra.