MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by shagie | 2026-01-13 18:45:56+00:00
The specifics of the law are:

8 CFR 214.2(o)(3) ( https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/part-214/section-214.2#... )

Extraordinary ability in the field of arts means distinction. Distinction means a high level of achievement in the field of arts evidenced by a degree of skill and recognition substantially above that ordinarily encountered to the extent that a person described as prominent is renowned, leading, or well-known in the field of arts.

Extraordinary ability in the field of science, education, business, or athletics means a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who have arisen to the very top of the field of endeavor.

Extraordinary achievement with respect to motion picture and television productions, as commonly defined in the industry, means a very high level of accomplishment in the motion picture or television industry evidenced by a degree of skill and recognition significantly above that ordinarily encountered to the extent that the person is recognized as outstanding, notable, or leading in the motion picture or television field.

The key is that this is extraordinary. About 20,000 O1B visas across all fields ( https://www.passright.com/how-many-o-1-visas-are-issued-each... )

This isn't a local worker thing (the H visas) but rather bringing the best and brightest from across the world to the United States.

https://www.hio.harvard.edu/o-1-visa-individuals-extraordina...

> The O-1 visa is a temporary work visa designated for individuals who have achieved and sustained national or international acclaim for extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics, or individuals who have demonstrated a record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture and television industries.

> O-1 Extraordinary Ability visa status is reserved for those who are among the small percentage of experts who have risen to the top of their field. The approval of an O-1 petition by the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) decides whether an individual qualifies for O-1 classification. This classification requires a substantial amount of evidence. The O-1 is a very complicated visa category subject to high levels of scrutiny by the U.S. government. Due to the complexity, the O-1 visa is used very infrequently.
by submeta | 2026-01-13 18:46:05+00:00
> What I would say is that Western governments want stability in Iran, just like virtually every other nation.

That’s why the US toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh in the 1950s and installed a puppet regime with the brutal Shah? And when the Iranians started a revolution and sent the dictator into exile the West gave money and weapons to Iraq‘s Saddam Hussain and killed 1 mil Iranians? And put Iran under harsh sanctions for decades under which Iranians suffer deerly?

> If the current leaders in Iran were not sponsoring terrorists across the world,

Global terrorism comes from IS/Al Qaeda, which are Sunnis, originating in Saudi Arabia, not Iran.

And speaking of extraterritorial killings: Read the book „Rise and Kill“ by an Israeli. Israel kills people around the globe extrajudicially like no other country. Israel is accused of genocide. Yet the collective West is silent.
by JadeNB | 2026-01-13 18:46:43+00:00
> Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.

It also culturally informs someone's perceived suitability as a role model. It doesn't matter to the dead person if they are held in high or low esteem, but it may matter to people in their formative stages deciding whose influence they follow and whose they shun.
by cameronh90 | 2026-01-13 18:46:56+00:00
That’s why we have the national crime survey, performed by the ONS.

Correlating it with police stats and murder stats suggests that reporting and recording is actually going up as a proportion of crime. Petty crime like shoplifting has gone up, but relatively speaking most people would probably take that over stabbing and murder even if ideally we’d have neither.

There’s this weird trend that’s taken over social media trying to portray London as a lawless hell hole but few people who actually live here are experiencing it that way, and the stats back that up. It’s largely people outside London that are claiming the crime is bad here.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2026-01-13 18:47:04+00:00
The purity spiral on the other side is already batshit. "If you support that we're going to say you're bad and not buy your work" is quite a way from widespread physical and media violence.

Adams was a mediocre bureaucrat who discovered he could make a living as a competent comedian. His success at that persuaded him that he was an Important Moral Authority.

He started as a banker and ended as a self-harming prosperity preacher - not exactly a rare archetype in the US.

The funny parts were funny. The rest, not so much.
by themgt | 2026-01-13 18:47:06+00:00
> The USA cannot do it, because there is actually a law against cutting off communications systems dating back to 1944. Of course there have been attempts to make it possible.

The link you provided says:

In 1942, during World War II, Congress created a law to grant President Franklin D. Roosevelt or his successors the power to temporarily shut down any potentially vulnerable technological communications technologies.

The Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act would reverse the 1942 law and prevent the president from shutting down any communications technology during wartime, including the internet.

The House version was introduced on September 22 as bill number H.R. 8336, by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI2). The Senate version was introduced the same day as bill number S. 4646, by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

The bill did not pass and did not become law. So what are you referring to?
by gs17 | 2026-01-13 18:47:21+00:00
> I assume that some of the music that's showing up in my Spotify feed is AI-generated but I've never noticed.

A lot of it is now, and it's frustrating to me. The worst part is that I'm not actually anti-AI-music. There's one or two "groups" ("producers"?) I've found where it's clearly AI but they've put a lot of work into making something worth listening to, but Spotify seems to have a "this sucker will listen to the cheap stuff" flag and now I'm drowning in tracks from people who paid for Suno and think that's enough.
by bobbiechen | 2026-01-13 18:47:44+00:00
(author here) Thanks for posting! I need to update/post a follow-up with a couple of notes since I wrote that post:

* Ben van Enckevort, the original creator of the Slack quick-switcher with Ctrl/Cmd-K, showed up in the StackOverflow thread to tell us the choice of "K" was fairly arbitrary: https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/153937 . Thanks AJ Montoya for pointing it out too :)

* Dean Jackson pointed out TextMate as the predecessor to Sublime, including fuzzy search jump-to-file

* Amit Patel suggested Emacs as a potential originator, which led us to find Richard Stallman's manual for Emacs 150 (1980) which does have the Meta-X "extended command" that is very similar to today's command palette. A 1978 TECO manual doesn't mention this, so right around 1980 would be the right time frame.
by toomuchtodo | 2026-01-13 18:47:48+00:00
Plane was the test bed for the military application in my citation, the ground station could be ground or roof mounted and camouflaged. As it would emit no RF, you would have to know where to look for it to find it (unlike say, StarLink ground terminals, which are detectable).

If you emit RF in a contested environment as a civilian, you can be found using multilateration. SDR networks on the public internet enable this today, as long as there are enough receivers online in an area and you know what you're looking for, so I don't think it's beyond the grasp of nation state actors.
by bluebarbet | 2026-01-13 18:48:06+00:00
The art-vs-artist hand-wringing seems to be a particular affliction for Americans and particularly US progressives. I suspect it's something to do with America's protestant puritan heritage. There's a metaphysics of contamination at work that's hard to explain without religion. As a liberal European atheist I have no problem using software written by edgy young fascists (assuming it's good software). Just as I have no problem admiring art by (to take one of a million examples) the sexual predator and borderline sadist Pablo Picasso.
by benjreinhart | 2026-01-13 18:48:27+00:00
Love the history you weave into these posts!

It's crazy how much of the world still relies so heavily on FTP and SFTP for critical day-to-day operations.

Related, but for us at Mocha, this past year was the first time in a while that I had used SSH and we were doing so programmatically for a few things. These protocols have survived the test of time!
by Archio | 2026-01-13 18:49:03+00:00
“it's a fair criticism though because of the general vitriol about Hamas and Gaza.”

Ok, you’ve convinced me. I now firmly support reducing billions in American aid to Iran, curtailing Iranian use of American bombs, and diplomatic cover America gives to Iran in the UN. I am now also calling strongly to remove all these state laws we have that ban government business with companies that don’t support Iran!
by hagbard_c | 2026-01-13 18:49:18+00:00
Yes, I got a tour of their factory back in the day when I was editor for a number of IT-related magazines. Close to everything was made there in that factory from the metal housing for the machines to the circuit boards - photoresist, exposure, etching, cleaning, printing, conformal coating, through the pick-and-place machine, through the wave solder bath, testing and mounting in the chassis. In the Netherlands, in a relatively modest factory hall. If it could work then - and it did, for a while - it should be possible to do that now without the compulsive urge to outsource everything.
by apercu | 2026-01-13 18:49:19+00:00
A large percentage of my work is peripheral to info security (ISO 27001, CMMC, SOC 2), and I've been building internet companies and software since the 90's (so I have a technical background as well), which makes me think that I'm qualified to have an opinion here.

And I completely agree that LLMs (the way they have been rolled out for most companies, and how I've witnessed them being used) are an incredibly underestimated risk vector.

But on the other hand, I'm pragmatic (some might say cynical?), and I'm just left here thinking "what is Signal trying to sell us?"
by js8 | 2026-01-13 18:49:27+00:00
In fact, I believe if the U.S. wanted to really help the Iranians, they should have lifted the sanctions in exchange for Iranian government easing some of the domestic laws.

I don't think sanctions are that helpful in establishing democracy, and even if they were, taking the population hostage in order to instigate an uprising is morally quite dubious.

In any case, U.S. has recently proven to be a dishonest actor, so even if above was correct I would still not want them to do it.

P.S. I was born in communist Czechoslovakia. So I have seen an organic regime change, and the Iranian one is IMHO too violent to be the moment.
by stronglikedan | 2026-01-13 18:49:32+00:00
> I fear that most people, like OP in this case, don’t really understand the difference between "TUI" (where a terminal is used to display a GUI) and "CLI", where every interaction is a written command resulting in a output.

I'm not sure how you could infer that, since OP didn't mention "TUI" or "GUI" or "CLI" anywhere in this post, and a text-based browser UI could come in either form.
by Karliss | 2026-01-13 18:49:53+00:00
Windows11 making it hard to create a local account is a separate topic.

The fine print notes refer to to specific features. In this cases it's "4." for Copilot.

You don't need apple account if you are fine with not using half the features listed in the marketing page for apple hardware. If you looked at the bottom of page for any of apple computers you will see similar fine print. For example https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/ .

> 22 Requires that your iPhone and Mac are signed in with the same Apple Account using two-factor authentication, your iPhone and Mac are near each other and have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on, and your Mac is not using AirPlay or Sidecar. Some iPhone features (e.g., camera and microphone) are not compatible with iPhone Mirroring.

> 23. SMS requires an iPhone or iPad with iOS 8.1 or later or iPadOS. iPhone calls require an iPhone with iOS 8 or later.

> To access and use all Apple Card features and products available only to Apple Card users, you must add Apple Card to Wallet on an iPhone or iPad that supports and has the latest version of iOS or iPadOS.

> iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are available on the Mac App Store. Downloading apps requires an Apple Account and a device that is compatible with the OS version required for each app.

And seems like there are a few more things advertised as features of specific apple hardware which probably won't work without apple account but lacks fine print at the bottom for example iCloud.
by __loam | 2026-01-13 18:49:56+00:00
The existence of few competitors is not proof that monopolistic power doesn't exist and isn't being leveraged. Saying Google isn't monopolistic is being willfully wrong. You're more wrong when we look at the browser market, and Google has lost anti-trust suits on this very topic in the past couple years.

A public mail service is required by our constitution. It's cheaper than the private options and often the only option for many rural areas. It's not a monopoly.
by tinfoilhatter | 2026-01-13 18:50:39+00:00
Why is questioning a historical event abhorrent behavior? Every historical event is fair game except for one, even historical events where far more people died due to their religions or cultural affiliations. There's only one we aren't allowed to question however. We even have special made-up terms to describe people that question this one specific event. We don't do it for any other historical event. Why is that?
by zahlman | 2026-01-13 18:50:48+00:00
> endlessly going around in circles responding to the same emotional (and often factually wrong) talking points is an abuse of our principles

I don't know who "our" refers to, but it certainly is an abuse of my principles.

Which is exactly why I do not make emotional appeals in my comments, and stick to what I can factually verify, including with timestamps in video footage and citations of the relevant legal standards. And why I clearly argue for where others are factually wrong instead of making blanket assertions without evidence.

It is my interlocutors who are making emotional appeals and claims that are not supported by the evidence, up to the point of accusing me of "lying" about video depicting things even as I clearly point to the exact points in the video that clearly depict them.
by AndrewKemendo | 2026-01-13 18:51:37+00:00
What do you mean by pretense?

The word pretense to me means “we’re gonna actually try this and let’s see how it goes”

The United States has literally never done that and we know that because internal documentations for pretty much anything always have some kind of American benefit Nexus it is not based on any type of foundational belief that transcends the concept of “we’re gonna do whatever the people who are the loudest owners of the political system of the United States want to do”

Everything else including: Powell going to the UN with a vile full of rice is just straight up unabashed unequivocal propaganda
by andyjohnson0 | 2026-01-13 18:52:04+00:00
Back in the early eighties people would go to a shop and buy "a VisiCalc". What they were actually getting was an Apple Ii pre-loaded with VisiCalc software. But to them, VisiCalc was the computer.

> Search engines still index blogs far better than social media posts.

For a lot of people, social media is the internet. They don't discover things on search engines, they are guided to them by engagement engines in walled gardens.

And increasingly what they're bwing guided to is commercial, mimetic slop. Most people are, unfortunately, not interested in the fairly high-minded content that the article's author is referring to. I wish it were otherwise.

I've had a blog for twenty five years. I try to do the right thing, and I get no views. Thats because blogging as an artesian activity is dead. Which is its great strength.
by gus_massa | 2026-01-13 18:52:14+00:00
> Most important, they say, calculators free students from the drudgery of ``paper and pencil'' math, so they can spend more time solving problems.

That would be nice, but it doesn't happen in practice. I teach in the first year of the university in Argentina. In the midterm we have 3 normal algebra exercises and one world problem. I'd like to add more world problema, but the students are very afraid of the world problem.

[1] Like x+y=10, x-y=6, with 3 variables and 3 equations so they have to use the Gauss method.
by doodlebugging | 2026-01-13 18:52:16+00:00
>No. That is excessively cynical. Even GW Bush and the neocons really thought toppling Hussein would benefit Iraqis more than just Americans.

The push into Iraq to remove Hussein was an effort to gain control over the oil and gas production in Iraq. It was favored by the domestic oil and gas industry here in the US and once we had boots on the ground in Afghanistan after Sept 11 and Bush&Co began making noise about Iraq and WoMD, the industry began digging up old geological and geophysical studies of the region to build interest and knowledge base domestically so that once our troops had control of the production areas domestic operators could move in to handle production. Industry publications had adverts for old Iraq datasets and services related to it before any invasion happened. Maybe they were just hedging their bets you say. Yeah, right. It was always about oil and gas in Iraq. They just needed to remove the thorn in their side and install a compliant government.
by jam0xb797fd | 2026-01-13 18:52:20+00:00
This is pretty interesting and reminds me of the classic “Bitter Lesson” essay by Sutton: early efforts to micromanage LLM behavior parallel early chess programmers painstakingly encoding human heuristics, only to lose out to brute computational scaling/cheaper intelligence (rekt).

Your transition from rigidly engineered workflows to systems embracing raw intelligence feels a lot like the shift from handcrafted speech models to deep neural nets.

wonder how much more human intuition you have to scrape out before you are futureproofed

That said, there’s still a subtle tension here—human workflows encode intention in a way chess doesn’t, so purely scaling compute might underestimate how much structured intent matters. Perhaps the final answer isn’t “more computation” alone, but rather more computation guided by a minimal yet essential scaffolding of human intent.
by reducesuffering | 2026-01-13 18:52:33+00:00
> The internet did its thing and quoted him out of context

Let's not act like this is some case of out of context quotes. Here's the actual quote for people to decide for themselves:

"I'm going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn't seem like it pays off. I get called a racist. That's the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't even think it's worth trying. I'm not saying start a war or do anything bad. Nothing like that. I'm just saying get away. Just get away."
by fennecbutt | 2026-01-13 18:52:39+00:00
Well same thing as gaza, idk why the west mostly supports Israel. Is it because they're more "like us" than gazans?

I mean...how about we just not kill each other. Kept the drawn lines, make "settlers" illegal and be done with it.

But nah we all tribal monkeys, our species is poisoned by evolution. So we'll never stop taking from each other, killing each other.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-13 18:52:53+00:00
>it's owned by private companies.

So what? If it's on Swedish ground then it's under Swedish government(military) enforcement in case the shit hits the fan.

>The government could impose legislation to force providers to comply with shutting down international peering but I have a hard time seeing it pass.

Do you think if Russia invades Sweden tomorrow, private businesses can still do whatever they want like in peacetime, or will they have to follow the new waartime rules set by the government and enforced by armed soldiers knocking on their door dragging them to court if they refuse to comply?
by visageunknown | 2026-01-13 18:52:54+00:00
This is classic whataboutism. You don't have to criticize every single atrocity in the world in order to criticize one. I often find that people who take your stance don't care about any issues. They're simply weaponizing other problems to avoid engaging with the one they actually oppose.

There is also a key difference between the Palestine issue vs the others you listed. The fact that our country is deeply in bed with the country that is committing these crimes against humanity and actively funding it, along with the strange level of undue influence that country has on our government.
by mikaeluman | 2026-01-13 18:52:56+00:00
I don't agree. Lithium and Copper are mined and given electrification scenarios there is a projected supply deficit: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook...

Those prices are outdated now since practically all metals are surging.

There has indeed been great growth in battery capacity but it's as I said nowhere near able to supply a country like Sweden during the winter. It is off by orders of magnitude. We need 5TWh for that. It is not going to happen any time soon.

I understand California is different. Still, one would need to do these risk scenario calculations. Have they been made?

I know California has rotating blackouts already as it is. I really don't have any idea how people find that acceptable. If it happened in Sweden the government would be replaced on the day. It would be a real disaster.

I will be a bigger believer if a state like California can actually show its possible.

For sure I hope technology improves but the current ideas of solar+battery are simply highly unlikely.
by bayeslaw | 2026-01-13 18:53:12+00:00
I'm an ML engineer/founder and I'm frankly amazed what has happened to the promo/intro video industry.. A few years ago this video that I just made in about 2 days would have required serious funding and whole group of 3D artists, cinama crew, voice actors..

Forget what the video is about. Focus on the fact that I - a non-pro - made this in 2 days for $100.

What will this do to dozens and dozens of jobs?

On the one hand I never felt more empowered as a bootstrapper, on the otherhand it doesn't taka a lot of thinking and foresight to start to fear my demise as a builder, coder, ML engineer.

How are you doing in 2026? Do you have friends who already lost their jobs?
by 9rx | 2026-01-13 18:53:37+00:00
He did some research. Now he is validating it.

Believe it or not, not all researched information is accurate. And even when it is accurate it isn't always interpreted correctly. It is not sufficient to simply research something.

One must also discuss it. That allows revealing what one thinks they know, to help realize what they don't through coordination with others.

That is what discussion is for. If he already had a perfect picture, what would the point of talking about it be? There isn't one.