MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nkurz | 2026-02-13 23:53:51+00:00
> Probably 99% of all drywall in the US is not painted directly, either.

I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but I'm pretty certain this is a vast overestimate.

I've painted a more than average number of interior walls in the US (both personally and professionally) and except for a few that were wood, adobe, or lath and plaster, all the rest involved painting directly on drywall. Sometimes the base paint was applied with a thick nap roller to achieve a degree of texture, but I never textured one with something else before painting.

All I can guess is that there are large regional differences or cultural here, and each of us is having a very localized experience.
by c7b | 2026-02-13 23:54:10+00:00
Technically, infinite scroll is of course finite, too. Unless it adds newly created content, but if you count that as infinite then logs can be infinite too.

That's exactly why you don't write legislation to ban infinite scroll but 'addictive' design. Then it's ultimately up to the courts to decide, and they have the necessary leeway to judge that journalctl -f isn't addictive but TikTok is, even if they both use a version of infinite scroll.
Plain Markdown winning over fancy forms is the biggest plot twist in dev tools
by nuwansam_87 | 2026-02-13 23:54:27+00:00
For decades, fancy forms in DB-centric SaaS was the way to go with work scoping and planning. Could we have file-first approach where human workflows get layered on top? https://docs.testchimp.io/blog/test_planning_as_code - Try it out and let me know your thoughts!
by sparky_z | 2026-02-13 23:54:45+00:00
Correct. Of course, that wasn't the case in 1750 or 1900. It wouldn't have been possible then.

Hence why prior technological changes that increased productivity didn't result in living lives of extended leisure, despite some predictions to that effect. Instead people kept working to raise the overall standard of living to what could be achieved when using the new tools to their fullest extent. Doing more, not doing the same with less effort. As you say, we're not animals. We can strive for better.
by brucehoult | 2026-02-13 23:54:50+00:00
> Instead of running large runtimes locally, it acts as a lightweight agent client and delegates reasoning to cloud LLM APIs (GLM/GPT/Claude), while keeping orchestration local.

I thought that's what OpenClaw already is -- it can use a local LLM if you have one, but doesn't have to. If it's intrinsically heavy that's only because it's Javascript running in node.js.
by DonaldFisk | 2026-02-13 23:55:11+00:00
Agreed.

General relativity was a completely novel idea. Einstein took a purely mathematical object (now known as the Einstein tensor), and realized that since its coveriant derivative was zero, it could be equated (apart fron a constant factor) to a conserved physical object, the energy momentum tensor (except for a constant factor). It didn't just fall out of Riemannian geometry and what was known about physics at the time.

Special relativity was the work of several scientists as well as Einstein, but it was also a completely novel idea - just not the idea of one person working alone.

I don't know why anyone disputes that people can sometimes come up with completely novel ideas out of the blue. This is how science moves forward. It's very easy to look back on a breakthrough and think it looks obvious (because you know the trick that was used), but it's important to remember that the discoverer didn't have the benefit of hindsight that you have.
by ASalazarMX | 2026-02-13 23:55:26+00:00
You have to long-press that icon, not just tap it. Granted, it enables lockdown too, which is what the physical button used to do. As other have pointed, you can also do that by long-pressing lock + volume up.

It is still ludicrous how Apple had to work around its own decision to not use the camera button for anything else, since allowing us to move Siri to the camera button would leave the lock button for the easy duress gesture it traditionally has been.
by econ | 2026-02-13 23:55:35+00:00
Early on in the internet age it somewhat bothered me that every page on the www either acts like it is the first thing one reads on a topic or assumes great knowledge of the subject. With nothing in between.

Wondering about a technical solution I couldn't find anything besides fold out explanations and links to explain jargon. Neither would really bridge the gap.

One obvious theory was to keep track of what the user knows and hide things they don't need or unhide things they do. This is of course was not acceptable from a privacy perspective.

Today however you could forge a curriculum for countless topics and [artificially] promote a great diversity of entry level videos. If the user is into something they can be made to watch more entry level videos until they are ready for slightly more advanced things. You can reward creators for filling gaps between novice and expert level regardless of view count.

Almost like Khan academy but much slower, more playful and less linear.

Imagine programming videos that assume the reader knows everything about each and every tool involved. The algorithm could seek out the missing parts and feed them directly into your addiction or put bounties on the scope.
by sensanaty | 2026-02-13 23:55:39+00:00
I look through the backlog for my team consisting of 9 trillion ill-defined (if defined at all) tickets that tells you basically nothing.

The large, overwhelming majority of my team's time is spent on combing through these tickets and making sense of them. Once we know what the ticket is even trying to say, we're usually out with the solution in a few days at most, so implementation isn't the bottleneck, nowhere near.

This scenario has been the same everywhere I've ever worked, at large, old institutions as well as fresh startups.

The day I'll start worrying is when the AI is capable of following the web of people involved to translate what the vaguely phrased ticket that's been backlogged for God knows how long actually means
by saidinesh5 | 2026-02-13 23:55:47+00:00
>I'm not saying legislation is a good solution but you seem to be making a poetic plea that benefits the abusers.

Only if you believe everyone else has no agency of their own. I think most people outgrow these things once they have something more interesting in their lives. Or once they're just bored.

Back when this thing was new, everyone was posting pictures of every food item they try, every place they've been to etc.. that seems to slowly change to now where there are a lot more passive consumers compared to a few polished producers.

If you're calling people delivering the content "abusers", what would you call people creating the content for the same machine?
by ajam1507 | 2026-02-13 23:56:08+00:00
> But we know reddit and HN are definitely not mainstream.

Reddit is one of the most visited websites on the planet, not sure how you can say it isn't mainstream.

> Is this hurting Amazon? No, it is not.

Depends on your definition of hurting Amazon, but regardless Ring is a tiny portion of Amazon's revenue so even if every single Ring owner returned it wouldn't "hurt Amazon"

> This may go the way of #deleteUber, #deleteFacebook and similar boycott campaigns - minor blips at best.

Not sure about Uber, but #deleteFacebook absolutely did have a long term impact in certain demographics.
by mercanlIl | 2026-02-13 23:56:47+00:00
I know anecdotally that many people my age, including myself, are addicted to these platforms. Although I manage, it has materially impacted my life. It’s a daily struggle to reduce the amount of time I use Reddit/Tiktok/Twitter etc.

Seeing this in myself and others of my generation, I wholeheartedly agree.

This war on our attention has a significant cost to mental health, which in turn has an impact on physical health. The cost to individuals and society is immense.

We regulated cigarettes and gambling. I think society would benefit from regulating (or at least disincentivizing) the use of these platforms.
by AIorNot | 2026-02-13 23:57:40+00:00
yeah no offense against Dwarkesh, and good luck to him, but he's just a kid -it would have cool to have someone with some real ML chops or industry knowledge and good comm skills to host these talks..anyway I am impressed by scope of his guests.. but I do think he doesn't have the experience to counter beyond fawning over them or else steering the topic to less insightful conversation

He kinda reminds me the of the Alex O Conner -same age group -very smart but inexperienced with the heavy hitters
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-02-13 23:57:53+00:00
"The wording here is fascinating, mainly because they're effectively acting as arbiters of "vibes"."

151 "vibes" wn "WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)"
vibes

n 1: a percussion instrument similar to a xylophone but having
metal bars and rotating disks in the resonators that
produce a vibrato sound [syn: {vibraphone}, {vibraharp},
{vibes}]
by dwb | 2026-02-13 23:58:01+00:00
Sure, I said I understand why people build them. I’ve used a lot of them. And yes with the tools we have you’re right, but I’m more lamenting the wonky, kind of archaic, unintegrated, only-semi-composable toolset that we have. No fundamental reason why you couldn’t deliver more structured UIs directly over SSH or a serial console, it’s just that in this timeline that didn’t happen yet (apart from X forwarding, which isn’t quite what I’m on about).
by hxseven | 2026-02-13 23:58:03+00:00
Thanks for sharing this interesting project and approach!

One suggestion for improvement: Add some more info to your website/GitHub about the need for a provider and which providers are compatible. It took me a bit to figure that out because there was no prominent info about it. Additionally, none of the demos showed a login or authentication part. To me, it seemed like the VMs just came out of nowhere. So at first, I thought "Cloudrouter" was a project/company that gave away free VMs/GPUs (e.g. free tier/trial thing). But that seemed too good to be true. Later, I noticed the e2b.app domain and also then found the note at the bottom of the site that says "Provider selection -> Use E2B provider (default)". Then I got it. However, I should mention that I don't know much about this whole topic. I hadn't heard of E2B or Modal before. Other people might find it more clear.

For those that are wondering about this too, you will need to use a provider like https://e2b.dev/ or https://modal.com/ to use this skill, and you pay them based on usage time.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-13 23:58:43+00:00
About 15 years ago I installed a new kitchen faucet for my grandmother, whose kitchen had been renovated in the early/mid 90s. Right near the end of the time when PB was inexplicably popular. I have to say, I spent several hours cursing whoever decided to use PB, and in this particular case whoever decided that the pipes should connect directly to the faucet rather than terminate at a bog standard quarter turn valve. Lots and lots of cursing.

As I recall, wasn't PB basically a single vendor, too? Finding PB-to-anything-else adapters at Home Depot was like going on a treasure hunt. Sizing is different, so you really need something actually built for PB. And probably end up with sharkbites. If I were shopping for a house right now and found it had been plumbed with PB, I'd just turn around and walk away.
by stuffn | 2026-02-13 23:58:57+00:00
Moms Demand Action and the Bloomberg troll syndicate would have you believe guns are manufactured to walk out of gun safes and shoot themselves.

We have plenty of bad actors in our country seeking to reduce or eliminate fundamental rights through lawfare. The anti gun trolls blame the gun and the manufacturer because their brain is so well rendered into dust by authoritarian socialism they don’t recognize humans as capable actors.
by hunterpayne | 2026-02-13 23:59:32+00:00
This reminds me of that old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times". I see AI causing lots of chaos. I also see AI causing some of the biggest opportunities in some time. Many businesses are destroying their competitive advantage by deploying AI slop. Over time, they will degrade their ability to make a working and snappy website. This will create opportunities for new businesses to take their place. If you ever wanted to start a new business, shockingly this is the time as the current crop slowly degrades their customer portals into slop. They will probably reach a point where they can no longer deliver working, efficient and secure apps anymore.

Maybe I am wrong, but the history of business on the web says I am right. If you go back and look at why those businesses think they are successful, and if that analysis is correct, then I am.
by TulliusCicero | 2026-02-13 23:59:57+00:00
> Yet yeah somehow I'm just a confused fan and you're not biased by politics?

Yes, because you're confusing "can generally make the decisions necessary to drive by itself" with "can be trusted to drive by itself with a non-attentive human occupant".

> They will turn of the supervision requirements soon

Oh, totally; this year, right?

The complete lack of self awareness is absolutely astounding.
Ask HN: Best GenAI image app UX with own API keys?
by transitivebs | 2026-02-14 00:00:07+00:00
does anyone know a simple genai image app which lets me use my own gemini nano bana api key and has a good UX for exploring multiple generations at a time?

free or paid, hosted of self-hosted; doesn't matter; i just want a better UX to explore the space of ideas when generating images and want to bring-my-own-api-key

thanks!
by mrexroad | 2026-02-14 00:00:44+00:00
re: finding studs. unless it's balloon framing, you'll hit the bottom plate in normal stick home construction (and if not, you probably should air seal that gap...). The most consistent and easiest way to find studs is hovering a neodymium magnet across the wall to find the drywall screws. I haven't used my stud finder in years b/c of how much more reliable this is. Plus, it works even if you've doubled up your drywall (e.g. 2x 5/8in w/ green glue for sound abatement, etc).
by mindcrime | 2026-02-14 00:01:05+00:00
On the one hand, I understand - and support - their reasons for making this change. But on the other hand, I find it very distressing to think how much harder it is going to be for independent researchers, working outside of the realm of formal academia, to get over the hump of getting their first submission accepted. The bar was already high for folks who aren't "connected" and now it gets - seemingly - much higher. Probably that price is worth it in the grand scheme of things, but that's small comfort for the folks out there scrambling for an endorsement.
by small_model | 2026-02-14 00:01:14+00:00
Dwarkesh is not a very good interviewer he kept asking the same question even though Dario patiently answered it about 6 times. Wasted an hour on "Why don't you spend 5 trillion on compute build out" Should have moved on but he didn't seem to grasp what Dario was saying, either not listening or not sharp enough.
by qudat | 2026-02-14 00:01:32+00:00
Creative destruction is a fundamental component of economic growth and has been happening since economies were part of humanity.

You are thinking too linearly. When the price of goods and services go down because the cost to produce those goods are services decreases, that means things are cheaper. Now that things are cheaper we have more money to spend on other goods or services.

Who knows what industries will be created because of this alleged release of human labor.

When the refrigerator was invented we didn’t just replace an industry of shipping ice, we created new industries that relied on refrigeration. That’s creative destruction. That’s economic growth.

This is not to mention that I find the scope and scale of AI displacement to be highly dubious and built on hype.
by riscii68 | 2026-02-14 00:02:05+00:00
After tracking the recent fires in LA & Hawaii, the massive blackouts in Europe, and other recent destructive flood/wind events, I realized how unprepared we are as a population for these types of severe events (myself included). After chatting with a lot of folks, I realized people are generally aware of these issues - but aren't sure where to start, what specific steps to take, or how to finance the whole thing.

My friend and I wanted to build a tool that does three things:
1. Give an immediate, address-level risk profile for natural hazards (starting with fire/flood) and crime vulnerability.
2. Generate a practical 'improvements' checklist to "harden" that specific property.
3. Help surface rebates, credits, and other free services - to make it easier for people to afford these improvements.

Even as I’ve spent the last year researching natural hazards, one fact still haunts me: Windborne wildfire embers (firebrands) can travel up to 5 miles ahead of the main fire front.

Most homeowners look at their immediate neighborhood and think, "I’m not near the trees, I’m safe." But the data shows that's a fallacy. You aren't just at risk from your backyard; you’re potentially at risk from a 5-mile radius of backyards.

In the context of home safety, a wildfire might be a Black Swan to the average person, but a Dragon King to Didier Sornette who might see the fuel load, the wind patterns, and the 5-mile ember-throw potential.

This is an early version so your thoughts would be helpful:

- Any bugs or unclear features?
- Thoughts on how to show this more clearly to users.
- If you were looking for a new house (or improve an existing one), would using this tool help you feel safer?

Thanks!
by cbdevidal | 2026-02-14 00:02:17+00:00
Automations do create jobs, but fewer jobs. Businesses wouldn’t invest so much money if they had to keep the same number of workers. Automation necessarily reduces the number of humans working in aggregate at one task.

What DOES go up with automation is demand. Fewer farmers today than 100 years ago, but significantly more mouths to feed.

What also increases is new kinds of jobs; entirely new fields. The automobile shrank the number of buggy whip makers, but taxi drivers increased. Then the internet increased Uber drivers on top of taxi drivers.
by sonofhans | 2026-02-14 00:02:29+00:00
My guess is that you’ve not had your house egged, or have some poverty of imagination about it. I grew up in the midwest where this did happen. A house egging would take hours to clean up, and likely cause permanent damage to paint and finishes.

Or perhaps you think it’s no big deal to damage someone else’s property, as long as you only do it a little.
by Manuel_D | 2026-02-14 00:02:34+00:00
Groups did sue after the Bank Secrecy Act, and the cases went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that it did not violate the constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act

> Shortly after passage, several groups attempted to have the courts rule the law unconstitutional, claiming it violated both Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted search and seizure, and Fifth Amendment rights of due process. Several cases were combined before the Supreme Court in California Bankers Assn. v. Shultz, 416 U.S. 21 (1974), which ruled that the Act did not violate the Constitution
by trhway | 2026-02-14 00:04:15+00:00
>the end of exponential growth

we're on the verge of getting to Moon and Mars in more than rare tourist numbers and with notable payloads. Add to that advancements in robotics, which will change things here on Earth as well as in space. The growth is only starting.

>The Internet also went through an exponential growth phase at the beginning.

If we consider general Internet as all the devices connected i think the exponential growth is still on as for example ARM CPUs shipments:

2002: Passed 1 billion cumulative chips shipped.
2011: Surpassed 1 billion units shipped in a single year.
2015: Running at ~12 billion units per year.
2020 (Q4): Record 6.7 billion chips shipped in one quarter (842 chips per second).
2020: Total cumulative shipments crossed 150 billion.
2024 (FY): Nearly 29 billion ARM chips shipped in 12 months.
2025: Total cumulative shipments exceeded 250 billion.
by sensanaty | 2026-02-14 00:04:22+00:00
I'd estimate we're near a million LoC (will double check tomorrow, but wouldn't be surprised if it was over that to be honest). Huge monorepo, ~1500 engineers, all sorts of bespoke/custom tooling integrated, fullstack (including embedded code), a mix of languages (predominantly Java & JS/TS though).

In my case the AI is actively detrimental unless I hand hold it with every single file it should look into, lest it dive into weird ancient parts of the codebase that bear no relevance to the task at hand. Letting the latest and "greatest" agents loose is just a recipe for frustration and disaster despite lots of smart people trying their hardest to make these infernal tools be of any use at all. The best I've gotten out of it was some light Vue refactoring, but even then despite AGENTS.md, RULES.md and all the other voodoo people say you should do it's a crapshoot.
by nostrademons | 2026-02-14 00:05:24+00:00
I've seen videos where people will put in removable drywall panels that can just be lifted out for access.

There are a lot of downsides though. You lose airsealing, if you don't have an airtight building envelope on the outside of the drywall. You lose fire resistance. You often lose aesthetics, although I've seen this done extremely tastefully. You lose childproofing, and run the risk of a kid electrocuting themselves or destroying your plumbing or dropping stuff in the wall. You impose constraints on what can go on the walls and where your furniture can go.

Given that drywall is pretty easy to cut and replace, most people figure it's just not worth the costs for something you do infrequently.
by gsf_emergency_6 | 2026-02-14 00:05:29+00:00
Recently I read (on a dead tree page, sorry, I don't want to train the agents by citing it here but maybe I can bring it along in a good scenario :)

that the Daily Mirror started off as a feminist rag.

That's a fresh take that portends a different kind of future from the one that google AI (or the samasphere) knows about?

Fwiw I also chuckle to myself whenever I see left leaning articles in FT that'd be out of place in NYT.

The interesting one about FT that Google AI knows about is that it was started by (amongst others) a finance fraudster (Horatio Bottomley)
by mrexroad | 2026-02-14 00:06:35+00:00
pretty sure it's an established rule now that drywall cannot be discussed w/o linking to vancouver carpenter.

but, yeah, his videos are great. i've done more than my share of everything from sound abatement channels/glues/etc, hanging rock on vaulted ceilings, to level 5 finishes, but I still like to flip though his videos every now and then and pick up logistical / speed tips.
by iugtmkbdfil834 | 2026-02-14 00:06:41+00:00
Honestly, it may be contrarian opinion, but: good.

The ridiculous focus on 'safety' and 'alignment' has kept US handicapped when compared to other groups around the globe. I actually allowed myself to forgive Zuckerberg for a lot of of the stuff he did based on what did with llama by 'releasing' it.

There is a reason Musk is currently getting its version of ai into government and it is not just his natural levels of bs skills. Some of it is being able to see that 'safety' is genuinely neutering otherwise useful product.
by wahern | 2026-02-14 00:07:22+00:00
There's no operating rail between LA and Phoenix, freight or passenger. Union Pacific rerouted freight away from Phoenix decades ago, Amtrak followed suit, and the previously used rail line that connected LA and Phoenix is out of service. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Subdivision_(Union_Pac... and https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html