MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by akst | 2026-02-05 13:00:24+00:00
In macroeconomic, you have an aggregate production functions that represents output for a country or something. In many of these function you'll have a parameter for technology, it acts as a multiplier over inputs, so the greater the measure of technology the greater the output. Quite a few of these also exhibt a characteristic where output drops if technology increases too fast. To illustrate this, imagine a scenario in real life that kind of looks like a rapid evolution of some kind of technology of home phones, to cell phones, to smart phones at a rate faster than people know how to make use of them, while also spending money adoption making the intermediary adoptions quite wasteful.

I think we see an aspect of this here, a lot of things we took for granted are changing, shared assumptions are being challenged and it's a period we're all relearning new things. To some extent spending too much time diving on the current iteration of AI tooling might be for nothing if gets invalidated by another sudden jump.

With all these new tools people are building, I can't help but feel they are building foundations on moving soil.
by xtiansimon | 2026-02-05 13:00:48+00:00
> “…deciding what to do and what not to do is something else that takes forever…”

If that’s the case, then I should think business owners and office workers should be able to sort that out, lestwise on the “how to automate the boring stuff” front. That repetitive, boring, time consuming, error prone work.

The danger is they pull a 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter —level mistake .
by YannBuilds | 2026-02-05 13:00:51+00:00
You’re absolutely right, and I should clarify the target: this isn't meant to replace a high-end branding agency for a multi-million dollar corporation.

I built this primarily for myself. I launch several projects a year as a "vide coder," and I realized that branding is my biggest cognitive drain. It’s not just about picking colors; it’s the constant friction of the technical tasks—converting logos to SVG, generating a full set of favicons, or manually creating social OG images. All these steps take hours and kill my shipping momentum.

To be honest, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the results. Most of the time, I wouldn't have done better myself manually. My goal is to provide a high-quality foundation so developers can ship an MVP that looks polished and credible from day one. If the business grows, you'll eventually need a human touch—but this gets you to that stage 10x faster.
by mooreds | 2026-02-05 13:01:42+00:00
> All insourced code is future maintenance expenditure. You need to balance that to the benefits.

I love this perspective. I feel like the pendulum has swung too far back to "it's easy to build, it'll be easy to support". But to be fair, it was probably too far the other way a few years ago: "it was easy to buy, it'll be easy to have them support it".

Other than trial and error, how do you think about pricing out maintenance costs for insourced code vs purchased functionality?
by jcmartinezdev | 2026-02-05 13:01:46+00:00
This is a really solid primer. I appreciate that the author didn't just jump straight to the most complex solution (CDC/Event Sourcing) but actually laid out the progression of strategies.

While "Sequential Dual-Write" is technically flawed, I think it's fair to admit that it's where 90% of projects start (and stay) until the pain becomes real.

That said, the section on the Transactional Outbox is the highlight here. It really is the most pragmatic middle ground for most engineering teams.It's as good as it gets without kafka.

Great read!
by throw0101a | 2026-02-05 13:02:13+00:00
A semi-joke-y take on BRICS:

> Pretty straightforward really. You combine Brazil's history of monetary stability, with Russia's respect for property rights, India's domestic tranquility, China's financial transparency, and South Africa's investment opportunities - and hey presto, you've got a new global money

* https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1665053372402081792

Of course more countries may enrol in the system, but that dilutes the influence of the five namesake nations of BRICS.

But then you have to choose an actual currency(s) to do transactions in, so will you trust them to be stable? Or perhaps go with a 'theoretical' currency likes Keynes' bancor?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_currency#Single_world_cu...

As for gold-based currencies, see perhaps "Why the Gold Standard Is the World's Worst Economic Idea, in 2 Charts":

* http://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archi...

* https://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2016/12/14/why-a-...
by turtlesdown11 | 2026-02-05 13:03:19+00:00
>It seems even more implausible that a reputation monitoring business would raise a random French streamer's criticism of Palantir to Peter Thiel's attention.

It's "more implausible" to you that a company who's job it is to monitor online sentiment about a particular company would be able to identify negative sentiment? So your argument is that these online monitoring businesses do not offer a real product?

> I'll come back and admit defeat if I get booted off of Thiel-funded technology platforms in a few days, but I know and I strongly suspect you know that's not going to happen.

Could you look up what a strawman is, and stop using them in your arguments?
by ZeroGravitas | 2026-02-05 13:03:34+00:00
Yes, that was the original plan the last time too.

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deport...

> As with most of the Nazis’ murderous actions, the deportation of German Jews was improvised and haphazard . The increased numbers of Jews arriving in the ghettos of eastern Europe led to severe overcrowding, unsustainable food shortages and poor sanitation. This, in combination with the slow progress in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, convinced the Nazis that a ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’ needed to be organised sooner than had been originally envisaged.
by apothegm | 2026-02-05 13:05:15+00:00
This also depends so much on your scaling needs. If you need 3 mid-sized ECS/EC2 instances, a load balancer, and a database with backups, renting those from AWS isn’t going to be significantly more expensive for a decent-sized company than hiring someone to manage a cluster for you and dealing with all the overhead of keeping it maintained and secure.

If you’re at the scale of hundreds of instances, that math changes significantly.

And a lot of it depends on what type of business you have and what percent of your budget hosting accounts for.
by Hikikomori | 2026-02-05 13:05:19+00:00
Steam does not require always online, you can login, download your game, then go offline.

Steam also does not require DRM, developers can choose not to use it, if they do you can just copy the game install dir to a separate folder and run your game without steam.

I guess you could say Valve made this easy, but its not like games didn't have DRM befores team or wouldn't have required always online without steam.
by wqaatwt | 2026-02-05 13:05:29+00:00
Really doubt it has a significant impact on mac mini sales…

And being fair ClawBot is a complete meme/fad at this point rather than an actual product. Using it for anything serious is pretty much the equivalent of throwing your credit cards, ids and sticky notes with passwords and waiting to see what happens…

I do see the appeal and potential case of the general concept of course. The product itself (and the author has admitted it themselves) is literally is a garbage pile..
by cucumber3732842 | 2026-02-05 13:06:57+00:00
There are a lot of off ramps to comfort on the road to greatness. The hypothetical man who is genetically sufficient for the job (a short man will not succeed in many sports nor will a man with a bad voice be a good singer, a creative mind will not excel at the analytical and an analytical mind will not succeed at the creative), and mentally "just gets" the volumes of understanding it takes to be a once in a generation performer of some craft by mid teens or so will in starting down that path will necessarily achieve the intelligence to determine that there are other, orders of magnitude more sure paths to a comfortable life.
by alpinisme | 2026-02-05 13:07:45+00:00
Yes and no. Obviously it’s unusual rounding or I wouldn’t have said “I guess technically,” but rounding is all about domains and relevant precision. To be honest, when someone says “billionaires” I don’t assume that the number 1,000,000 is a meaningful hard cut off. I assume we’re talking about the ones who are three orders of magnitude up from “millionaire” and orders of magnitude work by rounding from .5.
by agentguard | 2026-02-05 13:07:53+00:00
Hi HN, I built this because AI agents have full shell/file/network access but zero security review for third-party skills. AgentGuard auto-scans skills before they run (24 detection rules), blocks dangerous runtime actions (rm -rf, credential theft, pipe injection), and provides Web3 asset protection via GoPlus API (token honeypots, tx simulation, phishing detection). Works with Claude Code, OpenClaw, and any MCP-compatible agent. MIT licensed, 134 tests. Would love feedback on detection gaps and what platforms to support next.
by ontouchstart | 2026-02-05 13:07:56+00:00
If you read that Wirth 1995 paper (A Plea for Lean Software) referenced by the OP, following paragraphs answered your question:

“
To some, complexity equals power

A system’s ease of use always should be a primary goal, but that ease should be based on an underlying concept that makes the use almost intuitive. Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling — the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.

Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user. (What it does confer is a feeling of helplessness, if not impotence.) Therefore, the lure of complexity as sale incentive is easily understood; complexity promotes customer dependence on the vendor.”

I am typing (no screenshots or copy and paste) this 30 year old wisdom in to reply here as an archived reminder for myself.
by nullocator | 2026-02-05 13:08:05+00:00
Is the immediate lethal threat in the room with us right now? I hope no one ever accidentally believes you're an immediate lethal threat simply for existing, or at least if they do, maybe you'll be lucky enough to not have yuppies on the internet trying to defend your murder.

Can the officers in any of these incidents even articulate a threat, and how the only remedy was to shoot through the driver side window, or in the back of the head?
by ninkendo | 2026-02-05 13:08:13+00:00
Playing music doesn’t require unlocking though, at least not from the Music app. If YouTube requires an unlock that’s actually a setting YouTube sets in their SiriKit configuration.

For reading messages, IIRC it depends on whether you have text notification previews enabled on the lock screen (they don’t document this anywhere that I can see.) The logic is that if you block people from seeing your texts from the lock screen without unlocking your device, Siri should be blocked from reading them too.

Edit: Nope, you’re right. I just enabled notification previews for Messages on the lock screen and Siri still requires an unlock. That’s a bug. One of many, many, many Siri bugs that just sort of pile up over time.
by codingdave | 2026-02-05 13:08:25+00:00
I tell ya what - I'm currently working on finalizing a contract with someone for related work, but if that falls apart for some reason, I might pick this back up independently, and if so, I might be interested in chatting more. I'd recommend adding your email to your profile, and I can reach out if appropriate.

Just to set proper expectations, though, my current contract negotiations are already fully agreed, we're just waiting on the legal team to finalize things, so the odds of me seeking a new partner are not high.
by roxolotl | 2026-02-05 13:08:27+00:00
I’d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion. Basically converts from everything and any markdown style to everything else. And then for clipboard just use `| pbcopy` on a Mac or `| xsel -ib`. Full command on a Mac would just be `pandoc README.md -t html | pbcopy`. If you want a docx you can get that too.

0: https://pandoc.org/
by mooreds | 2026-02-05 13:08:36+00:00
Not what you are asking for, but the Onion has some AI tips: https://theonion.com/tips-for-using-ai/

Fav tips:

- Give the AI restraints, like “Don’t tell me to kill myself as part of this stir-fry recipe.”

- Fact-check any information provided by asking the follow-up question “Are you sure?”

- Offset your water footprint by not bathing for 72 hours after each use.
by jermaustin1 | 2026-02-05 13:09:17+00:00
When I worked IT for a school district at the beginning of my career (2006-2007), I was blown away that every school had a MASSIVE server room (my office at each school - the MDF). 3-5 racks filled (depending on school size and connection speed to the central DC - data closet) 50-75% was networking equipment (5 PCs per class hardwired), 10% was the Novell Netware server(s) and storage, the other 15% was application storage for app distributions on login.
by bossyTeacher | 2026-02-05 13:09:20+00:00
Possibly so in urban areas. Internet is already available everywhere. Sell dumb devices that can remotely log in to virtual devices. An LLM can connect to this virtual device and execute whatever action the user wants. Centralising compute resources this way means it's likely cheaper to offer huge compute to tons of users and so rather than buying a smartphone, you buy a monthly subscription to AI which can do everything your device does but you just need to speak or text to it. Sub includes cost of dumb device maintenance, securing the data you sent to the virtual device, etc.

Personal Computing as a service. Let the computer think for you.
by halfcat | 2026-02-05 13:09:44+00:00
Claude Code doesn’t need to vibe code Figma. It _is_ Figma.

Take a couple screenshots of your legacy app, write a short paragraph describing it, and the web tool will give you a self-contained HTML file that’s a fully interactive mock-up.

But it’s still a mock-up. So software dev in general will be fine, it will evolve. But unless the AI companies run out of money and it turns out the $20/mo plan actually costs $1000/mo without VC subsidies, Figma is cooked.
by queenkjuul | 2026-02-05 13:10:08+00:00
I don't have an X account, so no, nothing I've said is based on personal experience. You should read the news. Google "XAI France"

Or just keep pretending I'm making things up, but I'm not.

My opinions here are not related to musk, except so far as he encouraged people to use his chatbot for disturbing, illegal ends
by esterna | 2026-02-05 13:10:52+00:00
Do you have advice how I could get someone to do a (possibly paid) review of PCBs for small hobby projects?

Being new to this space, it's hard to learn quickly when the feedback cycle involves having PCBs manufactured, shipped, soldering them and then finding out what could have been better. (Or it works and you never find out what you did wasn't the right way to do it)
by notepad0x90 | 2026-02-05 13:12:09+00:00
If NATO survives, sure. And assuming they aren't busy with other distractions at home. The main thing that Russia has that none of the rest do (or so I hear, don't hold me to it), is icebreakers that are superior, and submarines that are also deployed all over the world, including arctic waters.

The key thing is that Russia has some capability. Not superiority, but capability, that's all it takes to make war feasible. Having superior manpower or firepower doesn't guarantee victory, as you can see with Russia and Ukraine. Familiarity, homefield advantage, and political will are very important as well.
by infecto | 2026-02-05 13:13:30+00:00
Maybe you find it fun. I don’t, I prefer building software not running and setting up servers.

It’s also nontrivial once you go past some level of complexity and volume. I have made my career at building software and part of that requires understanding the limitations and specifics of the underlying hardware but at the end of the day I simply want to provision and run a container, I don’t want to think about the security and networking setup it’s not worth my time.
by Soerensen | 2026-02-05 13:14:22+00:00
The scrappiest thing that worked for me: manual onboarding calls with every single early user, even when it didn't scale.

I'd hop on 15-minute calls to understand their workflow, then send them personalized Loom videos showing exactly how to use the product for their specific use case. Time-consuming? Absolutely. But those users became evangelists because they felt ownership over the product direction.

A few other things that moved the needle early:

1. Commenting on niche subreddits where your target users actually hang out - not to pitch, but to genuinely help. When people see you're knowledgeable, they check your profile. Make sure it mentions what you're building.

2. Finding "trapped" users on competitor platforms. Look for complaint threads about existing tools, then reach out directly with "Hey, saw your frustration with X. Would love to show you how we solve that specific problem."

3. Making your first 10 users feel like co-founders. Give them direct access to you via text/Slack. Ask their opinion on features. They'll fight for your product's success.

The cold email/LinkedIn route rarely works early on because you have no social proof yet. Much better to go where conversations are already happening and demonstrate expertise first.
by gspetr | 2026-02-05 13:14:35+00:00
This is the prime example of Law 1 of Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power": "Never Outshine the Master."

The core principle is to always make those above you - your bosses, mentors, or superiors feel comfortably superior.

If you display your talents too aggressively, you risk triggering their deep-seated insecurities, which can lead them to sabotage your career or remove you from your position.

Galileo Galilei handled this really well. When he discovered the moons of Jupiter he strategically named them after the ruling Medici family.

By making the discovery about their greatness rather than his own intellect, he secured their lifelong patronage.

However, if your superior is a "fading star" or is clearly about to fall, you do not need to be merciful. In these cases, it may be strategic to outshine them to hasten their downfall and position yourself as the natural successor.
by throw0101a | 2026-02-05 13:14:55+00:00
> 1. No one sane trusts EU after RU sanctions either.

The RU sanctions were implemented 'only' because RU invaded another country. If you don't plan on invading countries is there much to worry about?

To a certain extent if you 'just' want to participate in the world economy the EUR seems fine. If you're looking to start geopolitical drama with military actions, is there any currency of a major economy that would not be a risk? Major powers tend to want stability, which would allow them to stay major, so would frown upon anyone stirring the pot (besides, perhaps, another major power: see China with Russia against UA/EU).
by pjc50 | 2026-02-05 13:15:32+00:00
> The gross unfairness of it all. I mean, it is bad enough that the failures in charge of the banking system got bailed out despite being incompetent at their jobs, but the average person had to guarantee them their high status role in society? It is a sick joke.

This is a very valid narrative, although if you say it in public people will call you a socialist. It applies to people like Fred Goodwin of RBS (eventually stripped of knighthood) and Sean Quinn of AIB (who did actually serve jail time).

> And it isn't like bankruptcy is that terrible. All the physical assets still exist. There is still food

I think you're really underestimating how terrible "retail banking stops functioning" would have been in the short term. The loans allowed the problems to be addressed over the medium term. "Every retail bank has ceased trading" is a problem you have about three days to solve before the inability of people to buy food and petrol starts a much larger collapse.

Besides, some of the bailouts were very close to "flat-pack" bankruptcies. Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley were fully nationalized! Equity holders lost everything, that's a bankruptcy!

(Americans will say "who" there, but again: it was a global crisis. It more resembles climate change. It's very difficult to say that any individual is responsible for it, but somehow Australia ends up on fire as a result of unsustainable emissions, and the banking system collapsed as a result of unsustainable lending emissions.)
by rsynnott | 2026-02-05 13:15:43+00:00
I'm not sure I've ever talked to an actual human about booking a flight or a hotel room, and I'm 40. Airlines and hotels have websites (and then there's booking.com etc of course). They were early adopters, even! Ryanair has had a website where you could book flights for 26 years, and that's a budget airline.

I would never, in a million years, trust an LLM to book a Ryanair flight. I barely trust _myself_ to book one without accidentally buying insurance or something. And booking.com is not much better. If the travel sites are not _already_ embedding adversarial prompts they will be soon. And they'll be good at it, because they've spend the last few decades practicing on humans.
by chirau | 2026-02-05 13:15:45+00:00
CONTEXT:

I forgot to include the background to this court case. In 2025, the Chief Data Officer of the SSA, Mr Borges, whistleblew that DOGE had unlawfully uploaded a whole copy of NUMIDENT (the SSA datastore) to an insecure server. Here is the filing from Mr Borges.

https://whistleblower.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/08-26-2...
by everdrive | 2026-02-05 13:15:47+00:00
No keyboard, no mouse, tiny screen. Every single action you'd like to take is slower and more cumbersome. Want to selection a portion of a URL? Well, get ready for an adventure. Tap the URL bar once, then -- oops, now it thinks you want to copy. You can't tap the individual sections. Try to move the little "copy bars" but oops, the press didn't register because they're tiny. Spend about a minute randomly pressing the URL bar until you can actually get the behavior your want. Or, try to switch tabs. It's not hard per se, but it's an order off magnitude slower than ctrl+tab. Or search within a page. Can you just hit ctrl+g and start typing and then press ctrl+g again? No, no, you need to enter a menu, enter a submenu, then wait for the onscreen keyboard to show up, then glide your finger over that with a few corrections, then move your finger down the the tiny next button.

It's all objectively terrible, and it accomplishes nothing except allowing the user to use the internet right then and there.
by alekkowalczyk | 2026-02-05 13:17:01+00:00
I tracked my time in Excel for 15 years. With AI, I was finally able to build the app I always wanted as a solo developer.

Tools like Toggl and Clockify are powerful, but they're built for teams with billable hours and client management. If you just want to know where your time goes, you're stuck with unnecessary complexity.

TickTappy is aggressively simple:
- One tap to start, one tap to stop
- Color-coded tags
- Weekly view showing time patterns
- Native apps: iOS, iPad, Mac, web

What it doesn't have: complex dashboards, mandatory fields, team features.

Built with React Native/Expo and Supabase. Happy to discuss the tech stack or design decisions.

Free to use. Premium unlocks cross-device sync