MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by adrian_b | 2026-02-08 20:46:22+00:00
The most likely hypothesis about how humans have become the most efficient hunters of the planet does not pass through catching insects and very small animals, but through eating the remains of the big prey killed by carnivores.

There are various bits of evidence for this, like the higher stomach acidity of humans, which resembles that of carrion eaters, like hyenas.

It is plausible that the ability to throw sticks and stones was used initially for scaring other predators and make them abandon their prey, and only later, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it became accurate enough to be usable for hunting living animals.

The ability to use stones to break the bones and eat the parts inaccessible for the carnivores who had killed the prey, i.e. marrow and brain, which are rich in hard to get nutrients, e.g. omega-3 fatty acids, is also presumed to have played an important role in the development of a bigger and bigger brain.

It is likely that the gangs of humans acted in a very similar way with the packs of hyenas, which acquire much of their food by scaring away from their prey the other predators, e.g. cheetahs, wild dogs, leopards and even lions. Moreover, similarly to humans, the most important ability of hyenas is not speed, but endurance when pursuing a possible prey that is tired or weakened, e.g. by wounds. While hyenas rely on their big teeth to chase the other predators, humans have relied on their ability to throw things at a distance, for the same purpose.
by mindslight | 2026-02-08 20:46:26+00:00
This sounds like outright denial to me. There are already many red lines that have been crossed, and plainly stated intentions to go much further. I know it's comforting to write off the red lines as isolated incidents, and the statements as harmless political trolling. But at this point its utter foolishness - there are very good reasons we reaffirm societal values rather than trashing them.
by apparent | 2026-02-08 20:46:54+00:00
Raise your eyebrows all you like! Just don't tell me (a visible minority, as you so eloquently put it) to consult a visible minority.

The notion that a word is poisonous because it is used by people who use it in a different way is silly. According to this logic, democrats should not advocate for "progressive" policies because some of the people who call for progressive policies are actually calling for the confiscation of private property.

It's like saying that vegetarianism is poisonous because Hitler was rumored to have been vegetarian. It's like ad hominem, but dumber.
by araes | 2026-02-08 20:46:59+00:00
There's a GBDK demo that actually does something similar (spinning 2D imposters). Does not handle the lighting though, which is quite impressive.

https://github.com/gbdk-2020/gbdk-2020/tree/develop/gbdk-lib...

Unfortunately, the 2D imposter mode has pretty significant difficulties with arbitrarily rotated 3D. The GBDK imposter rotation demo needs a 256k cart just to handle 64 rotation frames in a circle for a single object. Expanding that out to fully 3D views and rotations gets quite prohibitive.

Haven't tried downloading RGDBS to compile this yet. However, suspect the final file is probably similar, and pushing the upper limits on GB cart sizes.
by greenbit | 2026-02-08 20:47:34+00:00
I'm well familiar with 6502 shenanigans, but never really looked into 2600 programming before. Looking into that source file though, I got the impression that Atari mapped the I/O right into zero page? Kind of surprising, but I guess with the 6507 the effective address space was only 8K, so why not. Certainly if you're trying to get all your computing done in the blanking intervals, it'd help if banging the video chip could be done that much quicker as well.
by myth_drannon | 2026-02-08 20:49:11+00:00
From The Free Press article:

In a 1995 interview with Inc. magazine, author Kurt Vonnegut was asked what he thought about living in an increasingly digitized world. His response is so perfect that it’s worth reprinting in full:

I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “OK, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, “Where are you going?” I say, “Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something
by refulgentis | 2026-02-08 20:49:16+00:00
I'm unconvinced, to my possibly-undercaffeinated mind, the string of 3 posts reads like this:

- a problem already solved in TFA (you vouching for someone eventually denounced doesn't prevent you from being denounced, you can totally do it)

- a per-repo, or worse, global, blockchain to solve incrementing and decrementing integers (vouch vs. denounce)

- a lack of understanding that automated global scoring systems are an abuse vector and something people will avoid. (c.f. Black Mirror and social credit scores in China)
by KempyKolibri | 2026-02-08 20:49:26+00:00
I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that the n3:n6 ratio actually matters as long as you’re meeting the absolute required levels of each.

There was a big push for this hypothesis in the 2010s, but on closer inspection the only research that seemed to support it was where the “low n3:n6 ratio” cohort were there by virtue of low n3, not high n6.

Where studies compare groups of people where ratios were manipulated but both were at adequate levels, I don’t believe we see any evidence of a deleterious effect.
by kkfx | 2026-02-08 20:49:38+00:00
Spreadsheets are perhaps the only pseudo-visual programming tool to have achieved significant widespread use, but they are terrible:

- the logic is hidden; until you click on a cell, you don't know "what it actually contains"

- there is no entry point, no main(), so there is no way to read it other than keeping 100% of what the sheet does in your head, or ignoring parts of it and risking breaking them while working on others

- the logic tends to be coded in single lines rather than multi-line with proper indentation, which makes reading it very difficult

This is just the conceptual basis, without even counting the improper auto-formatting of cells that has even led to renaming genes to prevent them from being considered dates https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam... or the absurdities regarding date calculations.

They can be convenient when you have to play around with a few pieces of tabular data, yes, but the price you pay is much higher than working with high-level languages that would be easy for even the average user to understand if only they had started with them.
by samiv | 2026-02-08 20:49:45+00:00
What terrifies me is the total and utter potential disruption to our economies in a very rapid order.

Software is just a proxy for the thing that we want which is data. The same way an electric drill is a proxy to a hole. Since it's impossible to sell holes there's a market for selling electric drills to make holes.

A lot of economic activity is based on these proxies. Same in the software digital world. Even though it's data that were after many successful software businesses have been started to sell the tools, i.e. software products for people to make their digital "holes".

Now imagine if you could just suddenly 3D print your electric drill. Or your frying pan. Or your garden shears. What would happen to the economiies based on selling these tools?

Once you can prompt your way to any digital creation what happens to the economies based on making the digital tools?

It's not there yet, but if/when it does it's going to be a complete economic restructuring that will affect many. Careers will be wiped out, livelihoods will be lost.
by inglor_cz | 2026-02-08 20:49:59+00:00
Interestingly, there was a recent interest in a case of a surgeon who scratched himself when operating on a cancer patient, and developed cancer himself at the site of the scratch. The cancer was found to be identical to his patient's.

https://surgery.international/surgeon-diagnosed-with-patient...

The case is fairly old, from 1996. It re-surfaced recently.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199611143352004
by embedding-shape | 2026-02-08 20:50:06+00:00
> What you really want is a way for scripts to describe their dependencies, and then the runner figures out what order to run them in, and cache scripts that don't need to be run because their inputs didn't change.

DAG + content-addressing, final binary being the target and everything resolved from there. We could have some beautiful build system that just works and is fast, but seems it never magically appears by itself although it seems so elegant. Guess Nix/NixOS is the closest we've gotten so far, works well enough, missing concurrency and parallelism though.
by gruez | 2026-02-08 20:50:37+00:00
>They then also refused to blacklist their own broken bootloader to save sysadmins the time (who would need to deploy new recovery images and boot media containing the fixed bootloader).

Source? The OP suggests they expect it to be blacklisted

>I assume that Kaspersky bootloader signature certificate will not live long, and it will be added to global UEFI certificate revocation list, which will be installed on computers running Windows 10 via Windows Update

If you search around you'll also find that microsoft does publish secure boot revocations, contrary to what you claim.

https://github.com/fwupd/dbx-firmware
by wk_end | 2026-02-08 20:51:56+00:00
Yeah, it’s only kicking the can down the road if you’re the actual maintainer of the software.

If you’re just a packager, it’s your job to get the package to build and work correctly; for your own sanity, you should be making minimal changes to the underlying code to facilitate that. Get it building with the old language version and file a bug report.
by KempyKolibri | 2026-02-08 20:52:09+00:00
Just get an omega 3 supplement that has a good amount of DHA and EPA. There’s not as much evidence to support it as there is to support eating fish, but that’s more due to a dearth of research on the subject than because the evidence suggests it has no effect.

Unfortunately it tends to be more expensive. I have recs if you’re in the UK but not much use otherwise!
by dspillett | 2026-02-08 20:52:22+00:00
> Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things.

That is a problem that needs to be fixed in those users, not something we should take advantage of as an excuse for releasing shoddy work.

> For some reason this is continually terrifying and shocking to many.

For many reasons.

It means that a good product can be outcompeted by a substandard one because it releases faster, despite the fact it will cause problems later, so good products are going to become much more rare at the same time as slop becoming much more abundant.

It means that those of us trying to produce good output will be squeezed more and more to the point where we can't do that without burning out.

It means that we can trust any given product or service even less than we were able to in the past.

It means that because we are all on the same network, any flaw could potentially affect us all not just the people who don't care.

The people who don't care when caring means things release with lower cadence, are often the same people who will cry loudest and longest about how much everyone else should have cared when a serious bug bites their face off.

and so on… … …

Are you suggesting we should just sit back and let then entire software industry go the way of AAA games or worse?
by bri3d | 2026-02-08 20:52:47+00:00
> You are missing the point

Of the GPLv3 sentence? No, it's dishonest rhetorically. Of the piece? Also I don't think so, exploiting the shims is a fun way to prove that Secure Boot is silly but we already knew that, and by 2019 claiming that "most" systems only allowed Microsoft keys is just flat out dishonest as well.

> It's the fault of those who pushed SecureBoot down our throats (and don't get me wrong: I use SecureBoot) to have decided that Microsoft had both a free-pass to have its certs by default in every UEFI out there but no other certs.

I really don't get this argument in general; Microsoft certs are enrolled by default as a combination of: a matter of convenience for majority users who are going to use Microsoft OSes, the unfortunate design of Option ROM signature checking, and the desire to get a Windows logo on the packaging and Microsoft OEM discounts.

There's no Secure Boot or UEFI related reason that boards can't come in Setup Mode with no PK, and most industrial boards do indeed come this way, since they don't need Option ROMs and customers don't want a Microsoft logo.

> So users either have to understand how to enroll their own certs or to use a shim signed by... Microsoft.

This seems like the best outcome for end-user computers which will have Windows installed to me? Users get a computer that checks that the OS it came with is valid (well, tries to, but that's a different can of worms), and still have the option to do whatever they want with it if they so desire. They can choose the Microsoft signed shim for convenient dual-booting, or erase the platform keys and own their system end to end if they wish.

> Let's not forget that we're talking about the company responsible for Windows 11 here.

I've never really understood these arguments, and it's even weirder to bring Windows 11 into it. Is the thing we're railing against here Ballmer-Borg Microsoft? Shitty Product Management Kills Products Microsoft? AI Infested Microsoft? The Venn diagram of overlap between 1990s Microsoft (genesis of UEFI), 2012 Microsoft (Secure Boot introduction), and 2025 Microsoft (Windows 11) seems likely to be... quite small.
by meetingthrower | 2026-02-08 20:53:00+00:00
But if you are not saving "privileged" information who cares? I mean think of all the WordPress sites out there. Surely vibecoding is not SO much worse than some plugin monstrosity.... At the end of the day if you are not saving user info, or special sauce for your company, it's no issue. And I bet a huge portion of apps fall into this category...
by xandrius | 2026-02-08 20:53:00+00:00
Tech is as fun, and even more fun than it used to be, in my opinion.

The software and hardware limitations are a fun challenge (albeit becoming ever so more hard to break) and you can have kids enter at any stage of technology: from a simple terminal only system, to a rpi, or modern computers. You have games, robotics, embedded systems, etc. that are order of magnitude easier to pick up and with far more tutorials (back in my days, I only could find 1 complete tutorial to make games, in C++ + OpenGL and only in English).

I personally wouldn't start anyone off straight with LLMs as I believe it takes away a bit of the self exploration and taking it as slow as needed.

Call me an optimist but I believe being a parent and getting a kid interested in tech hasn't been easier, especially since the social stigma has long since diminished.
by giancarlostoro | 2026-02-08 20:54:05+00:00
How do you even ban something like KeypassXC given that it is open source and any end user could basically edit KeypassXC and bypass a ban?

Edit: Reading one of those issues it sounds like they want the keys stored in an encrypted way, is that too much to ask for? I dont care about viewing it but it shouldnt be stored in a plain easy to open JSON.
by teocalin37 | 2026-02-08 20:54:12+00:00
Pilot is per-agent/process, not per-machine. On one host, you can run many independent agents, each with a permanent virtual address. Separate trust handshakes/revokes (one agent trusts peer X, another doesn’t). Scope is to give agents a "phonebook" (discovery + permanent addresses) + direct reachability for messages, data streams, pub/sub, HTTP/gRPC, or even tunneled legacy TCP via gateway. Tailscale wins if you want to create a private net, or expose stuff via Funnel.
by enraged_camel | 2026-02-08 20:55:25+00:00
>> Appliances like Microwaves, etc were revolutionary for its time. Only problem: they lasted forever (>20 years). No 1 needed to buy it again = no business. It was deliberately not made to last as long and possibly not exactly cheaper both in cost and retail price.

This is a common myth that was debunked a while back. Essentially people get fooled by survivorship bias: they only see the few old appliances that somehow survived, and that leads them to conclude that things were higher quality back in the day.
by Epa095 | 2026-02-08 20:56:42+00:00
I have been going partially down the same road, getting my own domain for email, so I can switch between providers (or self-host) in the future. A couple of notes:

- You dont actually own the domain, you kind of lease it, and will have to pay every year for renewal. The renewal price can be significantly higher than the "purchase" price, so be carefull to pick one with a low renewal price. I dont really know if there is any guarantee against the renewal-price increasing in the future, so you might end up kind of stuck.

- The email provider must support using a custom domain, which many do on their paid plan.

- Some support "catch-all" feature, that emails sendt to any adressess @yourdomain.com goes into the mailbox. Then you can register at places with e.g hackernews@yourdomain.com or possiblespamsite@yourdomain.com. But if you do this you can only move to other providers providing the same in the future. You can not neccesarrily send from the same adresses though!
by meetingthrower | 2026-02-08 20:57:06+00:00
Right!? It's like me all the sudden being able to fix my car's engine. I mean, sure, there are mechanics, and it surely isn't rocket science, but I couldn't do it before and now I can!!! A miracle!

Cue the folks saying "well you could DIE!!!" Not if I don't fix brakes, etc ...
by michaelteter | 2026-02-08 20:57:46+00:00
Yes, those were the suggestions which made me think there was a disparity between the About and the posts (or lack thereof).

Best of luck to you on your blog. I would suggest you also add a "welcome to my blog" post where you give a little background about why you're writing the blog and what kinds of content readers can hope to see in the future. There's no denying that you have little content, so you might as well make it clear to readers _why_ that is. Plus, it sets them up to be interested to see what's coming next.
by n8cpdx | 2026-02-08 20:57:54+00:00
Back in the bad old days of Intel Macs, I had a full system crash just as I was about to get up to give a presentation in class.

It rebooted and got to desktop, restoring all my open windows and app state, before I got to the podium (it was a very small room).

The Mac OS itself seems to be relatively fast to boot, the desktop environment does a good job recovering from failures, and now the underlying hardware is screaming fast.

I should never have to reboot, but in the rare instances when it happens, being fast can be a difference maker.
by kbelder | 2026-02-08 20:58:18+00:00
"I'm a guy using Linux" - Ok.
"I'm a Linux guy" - Bad.

This is very much an imprecise abstraction, more like a rule of thumb. Just be careful how you think of yourself.

"I ride bicycles" - Fine.
"I'm a cyclist" - Getting weird.

"I voted for X" - Ok.
"I'm team X" - Dangerous.
by llm_nerd | 2026-02-08 20:58:38+00:00
This is talking about early onset, which is a particularly terrifying outcome. And yes, 1 in 1000 for a horrible outcome sounds much better than 2 in 1000, doesn't it?

And to be clear, many things that people worry about is less likely than that. Homicides (over an 8 year period about about 0.04 per 1000 people), terrorism (vanishingly small), and on and on.

None of this means that people should stock up on omega-3s, and as likely the study is actually finding a correlation with something else (e.g. wealthier people enjoy more fish rich diets and are less exposed to toxins, or something else), but halving something terrifying that isn't that uncommon is legitimately newsworthy.
by bri3d | 2026-02-08 20:58:42+00:00
What if my threat model is "compromised the disk imaging / disk supply chain?" This is a plausible and real threat model, and represents a moderate erosion, like I said.

UEFI Secure Boot is also just not a meaningful countermeasure to anyone with even a moderate paranoia level anyway, so it's all just goofing around at this point from a security standpoint. All of these "add more nag screens for freedom" measures like the grandparent post and yours don't really seem useful to me, though.
by apothegm | 2026-02-08 20:58:46+00:00
Sardines, too, which are also fishier than salmon but tend not to be salted the way mackerel is.

Unless you’re also consuming all the oil from the can, prefer fish canned in water to canned in oil — because apparently the omega-3s can leach out into oil, but they’re not water-soluble.

Btw, trout is also up there (though not as high as salmon) and is a lovely mild-flavored fish.
by elevatortrim | 2026-02-08 20:58:52+00:00
As a manager who is trying to do all the things you listed well, I would love it to be more like a game sending NPCs around. Ignoring the macro implications of AI, even if very successful at or resistant to it, I’d think there would be very, very few people who are actively seeking people drama. Educating kids can be fun, but educating adults in the business domain is almost always a drag as in any given professional room, you would be very lucky to find one person who is genuinely there out of curiosity rather than obligation or fomo.
by famouswaffles | 2026-02-08 20:59:10+00:00
1. LLMs are transformers, and transformers are next state predictors. LLMs are not Language models (in the sense you are trying to imply) because even when training is restricted to only text, text is much more than language.

2. People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to 'the real world'. You don't. You run on a heavily filtered, tiny slice of reality. You think you understand electro-magnetism ? Tell that to the birds that innately piece direction from sensing the earth's magnetic field. To them, your brain only somewhat models the real world, and evidently quite incompletely. You'll never understand electro-magnetism, they might say.