MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tadfisher | 2026-02-20 22:45:56+00:00
Agreed that there is a ton of baby in this bathwater.

Also, the open nature of AOSP gave Google its advantage during the early days. Since then, Google has morphed into a company that would likely not make the same decision to create an open-source OS free for others to use and contribute to.

So in the end, what we as consumers actually get, in 2026:

- Google encourages application developers to use hardware attestation to prevent themselves from running on non-blessed, third-party AOSP distributions.

- Google builds basic functionality people care about (including passkeys!) into Play Services, a closed mega-application that happens to require a Google account for most features, and is a moving target for open distributions to mimic.

- Google has closed AOSP contributions to themselves and OEM partners only. AOSP releases are now quarterly source dumps.

- OEMs which traditionally allowed bootloader unlocking (and thus actual ownership of the hardware) have removed it as a matter of policy.

So what exactly is open about Android anymore? Does "source-available OS you can see and not touch" align with your interests? Because it's increasingly not aligned with mine.
by pseudalopex | 2026-02-20 22:46:00+00:00
> This feels a little excessively cynical, you still might hate it, but it's specifically for the 250th Anniversary of America.

The article addressed this.

Although it’s described as voluntary, Carr said broadcasters can meet their public interest obligations by taking the pledge. This is notable because Carr has repeatedly threatened to punish broadcast stations for violating the public interest standard.

“If this were genuinely intended as voluntary, and genuinely about celebrating America, there is no reason to limit this to broadcasters,” Feld told Ars. “Cable operators are equally free to celebrate America, as are podcasters for that matter.”
by doomslayer999 | 2026-02-20 22:46:05+00:00
It's mostly SV grifters who shoved LLMs up our asses. They then get in cahoots with boomers in the government to create policies and "investment schemes" that inflate their stock in a ponzi-like fashion and regulate competition.
Why do you think Trump has some no-name crypto firm, or why Thiel has Vance as his whipping boy, and Elon spend a fortune trying to get Trump to win? This is a multiparty thing, as most politicians are heavily bought and paid for.
by camel_Snake | 2026-02-20 22:46:05+00:00
Is that no longer the case, or am I misunderstanding the operational costs displayed?

Opus: 521k input tokens; 12k out

Grok: 443k input tokens; 57k out

Gemini: 677k input tokens; 7k out

OAI: 543k input tokens; 17k out

Gemini appears to use by far the least amount of reasoning tokens, assuming they're included in the output counts.
by tim-tday | 2026-02-20 22:46:34+00:00
The journalist fails to understand the strategy of humanoid robotics.

Current state of the art: a robot mounted to the floor in a factory can do one thing quickly and without error

Limitation: if you unbolt it from the floor it cannot move, reposition, walk. If it could (and could also do the previous thing) it’d be able to do any and all work in the world.

Phased solution:
Phase one make robots that can move around (check)
Phase two integrate specific tooling and job skills into those robots
Phase three total world domination. Because your robot can do any and every job on earth.

https://archive.ph/HW5D1
by conductr | 2026-02-20 22:46:47+00:00
It’s pretty common of regulators to ask things of those they regulate. CMS asks for input regarding healthcare changes, EPA asks for input on new standards, and so one. Is there some impression that regulators just blindly bark orders and are punitive to those that don’t comply, even when compliance isn’t mandatory? Be as cynical as you want but I see this as pretty innocent and wish we still had a patriotic culture in America and I support finding ways to try to rebuild it. This seems reasonable and was only a request for common good of the nation. Make it political all you want but I don’t think that’s what it is.
by PollardsRho | 2026-02-20 22:47:00+00:00
What about bets without insider participation, where you want the market to function as an aggregator of educated guesses? OP has one reaction to insider trading, but I imagine a very common alternative would be "those insiders make their money off of bettors like me, I shouldn't participate." Some questions are clearly insider-proof, but I imagine many questions have insiders who don't bet on Polymarket. If Polymarket is going to be a good prediction market, surely it should incentivize people to make predictions on those questions too?
by TZubiri | 2026-02-20 22:47:01+00:00
This is how I program. It's very minimalist, I try to use as few dependencies and possible. It has its pros and it has its cons:

Pros:

- No external vulnerabilities

- Almost everyone can understand the code, easy onboarding of more devs

- Good long term feature speed.

- Good terminal speed.

- Higher moat, more R&D, more proprietary tech.
More in-house understanding of a broader slice of the tech stack.

Cons:

- Slower initial development speed.

- Needs more specialized, lower level devs.

- Might introduce custom vulnerabilities (Think living in the woods vs living in the city security models)

The raison d'etre I externalized this, is that I hired a family member that was fresh out of college, took him as an apprentice, and I noticed he often tried to install random packages to solve specific issues, so I documented how I would lock the requirements file, for consistency.

After that I just started adding more conceptually similar decisions, and there's quite a few of them. There's a lot of inspiration in Spolsky's Wasabi in that both the dev environment and the actual product are supposed to work on machines as they come in standard distributions, without any additional configuration.

Another cons is that it's not a very marketable skillset, when applying for positions it just doesn't look great that I don't know any of these deeper stack technologies. And positions that don't require deeper tech are usually bombarded by junior profiles, which are harder to discern.
It's not sexy, it doesn't sell.

Another pro is that, since having a virgin codebase is only ever possible at early stages of a project, and going from a clean minimalist state to a clusterfuck is an irreversible process, it's a virtue that I think is worth delaying as long as possible. These cop-outs in programming are super useful, but they are like lifelines, Stackoverflow, npm install, LLM Code Generation, yes they work wonders, but every time you start using one of those, then you will forever from that point onward need to keep using them, and the development velocity will soon stabilize, so when starting a new project you should pace yourself. The longer you hold out the bigger the reward, if you wait until 2030 to start using dependencies and 2035 to start using agentic coding, you will win the marathon, let the competitors get their accolades for the 100m.
by tartoran | 2026-02-20 22:47:06+00:00
I don't have severe myopia and I'm fine with no glasses for now. The optometrist detected .5 correction needed but advised me to not go for it for the reason I mentioned. I think they are more qualified to give this advice than some rando on the internet. If they were a mercenary they'd tell me to go for it, that optometry practice was part of an eye glasses store and I'm sure they'd gain from my business there. And here I am 20 years later not wearing glasses yet. As I'm getting older my vision is getting slightly worse, I'll probably get to wear them at some point but that's beside the point.
by shirro | 2026-02-20 22:47:11+00:00
The algorithm has been given a job todo. First priority on any platform is engagement and a well functioning, complete human being is not going to be engaged by rage bait and hate. They are rare, precious jewels. The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out. It is relentless and escalates until their brains cook. Algorithmic social media is a massive social harm. The people who are in deep likely need years of deprogramming and therapy to recover which they will never get.

These platforms need to be shut down and people with a conscience need to stop using them, regardless of their own positive experiences, to deny them the power of network effects and their impact on the vulnerable.
by afavour | 2026-02-20 22:47:12+00:00
I do think it’s that but with a dangerous slippery slope embedded within. FB will optimize for engagement no matter what so if you linger on one political post they put among 99 friends and family posts they’ll immediately amp up the ratio.

My mother in law is an example of this. She’s always been “mildly” political, e.g. she liked Planned Parenthood’s FB page. Now her feed is a mess of anti-Trump stuff. I’m anti-Trump myself but a lot of these posts are barely coherent and she’s mentioned before now when she meets someone new her first thought is whether they voted for Trump or not. To my mind it’s a direct result of her slipping down that slope. She frequently has interactions (“fights” is too strong really) with friends and neighbors on her feed who are clearly off piste in the other political direction.

I even had an example of it on my own profile. For some reason I had a post from a local (NY) radio station in my feed, about Mamdani. Curious to click into the comments I saw a cesspit of vitriol by boomer age users, attached to their real names, sometimes with smiling photos with their grandchildren… for weeks after whenever I logged in there would be a new post by a different conservative leaning radio station, ready to make me angry. Engagement > user happiness.
by munificent | 2026-02-20 22:47:13+00:00
I just tried to repro this.

On my Facebook account, I scrolled through 30 posts without seeing anything thirsty. Mostly synthesizer stuff, stuff for my kids' schools, and a few posts from friends. It definitely knows I'm male because the ads are for men's apparel.

Instagram was the same.

I never ever watch reels or other short form video, so maybe that has something to do with it.
by nvarsj | 2026-02-20 22:47:24+00:00
I barely use facebook.com but I don't have this issue at all. I just checked - my news feed is filled with extended family posts, posts in groups I'm in and related things. TFA looks completely alien to me. I guess this is kind of an absurd local maxima you get with algorithms for rarely used accounts.

(disclaimer: I work at Meta)
by galkk | 2026-02-20 22:47:39+00:00
Yes.

One of very recent examples: handheld Xbox.

There are rumors about upcoming handheld Xbox. Many like the idea

It is announced, marketed as handheld Xbox (asus xbox ally x). Quite expensive, but okay.

After some time (!) they reveal that this handheld Xbox actually won’t play your Xbox games/subscription. It will play your pc subscription and pc games. Wtf

Literally about time when the sales of the device actually start, Microsoft racks up the price of Xbox ultimate from $20 to $30 per month. They unsubscribe page is overloaded.

How any coherent management would allow this?
by karmakaze | 2026-02-20 22:48:11+00:00
Actually this is the best advice I've heard to not being boring yourself. If you are earnestly interested in the other person's interests, wants, dreams, what have you, they will find you interesting.

This post is slightly different about not being bland/non-weird, which is another thing--be yourself out loud.

I know I do edit what I say to new people that I meet, because they probably actually aren't interested in my several deep but narrow interests--I can tell by my Youtube feed. I am unapologetically weird and totally fine with progressive disclosure. I suppose if we have common interests but they act similarly it would be a missed opportunity--I should give more signals, the equivalent of wearing my fave band T-shirt, like mentioning things regularly in casual small talk.

If anything I've edited my own life down for simplicity and focus: family, friends, some aspects of work, and a handful of lasting interests. If you don't care what other people think, a lot of things just become unimportant.
by flaburgan | 2026-02-20 22:48:27+00:00
Could anyone provide me some clarifications?

If I understood correctly, to "protect" users, Google wants to control what is installed on Android phones. I guess it means the Play store will be the only way to install an app, which in turn means:
- That users won't be able to install what they want and that they would need a google account to install apps
- That app developers have to go through google to distribute their apps, with identity verification etc.
Obviously this is awful and would mean the end of F-droid and Aurora store etc.
However, I'm also reading here and there that it is a threat to alternative ROMs. To me it sounds at the contrary as an amazing opportunity, as they can strip this verification and be the only truly open Android, or am I missing something? Why do people link this app verification thing with a possible closing of AOSP?

Also, Mozilla was already saying it 10years ago with Firefox OS but... The web is the platform. 90% of the apps out there could be websites. We have all technologies needed for this including offline with service workers. And it works on every damn platform, even the most obscure OS has a web browser. Don't want to be locked to an ecosystem? Just target the web!
by TacticalCoder | 2026-02-20 22:50:56+00:00
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the UK were to soon outlaw Google street view.

UK authorities are in full Pravda mode, trying to control the narrative.

But the people aren't happy and the Reform party is nearly guaranteed to win the next election. Which many are going to describe as a "far-right populist party". But people have to wonder: how comes suddenly a "far-right populist party" is predicted to win all the votes? What did go wrong? At which point did the UK take a wrong turn?

For I don't think that people suddenly wake up and decide that they'll all be voting for a far-right nationalist party.

I think this entire movement of censorship in the UK but also in the EU overall (Spain being a particularly bad offender) is because the traditional political parties know that they are toast if they cannot control the narrative.
by skydhash | 2026-02-20 22:51:04+00:00
As I said, the computer does not care, neither would a robot care about a garden or a garbage dump as long as it can cross it. But we interact with the world through our senses and we categorize things with epithets like pleasant, disagreeable,… And when we can present things to others would generally find enjoyable and pleasing, we are deemed to have good taste.

So the act of presenting and the judgement by others are what qualify the whole “taste” thing. The judgment is not yours to make, and presentation (either voluntarily or not) is all that needed for others to form an opinion.

So your private code that no one else has seen? No one cares. The repo linked to your Show HN post? You will be judged based on that.
by agentifysh | 2026-02-20 22:51:40+00:00
> The important context is that these two presidents were Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Roh Tae-Woo, who led the military coup of December 12th (1979), seizing power, and then sending paratroopers to murder hundreds of civilians to quash public protest in the uprising of Gwangju (1980).

I think your comment here is very emotionally charged here but to clarify to outsiders reading, those protestors also broke into an military armory, armed themselves to the teeth, and an armed conflict broke out. It's still not clear as to who fired the first shot and by all definitions can be viewed as armed insurrection not a mere "public protest".

Also during this time protests were spreading not just in Gwangju but in other large cities. The Gwangju incident is still a very contested and heavily debated historical event one that has been constantly politically weaponized to silence opposition.

> So mock their later pardons if you want to, but you can't deny it marked an important and necessary step in Korea's history. It also shows sending your ex-presidents to prison only to pardon them later is still better than not bothering with it at all.

I am mocking South Korea's political arena because pardoning Presidents after charging them with treason/corruption/insurrection only reinforces that laws are selectively applied and some are still above its law and constitution. Better would've been to refrain from the tit for tat kangaroo courts altogether to placate whatever direction the country's leaning towards in that election cycle.

> Also, the "obvious reason" that American politics sent zero ex-presidents to prison is that Biden chickened out. So, there's that.

Post-watergate scandal, it was President Ford that stated going after Nixon would bottleneck national interest decision making with partisan legal/political factionalism , something that South Korea has become today and it will not stop.
by diasf | 2026-02-20 22:52:15+00:00
The comments on this post are very misinformed. The car did not issue a "Take over immediately" alert despite having the capability or claiming to do so[1]. Hence the partial blame.
The punitive damages are justified since, Tesla during the whole process has been found to repeatedly lie about the existence of the server logs. @greentheonly on X, found that the server logs was indeed uploaded to their servers[2] and after this they had to hand over the logs. The logs were crucial in determining that Autopilot/Autosteer was on and that no warnings were issued. Tesla knew that they had the server logs all along. For a corporation to engage in this behavior is almost criminal.

[1] https://electrek.co/2025/08/04/tesla-withheld-data-lied-misd...
[2] https://www.pcmag.com/articles/hacker-who-helped-score-243-m...
by ping00 | 2026-02-20 22:52:17+00:00
as a pentester at a Fortune 500: I think you're on the mark with this assessment. Most of our findings (internally) are "best practices"-tier stuff (make sure to use TLS 1.2, cloud config findings from Wiz, occasionally the odd IDOR vuln in an API set, etc.) -- in a purely timeboxed scenario, I'd feel much more confident in an agent's ability to look at a complex system and identify all the 'best practices' kind of stuff vs a human being.

Security teams are expensive and deal with huge streams of data and events on the blue side: seems like human-in-the-loop AI systems are going to be much more effective, especially with the reasoning advances we've seen over the past year or so.
by orbital-decay | 2026-02-20 22:52:23+00:00
What if these filters also cure cancer by some mechanism that isn't known yet? Who knows, it might be true! After long experimentation with warmer lighting my cancer is gone, so it definitely worked for me.

What you're saying is not science either. The entire medical usage of blue light filters hinges on just a few papers. If you really can prove those studies inapplicable you can prove that there's no objective reason to use them (I'm not necessarily saying the author did that).

Whether these filters feel nice is entirely unrelated question, nobody stops you from decorating your living space as you see fit.
by observationist | 2026-02-20 22:53:29+00:00
If it's got a sim card, it's still phoning home and providing location data. You can't escape the panopticon. A faraday bag gets you mostly there, though, but the point isn't that you can maneuver against it, it's that the device and its operation is fundamentally compromised by design.

There's a whole lot of shady crap underlying the infrastructure and the hardware that consumers cannot touch, pinephone / librephone or otherwise. It's not designed for consent. At best you can gain ephemeral relief, but even that is illusory, because by simple process of elimination, differential analysis allows fine grained ID and tracking of people even if they don't have accounts, phones, interact with websites, etc.

It's not a shady cabal of lizard people, it's just the grubby natural alignment of interests by a wide ranging set of companies and regulators and groups who allow it to happen without imposing any accountability, and ensuring that the system remains structured such that no effective accountability can be imposed.

Extorting constant streams of data for adtech is too valuable and the entire thing is too complex for silly things like ethics to interfere.
by wslh | 2026-02-20 22:53:30+00:00
Asking for a friend who’s working on a startup around this general space: do you think it’s better to go niche, focusing on agents for a specific type of application or a specific language/ecosystem, or is that effectively “killing the startup” by limiting market size too soon?

Another question that came up in conversations with them: there might be value in offering a nonscalable, high-touch service, where you build and maintain customized agents tailored to a client’s specific codebase on a periodic basis.
by ThrowawayB7 | 2026-02-20 22:53:57+00:00
Xbox has been languishing badly and Microsoft games in general have not been doing very well over the past decade despite gaming becoming completely mainstream so one might suspect that he is being retired rather than retiring. Yes, he was better than Mattrick but that was a very, very low bar to clear.

I will give Spencer a bit of credit though for bringing back Microsoft Flight Simulator.
by taeric | 2026-02-20 22:54:16+00:00
I think this was what I was told the first time. The advantage of taking a picture with my phone's camera is it kind of made it obvious just how much brighter the screen was then the paper.

Which, fair that it may be obvious to others to just scan their eyes from screen to paper. I've been surprised with how much people will just accept the time their eyes have to adjust to a super bright screen. Almost like it doesn't register with them.
by syndacks | 2026-02-20 22:54:26+00:00
A lot of people here like this guys writing.

For a longer and more biting critique of SF one should read

Private Citizens (2016) by Tony Tulathimutte

“ Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizens embraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire.”
by currymj | 2026-02-20 22:54:37+00:00
there is some inevitable "insider trading" in commodities markets. for example if you're a giant agricultural company, and you want to hedge the price of soybeans, you have some extremely relevant insider information about the soybean market. but you're still allowed to trade soybean futures. very different than securities.

if prediction market contracts really are regulated as commodities, then presumably a lot of insider trading must be legal, although there must be limits of one kind or another and probably if you do something really egregious you might be prosecuted under some legal theory.
by pwrsysengineer | 2026-02-20 22:54:49+00:00
I created a Facebook account a few years ago to get in on the local marketplace deals. After opening the website a few times and seeing very suggestive content, I had the idea of tailoring my feed to the most racy things I could find. Eventually, my feed was filled images of children wearing bathing suits and in suggestive positions, censored images of sexual acts, and AI generated images of grannies with large breasts and little clothing. I was taking screenshots for a while but one time I opened my photo gallery while on the train and realized how embarrassing it looked to have a phone filled with this crap.