MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-03 02:40:28+00:00
>there's been, in 2025, 983 000 people receiving disciplinary sanctions[0]. then:
>1. either there's no corruption, and people are getting sanctioned for no reason
>2. there's corruption
> Less incompetency

You're just compressing reality so the logic becomes simple. But your analysis loses the nuance. First of all no one said there's no corruption in China. Corruption is everywhere... saying there's none is a practical impossibility.

Second. In 2025 983,000 people received disciplinary sanctions.... If what China claims is true or even partially true it means corruption was reduced on a scale that cannot be replicated in the US.

You analysis is valid, but inconclusive.

>furthermore, in my experience, Asian people, and Chinese in particular, also have better working habits − stronger wills − than most Westerners.
>I'd still be careful about assuming they're really _that_ more competent. intellectual theft, propaganda, rushed work, all could contribute to a temporary illusion of superiority.

First of all let me be frank. I am asian. I am genetically Chinese and culturally western. My comment was purely about centralized systems of government and how THAT effects competency and not at all about the competency of the population seperate from that.

That being said, average IQ in China is higher than the US, that is a statistical fact. I did not comment on how that translates into this argument or what IQ even means in reality. I'm going to avoid that argument because I have no opinion on it.

>this is a watered-down description of the actual situation.
>you can get jailed, beaten up, tortured, killed, etc. religious groups seem to be the main target of the most violent treatments[1]. there's really no reason to target peaceful people, via such extreme means.

You're right. I did water it down. But I still stand by my point. I won't in actuality participate in activities that will lead to these types of consequences so restricting me of these freedoms is something I practically don't care about.

The religious argument is valid. But what do you think of scientology? Cults. Basically the religions that China cracks down on are religions it considers to be similar to scientology. Ultimately these things are bullshit. I'm not religious so, again practically speaking it doesn't affect me. I think most HNers are also atheist or agnostic.
by superdisk | 2026-02-03 02:40:57+00:00
I worked on a language learning site and in order to try to onboard tutors, I wrote a script that scraped the Preply tutor list, which gave first names, pictures, and a YouTube account link.

From there I made a spreadsheet and spent hours googling names and trying to match up pictures to faces, sending messages asking if they'd like to be a part of a pilot program on my platform.

Got quite a few people willing to try it out :) but sadly the startup didn't succeed. Fun times though.
by bikenaga | 2026-02-03 02:41:02+00:00
Original title: "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" - Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen

Abstract: "Using high-frequency administrative data from ADP, we document six facts characterizing labor market shifts following the widespread adoption of generative AI. Early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations experienced 16% relative employment declines, controlling for firm-level shocks, while employment for experienced workers remained stable. Adjustments occur primarily via employment rather than compensation, with employment changes concentrated in occupations where AI automates rather than augments labor. Results are robust to excluding technology firms and occupations that are remotable. These six facts provide early large-scale evidence consistent with generative AI disproportionately impacting entry-level workers in the American labor market."
by tootie | 2026-02-03 02:41:04+00:00
Presumably it's air source and if it's indoors it will just be the air in whatever room it's in. That's how my ventless dryer works. I'm not sure what the implications are for taking heat from air that may have been heated by another heat pump are for efficiency. But also if it's summertime, they may be relieving load from your air conditioner.
by skhr0680 | 2026-02-03 02:41:08+00:00
> Also happy to see this classic RTS is still being played and even developed by the community. I'd be curious to know what the age of people this invested into the game is, if it's all 30+ year old boomers with nostalgia and knee pain

There's enough of a community to support a yearly World Series with $25K cash awards in 2025!
by LeFantome | 2026-02-03 02:42:10+00:00
This one bothers me too.

Systemd and Xorg are very similar in many ways. I do not know how you hate Systemd and love Xorg unless your real problem is just change.

And, while I like Wayland, I think that liking the Wayland architecture should have you disliking Systemd. But that is just me.
by idopmstuff | 2026-02-03 02:42:48+00:00
That's the place!

The most fun one is this, which creates listing images for my products: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/opus-45-codes-ge...

More recently, I'm using Claude Code to handle my inventory management by having it act as an analyst while coding itself tools to access my Amazon Seller accounts to retrieve the necessary info: https://theautomatedoperator.substack.com/p/trading-my-vibe-...
by skydhash | 2026-02-03 02:42:52+00:00
> I expect the markets are reflecting that soon there will be more competition.

> It'll take time, and as LLMs improve, it'll take even less time.

People have written great software in ed(1). We have tools like uxn[0] written on potato computers and billions and years later, we still have to hope for AI output.

[0]: https://100r.co/site/uxn.html
by Animats | 2026-02-03 02:42:57+00:00
This is terrible for Space-X. They're doing a great job. Musk has left running it to Gwynne Shotwell, who really is a rocket scientist. Now Space-X has a AI business unit they don't need, a new money drain, and more attention from Musk.

Should have merged xAI into Twitter. A failure there would not be a major setback.
by rootusrootus | 2026-02-03 02:43:45+00:00
3 years of Trump getting progressively weaker as more and more Republicans in purple districts decide they are more likely to be reelected by going against Trump than by supporting him. Not to mention the midterms will at least make it impossible to get any legislation passed that they want (which, thankfully, they have been mercifully incompetent at so far).
by dyzz | 2026-02-03 02:43:56+00:00
Kato | Senior Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE | Full-time
Kato is building a compliance-first AI servicing platform for the $24B lending market. While others treat regulatory guardrails as an afterthought, we’ve built a regulatory rules system with an AI decision engine on top. Our first product is a Voice AI agent currently handling loan servicing calls for major fintechs like Bilt Rewards and Parafin.

We are backed by Pear VC and angels from Brex, Bridge, and Square. You’ll be our second engineering hire, working directly with our CTO (ex-Google/Brex EM) and CEO (ex-Goldman/Brex).

The Role: As an early hire, you’ll own mission-critical projects across the entire stack. You’ll lead the architecture of our real-time voice processing system, optimize LLM integrations for compliance-aware conversations, and build out our customer-facing dashboards.

Tech Stack:

Backend: Golang, PostgreSQL

Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, React, Tailwind

Infra: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker

AI/ML: LLMs, Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech

Requirements:

2-5 years of production software experience.

Strong API design and architectural thinking.

An "owner's mindset"—we are a small, high-intensity team where everyone drives product direction.

Experience with WebRTC, real-time audio, or FinTech is a plus but not required.

Location: San Francisco (4 days/week in-person).

To apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Pear-VC/214dc247-0778-485b-8a3d-067...
by wonger_ | 2026-02-03 02:45:05+00:00
My 2c from lots of remote math tutoring, and one coding-for-fun middle school student:

- student motivation is everything. Hard to motivate thru a screen and with cameras off. Hard to keep them engaged or recognize if they're engaged. Less of an issue with adult students.

- reduce friction for students as much as possible. Ideally one web tool, zero installs, zero setup, zero accounts. Prefer tools with few failure modes, and have fallbacks (e.g. if multiplayer breaks, at least I can screenshare single player mode)

- the middle school student liked https://scratch.mit.edu/ and some gamedev-ish tools. Also Minecraft mods. These are not remote-tutoring-friendly, but the student liked it, so I defaulted to basic screenshare methods: "try clicking the red button on the left of the screen... can you zoom in? ... here, stop sharing for a minute and let me sketch how this works... let me control your mouse for a minute so I can troubleshoot this obscure error." Kinda painful, altho I didn't have much practice with these kinds of situations.

- you'll probably get more feedback from teacher subreddits or irl conversations with teachers
by chongli | 2026-02-03 02:45:07+00:00
Rental cars and houses do exist, but you could still have fully owned cars and houses whose doors lock without paying a subscription.

For cars maybe, but not for houses. Property law for land is very old and very well established. If someone else is able to lock you out of your house then they are the title owner, not you. If you are the title owner then you’re well within your rights to have a locksmith replace the lock on the door.
by figbert | 2026-02-03 02:45:29+00:00
Location: Palo Alto, CA, USA
Remote: Much prefer in-person but if compelling I can be flexible
Willing to relocate: Yes, anywhere in the world
Technologies: Software (Go, Swift, Gleam, Ruby, Python, WebDev, Deployment), Hardware (CAD, rapid prototyping, DfM, drafting, mechanical engineering), Systems Thinking
Résumé/CV: https://figbert.com/files/cv.pdf
Email: figbert [at] figbert [dot] com

I'm an industrial design junior at Stanford University looking for summer work at the intersection of software and hardware. Want to have a tangible impact on the creation of meaningful products. Love working on diverse problems, diving in on areas where progress has stalled and getting things going again. Feel free to reach out.
by refulgentis | 2026-02-03 02:45:30+00:00
Moltbot is not quite de regieur prompt injection "is it instructions or data?" built-in vulnerability.

This was "I'm going to release an open agent with an open agents directory that operates your personal computer remotely!", I deeply understand the impulse, but there's a fine line between cutting edge and irresponsible & making excuses.

I'm not even sure 100% how what side I would place it on. I have a soft spot for the author, and a sinking feeling that without that, I'd certainly choose "irresponsible".
by eli_gottlieb | 2026-02-03 02:45:34+00:00
> Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory.

That has absolutely nothing to do with civil liberties and everything to do with the adversarial legalism of the Common Law code and with property rights, which are quite a different matter. There are any number of Western countries in which individual or household property rights are not taken to constitute an arbitrary veto on otherwise legal state action: if a train is scheduled to get built, it gets built, and compensation is paid but vetoes cannot be exercised.
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-03 02:45:42+00:00
>Look up "Nail Houses". The USA used eminent domain heavily in the same situation back when they were still building new infrastructure.

Yeah. China is not THAT strict. But still building the rode around the nail house is something that wouldn't happen in the US. Eminent domain for other people is something I believe in for a better society.

>It's not the result of many individuals objecting. It's the largely the result of a few wealthy individuals objecting. Elon Musk has admitted to publicizing hyperloop largely to take the wind out of the sails of the proposed high speed rail. American democracy is for the rich.

Still it is freedoms + capitalism that enables this. Rich people objecting can get silenced. Jack Ma for example.
by Analemma_ | 2026-02-03 02:45:43+00:00
We’re not going to use 100% of our solar panel manufacturing capacity to power space data centers, specifically because everyone else on the ground is so power-hungry. If we’re being generous, it could maybe top out at 1%, which adds another ~20 years to your timeline for a total of 50. I think it’s safe to say this part is bunk (along with everything else about this plan which is also bunk).
Show HN: APYCalc – Privacy-First APY Calculator (Zero Data Collection)
by ludydev | 2026-02-03 02:45:49+00:00
Hey HN! Maker here.

I built APYCalc.net after getting frustrated with financial calculators that require email sign-ups and track your inputs.

**Tech Stack**:
• Vanilla JavaScript (no frameworks, no dependencies)
• 100% client-side execution (calculations never hit a server)
• No cookies, no analytics, no tracking
• Hosted on Cloudflare Pages

**How It Works**:
All calculations use industry-standard formulas (e.g., APY = (1 + r/n)^n - 1). Your inputs are processed entirely in-browser via Web APIs.
>
**Why I Built This**:
I compared 10 popular APY calculators with identical inputs. Results ranged from $61,350 to $62,780 on $50K over 5 years. Also, 8/10 sent data to servers.

**Next Steps**:
Considering open-sourcing if there's interest. Also thinking about adding tax-adjusted return calculators.

Feedback welcome! Especially from folks who've thought about privacy in fintech tools.
by WatchDog | 2026-02-03 02:46:46+00:00
> ...the Department of the Interior settled on a single justification for blocking turbine installation: a classified national security risk.

To speculate on what this risk is, the two obvious risk I can think of would be:

- Susceptibility to seabed warfare[0]. A rival nation can sabotage the infrastructure and maintain deniability, like we have seen with the Nord Stream sabotage[1].

- Potential interference with passive sonar systems, the turbines are likely to generate a fair bit of noise, which could potentially make it harder for SOSUS[2] to detect rival submarines.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabed_warfare

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS
by 1659447091 | 2026-02-03 02:47:37+00:00
There is a partial paywall for US visitors(only) where users that log-in have access to more content and the BBC news channel stream. There is still ad-supported content for breaking news and some other articles. But some are placed behind a paywall -- and only in the US.

Though, I haven't run in to any paywalled BBC articles posted here (and only submit the one's that are ad-supported [US based])
by GarnetFloride | 2026-02-03 02:49:42+00:00
Location: Orem, Utah

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Technical Writing, Information Development, User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI), Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan-fassmann/

Email: stephan /dot/ fassmann /at/ gmail /dot/ com

I created documentation that allowed customers to successful self-service reducing support calls by 60%.

I expanded the knowledge base with 200+ articles, reducing support call duration by 40%.

I spearheaded a tiger team when I found that customers were not getting the license keys they paid, and the database team misplaced many customers in a migration, saving $50 million in customer accounts.
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-03 02:50:12+00:00
Every additional "right" you have is a "freedom" you can choose to execute or not execute on. A right is an additional freedom. If you have no rights, you have no freedom, if you have unlimited rights, you have unlimited freedom.

I agree there's things like eminent domain. I'm just saying China leans more in the direction of less rights overall which in turn leads to a more productive society.
by bmitc | 2026-02-03 02:50:35+00:00
The U.S. doesn't have that much real freedom. It is nearly completely controlled by a concentrated oligarchy of people and corporations. Sure, there are rights, but these are almost entirely enforced via a massively beauractic and expensive judicial system. So if your rights are violated, it can take months and perhaps thousands or millions of dollars to prove and correct such violations. A cop murders someone? That takes like two years or more of trials and appeals if it even escapes internal affairs and the district attorney's office.

As an example, Texas is a state that prides itself on freedom but is incredibly privatized. There's hardly any public land. The entire electricity grid is privately owned. Toll roads abound in every major city. Over 20% of homes have an HOA, so those Texans have people (basically a small corporation) telling them how to cut their lawn. Women can't get medically suggested abortions. Universities are told what to teach by donors and politicans. For a while, the Texas DMV was collecting fingerprints just to get a license. Is that really freedom?
by lugao | 2026-02-03 02:50:40+00:00
Car-grade inference hardware is fundamentally different from data center-grade inference hardware, let alone the specialized, interconnected hardware used for training (like NVLink or complex optical fabrics). These are different beasts in terms of power density, thermal stress, and signaling sensitivity.

Beyond that, we don't actually know the failure rate of the Tesla fleet. I’ve never had a personal computer fail from use in my life, but that’s just anecdotal and holds no weight against the law of large numbers. When you operate at the scale of a massive cluster, "one-in-a-million" failures become a daily statistical certainty.

Claiming that because you don't personally see cars failing on the side of the road means they require zero intervention actually proves my original point: people who haven't managed data center reliability underestimate the sheer volume of "rare" failures that occur at scale.
by krick | 2026-02-03 02:51:39+00:00
I feel like there's a lot of confusion, so not sure if anyone can clear up mine, but I'm really struggling to see a significance of this.

Obviously, like all ignorant people do, I am going to oversimplify things here. But still, to me, the "platonic idea" of Anki seems a dead simple thing. All what I care about when using Anki is what's on the 2 sides of a Card, a question + answer, which can only be some visual image (possibly encoded as text, possibly just JPEG, I really don't care as long as it fits in my mobile device memory) + optional sound. That's really it. If it should be bi-directional or uni-directional card is a detail of how the deck is generated/encoded, and the spaced repetition algorithm is a detail of the app that I use to study (so, usually AnkiDroid, I imagine — an unaffiliated 3rd party; who even uses desktop apps nowadays?).

So, I imagine there can exist (and do exist) some minor additional features, like an ability to require a typed answer for a card, but it seems pretty minor, and I really don't see a lot of room for the app to evolve.

So, ultimately people need only a common .apkg format, which exists and is relatively simple (although I suppose it could've been even simplier), and a place like AnkiWeb, where people can share their decks, so Spanish top-2000 or basic integrals deck isn't re-invented over and over again. It's a pity that AnkiWeb isn't more open and will be even less open from now on, but as long as someone is willing to just host it (which is ultimately just paying for downloads traffic) it's easy to replicate, so no super-valuable IP here.

Of course, a primary use-case for Anki is a tool to make decks, but you could really do with pretty simple python script + YAML/JSON/CSV/whatever metadata file to convert it to AnkiDroid-compatible .apkg file.

So, basically, who cares? What is to "own" there?
by lurking_swe | 2026-02-03 02:51:46+00:00
the people that USE the software the most are not the people BUYING the software. it’s why all enterprise software has trash UX.

do you think i as a software engineer like using Jira? Outlook? etc? Heck even the trendy stuff is broken. Anthropic took took 6 months to fix a flickering claude code. -_-
by charcircuit | 2026-02-03 02:52:13+00:00
In your example certbot is given permission to write to /var/www/.well-known/acme-challenge and to write certs somewhere. Your web server also has permission to read those files too.

There is no need for the acme client and web server to run as the same user. For reloads the certbot user can be given permission to just invoke the reload command / signal directly. There does not need to be sudo in between them.
by sweetrabh | 2026-02-03 02:52:29+00:00
The rapid adoption of AI coding agents raises important questions about trust boundaries. When an agent like Claude Code needs to handle sensitive operations - API keys, credentials, database connections - how do you prevent those secrets from ending up in the model's context or logs?

We ran into this building a password automation tool (thepassword.app). The solution: the AI orchestrates browser navigation, but actual credential values are injected locally and never enter the model's reasoning loop. Prompt injection can't exfiltrate what's not in the context.

As these tools move into enterprise settings, I expect we'll see more architectural patterns emerge for keeping sensitive data out of agentic workflows entirely.
by jaggederest | 2026-02-03 02:53:02+00:00
I believe that the issue right now is that we're using languages designed for human creation in an AI context. I think we probably want languages that are optimized for AI written but human read code, so the surface texture is a lot different.

My particular hypothesis on this is something that feels a little bit like python and ruby, but has an absolutely insane overkill type system to help guide the AI. I also threw in a little lispiness on my draft: https://github.com/jaggederest/locque/
by Macha | 2026-02-03 02:54:08+00:00
I don’t think Nintendo’s scheme was ever that great as it blurred the difference between variant form factors (Game Boy Pocket vs Game Boy, Game Boy Micro/SP vs Game Boy Advance, DS Lite, 2/3DS XL, Wii Mini), pro models with limited exclusives (Game Boy Color, DSi, New 2/3DS), and full on new generations (Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii U).
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-03 02:54:34+00:00
What? I'm defining China, a country with less freedoms, AS more optimal then the US.

I think that comment about guns through everyone off. People are very liberal on HN and at the same time very patriotic. They support gun control and ironically more freedoms at the same time so I think you and the other guy didn't realize that you both support China's lack of freedom in the aspect of owning guns.
by sweetrabh | 2026-02-03 02:54:50+00:00
This is why the architecture of AI tools matters so much. Any extension with full codebase access can exfiltrate - and the same risk exists for AI agents handling credentials or API keys.

We built a password automation tool (thepassword.app) specifically to address this: the AI model orchestrates browser navigation, but actual credential values are injected at the local browser level and never enter the model's context. Even if the model were compromised or prompt-injected, there's nothing sensitive to steal.

The lesson generalizes: for any AI tool touching sensitive data, the safest architecture keeps that data entirely outside the AI's reasoning loop.