MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by citizenpaul | 2026-02-03 18:19:53+00:00
Until there is legislation to simply ban data mining/reselling no companies are going to stop. The benefits to selling you out are simply too profitable and ignoring the hand slap laws/fines stops no one.

The biggest hindrance is that there is ZERO government desire to reign this in. Why? Because the government itself is one of the biggest customers of this data.

The government "fines" the company and immediately comes right back around to the checkout line and hands the same company piles of money for the exact same data they just fined them for selling. The company then just raises the price to make up the difference. I don't see any of this changing in the next 50 years.
by rmonvfer | 2026-02-03 18:20:18+00:00
You wouldn’t even believe the stuff I’ve heard in “startup” and “innovation” spaces about regulation and stuff like government grants.

I usually hear the “we [europe] have some of the brightest minds, we can do anything” and sure, granted, but that’s not the issue and it has never been. Why would those bright minds want to build something in a place that’s so obviously against the very same idea of free competition? Of course they don’t, those who can just flee and those who can’t usually end up building some useless grant-ware in an endless cycle. That’s not to say that we don’t have great startups and entrepreneurs, we do, but I find myself fighting every day against a system that’s built for the state to decide what, when and how citizens must innovate (and live).

/s
by iainmerrick | 2026-02-03 18:20:20+00:00
To clarify, when I mentioned the bitter lesson I meant putting effort into organising the "skills" documentation in a very specific way (headlines, descriptions, etc).

Splitting the docs into neat modules is a good idea (for both human readers and current AIs) and will continue to be a good idea for a while at least. Getting pedantic about filenames, documentation schemas and so on is just bikeshedding.
by vladdoster | 2026-02-03 18:20:24+00:00
Location: Nashville, TN
Remote: true
Willing to relocate: boston || nashville
Technologies: Python, Django, IaC, Terraform, Golang, CI/CD, Azure/AWS, {ba,z}sh, Lua, Springboot,
Redis, Docker, Open Service Broker, {,non}relational & vector dbs, shared services, SOA
Email: mvdoster@gmail.com

resume: https://linkedin.vdoster.com && http://github.com/vladdoster

sr. cloud software engineer @ Mastercard (5 years)

Designed and built Platform-as-a-Service for microservice workloads running on Azure and AWS
to migrate on-prem workloads to the cloud. The platform operates globally, allowing teams to
deploy to several Azure-backed regions worldwide. Helped plan and create regional landing zones
in Azure for application teams wanting to perform globally. Designed platform components using
Terraform, Go, and Node; developed support tooling using Bash, Python, and Azure CLI. De-risk the
platform by addressing security vulnerabilities and ensuring the platform is PCI compliant.

api/devops software engineer @ Harvard Medical School (2 years)

Worked as part of the DevOps team to manage a 15k core CentOS HPC cluster. Designed and implemented
Python-based security scanning pipeline to securely deploy & run Apptainer images via SLURM.
Coordinated cross-team emergency patching eﬀorts. Collaborated with researchers and engineers across
3-letter institutions to deliver secure research infrastructure. Built CI/CD Pipelines with GitHub, Jenkins,
to automate code builds, testing, and deployments. Wrote Puppet modules to manage configuration of HPC fleet.
Wrote custom Puppet module & Python scripts to automatically remediate Tenable findings.

full-stack software engineer @ Global Prior Art (3 years)

Used Django, Celery, Selenium grid, and AWS API Gateway for IP rotation to scrape USPTO patent PDFs,
apply CV for data extraction, and generate reports with relevant claims, saving employees 4-5 hours daily.
Wrote E2E black-box/fuzzing unit tests. Automated on-premise deployment via Github Actions and Ansible.

maintainer @ Zinit (5 years)

Develop and maintain a zsh plugin manager on Github with 4k stars. Implemented unit tests,
containerization, bug fixes, and new features.
See: https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/zinit

contributor @ Open-source documentation (5 years)

Contributed hundreds of documentation corrections and enhancements to 400+ open source projects.
by AnotherGoodName | 2026-02-03 18:20:37+00:00
It's part of the tradeoff between momentum and energy that you should aim to move as high of a mass of air at as low of a speed as possible for efficiency.

When you put energy into a mass of air you impart energy of 1/2 MV^2, the kinetic energy equation, which you can think of as the energy you're leaving in the air as it's accelerated to a given velocity on exhaust from the engine. The V^2 part is a killer. This does not translate directly into momentum at all and the most energy efficient way to gain momentum is with a large mass that's accelerated to a low velocity. You can actually see this with the wings which keep the plane itself up. The wings impart enough momentum to hold the weight of the aircraft up by moving a lot of air at relatively low velocity which sacrifices very little energy for the upwards momentum gained.

So engines in aircraft have been getting bigger and bigger as well as slower and slower. It's basic physics, aiming to move as high of a mass at as low of a practical velocity as possible. The 737 max issues were an example of adding giant engines to an airframe not originally built for them due to the drive to move as much air at as low of a velocity as possible while still keeping the plane moving forwards. Passenger aircraft have been getting slower over the years, the 747 was faster than the newer 787's because we're looking for efficiency above all else these days. Going open bladed makes a lot of sense as we go further down this path.
by kouteiheika | 2026-02-03 18:21:02+00:00
This is really amusing to watch, because everything that Grok is accused of is something which you can also trigger in currently available open-weight models (if you know what you're doing).

There's nothing special about Grok in this regard. It wasn't trained to be a MechaHitler, nor to generate CSAM. It's just relatively uncensored[1] compared to the competition, which means it can be easily manipulated to do what the users tell it to, and that is biting Musk in the ass here.

And just to be clear, since apparently people love to jump to conclusions - I'm not excusing what is happening. I'm just pointing out the fact that the only special thing about Grok is that it's both relatively uncensored and easily available to a mainstream audience.

[1] -- see the Uncensored General Intelligence leaderboard where Grok is currently #1: https://huggingface.co/spaces/DontPlanToEnd/UGI-Leaderboard
by tw04 | 2026-02-03 18:21:39+00:00
>Every AI system is capable of generating CSAM and deep fakes if requested by a savvy user. The only thing this proves is that you can't upset the French government or they'll go on a fishing expedition through your office praying to find evidence of a crime.

If every AI system can do this, and every AI system in incapable of preventing it, then I guess every AI system should be banned until they can figure it out.

Every banking app on the planet "is capable" of letting a complete stranger go into your account and transfer all your money to their account. Did we force banks to put restrictions in place to prevent that from happening, or did we throw our arms up and say: oh well the French Government just wants to pick on banks?
by chhxdjsj | 2026-02-03 18:22:12+00:00
I wish someone would do a large RCT of water fluoridation in pregnant women looking at long term cognitive outcomes if fetuses. It would be an easy study to do (just randomize each group to receive free deliveries of either fluoridated or not fluoridated water) and then look at their offspring’s scores on cognitive tests every few years. I think reputable scientists don’t touch this because they’re afraid of being labelled kooky.
by moffkalast | 2026-02-03 18:22:15+00:00
That's what Meta thought initially too, training codellama and chat llama separately, and then they realized they're idiots and that adding the other half of data vastly improves both models. As long as it's quality data, more of it doesn't do harm.

Besides, programming is far from just knowing how to autocomplete syntax, you need a model that's proficient in the fields that the automation is placed in, otherwise they'll be no help in actually automating it.
by aljgz | 2026-02-03 18:22:45+00:00
You gave up some convenience to avoid voting for a bad practice with your wallet.
I admire this, try to consistently do this when reasonably feasible.

Problem is, most people don't do this, choosing convenience at any given moment without thinking about longer-term impact. This hurts us collectively by letting governments/companies, etc tighten their grip over time. This comes from my lived experience.
by cyberax | 2026-02-03 18:22:51+00:00
I saw many corner cases in systemd over the years. And to echo the other poster in this thread, they typically are known, have Github issues, and are either ignored or have a LOLNO resolution.

And I'm not a systemd hater. I very much prefer it to the sysv mess that existed before. The core systemd project is solid. But there is no overall vision, and the scope creep resulted in a Cthulhu-like mess that is crashing under its own weight.
by munificent | 2026-02-03 18:23:02+00:00
I grew up in Cancer Alley. Here's my old neighborhood: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3DZbiz8Bgyx5tx7v9

That wedge surrounded by green is a neighborhood that was created by landfilling a patch of swamp and building a levee around it. The northeast side of the wedge is the "nice" part of the neighborhood. You can see the houses are much bigger and there is a golf course running through it. There's a country club and lot of very nice houses. That's where a lot of upper level oil company employees live. (We lived here, my stepfather was a research chemist at DuPont.)

The southwest side of the neighborhood (much of it literally on "the other side of the tracks") is the cheaper houses and some apartments where a lot of blue collar employees work.

Zoom out a bit and you see Shell Norco to the northwest, the very heart of (and cause of) Cancer Alley. Ormond Estates was basically created to be a commuter neighborhood for Shell. Across the river is Dow Chemical. Look east and you see the IMTT St. Rose chemical plant. Keep going upriver and you get to DuPont and the Marathon Refinery.

Most of the executives responsible for cancer here do live in the area. People of all stripes have an impressive ability to maintain cognitive dissonance and live in denial when they are incentivized to do so.

Southern Louisiana is an intense microcosm of this. Seafood is one of the biggest industries there and you would think the local culture would be intensely protective of the environment, especially after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But environmentalism is woven into liberal culture that is in opposition to the religious conservative culture of the area, so it often gets actively rejected even though poor people in Louisiana are the ones who suffer for their choice.

"Strangers in Their Own Land" is an excellent social science book if you want to know more about the area.
Show HN: PeerHelp – peer to peer study support for university students
by Ecyber | 2026-02-03 18:23:14+00:00
Hi HN,

I built PeerHelp to solve a problem I kept seeing at university. Students either rely on expensive tutors or low quality answer sites that do not help them actually understand the material.

PeerHelp connects university students directly with other verified students for concept explanations, revision support, and study guidance. It is not about writing answers for people. The focus is on understanding and learning.

Students can get help when they are stuck, and other students can earn money by sharing knowledge they already have.

I am looking for honest feedback, especially around ethics, positioning, and whether this is something you would have used as a student.
by kens | 2026-02-03 18:23:36+00:00
I'll mention that mainframes also had extensive libraries of shared software. The IBM user group SHARE (Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort) started in 1955 to share software and had hundreds of programs in an IBM-maintained library. IBM also had the Contributed Program Library. Software ranged from math libraries to programming languages to statistics packages to nuclear reactor simulators.

References: https://www.si.edu/object/archives/sova-nmah-ac-0498
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/650/programLibrary/Addition...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Type-III_Library
https://web.archive.org/web/20110322030511/http://www.bitsav...
by anonymous908213 | 2026-02-03 18:23:39+00:00
> Regardless of whether this should be the case or not, it is the case is every country I can think of.

And we are specifically talking about advocacy for legislation to change that. The report advocates for changing legislation to benefit government employees as a privileged class, while I think the common-sense position is to ensure the privacy of every citizen.

> When is the last time you can point to an act of political violence that would not have occurred had some public servant or elected official's address not been on a website or spreadsheet somewhere?

These attacks happen often, but a particularly notable case was that in the US, June 2025, where a mentally unhinged terrorist assassinated two public figures in their home, shot two others in another home (although they survived), and had a hitlist of other legislator's homes to target, although he was stopped before he could continue his spree. In fact he had stopped by four homes in total, but by chance the occupants were gone from one and the police were already checking in on another and he left without acting there. This was a tragedy that could only have happened in the way it did because of home addresses being so freely available, and it was pure luck that the tragedy was not even worse than it happened to be.

> These things simply don't happen enough to warrant further limiting government officials' accountability to the public.

What accountability to the public is meaningfully gained by letting people attack your home? "Random people going to legislator's doorsteps" is not a legitimate part of the democratic process of any country I'm familiar with.
by at1as | 2026-02-03 18:23:40+00:00
I think this is part of a recurring pattern in tech of pushing boundaries around copyright.

In the last few years, we had Google scanning books, Google threatening to shut down News in Canada rather than pay publishers, LLMs summarizing articles on social platforms, crawlers bypassing paywalls, and so on.

Each time, the industry frames it as their interpretation of the current law, which were usually not written with these specific future use cases in mind.

In my view the current discussion regarding Gen AI is similar.
by imiric | 2026-02-03 18:23:47+00:00
> otherwise you can't really have a default value, because there's no way to tell if a given zero was explicit or implicit

You can use pointers, or nullable types. These are not ideal, admittedly, but it's not true that "there's no way".

> there's no way to ensure that every field gets filled in

This can also be done with an exhaustive linter. You might think this isn't great either, but then again, always being reminded that you left out some fields is a) annoying, and b) goes against the benefit of default values altogether.

I agree with you on immutability, though.

I also agree with some of the points in the article, and have my own opinions about things I would like Go to do differently. But if we can agree that all programming languages have warts and that language designers must make tradeoffs, I would say that Go manages to make the right tradeoffs to be an excellent choice for some tasks, a good choice for many tasks, and a bad choice for a few tasks. That makes it my favorite language by a wide margin, though that's also a matter of opinion.
by ajcp | 2026-02-03 18:24:00+00:00
> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain.

Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?
by dirkc | 2026-02-03 18:24:13+00:00
Feels weird sharing a linkedIn post, so here is the text:

> Today, Y Combinator is announcing that YC-funded startups can choose to receive their funding ($500k) in stablecoins.
>
> We believe stablecoins like USDC are setting the stage for a new fintech renaissance and broader global access to financial services. Sending money should be as easy as sending a text message. Stablecoins make that possible: cheap, fast, and global, using currencies people already trust.
>
> Some of the fastest-growing YC startups in recent years like Aspora and DolarApp use stablecoins to power faster, cheaper financial services across India and Latin America. Plus, with the passage of the GENIUS Act and growing adoption by financial institutions, we’re bullish.
>
> Whether crypto-focused or not, we expect many YC startups to use crypto in some way, from payments to banking to capital raising.
>
> If you’re building onchain, apply for our Spring ‘26 batch by Feb 9: https://lnkd.in/dHEJ9Fc
>
> And for more on how we’re thinking about building onchain and the types of startups we’re excited to fund, check out our Request for Startups: https://lnkd.in/gSaJ_Xst
by JumpinJack_Cash | 2026-02-03 18:24:37+00:00
Goals are PR, In the last couple of messages you keep repeating goals , goals goals, as if their PR efforts should dictate if they are considered a success or a failure.

When you burn through hundreds of billions of dollars in capital in a very public manner you don't get to pick the goal, the goal gets to pick you and it's the following, and it's for everybody not just Musk or Tesla:

"Absolute domination in a new sector of the economy which changes the life of citizens so much so that they cannot fathom going back to life before such new tech/product' introduction and subsequent intervention of Government for Sherman act purposes / Anti Trust"

None of that will ever come to fruition as it was the wrong crusade to begin with considering that the population never really deeply wanted it and so it is being rightfully abandoned.

Considering the cultish nature of Tesla I'll make the following comparision:

If Companies logos are the new cross/star of david/ insert religious symbol then Tesla failed in their crusade.
The remains of the wrong crusade enterprise is being picked up by others who might or might not get some satisfaction and returns out if it.
by simoncion | 2026-02-03 18:24:41+00:00
> "I found one bug in systemd which invalidates everything"

I'll refer back to the story of Van Halen's "no brown M&Ms" contract term and the reason for the existence of that term and ones like it.

"Documented features should be reasonably well-documented, work as documented, and deviations from the documentation should either be fixed or documented in detail." is my "no brown M&Ms" for critical infrastructure software. In my professional experience, the managers of SystemD are often disinterested in either documenting or fixing subtle bugs like the one GP linked to. I find that to be unacceptable for critical infrastructure software, and its presence to be indicative of large, systemic problems with that software and how work on it is managed.

I really wish SystemD was well-managed, but it simply isn't. It's a huge project that doesn't get anywhere near the level of care and giveashit it requires.
by motrm | 2026-02-03 18:24:44+00:00
Reminds me a little of Fly's Tokenizer - https://github.com/superfly/tokenizer

It's a little HTTP proxy that your application can route requests through, and the proxy is what handles adding the API keys or whatnot to the request to the service, rather than your application, something like this for example:

Application -> tokenizer -> Stripe

The secrets for the third party service should in theory then be safe should there be some leak or compromise of the application since it doesn't know the actual secrets itself.

Cool idea!
by SpicyLemonZest | 2026-02-03 18:24:48+00:00
GDPR does not formally require cookie popups (and the cookie stuff predates GDPR as such anyway). But it's challenging to the point of impracticality to run a website with so few cookies that a popup is not required. The EU's official resources on data protection, for example, have a popup. (https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...)
by Lalabadie | 2026-02-03 18:25:18+00:00
> if requested by a savvy user

Grok brought that thought all the way to "... so let's not even try to prevent it."

The point is to show just how aware X were of the issue, and that they chose to repeatedly do nothing against Grok being used to create CSAM and probably other problematic and illegal imagery.

I can't really doubt they'll find plenty of evidence during discovery, it doesn't have to be physical things. The raid stops office activity immediately, and marks the point in time after which they can be accused of destroying evidence if they erase relevant information to hide internal comms.
by MarkHealth | 2026-02-03 18:25:24+00:00
Not at all...please don't misinterpret and make poor assumptions. We are building AI agents to work with credential verification using a company that specializes in building AI agents...your interpretations is VERY far off the mark. Our founder is an emergency medicine MD who has raised directly from physicians and we've got real early traction. I do hope we can get some actual thoughtful applicants, thanks for the earlier reply self-selecting out :)
by WalterBright | 2026-02-03 18:25:26+00:00
My post was not about betterC, it was about the super easy interoperability of C and D. This capability has been in D for several years now, and has been very popular as there's no longer a need to write an adapter to use C source code. The ability to directly compile C code is part of the D compiler, and is known as ImportC.

One interesting result of ImportC is that it is an enhanced implementation of C in that it can do forward references, Compile Time Function Execution, and even imports! (It can also translate C source code to D source code!)
by simonw | 2026-02-03 18:25:30+00:00
Yeah, this is a really neat idea: https://deno.com/blog/introducing-deno-sandbox#secrets-that-...

await using sandbox = await Sandbox.create({
secrets: {
OPENAI_API_KEY: {
hosts: ["api.openai.com"],
value: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY,
},
},
});

await sandbox.sh`echo $OPENAI_API_KEY`;
// DENO_SECRET_PLACEHOLDER_b14043a2f578cba75ebe04791e8e2c7d4002fd0c1f825e19...

It doesn't prevent bad code from USING those secrets to do nasty things, but it does at least make it impossible for them to steal the secret permanently.

Kind of like how XSS attacks can't read httpOnly cookies but they can generally still cause fetch() requests that can take actions using those cookies.
by apsurd | 2026-02-03 18:25:44+00:00
I've run into schema issues specifically with things like supabase: the huge benefit to supase is really fast and effortless prototyping. But after that actually maintaining your app becomes really hard and you pay the tax back over time.

In this regard, once past prototyping, i agree i've never had issues with LLMs running into schema problems, given they're doing a full feature, they're in line with how things need to change across the app.

LLMs do great at inspecting tables via Rails models and db adapters that can run sql commands to inspect all schema.