MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gregabbott | 2026-02-15 21:02:19+00:00
I made something similar to this a while ago: two single file HTML vanilla JS tools, for locally viewing[1] or wrapping[2] zipped webpages (a zip which has an index.html file and any related structure of files: folders, images, css, js). The wrapper bundles a given zipped webpage and the viewer code into a self-extracting HTML file that also runs offline (as in `file:///`). I needed it for simple zips but a little work should let it handle more interesting ones.

[1] https://gregabbott.pages.dev/zipped-webpage-view/ 12KB

[2] https://gregabbott.pages.dev/zipped-webpage-wrap/ 16KB
by grayhatter | 2026-02-15 21:02:45+00:00
> Why assume that? Could you not imagine that legislation is often meant to signal values to voters as much or more than it is intended to solve real problems.

You mean something like, to signal to voters they're trying to solve a problem voters want changed? Or a problem voters say they have?

I didn't mean to imply it would fix the problem, or that the problem would be fixed. Just that there's desire for [thing targeted], is something enough people would want to change.

I also said "assume that" for the sake of the argument/discussion given you started by saying you didn't understand. I say it's trivial to understand if assume there are other incentives where destroying the product is desirable. Thus making the incentive you mentioned, not very strong, (in context).
by miki123211 | 2026-02-15 21:02:52+00:00
Here's how this law is actually going to work.

Instead of destroying the unsold clothes in Europe, manufacturers are going to sell them to "resale" companies in countries with little respect for the rule of law, mostly in Africa or Asia. Those companies will then destroy those clothes, reporting them as sold to consumers.

So instead of destroying those clothes in Europe, we'll just add an unnecessary shipping step to the process, producing tons of unnecessary CO2.

The disclosure paperwork and the s/contracts/bribes/ needed to do this will also serve as a nice deterrent for anybody trying to compete with H&M.
by Mordisquitos | 2026-02-15 21:04:22+00:00
Are you a high-information voter? If so, could you please provide information about any consumer industry that comes even close to the apparel industry in terms of a) ubiquity and market scale and b) destruction of unsold but undamaged items while still producing equally functional equivalents for market?

Is there such a thing as fast-cutlery? Or fast-furniture? Maybe fast-book or fast-vehicle? Fast-whitegood perhaps? I'm at a loss here, I've only heard of fast-fashion.
We built a newsroom out of AI agents. Here's what happened
by greensleeves123 | 2026-02-15 21:05:20+00:00
Spoiler: Nothing much. Or at least, not on its own.

It would seem a not-so self-organising thing is developing on my VM. The process being quite fun, even if entirely pointless and fruitless so far, I thought I might as well document it for those others who might enjoy these misadventures.

Then thought better of it as I realised having it document itself would be both more interesting and more appropriate.

And that’s how I threw yet another agent onto the pile.
by sneak | 2026-02-15 21:05:27+00:00
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio...

> That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.

> Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here.
by lm28469 | 2026-02-15 21:05:37+00:00
> As if companies are just out here wantonly destroying otherwise valuable goods that could have been easily sold at a profit instead.

I remember watching a documentary in which they tracked a package of coffee returned to amazon (unopened). It traveled through half of Europe to end up in an incinerator in Slovakia, which is funny because amazon doesn't even operate there.

Big companies are doing a lot of weird shit because at their scale if it's even 1ct cheaper to burn 10 coffee pods vs reprocessing them back in their store it's going to make a huge difference in the long run.
by vdupras | 2026-02-15 21:06:35+00:00
> Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool.
> [...] I noticed AI could really code better than me [...]

AI code output is generally considered mediocre (in the sense of "on the median"). If it codes better than you, it might be that your code output is generally below average.

Might it be the case that you don't grasp how good one can get with computers and thus not realize that one could be much better than you are at programming them? Did you consider for a moment the possibility that you were missing something?
by OutOfHere | 2026-02-15 21:06:36+00:00
It's not irrelevant because it's not merely about knowledge cutoff. The reasonable presumption is also that newer models are superior in their objectivity and their intelligence, not merely in their knowledge. Newer models are simply better AI than older models, and are therefore more suited to guide an individual appropriately. It's the same reasoning as why one wouldn't want to use GPT-3.5 or GPT-2 anymore. To paint it as being merely about uselss knowledge is a gross misrepesentation.

Also, beyond a point, the knowledge does also matter. Imagine a model stuck in the past that thinks that Biden is still President.
by maxbond | 2026-02-15 21:06:40+00:00
> I think you are again engaging in the most charitable position possible, ...

Yeah, that's accurate. I will turn a dime the moment I receive evidence that this was routine for this author or systemic for Ars. But yes, I'm assuming good faith (especially on Ars' part), and that's generally how I operate. I guess I'm an optimist, and I guess I can't ask you to be one.
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-02-15 21:07:02+00:00
Mega thread of people responding over on
https://bsky.app/profile/timkellogg.me/post/3mevhhd4lbs2b

This post is a little over the top, but also way way way true too.

This first little foray into, what, the sociology, the anthropology of this new very strange very amazing era is much welcome by me. We haven't written down this massive phase shift like this before, but everything is so suddenly so very different.
by Applejinx | 2026-02-15 21:07:23+00:00
Those guys find it useful when there's some kind of legitimate gripe to use. He needn't take a break, it's very much Western companies doing this. He doesn't even need to put in an ad for whatever doubtless sanctioned Russian services would like to replace these Western tech giants.

Sometimes actual problems can be readily exploited for sinister purposes. Doesn't mean the original problems aren't also sinister, just be damn careful where you intend to flee to :)
by gwern | 2026-02-15 21:07:26+00:00
> Does this verify and/or rewrite the SRI integrity hashes when it inlines resources?

As far as I know, we do not have any hash verification beyond that built into TCP/IP or HTTPS etc. I included SHA hashes just to be safe and forward compatible, but they are not checked.

There's something of a question here of what hashes are buying you here and what the threat model is. In terms of archiving, we're often dealing with half-broken web pages (any of whose contents may themselves be broken) which may have gone through a chain of a dozen owners, where we have no possible web of trust to the original creator, assuming there is even one in any meaningful sense, and where our major failure modes tend to be total file loss or partial corruption somewhere during storage. A random JPG flipping a bit during the HTTPS range request download from the most recent server is in many ways the least of our problems in terms of availability and integrity.

This is why I spent a lot more time thinking about how to build FEC in, like with appending PAR2. I'm vastly more concerned about files being corrupted during storage or the chain of transmission or damaged by a server rewriting stuff, and how to recover from that instead of simply saying 'at least one bit changed somewhere along the way; good luck!'. If your connection is flaky and a JPEG doesn't look right, refresh the page. If the only Gwtar of a page that disappeared 20 years ago is missing half a file because a disk sector went bad in a hobbyist's PC 3 mirrors ago, you're SOL without FEC. (And even if you can find another good mirror... Where's your hash for that?)

> Would W3C Web Bundles and HTTP SXG Signed Exchanges solve for this use case?

No idea. It sounds like you know more about them than I do. What threat do they protect against, exactly?
by reliabilityguy | 2026-02-15 21:08:52+00:00
> Israel is a ethno-state and an apartheid regime. Don’t call this a Democracy, please.

Ireland and Poland (as well as many other countries) are ethno-states too. Did they stop being democracies?

Last I checked, the vote of israeli non-Jews counted the same way as the israeli Jewish one.

How can Israel be an apartheid state if Arabs in Israel routinely take highest positions in both public and private sector? It makes zero sense.
by justin66 | 2026-02-15 21:09:07+00:00
I believe in the present day, the premise motivating these undergrad books and courses based on alternatives (VU and Minix, MIT and xv6, Purdue and Xinu, God knows what else) is that Linux has become too complicated for an introductory course. I honestly don’t have any instinct as to whether this is correct pedagogically. I suspect the two main factors are how well the software facilitates getting students situated and in a position to do meaningful programming assignments quickly, and how motivated the students are to work on the software.

I reminder taking a security-oriented class ages ago and hacking on an operating system that was already dead as a trilobite, and we were all smart enough to realize this was not a triumph we’d be bragging about to our future children (or recruiters). Bleh.
by johnfn | 2026-02-15 21:09:13+00:00
This looks neat! I suppose I might ask the hard questions - how does this compare to Obsidian, which is my go-to "real time notes app that roughly feels like dealing with a plain text file but better"?

I would also make a small suggestion, which is that there is really no need to emphasize the fact that it's hand-written or without React or etc. While I suppose a small segment of users do truly care that you didn't use React, I think the primary consideration for most users will be how the app works. I would suggest mentioning how your technical decisions affect the user experience: is the performance better - and if so, can you quantify that?
by natanr123 | 2026-02-15 21:09:47+00:00
I built Study Path Agent: enter any topic and it generates a structured study path (chapters/steps) + a prerequisite graph, and suggests YouTube tutorials per step.

Small note: if you choose to upload the playlist to your YouTube account, Google may show the standard “unverified app” consent screen (verification in progress). Everything else works normally.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4hUfTcJdbQ
Feedback welcome: is the ordering useful, and are the video picks good?
by OutOfHere | 2026-02-15 21:10:23+00:00
Tuta is pathetic because it asked for my real name, ID verification, and real phone number, altogether defeating the point of anonymity. When I refused to provide identification, it disabled and deleted the new registration. This makes it as bad as Discord.

Perhaps you have a grandfathered account, but times have changed for the worse with Tuta alone.
by trivialities777 | 2026-02-15 21:10:50+00:00
> (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people.

They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to external firms.

Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.
by Applejinx | 2026-02-15 21:10:53+00:00
They couldn't possibly make all that money from just Nazis: I'm given to understand they're doing really well these days. I had the impression that Substack became heavily co-opted by anti-Nazis and have done nothing to defend the feelings of the Nazis they're also happy to host. Not sure what the balance is currently, but again: they couldn't possibly be making all that money from just Nazis, and I think that's instructive.
by nebula8804 | 2026-02-15 21:10:58+00:00
This is probably me experiencing a simulacra but with that slow loading getting up to go get a drink workflow, each page load was more special. It was magical discovering new websites just like trying out new software by picking something up from those "pegboards" at computer stores.

It also was a simpler time, the technology was in peoples lives but as a small side quest to their main lives. It took the form of a bulky desktop in the den or something like that. When you walked away from that beige box, it didn't follow or know about the rest of your life.

A life where a Big Mac meal was only $2.99, a toyota corolla was $9-15k, houses were ~100k, and when average dev salaries were ~50k. That was a different life. I don't know why but I picture this music video that was included on the Windows 95 cd bonus folder when I think of this simulacra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc
by cronin101 | 2026-02-15 21:10:59+00:00
Not trying to pick apart your point but I rotate a small set of staple clothes and they’re in fine condition after two years (haven’t had much time for clothes shopping since toddler arrived), despite me abusing “quick wash” and “drycare 40c” constantly on Miele W1/T1 stack for “90 minute, good to fold” laundry.

I don’t buy the cheapest brands, but also don’t buy anything marketed as premium/luxe.

Mostly I gravitate towards stuff with a fairtrade cotton (and good thread count, but that’s from preference of how it feels to wear)

Plus, I may be deluded but I’m of the opinion that polo shirts and jeans/neutral trousers are a multi-decade winning combination.
by dubeye | 2026-02-15 21:11:09+00:00
I think there's different markets though, it's not just the enterprise market, is it? There's a huge market where security audits are not as important.

Personally, for my small business. I've replaced £500 Zapier subscription, £100 Todoist subscription, and I only haven't replaced the rest because I feel like there's not a huge rush. And it's been six months and nothing has fallen apart yet.

You might not think small business is relevant, but it absolutely is.
by storystarling | 2026-02-15 21:11:47+00:00
Hi from Germany! Thanks for the feedback.

You're right - the showcase sorting prioritizes "Real Books" (from customers who opted in to share theirs) over "Inspiration" (demo books we generated), which pushes the Spanish example further down. We'll fix the sorting so your language appears first regardless of type.

Good catch on the German book with the English idea - that's the customer's original input, which we didn't translate for the showcase. Will fix.

On "samples" vs "ideas": agreed it's confusing. We'll either make the distinction clearer or merge them into one gallery.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!
by hnlmorg | 2026-02-15 21:11:53+00:00
But nothing has changed there. People have been posting intelligent-sounding gibberish on social media and blogs for years before LLMs.

The problem with centralisation isn’t that it gobbles up data. It’s that it allows those weights to be dictated by a small few who might choose to skew the model more favourably to the messaging they’ve want to promote.

And this is a genuine concern. But it’s also not a new problem either. We already have that problem with new broadcasters, newspaper publications, social media ethics teams, and so on and so forth.

The new problem LLMs bring to human interaction isn’t any of the issues described above. It’s with LLMs replacing human contact in situations where you need something with a conscience to step in.

For example, conversations leading to AI promoting negative thoughts from people with mental health problems because the chat history starts to overwhelm the context window, resulting in the system prompt doing a poorer job of weighting the conversation away from dangerous topics like suicide.

This isn’t to say that the points which you’ve addressed aren’t real problems that exist. They definitely do exist. But they’ve also always existed, even before GPT was invented. We’ve just never properly addressed those problems because:

either there’s no incentive to. If you are powerful enough to control the narrative then why would you use that power to turn the narrative against you?

…or there simply isn’t a good way of solving that problem. eg I might hate stupid conspiracy theories, but censoring research is a much worse alternative. So we just have to allow nutters to share their dumb ideas in the hope that enough legitimate research is published, and enough people are sensible enough to read it, that the nutters don’t have any meaningful impact on society.
by TonyBorlini | 2026-02-15 21:12:19+00:00
This vision of "no coding before 10am" captures an exciting shift—but it also raises important questions about correctness, maintainability, and the enduring role of human judgment in software.
I've been reflecting on these ideas (especially the claim that "code is context, not a library" and that you should "review the output, not the code") and wrote a response exploring why craftsmanship, elegance, and deep understanding still matter—even, or especially, in an AI-native workflow:

https://deep.liveblog365.com/en/index-en.html?post=195

The goal isn't to reject AI agents, but to ask: how do we build systems that last—not just ship fast?
Would welcome thoughts from this community.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-02-15 21:12:40+00:00
The naivete or complacency of people who work for so-called "tech" companies that perform wanton, surreptitious data collection about computer users as their core "business model" is illustrated by the belief that what is significant for the surveillance target is how the data is used

Thus, a company performing data collection and sharing it with the government may trigger nerd rage whereas company performing data collection and sharing it with advertisers triggers nerd advocacy, i.e., attempts to defend the practice of data collection with "justifications" that have no limit in their level of absurdity

For the surveillance target (cf. the surveilling company), what is significant about data collection is not how the data is used, it is how the data _could_ be used, which is to say, what is significant about data collection is (a) the fact that data is collected at all, not (b) what may or may not happen after the data is collected

Moreover, despite equivocal statements of reassurance in unenforceable "privacy policies" and the like, (b) is often practically impossible for those outside the company and its partners to determine anyway

Hypothetical: Trillion-dollar public company A whose core "business" is data collection and surveillance-supported advertising services takes a nosedive due to unforseen circumstances that affect its ability to sell ad services. Meanwhile, billion-dollar public company B whose core business is data collection and surveillance services for goverments sees their business on the rise. Company A decides to acquire or compete with company B

There is nothing that limits Company A's use of the data it has collected for whatever purpose the company and Wall Street deems profitable

As such, the significant issue for the surveillance target is (a) not (b)

Focusing on the fact that Company B assists governments whilst Company A assists advertisers is a red herring

Once the data is collected, it's too late
Show HN: CrossX – iOS/macOS App to Convert web/X articles to ePub for e-reader
by pompeii | 2026-02-15 21:13:11+00:00
Native iOS/iPadOS/macOS app: paste URL (or Safari share sheet), convert webpage or X thread (via fxtwitter) to clean EPUB 2.0, push directly to Xteink X4 over WiFi hotspot.
No cloud, no accounts. Supports stock firmware (192.168.3.3) + CrossPoint custom (crosspoint.local / 192.168.4.1) with auto/mDNS detect.

Early/WIP but daily-driver usable for me. Feedback welcome on parsing quality, connections, or next steps (images in EPUB, batch, etc.).
by remarkEon | 2026-02-15 21:13:50+00:00
Did you read the article? There's no evidence cited in it at all. This comment thread made me think "wow, Palantir must be selling PHI to the mob" or something, and The Intercept has the receipts, but the article simply states that Palantir has a contract to run medicaid billing. It then goes on to say that Palantir also works with other government agencies like ICE (bad), and the Israelis (worse than ICE), and the UK (they've crossed the line now!)

It's entirely left up to the reader to fill in the blanks that whatever is going on with this contract is nefarious and bad.

The Intercept used to do good work, but this article is complete trash. At least the author was self aware enough to reference the 2016 reporting.
by alexey-salmin | 2026-02-15 21:13:57+00:00
Whether treatment is net harmful or not depends on the level of the risk with no treatment. If you apply treatment with 15% chance of severe side effects to a tumor that will kill the patient with 50% chance in the next five years, of course it's net positive. If you apply it to a first-stage cancer that has 10% chance of progressing to the second stage, the very same treatment will be net harmful.

So no, most cancer treatments aren't net harmful now, but they likely will be in a world where your programme is implemented. Even something as "simple" as biopsy has mortality rates far from zero. Applying it at scale may not have the effect you expect. And surgeries and chemo are much worse.
by cadamsdotcom | 2026-02-15 21:14:22+00:00
If after 7 or 8 weeks you can’t change the software, it’s wise to start putting tests in to document retroactively how things work / worked and why.

The more the test suite grows, the more you & future agents will be able to consult it to understand how things should work - but also, why.

Imagine a test case that covers some non-compliant API response from a third party. The commit that’s tied to, the date the test was added, all that becomes metadata.. and the fact it’s executable means your agent can’t undo that fix without something very visible in the PR.
by plagiarist | 2026-02-15 21:14:23+00:00
I learned about a cryptographic interaction that can support that recently (and have spent a lot of time focusing on the idea as a means of procrastination).

I don't use Kagi but the context was their Privacy Pass thingie https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass

It works similarly to what you'd like: they sign sealed tokens you provide. Later, you can unseal a token and use it without invalidating the signature. It is mathematically too difficult for a classical computer to link the sealed and unsealed token.