MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by goodmythical | 2026-02-01 23:35:17+00:00
I mean, that's not at all the case.

As a trivial application of the spec, consider that there are time-limitted trials of software. Once it's run for 30m, it'll never run again without significant intervention.

If you're the kind of person that's willing to go out of your way to invalidate the control spec rather than just abide by your own time control rules, you've got a more significant problem than you're willing to admit.

We don't need software that prevents running for 31 minutes in every 24 hour period, we need humans who are both willing and able to manage their time.

I mean, can you imagine being the kind of person that blames a piece of software for one's inability to stop using said software. Like it's somehow tiktok or youtube or android or linux or who the fuck ever's fault that you can't stop doomscrolling or gaming or gambling or whatever.

As a matter of fact, every software already supports what you're asking for. Run a script that monitors focus time and kills after a certain period if you're really so unable to simply close the software based on your own paradigm. Leave the script running and have it issue kills for the entire duration of your specification. [use=focustime/24h; while use>30m/24h, kill proc.exe].

There are already existing implementations of this that, for instance, limit a user acct to a certain amount of time per period. Imagine a library that only allows 30m/account. I just got out of an environment that only allows accts to access for a maxiumum of 15m with one sign on with a 15m cooldown. If you used it for 3 minutes and signed out, you'd have to get back in line for 15m. If you demanded using it as much as possible you would use it for 15 and wait for 15.
by iterateoften | 2026-02-01 23:35:19+00:00
Project releases with llms have grown to be less about the functionality and more about convincing others to care.

Before the proof of work of code in a repo by default was a signal of a lot of thought going into something. Now this flood of code in these vibe coded projects is by default cheap and borderline meaningless. Not throwing shade or anything at coding assistants. Just the way it goes
by speakingmoistly | 2026-02-01 23:35:34+00:00
There's many things to be unpacked here, but one that feels particularly compelling is how the potential of AI is being leveraged to divide people further along class lines instead of being a tide that rises all boats. The narrative around AI adoption is largely a rehash of "think of how much more we could do with less", which is generally great for the ones who owns the means of production, not so much for the ones who are on the factory floor. It's quite visible when AI is being used as an excuse to lay people off and expand the expectation on whoever is left without necessarily increasing compensation to follow with the "added productivity". The worker/employee power dynamic is only made worse there since it seems to be a shared corporate wet dream to hire as little as possible and have "digital coworkers" fill the gaps. This isn't a new story: before, it was offshoring to cheaper markets (i.e. where the power dynamics are even more tipped toward the rich), now it's the dream of a digital worker that doesn't talk back and will work 24/7.

There doesn't seem to be much interest in using this to make people work less and engage in the rest of life more, hence the jokes about how somehow, the machines are generating art while folks are still toiling away to make ends meet.

The class division is even in the original message we're responding to: failing to get on the bandwagon or being pushed from it leads to lower income and status despite there being plenty to go around if we only stopped chasing infinite growth.
by ggm | 2026-02-01 23:35:43+00:00
The thing is, as I understand it Venezuelan oil is a net drag on the world, it's expensive, sulphurous, it's uneconomic to exploit right now because with the passing of energy dependency to solar, wind and batteries, we are past peak.

Not that it doesn't exemplify smash-and-grab, but its pointless and the corporates have said so: Yes, two of them were aggrieved they had lost assets in a past forfeiture/siezure by a state actor, and yes, they sought restitution but no, they won't aggressively be going back into exploit this resource. Not without price supports.

Canadian tar sands likewise: this is pointless oil. States declare criticality, when they depend on some aspect of the money flow, not when there is an actual shortage.

OPEC is silly, but seizing oil assets in a time of declining market need is also silly. plastics, fertilizer, explosives and drugs are the future of oil as inputs. Not heat energy.

If we see performative siezure of rare earths, uranium, you-name-it, it will be as pointless as this: There is no shortage of stockpiles, either domestically or in partner economies. It's just about price and profit, not actual strategic concern to existence.
by sejje | 2026-02-01 23:36:05+00:00
I live in a similar place, though I'm not off-grid.

The drawbacks for me are that "town" is about an hour away. But amazon delivers here.

There's no city life, no ordering to-go food or pizza, no movie theater, no ice cream runs to sonic. You have to plan ahead. Socialization happens online or with people in your own home, pretty much exclusively.

It's often hard to find anyone to fix your stuff--you become a framer, a plumber, a roofer, a mechanic. I consider this a net benefit, but it can be taxing at times.

That being said, not everyone does it quite like I do. All my neighbors have jobs in the city, for instance.
by Aurornis | 2026-02-01 23:37:12+00:00
> Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?)

There was a time in the past when Time Machine was reliable and well-designed. It made backups into a nice experience that were accessible to everyone.

If your only experience with Time Machine is the modern incarnation with all of the flaws and seemingly missing QA process then I understand how its popularity would be confusing.
by rtpg | 2026-02-01 23:37:19+00:00
rebasing, rebasing, rebasing.

I used/use magit a lot, and rebasing is much nicer with magit. But you're still faced with having to be in git land. JJ there's a lot of "rebasing at the speed of thought" because you really are just moving nodes around and "do what I mean" kicks in.

There's this other thing too, which is that jj I've always felt comfortable modifying changes that are not what I currently have checked out. With git it's always felt like the first step for any change management is "check out the changes into the working copy".
by zkhrv | 2026-02-01 23:37:27+00:00
Hey, that's pretty much the project I've been thinking of doing for a while!

I really dislike the monopoly YouTube has on online video, but other options or self-hosting can become really expensive due to bandwidth (especially if your video suddenly goes viral). I think P2P (over WebRTC, for browser compatibility) has potential for creating a solution.

Roughly:

* You have a Website with some <video>s you want to share hosted somewhere—doesn't matter if it's dynamic, static, hosted on a CDN or a VPS, as long as it imports a few scripts and embellishes the <video> tag with a few details.

* Base case: you want to publish a video, you host the video. That means you host a server at home that is running the hosting software (maybe WebTorrent based, maybe something custom). As high-speed fiber Internet becomes more common, hosting video from a home network becomes more feasible (unless ISPs decide to cock-block it).

* A signaling server establishes a P2P connection (WebRTC datachannels) between a visitor of your Website and your video-hosting home server.

* If you have a fast enough Internet connection (100+ Mbps) and low traffic, I don't see why the base case shouldn't work (other than network connectivity problems due to complicated NATs and such). If you have a surge of simultaneous traffic, those that came earlier can offload pressure on the home server by seeding the video chunks they have already downloaded. Theoretically, infinite scalability without bandwidth or hardware bottlenecks (but likely coordination woes in practice).

But there's more!

Say there's another person on the Web hosting their videos in the same way. If I like their video, I can re-host it on my own home server and let their signaling server know about it. Now there are two "persistent" video servers hosting the video that a visitor can download from. If I trust this person, I can choose to automatically re-host all their past and future videos.

Moderation isn't a problem, because you explicitly choose which videos to re-host, or because you re-host (future) videos of people you trust.

The more people re-host videos, the better their availability, download speed, and latency if hosts are geographically distributed.

Further ideas of pooling signaling servers and home servers into networks to enable other possible niceties (though likely with a more substantial moderation burden) ...

I've tried a really basic proof of concept of the base case (across a few countries on a mobile network!), and it worked!

Currently, I'm looking to talk with anyone who is interested in any of this :)
by syntaxing | 2026-02-01 23:37:32+00:00
So…geothermal? I wish this was possible too but I don’t see how it will work scientifically. Water is one of the chemicals that have one of the highest thermal mass/specific heat (maybe 1/3 of salt hydrates). Even then, you have to bury a crapton of water underground. This design mentioned in the article is more for short term, like 12 hours storage (since they’re accommodating for solar in nighttime)
by kulahan | 2026-02-01 23:37:40+00:00
All three of these companies are supremely dedicated to the customer experience. It’s a weird thing to be annoyed at. Ninty is the only company really experimenting with gaming hardware. Disney parks are a thesis on hiding the “behind the scenes” stuff perfectly. Apple does its best to make things just kinda work well, and if you’re in their ecosystem fully, it usually does work out.

Not everyone cares for the most capable device on the planet. Sometimes people just want a pretty familiar and easy experience. I haven’t used my phone for anything more than browsing the web and texting in ages. I absolutely don’t care about whatever function you think I’m missing due to Apple, honestly.

As a side note, the fathers of Psychology were absolutely terrible scientists. The entire field almost failed because they took it so far into pseudo-science land. Of course Jung isn’t correct.
by its_ubuntu | 2026-02-01 23:38:42+00:00
I must say that I am astounded to learn that I am ignorant. On reflection, I must admit this does seem to be the case however. Indeed, I've searched diligently and have found no evidence of any kind of harm whatsoever to my body, spirit, mind, or soul as a result of smoking anything. So I'm definitely completely ignorant as to how I've hurt myself in any way, exactly, after decades of daily, frequent smoking of this completely nontoxic substance.

I've even (don't panic) smoked tobacco at times, sometimes for months on end--once for over a year!--and didn't even die. The mind boggles.

In point of fact, I just might be the healthiest person on this forum. I'm in great shape and never get sick. Ever. (It's been decades.) How many of you can say the same?

I even didn't wear a mask ("masks--not even once") during the horror show that was COVID, nor got a vaccine, and somehow didn't get sick at all! Imagine that, if you can.

And I did all this despite my ignorance. Despite the crippling disadvantage of being an ignorant, know-nothing, less-than-desirable, provincial hillbilly from the hills of Alabama. Truly, it is better to be lucky than good, is it not?
by actsasbuffoon | 2026-02-01 23:40:12+00:00
It’s been a lot of fun watching her subscriber count go through the roof. She’s outrageously talented.

It’s also funny because usually it’s hard to reproduce what a musician does. I can listen to someone play guitar, but there’s so much nuance to how it’s played that you need to be pretty good to reproduce it.

But so much of her music is code, and she shows you the code, so she’s really teaching you how to reproduce what she’s doing perfectly. It’s awesome for learning.
by h4kunamata | 2026-02-01 23:40:31+00:00
>If you don’t want PKI then you don’t need headscale; you can always distribute the keys yourself and just run plain wireguard

It makes more sense to me, WireGuard + SPA (fkwnop aka replacement of port knocking that requires pre-shared key to even talk with, only that IP can access to it (IP Table), any scan tool seems it as closed)

Headscale/Tailscale only has value if you are behind a CGNAT, otherwise, it just adds extra management and complexities.
by xecaz | 2026-02-01 23:45:10+00:00
I also wrote an extraction tool that;
extracts all pictures to files names associated with what pdf they came from
ocr the jpg for text, and if more than 8 characters extracts the text to a txt file
leaves the org files should you need to revisit them
makes the dump searchable locally.
Ill like the repo if anyone from the media is interested, but didn't have the manpower to do this manually.
by Kerrick | 2026-02-01 23:45:43+00:00
RatatuiRuby is pretty new still: its beta launch was Jan 20. Octobox's TUI is built on it [0], and Sidekiq is using it to build theirs [1].

I believe they'll be maintainable long-term, as they've got extensive tests and documentation, and I built a theory of the program [2] on the Ruby side of it as I reviewed and guided the agent's work.

I am getting feedback from users, the largest of which drove the creation of (and iteration upon) Rooibos. As a rendering library, RatatuiRuby doesn't do much to guide the design or architecture of an application. Rooibos is an MVU/TEA framework [3] to do exactly that.

Tokra is basically a tech demo at this stage, [4] so (hopefully) no users yet.

[0]: https://ruby.social/@andrewnez@mastodon.social/1159351822843...

[1]: https://ruby.social/@getajobmike/115940044592981164

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016560...

[3]: https://guide.elm-lang.org/architecture/

[4]: https://ruby.social/@kerrick/115983502510721565
by ndegruchy | 2026-02-01 23:46:02+00:00
Just as a quick follow up, I completely forgot about the tool BackupLoupe[1]. It allows you to slice into your existing Time Machine backups and find out all manner of information on what's going on, what is backed up, when and what is taking up so much space.

[1]: https://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/
by commandersaki | 2026-02-01 23:46:54+00:00
I can't tell if Netbird provides this feature but looking at their access control feature it doesn't seem to.

I just want a roaming access Wireguard terminating endpoint to restrict access to a user to initial subnets, and open / allow routing to further subnets based on multi factor authentication. That way a user can connect and only have access to say a wiki and internal chat, but then escalate access by MFA to access resources on other subnets that have stuff like internal gitlab and whatever other critical resources exist.
by lrvick | 2026-02-01 23:47:55+00:00
If your entire social graph only exists on proprietary platforms then cutting that all at once is going to be brutal. I had to be a loud advocate for open solutions, and had to lead by example organizing IRL events myself with oldschool email .ical invites that still work just fine.

Many of the most talented people in the world only exist on free open source platforms. Social media is not the enemy. Proprietary centralized stock price driven social media is the enemy.

Come hang out on #!:matrix.org or other great tech communities on Matrix, and/or get invested in networks like Mastodon.
by hebejebelus | 2026-02-01 23:48:41+00:00
I don’t want to come off like I’m shitting on the poster here. I’ve definitely made that kind of careless mistake, probably a dozen times this week. And maybe we’re heading to a future where nobody even reads the readme anymore because they won’t be needed because an agent can just conjure one from the source code at will, so maybe it actually straight up doesn’t matter. I’ve just been thinking about what it means to release software nowadays, and I think the window for releasing software for clout and credit is closing, since creating software basically requires a Claude subscription and an idea now, so fewer people are impressed by the thing simply existing, and the standard of care for a project released for that aim (of clout) needs to be higher than it maybe needed to be in the past. But who knows, I’m probably already a dinosaur in today’s world, and I really don’t mean to shit on the OP - it’s a good idea for a project and it makes a lot of sense for it to exist. I just can’t tell if any actual care has gone into it, and if not, why promote?
by dapangzi | 2026-02-01 23:49:59+00:00
I was hoping this would be more fleshed out as an article, but the sentiment is understandable.

Want to throw some of my knowledge of digital music, as you called it out specifically.

In the late 90s most digitally arranged music production was relegated to trackers (think Amiga trackers) and sequencing samples and loops, because the storage simply didn't exist.

Then that would be committed to tape, sometimes on a 4-track, sometimes on studio-quality tape, sometimes on ADAT.

Fully digital music production like we have now was out of reach for most people until roughly the early-to-mid 2000s, when you see an explosion of people, even in local music scenes, quantizing drum parts and using virtual instruments (usually VST) that would normally require tens or even hundreds of thousands in hardware.
by speakingmoistly | 2026-02-01 23:50:00+00:00
Curious to hear your reasoning there.

The only argument I've heard to far about how this is the path to betterment relies on getting past a theoretical hump where AI and robotics go further and can replace most labour, and the upper class giving up it's power over the masses voluntarily instead of going further down the same road we're already on.

I can't speak much for the first, but I think trickle-down economics has better chances of working out than the second (i.e. none).
by refulgentis | 2026-02-01 23:50:47+00:00
This is blinkered.

- MiniMax can't fit on an iPhone.

- There's no reason to expect models to share OOMs for output.

- It is likely this is a graceful failure mode for the model being far too large.

No fan of Apple's NIH syndrome, or it manifested as MLX.

I'm also no fan of "I told the robot [vibecoded] to hammer a banana into an apple. [do something impossible]. The result is inedible. Let me post to HN with the title 'My thousand dollars of fruits can't be food' [the result I have has ~nothing to do with the fruits]"

Better to dig in a bit more.
by lrvick | 2026-02-01 23:50:57+00:00
Hear hear. The types of people that would stop being friends with you for not using proprietary software and platforms are the type of people that would stop being friends with someone for not eating meat, or some other ethical stance.

These are shitty shallow people, not real friends. Real friends will support, or at least tolerate, your honest ethics based lifestyle choices. Smart people often -prefer- being around people that think differently from them, and being different can even be an asset in making more smart friends.
by pron | 2026-02-01 23:51:02+00:00
I don't know what plb2 is, but the benchmark game can demonstrate very little for because, the benchmarks are small and uninteresting compared to real programs (I believe there's not a single one with concurrency, plus there's no measure of effort in such small programs) and they compares different algorithms against each other.

For example, what can you learn from the Java vs. C++ comparison? In 7 out of 10 benchmarks there's no clear winner (the programs in one language aren't faster than all programs in the other) and what can you generalise from the 3 where C++ wins? There just isn't much signal there in the first place.

The Techempower benchmarks explore workloads that are probably more interesting, but they also compare apples to oranges, and like with the benchmark game, the only conclusion you could conceivably generalise (in an age of optimising compilers, CPU caches, and machine-learning banch predictors, all affected by context) is that C++ (or Rust) and Java are about the same, as there are no benchmarks in which all C++ or Rust frameworks are faster than all Java ones or vice-versa, so there's no way of telling whether there is some language advantage or particular optimisation work done that helps a specific benchmark (you could try looking at variances, but given the lack of a rigorous comparison, that's probably also meaningless). The differences there are obviously within the level of noise.

Companies that care about and understand performance pick languages based on their own experience and experiments, hopefully ones that are tailored to their particular program types and workloads.
by dghlsakjg | 2026-02-01 23:51:34+00:00
> What's to be gained... by offloading inference to someone else?

Access to models that local hardware can't run. The kind of model that an iphone struggles to run is blown out of the water by most low end hosted models. Its the same reason that most devs opt for claude code, cursor, copilot, etc. using hosted models.
Show HN: I made a voice cloning Discord bot
by TheSaltySeaCow | 2026-02-01 23:51:38+00:00
Hey HN,
I recently released a Discord bot that allows you to clone your voice or your friend's (the bot requests their consent first) and generate speech directly within a Discord voice channel. It uses Fish Audio's API for the cloning, which I have found to be the most natural out of the many models I have tested. Let me know what you think!
- Nick (TheSaltySeaCow)
by sejje | 2026-02-01 23:51:50+00:00
And--not defending the loud guy--but my dad is a loud guy. He's in his eighties and he can't hear shit. He watches the news at a horrendous level, sometimes the TV buzzes.

Not everyone is just an asshole.

That being said, my dad might just leave it turned up, too. He lives in his home alone, though, so I'm not sure.
by kioku | 2026-02-01 23:52:20+00:00
I found the captions on Figure 1 quite interesting.

> Average performance (%) across four agentic benchmarks improves consistently with increasing model Intelligence Index.

> Centralized and hybrid coordination generally yield superior scaling efficiency, suggesting that collaborative agentic structures amplify capability gains more effectively than individual scaling alone.

Then again, the deltas between SAS and best performing MAS approach are ~8%, so I can't help wonder if it's worth the extra cost, at least for the generation of models that was studied.
by ben-schaaf | 2026-02-01 23:53:59+00:00
Noise is one of the things that improved moving to an apartment. We've got bylaws about noise with quiet periods, bans on bothersome noise, a smoking ban and a (loud) pet ban. We also have better windows that block noise, and decent noise insulation in the floors despite the hard flooring.

Compared to suburbia where neighbours start mowing at 7am, loud parties go late into the night and dogs bark all day, it's oddly quiet.
by izme | 2026-02-01 23:54:07+00:00
This takes me back. There exist emulators for these dongles as well, you run the a dumper with the dongle attached and load the program and it makes a dump file which you then use in the emulator.

I had to do this for a company so they could continue to use their old specialised Win98 software on modern computers using Dosbox and an emulator.