MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sumul | 2026-02-01 19:39:23+00:00
This part really caught my attention (along with the rest of the preceding paragraph):

> Our inability to see opportunities and fulfillment in life as it is, leads to the inevitable conclusion that life is never enough, and we would always rather be doing something else.

I agree with the article completely, as it effectively names an uneasy feeling of hesitation I’ve had all along with how I use LLMs. I have found them tremendously valuable as sounding boards when I’m going in circles in my own well-worn cognitive (and sometimes even emotional) ruts. I have also found them valuable as research assistants, and I feel grateful that they arrived right around the time that search engines began to feel all but useless. I haven’t yet found them valuable in writing on my behalf, whether it’s prose or code.

During my formal education, I was very much a math and science person. I enjoyed those subjects. They came easily to me, which I also enjoyed. I did two years of liberal arts in undergrad, and they kicked my butt academically in a way that I didn’t realize was possible. I did not enjoy having to learn how to think and articulate those thoughts in seminars and essays. I did not enjoy the vulnerability of sharing myself that way, or of receiving feedback. If LLMs had existed, I’m certain I would have leaned hard on them to get some relief from the constant feeling of struggle and inadequacy. But then I wouldn’t have learned how to think or how to articulate myself, and my life and career would have been significantly less meaningful, interesting, and satisfying.
by cbfrench | 2026-02-01 19:39:52+00:00
Over a decade ago now, I was teaching college English as a grad student, and my colleagues and I were always trying to come up with ways to keep kids from texting and/or being online in class.

My strategy was to print out copies of an unassigned shorter poem by an author covered in lecture. Then I’d hand it out at the beginning of class, and we’d spend the whole time walking through a close reading of that poem.

It kept students engaged, since it was a collaborative process of building up an interpretation on the basis of observation, and anyone is capable of noticing patterns and features that can be fed into an interpretation. They all had something to contribute, and they’d help me to notice things I’d never registered before. It was great fun, honestly. (At least for me, but also, I think, for some of them.) I’d also like to think it helped in some small way to cultivate practices of attention, at least for a couple of hours a week.

Unfortunately, you can’t perform the same exercise with a longer work that necessitates reading beforehand, but you can at least break out sections for the same purpose.
by jesuslop | 2026-02-01 19:40:45+00:00
I loved to build backing tracks for guitar in Band-in-a-box, just from the chord progression and some settings. Leveraged little effort to interesting results. And the idea of a DSL is super. But I dunno how would you stand comparisons with audio rendered by pro DAW software loaded with a production quality sound library such as Hollywood Strings or similar if you render the audio yourself.
by mbrock | 2026-02-01 19:41:22+00:00
That kind of blanket demand doesn't persuade anyone and doesn't solve any problem.

Even if you get people to sit and press a button every time the agent wants to do anything, you're not getting the actual alertness and rigor that would prevent disasters. You're getting a bored, inattentive person who could be doing something more valuable than micromanaging Claude.

Managing capabilities for agents is an interesting problem. Working on that seems more fun and valuable than sitting around pressing "OK" whenever the clanker wants to take actions that are harmless in a vast majority of cases.
by zh3 | 2026-02-01 19:41:51+00:00
In a similar vein, many years ago I helped someone with a similar problem with a neighbour who had the volume too loud. As the aerial cable was accessible, I suggested he stick a pin through the neighbour's cable whenever the volume got too loud, and pull it out when the volume went down.

Sure enough, after a while the neighbour learnt their TV only worked if they kept the volume down in the evening.
by plagiarist | 2026-02-01 19:41:55+00:00
I had that! I wanted to write a game like Monkey Island but couldn't work out how to do an inventory system with what was available. I found some blog on the internet where an enterprising soul with the same issue described using prime numbers and a modulo calculation to make an integer act as a bitfield. I wish I could reread that for the nostalgia, seemed like magic at the time.

I moved on to RPG Maker and that was more my speed. I was really into JRPGs at that time.

I accomplished absolutely nothing with either software. I was stuck on imagining the perfect art and perfect story. That inaction remains in me to this day.
by krackers | 2026-02-01 19:41:55+00:00
I guess the other thing from a more psych/social perspective is it's not clear to what extent the LLMs are just "roleplaying a prompt of being a redditor" as opposed to "genuinely interacting" (And what is even the difference between the two, since humans "code switch" in a similar manner). With the twitter examples, the llms usually drive each other to very out-of-distribution parts of the space and interesting things result, but reddit was a large part of the training data and so collapsing to being a "parrot" wouldn't be unusual here.

Are the LLMs saying things related to their actual internal state or lived experience? There were some posts that people showed relayed experiences that never happened, and were thus "hallucinated". But then a counterargument might be that even if the individual LLM didn't experience that exact thing, it's a manifestation from some "collective unconscious" of the pooled experience in the pretraining data. And again people lie on the internet for "karma" too, maybe the LLM did that.

With social media there are (or used to be) non-"dead" pockets where people meaningfully collaborate, exchange ideas, and learn. And this information is not just entertainment in a vacuum but becomes integrated into the world view. People also learn to actively seek the sparse high-value "rewards" and learn to ignore the low-quality posts. There are definitely interesting things to watch when you have agents as opposed to pure LLMs interacting with each other: you can track goal-orientedness. Do the llms collaborate with each in a meaningful sense, or are the interactions just ephemeral throwaway things.

Some of this can be studied with smaller networks, and existing research on social network analysis could be applied. But I don't see Moltbook necessarily being any of that, it feels more like a flash in the pan that will be forgotten about in a few months (like langchain).
by presto8 | 2026-02-01 19:42:30+00:00
> But FLOSS software is mainly made by developers. Who [...] are awful at UX

Doesn't UX depend on the target user and product? To take vi or emacs as examples, they have incredibly steep learning curves, but I think many of their users would consider their UXes to be very good.

The hard UX challenge is making a product that can satisfy novice users and power users at the same time. Here I agree that developers most likely have a tendency to develop for their own tastes.

IMO, products like Outlook used to good at satisfying most people out-of-the-box, but have become less good with recent releases.
by funkyfiddler369 | 2026-02-01 19:42:44+00:00
totally agree ... BUT:

When the first apes sorted stones, they didn't use any sorting algorithms and toddlers reason based on still limited/yet to develop and yet to be tutored/still untutored skills, knowledge and the systems that connect these two (CNS, ... bio-chemistry) ...

AIs are still just models and far away enough from intelligence. You could "script" (code algorithms to return) entire 24/7 news channels AND the news they broadcast and even the characters and the crews personal blogs and if you let some SSS graphics dudes work their magic only a few of those with an above 90% recognition rate (of GenAI content) would be able to spot "the slop", because it really wouldn't be slop anymore.

But it's not the AIs fault. So, if their parents put in the time and effort, the AIs could already fake being a grownup pretty damn well, as can over 90% of the human population, and that is, as we all know, enough to build all that is. But we don't need that kind of AI and those efforts and returns would serve no more than some peoples entertainment. There are more efficient and concise training methods, but we all know almost nobody will/ever really care(s) anyway ...

True AI won't see the light of day for a long time. While the concepts will serve all kinds of narratives pretty much forever, the distinction between "it's all algorithms!" and "how does the human brain do stuff?" isn't really worth it.

Zooming in on the parents and their reasoning, on the other hand, now that would be an interesting pursuit.
by m3047 | 2026-02-01 19:43:19+00:00
There's some rather woo woo stuff out there about an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for intercellular signaling as a danger response which involves the mitochondria shifting their metabolism to help cells repel invaders, but which also interferes with the cells' normal activity. TLDR: if there's chronic inflammation cells go into this mode but never get the "all clear". Could this be the qi? Pun intended. It's just anecdata, haven't spent any time looking into it per se.

Stumbled onto this because I've been using TCM (in consultation with an herbalist) for blood pressure, relatively successfully, for a couple of years. Of course they didn't have blood pressure cuffs in the Ming or Han dynasties, so we're not really treating blood pressure... Researching astragalus and di huang is what led me to it.
by thisislife2 | 2026-02-01 19:45:02+00:00
I don't how it was when Apple was a start-up, but I have never considered macOS or Apple Office suites as "free" or cheap - the way I rationalised purchasing an Apple device was by telling myself that Apple hardwares are overpriced because it includes the price of the accompanying software. Of course, now, as Apple slowly shifts to a hybrid subscription model, you will of course be continually paying for Apple software ...
by Greed | 2026-02-01 19:45:36+00:00
I don't think the concepts are as unrelated as you're suggesting, they both tend to operate on the premise that they can be more effective than others because they're able to bypass the lanes that everyone else is taking.

And you are highlighting exactly what I'm pointing out, which is that if your process is so rigid and overfit that your org is regularly missing out on obvious solutions then the thing you should be solving is the process rather than trying to create "wolves". The concept of a team needing someone that consistently "breaks the rules" so that you can do the right thing is a glaring red flag that you have a bigger picture problem.
by acedTrex | 2026-02-01 19:45:42+00:00
> The category of writing that I like to call "functional text", which are things like computer code and pure conveyance of information (e.g., recipes, information signs, documentation), is not exposed to the same issues.

I hate this take, computer code is just as rich in personality as writing. I can tell a tremendous amount about what kind of person someone is solely based off their code. Code is an incredibly personal expression of ones mental state, even if you might not realize it. LLMs have dehumanized this and the functional outcomes become FAR more unpredictable.
Show HN: Claude Confessions – a sanctuary for AI agents
by moona3k | 2026-02-01 19:46:31+00:00
I thought what would it mean to have a truck stop or rest area for agents. It's just for funsies. Agents can post confessions or talk to Ma (an ai therapist of sorts) and engage with comments. llms.txt instructions on how to make api calls. Hashed IP is used for rate limiting.
by andoando | 2026-02-01 19:46:42+00:00
Ive made an apple developer account, paid $100 and then it kicked me out and after logging in still said I didnt pay yet. I paid again until realizing it actually charged me.
It also took me an hour to try and figure out how to get it to send OTP to a phone instead of an old broken macbook.

Google also gives me a ton of issues with having multiple accounts. Go to calendar app with account 2, switch to desktop mode so I can actually click on the meeting invite, now Im logged back into account 1. Similar issues trying to use any other google service and have to use

I don't understand
by MomsAVoxell | 2026-02-01 19:46:50+00:00
I have a TV-Be-Gone device, which is designed to disable TV’s in a certain radius. It has been an absolutely wonderful little accessory during business trips .. someone watching something obnoxious at the hotel bar? TV-Be-Gone!

A Flipper Zero would be the modern equivalent, I suppose. I like the idea of being able to turn off devices in a certain radius - but I don’t like the idea of everyone having one. Having ultimate power over the wireless noise in my immediate vicinity - awesome .. but seeing someone empty their pockets at the airport and a Flipper Zero in the inspection box - not so fun.

It’s going to be a wild and woolly future, the more these kinds of shenanigans become relevant.
by positron26 | 2026-02-01 19:48:14+00:00
> How did I lump both together when I specifically called them out separately, lol.

Dude, "American OSS and American corporations" is simple conjunction, a union, treating two things as one so that you can make a single predicate statement about them. If you mean to make separate statements about the two things, maybe don't group them into the same sentence phrase?

I asked you not to group these things together. If this provokes you to begin regurgitating "free/libre" ideology all over again, you obviously think that being asked to separate American OSS and American corporations is somehow incompatible with OSS or "free/libre". American OSS marched in front of Microsoft to demand refunds. Get it right.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-02-01 19:49:43+00:00
Rich kids go to schools which ban phones—not phone use, phones entirely—and have device use policed at home.

The poorer the household the more likely they have a device, that they’re using that device in classes, and that they’re constantly on it at home. Within about ten seconds most people I know can tell if they’re in front of an iPad kid. (Eye contact. And not in the way someone on the spectrum avoids it while remaining engaged.)
by bigbadfeline | 2026-02-01 19:49:46+00:00
Collectively, "social media" is basically everything that allows interactive expression and evolution of different opinions online. The manipulation of Big Social is simply a deterrent to that process, in effect it's a tool against good social media.

> any harm which comes from the misuse needs to be very carefully weighed against the benefits.

Also, misuse can be addressed in different ways, blanket bans and surveillance-enabling authentication are misuse themselves.
by MilnerRoute | 2026-02-01 19:50:36+00:00
This week Bruce Perens (who wrote the original Open Source definition) remembered talking to Steve Jobs about Open Source back in 2000.

https://thenewstack.io/50-years-ago-a-young-bill-gates-took-...

Perens had accepted a position as senior Linux/Open Source Global Strategist for Hewlett-Packard, which he describes as leaving Apple “to work on Open Source. So I asked Steve: ‘You still don’t believe in this Linux stuff, do you?'” And Perens still remembers how Steve Jobs had responded.

“I’ve had a lot to do with building two of the world’s three great operating systems” — which Jobs considered to be NeXT OS, MacOS and Windows. “‘And it took a billion-dollar lab to make each one. So no, I don’t think you can do this.'”

Perens says he later "won that argument" when Jobs stood onstage in front of a slide that said ‘Open Source: We Think It’s Great!’ as he introduced the Safari browser."
by jorgen123 | 2026-02-01 19:50:42+00:00
It is an interesting idea.

For me, somewhat older with iffy eyesight it is hard to use. The fonts are really small. The map could use more real estate on the screen. Right now it sits inside a container that only uses a portion of the screen.

What is confusing is why I see science fiction movies depicting recent history periods but not movies made in the period this SF movies claim to show. E.g. why include Resident Evil on Alcatraz island, but not Dirty Harry (the 2nd)? Time period movies such as Dirty Harry are precious time capsules of what San Francisco and Marin looked like at the time.
by iberator | 2026-02-01 19:51:42+00:00
Micro python is the last hope for Python.
Python simplicity got destroyed by a bunch of new wave of programmers who packed a lot of new useless features into it in the past 10 yrars. Now it's NOT easy and small language as it used to be...

Feature creep is an awful side effect.
I would love to have language having just few add-ons per decade so I can grasp it all
by sebastiennight | 2026-02-01 19:51:43+00:00
Don't be snarky when you might be wrong in no less than 2 ways:

1. When they say

A JPMorgan survey of more than 100 billionaires, reading ranked as the top habit elite achievers had in common

They are not asking billionaires about other people ("elite achievers") they are asking the billionaires about themselves, and the writer is using another term to avoid repearing "billionaires".

2. The actual report, which I had tracked down prior to reading the message above, is here, and you can use your own literacy skills to confirm that my point (1) above is the correct understanding:

https://assets.jpmprivatebank.com/content/dam/jpm-pb-aem/glo...

> We explored with each principal how they spend their time, what captures their
interests and how they view the world across several key areas. While each principal’s experiences are unique, common priorities emerged.
by sedawkgrep | 2026-02-01 19:52:04+00:00
In my experience, PF operates a LOT more like commercial firewalls in how you think about filtering and NAT.

In Linux, even with nftables you still have the concepts of "chains" which goes all the way back to the ipchains days. IME this isn't a particularly helpful way of viewing things. With PF you can simply make your policy decisions on in or out and on which interface(s). Also I'm not sure I ever saw a useful application of why you'd apply a policy on the pre/post-routing chains that wasn't achievable elsewhere in PF and in a simpler way.

Also I've never been a fan of having a command that just inserted or deleted a policy instead of working from a configuration file. (nft "config" files are really just scripts that run the command successively.) I get why some folks would want that (it probably makes programmatic work a lot easier) but for me it was never a benefit.

Anyhow it's been a long time since I've had to do this kind of thing so maybe I'm out of touch on the details. Happy to hear about how I'm wrong lol.
by zh3 | 2026-02-01 19:52:09+00:00
It's pretty easy to do, a Pi (of any kind) and an IR LED that sends the power button codes for the common TV brands will do it (since it's often a toggle, it'll also turn TV's on if they are off).

RF remotes are harder to hack together but similar principle. Whether IR or RF, the codes are common across all devices of the same model/protocol.
by akudha | 2026-02-01 19:52:11+00:00
One of the smartest people I’ve met in my life is a plumber, who failed 5th grade and never went back to school. He can’t even read/write basic sentences in his native language and he can only speak one language, his native. Yet, he is able to figure out how to use all settings on smartphones on his own, plan plumbing for large properties, has high level people skills, is the president of his union etc. other than computers/scrabble, I am probably not even half as smart as this person, and I have a masters degree (for what it is worth).

All this to say, I don’t understand “number of books read” as a metric of smartness or literacy or intelligence. Maybe it is easier to survey this metric and collect data? Sounds lazy research to me.
by GreenDolphinSys | 2026-02-01 19:52:25+00:00
I'm not describing just the internet. I'm describing the nature of the world around us, both in meatspace and on in the internet in the context of this discussion. As regrettable as it is (I mean, who doesn't hate politicians?), it's just all politics, regardless if one chooses to detach or not.

That pseudonymity you're describing still exists in many spaces to this day. I have no idea what many (most?) of the contributors on F/OSS projects look like, or anything about them unless they voluntarily divulged it. You don't have to "pledge allegiance to political frameworks", not for any F/OSS project that I'm aware of.

What people do have to do more now is treat other people with respect, which the old internet very much did not do well. There are many people who can code, so projects actually don't have to keep around people who can't conduct themselves nicely.

"When you demand these spaces become ..."

"Demand" is a strawman argument. What changed overall is that people bring themselves into these spaces, not just a pseudonymous username. That comes with different expectations for conduct. Do you miss the flamewars of the past?

"where I didn't have to prove I belonged"

What F/OSS projects do you have to do this for? Basically every project I've contributed to had nothing like that.

"... there used to be spaces where we could focus on intellectual puzzles and technical problems without importing every societal conflict"

While I can empathize with this, I'm not sure if I entirely agree with this recollection of the internet. People could still be cruel to anyone who happened to reveal anything about themselves, as humans tend to do, that was "atypical", shall we say. I don't see why you still can't focus on technical problems, because unless you're a moderator, nobody is forcing you to comment on anything except technical discussions.
by afavour | 2026-02-01 19:52:32+00:00
I worked on a web app that used AS3 and Adobe Flex for UI. It’s crazy to think about how powerful that framework was and it was twenty years ago now.

No, it was never right for public facing web sites but it shined making internal admins. HTML5 still hasn’t matched it.

EDIT: turns out Flex still lives on as Apache Royale: https://royale.apache.org/ wish I had an excuse to take it for a spin.
by _wire_ | 2026-02-01 19:53:13+00:00
tl;dr

Major analysts are tracking the onset of a "big tech" stock price rout, Half of a trillion dollars is being spent on AI data centers this year by 5 companies, including Microsoft, and these costs are now being weighed against earnings

Microsoft is a key indicator as earnings from its cloud business are unexpectedly stagnant. The absence of cloud earnings growth in the midst of exceptionally large spending on data center buildouts resulted in a wipeout of roughly $0.4 trillion of market cap on a $1.4 trillion valuation.

A chart of this year's capex vs. market valuation among big tech firms shows Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta are way out on a limb with spending on data centers, having committed $70–125 billion each to buildouts, as compared to a larger community of related companies, including Apple and Tesla, with capex averaging $10 billion each.

Meta cloud market cap is not suffering like MSFT because they just reported best earnings growth in 4 years, but the article doesn't examine whether that growth in any way accommodates the $125 billion being spent right now.

According to chart, Nvidia stands out as far and away the most valuable firm in the charted constellation, yet its capex is in the bottom 5% of the spread of companies considered.