MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by blackcatsec | 2026-02-24 16:43:34+00:00
Let me reframe a bit on this one.

You are correct that it's not a distinctly organized group, but very loosely organized with people continually carrying the baton forward in the relay race to remove our rights. Each runner is going to be slower or faster than the previous one, but they're still running in the same direction.

A cornerstone of NCLB was to expand the funding for Charter Schools across the United States (rather than fund public education). And while these schools are supposed to be non-religious, a small provision of NCLB allowed parents to choose private, religious options if their schools fell behind (which, given the draconian testing expectations, made it pretty easy).

So maybe the NCLB Act took the long way around to get where we're at today, but it was still always headed in this direction as soon as it offered private schools as a funded alternative to public school, rather than investing in our public schools with our public funds.

On the larger issue of what you're saying, it can be difficult to distill the information down in a way that makes sense when all of it is a very complex web of people and power and ideaologies.

At the end of the day, it took 50 years, but they did succeed in getting rid of Roe vs. Wade eventually. The relentless pursuit of this effort which took 50 years of adaptation and pushing as hard as possible in every area without relenting, even when they hadn't succeeded in every direction, is what made this happen.

I expect no less from these further pushes now that we're over that hump. Maybe these efforts fail today, but they will continue to push where they can until they figure out ways in which they can succeed.

It's quite relentless and those of us whom are on the other side of this definitely need to recognize the threat for what it is. Which, to your statement, makes this so much more dangerous than if it were just a single headed hydra.
by AdelaideSimone | 2026-02-24 16:43:36+00:00
Contract law is rather a mess, but, IIRC, one the main, generic exceptions to contract clause enforcement is if is illegal, unconscionable, or violates public policy.

Many states have codified tort laws as being in the interest of public policy (e.g. most consumer protection acts). If this person were to sue under such a statute, it allows courts discretion in nullifying clauses like this arbitration clause.
by steve-chavez | 2026-02-24 16:44:11+00:00
> It's a replacement for SQL, the language

PostgREST doesn't provide a replacement, rather a subset of the SQL language meant to be safe to expose to untrusted (frontend) clients.

Load balancing is not built-in currently, but it can be done at the proxy layer, taking the advantage that GET/HEAD requests are always executed on read only transactions, so they can be routed to read replicas. This is what Supabase does [1] for example.

[1]: https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/read-replicas#api-...
by zeroonetwothree | 2026-02-24 16:44:29+00:00
I made a SO clone in 1 week at a previous job (ok not 100% feature complete obviously but good enough to start using). This is by myself with no AI of course (10 years ago).

With Claude Code today I could do it maybe 2x faster? Maybe not that much even though, a lot of time is spent not on purely mechanically typing out characters so it’s not a huge savings necessarily.
by tvali | 2026-02-24 16:44:50+00:00
This is self-identity structures of wave inference mapped into linearity, which makes base-4 system smooth (the one I described). https://spireason.neocities.org/Playground/InferenceCounter/... has some theory, https://spireason.neocities.org/Playground/SheepCounter1/she... introduces hologram base-4 system and this link was given before. You can see how to linearize many math normals, like differentials, integrals, waves, octaves and frequencies - all exist in math, not just physics!
by jason_s | 2026-02-24 16:45:18+00:00
Is there any similar ecosystem hook for a zip-like archive? It would be great to have something like .zip file containers for zstd/brotli which can contain a small number of dictionaries and then the decompression utility automatically uses them. For example, suppose you have a lot of .js / .css / .html files. Or Python files. Or whatever. It would be more efficient than individual .zstd files.
by robomartin | 2026-02-24 16:45:33+00:00
Interesting. I have worked in ITAR environments with serious security and have never experienced 30 minute lines at the door. In fact, I can't remember lines at all. Hard to understand what happened here.

Was it really a single turnstile for a building with over 10 floors? That's kind of silly, isn't it? Mass transit operations have this figured out. Most recently for me, taking the monorail in Las Vegas for the CES show. No problems for the most part. It would be interesting to know what this company actually installed.
by giraffe_lady | 2026-02-24 16:45:37+00:00
I think you're the one not knowing your enemies here. There is a plan to strip queer people of rights, it is already well underway. You cannot possibly have an effective plan of opposition if you don't acknowledge the incredible economic, social, and technological resources that have been spent spreading and nurturing the prejudices that you can now call "uncoordinated." A lot of the individuals furthering these measures do not identify themselves with "a plot," sure, but it doesn't mean they don't have a role in it.
by BigWings | 2026-02-24 16:45:41+00:00
Hi HN,

I've spent most of my career building software, but recently started getting into hardware — first with Arduinos and ESP32s, and then designing PCBs. With the amount of information available now, the barrier to entry feels much lower than I expected.

One component that fascinated me immediately was addressable RGB LEDs like the WS2812. Being able to control physical light with a single data line feels surprisingly powerful.

NeoRing came out of that exploration. I wanted something more compact and integration-friendly than the LED rings I had used before, and I was also interested in experimenting with a dual-ring layout to allow more interesting visual effects within a small footprint.

I wrote a small library with prebuilt effects to make it easy to get started, but it can also be controlled directly using standard WS2812 libraries.

Here's a short video showing it:
https://youtu.be/htdJqxQdXWA

I designed the PCB and assembled the first batch recently. Happy to answer questions about the design, signal integrity, manufacturing, or anything else.
by jajuuka | 2026-02-24 16:46:27+00:00
Welcome to capitalism? Companies exist to make money. If they don't then they are charity. Spending a ton of money on the dev time to strip out all the code and sanitize it to appease what was at the time a slowly dying community fun project is not a wise investment.

1. These use cases will be much better served by a dedicated device. One that can last much longer, be better supported and cost much cheaper. The market is full of them. So using an old phone is impractical when taking the market into account. It's like running an old Sony Vaio as your dedicate Pihole server. You COULD do that, but it's not the smartest move.

2. The good PR was the announcement. It's not like everyone has a drawer full of Galaxy S3 phones that they are itching to create a custom OS and bespoke software for. Nor would be news when an old device gets opened up since it's not going to generate clicks outside the most niche environments.

3. The community just isn't there. Even large projects like GrapheneOS and LineageOS rely on volunteers to maintain devices. That support is not equal across the board and requires specialized knowledge and dedicated. Something that most people don't want to do for free in their spare time.

It's just not very practical to throw all that money and time away for such a small use case. It's a literal money pit. Throw money in and get nothing back.
by mojoe | 2026-02-24 16:46:36+00:00
nicely said. I've been thinking a lot about how the bottleneck in the limit is getting your intent into the machine. Over time as AI improves it'll get better and better at extracting your intent just from situational context, but this only helps if you're willing to abdicate more and more judgement to the machine.

Eventually you may get to the point where the machine has all the context about the scenario and all the knowledge about how you think, and so will always perfectly be aligned with your intent, but when that day comes the thing will have far surpassed your decision-making capability and you won't be in the loop anymore anyway.
by colesantiago | 2026-02-24 16:46:41+00:00
Private markets is where the wealth is (if you invested at the bottom), as soon as Stripe goes public you're getting dumped on.

Unfortunately you need to be an accredited investor to access these markets.

This is the real gatekeeping here as rich pop stars, actors, sports stars and musicians who aren't versed in tech has more access to investing in these private companies than the academics, students in europe creating the algorithms that power them.

An 11 year old can inherit $100 million and be more "accredited" than you, even though they (may) have no knowledge of the industry, no investing experience and no years of industry experience.

Even if you have knowledge in the tech scene and you know which companies are going to go big in the future, unless you're ultra rich already to qualify as accredited, you're shut out early on.
Ask HN: Why is network documentation still a scavenger hunt for the truth?
by skhell | 2026-02-24 16:47:34+00:00
After nearly two decades around DC networking (design, maintenance, migrations), the consistent problem I see isn’t “how to get configs” it’s drift and it feels like it’s getting worse as architectures become more distributed.
Whatever you call the “source of truth” (DCIM/IPAM/CMDB, docs/spreadsheets, quick sketches in gimp/mspaint, diagrams, GIS/KMZ, vendor dashboards) almost always diverges from the running state. The first thing to decay is usually the relationships: connects-to / depends-on / contained-in / ownership. In the worst cases changes become: “We’re not sure let's disconnect/migrate and wait for someone to open a ticket.”

Eventually the real topology lives in people’s heads and you get the classic: “Don’t touch that! Karl built it, left months ago and the diagram like the documentation is probably a lie... but it still runs.”

I’m curious why this stays unsolved in practice, even with modern automation and vendor APIs. Most teams still end up maintaining heavy documents, or growing forest of scripts to parse all sorts of information, just to answer a seemingly simple question: what’s connected to what, right now? (Ideally with an up-to-date, human-readable detailed report.)

I’d love to listen your “this never works” stories:

- What’s your actual source of truth today: a database, a forest of CSVs, IaC state, discovery tooling, or simply “the as-is running system”?
- What breaks first for you: identity (naming/IDs), relationship mapping, change process, or tooling limitations?
- What’s your worst “Karl system” (critical infra with missing/poor documentation) you have been facing?
- How do you keep architecture information consistent across IT and OT, especially with unavoidable legacy systems?

If a CLI that pulls from hosts and generates reports (Markdown/Mermaid, maybe draw.io) with a convenient diff view existed, what would be the killer feature(s) that keep it from becoming shelfware?

I’m especially interested in failure cases and edge conditions that make this problem so persistent.
by dbg31415 | 2026-02-24 16:47:38+00:00
> Can someone explain to me how Discord got so big in the first place, particularly for non-gaming uses?

It won by simply building a vastly superior product during its growth phase.

For gamers, it replaced fragmented, clunky, or paid alternatives (TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype) with a frictionless, free app that had excellent voice quality and modern UX.

It worked so perfectly for gaming communities that non-gamers inevitably took notice, realizing it was effectively a better, free version of Slack for community building.

But that was the user-acquisition era. Now, we're seeing the classic enshittification phase.

Every other notification badge is an alert trying to sell you something. I still use it, but the product development focus seems to have entirely shifted to selling $9.99/month "blinky bullshit." I understand they have to monetize eventually, but it's exhausting.

Ultimately, it got big because for a few years, it was undeniably the best, cleanest chat client on the market. It was just relentlessly good for the user.

Whether it stays good, or follows down the Microsoft path of turning into a full-on ad-distribution network remains to be seen. But right now, despite all the crap sales, it's still pretty good... (=
by gamblor956 | 2026-02-24 16:47:55+00:00
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this comment as it's true.

Democrats increased IRS funding so it could go after more tax evaders. Conservative estimates are that eliminating tax evasion (evasion, not avoidance) by the ultra-wealthy could allow the U.S. to reduce rate brackets by 2-3% across the board while maintaining revenue.
by mistrial9 | 2026-02-24 16:47:57+00:00
there is also the case of Stephan Wolfram ...

physically large, loud, bossy, no doubt talented but relentlessly seeking to shout out others, "look at me" more than others, take control of budgets and company leadership at every opportunity.. and do some math. Build a system of slave-like labor from wanna-be's and then mercilessly and ruthlessly take their work as your own, demand that it is all yours, and take legal control with "investors" on your side.

source: direct contact with said jerk Wolfram
by skydhash | 2026-02-24 16:48:15+00:00
> taking an old and badly-documented codebase and answering questions like "where does this variable come from, and what are its ultimate consumers?"

Why do you even need an LLM for this? Code is formal notation, it’s not magic. Unless the code is obfuscated, even bad code is pretty clean on what they’re doing and how various symbols are created and used. What is not clear is “why” and the answer is often a business or a technical decision.
by kevinfiol | 2026-02-24 16:48:48+00:00
It always amazes me how successfully this was swept under the rug and how few people I talk to know about this. The Jack Smith public hearing [1] was so damning, it is unbelievable how quickly the media and the public have moved on. In my mind, this disqualifies this president and his supporters from ever being taken in good faith. Not only did he put your representatives in danger on January 6, he actively did so in order to undermine the election.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z56_LJtERCI
by WarcrimeActual | 2026-02-24 16:48:54+00:00
I see it differently, and not in a particularly popular manner. Public companies allow those that are already pretty well off to rocket past those who can't afford shares, therefore adding to the disparity. I despise sudden or inherited wealth though so I'm not the best barometer for how things should work when it comes to this. I can't count how many times I've been made almost physically ill hearing about the next meme stock that made some nobody a millionaire overnight.
by jez | 2026-02-24 16:49:26+00:00
As others have mentioned, it comes down to the threat model, but sometimes the threat model itself is uncomfortable to talk about.

It’s sad to think about, but in my recollection a lot of intra-building badge readers went up in response to the 2018 active shooter situation at the YouTube HQ[1]. In cases like this, the threat model is “confine a hostile person to a specific part of the building once they’ve gotten in while law enforcement arrives,” less than preventing someone from coat tailing their way into the building at all.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16748529
by blackcatsec | 2026-02-24 16:49:53+00:00
It's certainly amped up in coordination over the last decade with the mixing of the tech oligarchs and the traditional religious oligarchs.

What it reminds me of is the situation in Saudi Arabia. The religious elite allows the Saud family to rule all of the politics and economics of the government so as long as the religious elite have the ability to enforce religious law on the population. It's an unholy union of church and state and this marrying of those two in the United States should absolutely fucking terrify everyone.
by mostlysimilar | 2026-02-24 16:50:06+00:00
It strips query params used for tracking. Has it never bothered you when you click share on Instagram or YouTube and it inserts a unique-to-you "share ID" in the URL? I was burned by this once, now every time I copy a share URL from a social media platform I first paste it into my text editor and remove all of the privacy invasive tracking cruft.

As an aside I think it's only matter of time before this is done without query params and instead each share link is generated just for you.
by zendist | 2026-02-24 16:50:07+00:00
At age ~11, I sent a MSPaint design of a phone with two SIM cards that you could switch between physically on a phone.

I sent it to Nokia over email :-D. They didn't respond.

Dual SIM phones apparently became a thing that same year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_SIM#:~:text=The%20first%2...
Not originally by Nokia, though.
by Stromgren | 2026-02-24 16:50:13+00:00
I very much appreciate this take. I will say though that I’ve had experience myself where using coding agents lead me to what I’d consider (in your terminology) a better mapping between information and code. Not because the agent was able to do things better than myself, but because, as my project grew and I got wiser on how to best map the information, it was incredibly fast for me to change the code in the right direction and do refactorings that I otherwise might not have gotten around to.
by orwin | 2026-02-24 16:50:19+00:00
What percentage of that is automated audit, and what percentage is manual audit? Nowaday my country is mostly sane with tax filings, but in the weird time between the 90s and the 2010s, we had an uptick in "fraud" by low-income earners. This was caused by inconsistencies between filed data and the data the IRS equivalent had, but i guarantee you no effort was put into thsi (except secreterial manpower for the hotline/mail), that was just automated system ringing.

In fact my first college side-job was exactly that, responding to taxpayers who were "caught" by the automated system and needed a payment delay.
by user_7832 | 2026-02-24 16:50:30+00:00
Slight tangent, but I find it mind boggling that so few phones offer bootloader unlocking - which is essential if you truly want to own your phone.

I was recently in the market for a new phone, and (correct me if I'm wrong) the only companies that offer bootloader unlocking is Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and OnePlus. Samsung and Xiaomi I think both technically support it but it's a pain in the butt practically.

That's... a shockingly small list!? .

In my case, after adding "I want a CPU that isn't crap while being expensive" (eliminating Tensor) and "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub flagship performance" (eliminating Nothing), OnePlus and Motorola were pretty much the only two options!

Is it that hard to get a phone you can truly own? I don't know, I honestly hope I'm missing something.
by nlawalker | 2026-02-24 16:50:56+00:00
In elementary school, a couple friends and I sketched out an entire game's worth of ideas for Mega Man bosses and mailed them to Capcom (this would have been 1990 or so). I remember how thick the envelope was.

I recall their response being very human, warm and encouraging, but it also included all of our original sketches, with a very direct (but kid-understandable) statement that they were obligated to return the originals to make it very clear that they were not kept and thus could not possibly be understood to be "inspiration" for anything that might be in a future game.
by shagie | 2026-02-24 16:50:58+00:00
When this came out a week ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47039636 ) I was playing around with some prompts to see what I could do to guide it without giving it the answer.

I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive? Before answering, explain the necessary conditions for the task.

The "before answering..." got it to load enough of the conditions into its context before making an answer (and then having the LLM do a posthoc reasoning for it).

I believe this is a demonstration of the "next token predictor" (which is quite good) but not being able to go back and change what it said. Without any reasoning before making an answer, it almost always picks the wrong answer (and then comes up with reasons that the answer is "right").
by adventured | 2026-02-24 16:51:04+00:00
An IPO today is mainly a way for major investors - those that want out - to liquidate out in a big way by dumping to a very large mass of investors. There is no other means to do that without signaling a gigantic loss of confidence.

Raising money as a private entity is trivial these days if you're in the league that Stripe is. See: the comical AI private funding levels.
by armadyl | 2026-02-24 16:51:20+00:00
> As an ex-Stripe, I understand the sentiment, and the tender offers are a nice middle ground for now, but I still would like to see them go public eventually.

This is an incredibly odd sentiment, imo. What’s the desire to see them go public unless you personally are profiting from it? Going public would quickly set Stripe on a pathway to potential enshittification and at minimum starting to squeeze the consumers and businesses it provides services to more.
by rbanffy | 2026-02-24 16:51:22+00:00
> Also, IBM mainframes are wonderfully isolated from physical hardware. They could change processors in the next model, and users would notice a small delay as binaries were recompiled on-the-fly the first time it was used.

This was with AS/400's move from their own CISC processors to POWER. While you could pull that off with mainframes, it'd be recompiling actual native binary code. IBM mainframe architecture is very well defined and documented (sadly, unlike AS/400).

This [0] describes it in depth.

0- https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/SSQ2R2_15.0.0/com.ibm.tpf.toolki...
by randito | 2026-02-24 16:51:30+00:00
> In my last performance review, my manager was actually surprised when I told him that I am now more a manager of my own work than actually doing the work.

I think this is very telling. Unless you have a good manager who is paying attention, a lot of them are clueless and just see the hype of 10x ing your developers and don't care about the nuance of (as they say) all the surrounding bits to writing code. And unfortunately, they just repeat this to the people above them, who also read the hype and just see $$ of reducing headcount. (sorry, venting a little)
by kaspermarstal | 2026-02-24 16:51:54+00:00
I’m quite sure that’s the en state of software except without the software around it. There will only be an AI and interface. For now, though, while tokens cost a non-trivial amount of energy, I think you can do something more useful if you have the LLM modify the program at runtime because it’s just may orders of magnitude cheaper. Fx, use the BEAM, it’s actor model, hot code reloading, and REPL introspection and you can build a program that an LLMs can change, e.g. user says “become a calculator” and “become a pdf to html converter”.

I’m not just making this stuff up of course, got the idea yesterday after reading Karpathy’s tweet about Nanoclaws contribution model (don’t submit PRa with features, submit PRs that tell an llm how to modify the program). Now I can’t concentrate on my day job. Can’t stop thinking about my little elixir beam project.