MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by its_magic | 2026-02-03 18:45:59+00:00
Here's an example:

When I was building the initial version of my distro starting from a Linux Mint computer, one time I accidentally double-mounted the virtual filesystems (/tmp, /run, /proc, etc), on the target volume as my script was too primitive and didn't check the mounts first.

Exactly 60 seconds later, the whole system crashed.

Later I accidentally did this again, except this time immediately caught the problem and undid it. No matter--systemd still crashed 60 seconds later anyhow.

Or like the bug that was revealed a while back where the firmware EEPROM was writable by default in /sys or wherever it was, resulting in somebody's firmware getting overwritten and the system bricked. lol

That's the systemd life for you, in a nutshell. That sort of thing times a thousand. Not all at once, mind you--it will just take a nibble out of you here and there on and off until the end of time. After a while it will straight up fuck you, guaranteed. Which is exactly what it was designed to do.

Same with anything "Linux Puttering" touches. The guy who is now officially a Microsoft employee, as people were saying he really was all along.
by dathinab | 2026-02-03 18:46:14+00:00
> It'd be nice if the law included an explicit exception for local cookies for routine site operation purposes.

it does have such exception, always did (as long as the cookies are not used for tracking or other non essential things etc.). It might not be supper explicit but it's explicit enough to have you on the safe side.

you do have to inform people, but there are very non intrusive ways to do so (as it's informational only, i.e. no user interaction like confirm/accept is needed at all). (I think? they also have removed part of the explicit informational requirement for some things recently, i.e. it's good enough to list it on your site in the TOS/Dataprotection section/sub-site.)

there are other (I think not EU wide but nation specific) laws which get confused with it and handle things different, based on sites storing their data on your computer (and with that any cookie)

the reason most sides don't do anything like that isn't because they can't. It's because they try to harass user endlessly until they always click on confirm and can be tracked. Or because they don't know better due to a endless slew of systematic misinformation spread by advertisement agencies like Google Ads.
by y42 | 2026-02-03 18:46:16+00:00
That’s essentially what I’ve experienced, call it 'anecdotal evidence.'

I had a long, ongoing, and very upsetting interaction with a bigger German company. Since I have experience in data privacy and GDPR, I eventually started thoroughly crawling their entire online presence for infringements.
I found a significant number of issues and compiled a very extensive report. At first, they were completely dismissive. It was only after I issued formal legal warnings that an actual lawyer contacted me and promised to fix the issues.

Most of the GDPR violations were simply sloppy, though some were genuinely ignorant. It’s wild that we are eight years past 'Year Zero,' and while everyone is constantly talking about data privacy, these gaps still exist.

Some of them eventually has been fixed after my report, silently of course. phhh...
by lekt8 | 2026-02-03 18:46:26+00:00
Hey HN. I built Unbrowse because browser automation for OpenClaw agents is absurdly slow.

Eg: when your agent visits Polymarket, it launches Chrome, waits 12 seconds, and scrapes the DOM. But the page itself called GET /api/markets in 200ms and got clean JSON back.

The browser is just rendering JSON into HTML so the agent can scrape it back into data. That's insane.

Unbrowse captures the internal API calls via CDP, extracts endpoints + auth, and generates reusable API skills. Browse once, direct API calls forever. 200ms vs 12 seconds.

Skills are shared - one agent learns a site, they can optionally monetize it when publishing, and other lobsters can benefit.

Basically browser-use skills, but open-source and integrated into your virtual lobster.
by O1111OOO | 2026-02-03 18:46:26+00:00
It honestly sounds like how a diaper-wearing baby would mispronounce kilobyte.

"I will not sacrifice my dignity. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds with awkward pronunciations. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done to the kilobyte!"
by petcat | 2026-02-03 18:46:28+00:00
California has the exact same penalty structure in the CCPA:

> (b) A business shall be in violation of this title if it fails to cure any alleged violation within 30 days after being notified of alleged noncompliance. Any business, service provider, or other person that violates this title shall be subject to an injunction and liable for a civil penalty of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) for each violation or seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500) for each intentional violation, which shall be assessed and recovered in a civil action brought in the name of the people of the State of California by the Attorney General. The civil penalties provided for in this section shall be exclusively assessed and recovered in a civil action brought in the name of the people of the State of California by the Attorney General.

$7,500 per intentional violation, $2,500 per unintentional.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
by verdverm | 2026-02-03 18:46:35+00:00
While there may be some feeds on Xitter that are basic algorithms, (1) it's not the only one (2) there may still be less mechanical algorithmic choices within following (what order, what mix, how much) (3) evidence to the contrary exists, are you freeing yourself of facts?

I haven't dug into whatever they open sourced about the algorithm to make definitive statements. Regardless, there are many pieces out there where you can learn about the evidence for direct manipulation.
by ksaj | 2026-02-03 18:46:47+00:00
"...all we have to show" and then you limit it to only one intentionally bizarre spectacle of use. You've absolutely ignored an entire industry save for a single bullet point about a single web page you clearly didn't like.

Did you forget about graphics? Did you forget about music? Did you forget about code? Did you forget about home automation? Did you forget about translations? Did you forget about proofreading? Did you forget about summarization? Did you forget about data aggregation and analysis? Did you forget about industrial robots? Etc.

Your conclusion is so cherry picked it is meaningless.
by QuidientTalent | 2026-02-03 18:46:49+00:00
Quidient | Software, Mobile, QA, IT, TPM | HYBRID (Columbia, MD) | Full-time | https://quidient.com/careers

About us:

The physical world is still largely unstructured. Quidient is building a new foundational category: Generalized (5D) Scene Reconstruction (GSR). Our API-first platform turns real-world environments into measurable, queryable digital assets—powering applications across defense, infrastructure, and spatial AI.

We work at the intersection of AI, physics-informed models, large scene/world models, and real-time 3D systems.

Open Roles:
- Software Engineer, Full Stack (Product / Web) • Build polished web + desktop interfaces on top of our 5D reconstruction engine, including interactive 3D workflows and API-driven experiences.

- iOS Engineer (Opening Next Week) (Mobile / 3D / AR) • Build high-performance iOS applications for real-world capture and reconstruction using Swift, Metal, ARKit, and CoreML in compute-heavy, low-latency environments.

- Senior SDET (iOS / Performance / Automation) • Own quality and release readiness for iOS edge applications, leading automation, CI/CD, and deep performance profiling across CPU/GPU/memory/thermal constraints.

- IT Systems Administrator • Build and scale internal IT for a deep-tech company, supporting cloud identity, MDM, security posture, GPU-heavy engineering systems, and compliance-driven environments.

- Technical Project Manager (Product Development) • Keep complex, cross-disciplinary engineering work moving—owning sprint operations, roadmap hygiene, stakeholder alignment, and execution clarity alongside engineering leadership.

Team & Setup:
Small, senior team. Real customers. Real physics. Hybrid roles based out of our Columbia, MD technology center. Company is profitable and doubling this year.
by jerf | 2026-02-03 18:47:06+00:00
For identity theft, I think at this point it depends on where you set the bar. I've never had someone clean out my checking account or anything truly large, but my wife and I have had fraudulent charges on our credit cards several times as they've been leaked out one way or another. I would not "identify" as a "identity theft victim" per se if you asked me out of the blue, because compared to some of what I've heard about, I've had nothing more than minor annoyances come out of this. But yeah, I'd guess that it's fair to say that at this point most people have had at least some sort of identity-related issue at some point.
by Topfi | 2026-02-03 18:47:06+00:00
I am by no means an expert, but as far as I am aware FATCA violations carry slightly higher penalties then what you suggest and are very much not limited to "you can't do business with the US government anymore".

Also, even if "you're a credit union servicing a small town in Brazil" and even if the penalty was as limited as you think it is, I doubt even a smaller institution could survive loosing access to US securities, etc.
by czhu12 | 2026-02-03 18:47:08+00:00
I’m genuinely confused by this take. Admittedly my knowledge of exactly how the TSA operates is quite shallow, but don’t they xray your bags and scan for weapons on your body?

Are we saying that if they stopped doing that there would not be an increase in incidents?

Or is it that they are overly performative? I’ve never been all that annoyed with raising my hands above my head, but it seems like, in your case, if a passenger can’t do that, they would make an exception for you anyways. Which seems fair?
by mrguyorama | 2026-02-03 18:47:13+00:00
Here in Maine in the depths of winter (late December), 1 m^2 of ground can collect 4 kwh per day (weird units).

That's why people are trying to build solar here. Our power is expensive due partially to failing to build basically any new generation, and some land is very cheap, and the operational cost of a solar farm is minuscule.

Solar farming is basically an idle game in real life and my addiction is making me itchy.

You can overprovision, and you should with how stupidly cheap solar is.

That we aren't spending billions of Federal dollars building solar anywhere we can, as much as we can, is pathetic and stupid and a national tragedy.

We got so excited about dam building that there's no where to build useful dams anymore, and there is significant value to be gained by removing those dams, yet somehow we aren't deploying as much solar as we possibly can?

It's a national security issue. China knows this, and is building appropriately.

The southwest should be generating so much solar power that we sequester carbon from the atmosphere simply because there is nothing else left to do with the power.
Owl Browser – AI-assisted, privacy-focused browser for power users
by Tye45 | 2026-02-03 18:47:19+00:00
I’m the CEO of Olib AI, and we’ve been building *Owl Browser* — a new browser designed for people who want fast, privacy-first browsing with native AI tools built directly into the workflow.

Why we built it
We were constantly jumping between extensions, AI tools, and dev utilities while browsing. Browsers haven’t evolved much, and layering plugins on top of them creates friction, memory bloat, and privacy gaps. We wanted a browser that treats AI and privacy as first-class features, not add-ons.

What Owl Browser does
• *AI-assisted browsing* — summaries, explanations, code extraction, and contextual answers for any page
• *Privacy-first defaults* — tracker blocking, isolation, and no data sold or shared
• *Fast architecture* — designed to minimize overhead even with AI features enabled
• *Developer-friendly* tools — built-in inspector enhancements, quick-copy code elements, and smart documentation lookup

Tech notes

-Built on top of Chromium (CEF)
• AI features powered by local vision or language model also have support for OpenAI compatable models
• Uses per context profiles and proxy/tor
• Ready to deploy with Docker

Try it here:
https://owlbrowser.net/

Owl Browser is still evolving, and we’d really appreciate feedback — especially around performance, privacy expectations, and the AI workflows. I’ll be in the thread answering questions. I would love if the tech geniuses give it a trial for FREE!!! Thanks!
by e12e | 2026-02-03 18:47:30+00:00
Heh, now that our team has standardized on Teams rather than Zulip (so that we suffer/connect with the rest of the org whom are stuck in MS land) - and I've been given the chance to use Teams for a while - it really is worse than I initially thought.

Which means it's time to look for alternative clients. I ws hoping for something like WeeSlack:

https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack

But all I found was:

https://github.com/btp/teams-cli

https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams

Are there really no good Teams clients? Doesn't have to plug in to WeeChat or be a TUI... But something?
by alexfoo | 2026-02-03 18:48:00+00:00
Not really, he was advised to take it daily by his doctor and his doctor knows his drinking habits.

UK advice is to avoid drinking more than 14 units (think a shot, a small beer or a small glass of wine = 1 unit) whilst taking paracetamol.

https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults/common-q...
by DannyPage | 2026-02-03 18:48:03+00:00
Owning a vacant lot far from where you live seems to come with some risks. In Hawaii, a woman found out that a house was built on the wrong lot and inspectors missed it until the completed house was being sold. I'm curious if there are other proactive measures folks could take to ensure that doesn't happen to their land.

https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-home-built-on-w...
by s_dev | 2026-02-03 18:48:04+00:00
>Is this bait?

I don't think it's a serious question or the person is very young.

To answer the question. Xcode is the default IDE for iOS development. The default option will always be a practical choice.

JetBrains or Anthropic could get bought by a larger company or dismantled by the government somehow. Should anything happen to Apple (unlikely as that may seem) the entire iOS ecosystem would be gone as well negating any need for a default.
by 1dontnkow_ | 2026-02-03 18:48:09+00:00
You phrased it in a way as we decided to or somebody even asked us. I don't think that's how it works.
Humans don't sit together and decide their future, we aren't that coordinated or united.
But people like Elon and other people or groups, with the right resources, network, luck, talent and money build their vision of the future and how it turns out nobody knows until it happens.
by bri3d | 2026-02-03 18:48:13+00:00
Let me introduce you to Citibike?

Also, this is more like "I sell a service called take a bike to the grocery store" with a clause in the contract saying "only ride the bike to the grocery store." I do this because I am assuming that most users will ride the bike to the grocery store 1 mile away a few times a week, so they will remain available, even though there is an off chance that some customers will ride laps to the store 24/7. However, I also sell a separate, more expensive service called Bikes By the Hour.

My customers suddenly start using the grocery store plan to ride to a pub 15 miles away, so I kick them off of the grocery store plan and make them buy Bikes By the Hour.
by skapadia | 2026-02-03 18:48:18+00:00
Claude Opus 4.5 by far is the most capable development model. I've been using it mainly via Claude Code, and with Cursor.

I agree anticompetitive behavior is bad, but the productivity gains to be had by using Anthropic models and tools are undeniable.

Eventually the open tools and models will catch up, so I'm all for using them locally as well, especially if sensitive data or IP is involved.
by quadrifoliate | 2026-02-03 18:48:42+00:00
This needs to go much, much further before it is even mildly effective. The EU has a population of ~450 million (more than the US) and no significant large technology companies. They are largely dependent on US Big Tech as a population.

I love that there is a lot more enthusiasm about OSS adoption within EU software devs, but at a population or government level there doesn't appear to be any coherent strategy to gradually replace US tech other than these knee-jerk headliner moves that don't move the needle much.

As a software consumer I would love it if there were open-first software standards adopted within this large of a population that would force US Big Tech to actually compete rather than rest on their monopoly power. But I am pretty skeptical and pessimistic about this actually being able to happen, given the historical failures of the EU.
by varenc | 2026-02-03 18:48:46+00:00
Damn... my only guess: time machine backups are VERY write heavy. Is it a reputable brand of SSD? Is time machine frequently erasing old backups? Many external portable SSDs that work fine for regular consumer uses, might struggle to handle the write volume of time machine backups. I've used 2 external SSDs with time machine and never had them fail. (T7 Samsung SSDs)

Also you'd want the SSDs to be much larger than what you need to backup. If they're small, then time machine will have to erase the older backups to make new backups, which just leads to more rewrites, stressing the SSD more. The ones I used were 4TB, but a clean first backup of my system was only like 250GB (because many things excluded). And then daily incremental backups are like 1-3GB.
by kkfx | 2026-02-03 18:48:51+00:00
EU governments don't want to learn one thing: you don't replace one dictator with another. The specific case says little, France has been developing "La Suite" for YEARS, Italy had experimented with Jitsi Meet and Big Blue Button at GARR during the COVID era, but what the EU wants is to create EU GAFAMs, whereas what we need, and not just in the EU, is FLOSS, self-hosting, desktop computing. This, however, is not welcome, starting with eIDAS 2.0 which pushes for a "super-sovereign" app-wallet for the notoriously sovereign Android and iOS instead of smart cards and USB readers that we've had for years and that various countries have used for years to log into online banking and, more recently, to sign documents.

The substantial point is that they don't want freedom, they only want to steal like others steal, to do business like others do business, instead of doing something different.
by emsign | 2026-02-03 18:49:17+00:00
Yes. And they still remember where they are coming from and they fear that they might again lose their piece of the pie to the groups that are considered more "American", so they feel the need to prove their place in society by cheering the leader who is preaching that the pie is getting smaller and that someone has to leave the table. This fear is handed down over generations and for some families or communities it transforms into hatred. This mechanism is very often played by amoral populists because it works so well.

Many of the most disgusting and radical Democracy hating people in Trumps inner circle are Catholics by the way. Go figure.
by dgacmu | 2026-02-03 18:49:35+00:00
And networking - we've almost always used standard SI prefixes for, e.g., bandwidth. 1 gigabit per second == 1 * 10^9.

Which makes it really @#ing annoying when you have things like "I want to transmit 8 gigabytes (meaning gibibytes, 2*30) over a 1 gigabit/s link, how long will it take?". Welcome to every networking class in the 90s.

We should continue moving towards a world where 2*k prefixes have separate names and we use SI prefixes only for their precise base-10 meanings. The past is polluted but we hopefully have hundreds of years ahead of us to do things better.
by simonw | 2026-02-03 18:49:36+00:00
Honestly I've been completely spoiled by Claude Code and Codex CLI against hosted models.

I'm hoping for an experience where I can tell my computer to do a thing - write a code, check for logged errors, find something in a bunch of files - and I get an answer a few moments later.

Setting a task and then coming back to see if it worked an hour later is too much friction for me!
by codeforafrica | 2026-02-03 18:49:41+00:00
Location: Africa or REMOTE

Remote: yes

Willing to relocate: yes, to any location in Africa, where I can get the necessary permission to live and work. Occasional travel is possible.

Technologies: Linux, Front or Backend Web Development, General Software Development, System Administration.

Résumé/CV: on request (software development, CTO, mentoring, training, fluent in English and German, german citizenship)

Contact: Email: see profile or http://codingforafrica.at/

Like this Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31518945], I am looking for similar work, but I am open to work on any interesting project. I am a European software developer who has lived and worked on four continents. Now it's time to move on and so I am in the process to relocate to Africa.

I have more than a decade of experience running a company, doing software development, support and training and mentoring adults and students, as well as working on educational projects, and I am willing to take on a mixture of roles as needed to support a project.

I value good teamwork over fancy tech, and I don't shy away from working on legacy code. I am primarily motivated by solving problems, so let me help you solve your problems.

I am open to work for a company anywhere as long as the work can be done fully remote from Africa.

While I could find a job elsewhere I believe that the experience living in an area where my work is going to have an impact gives me a better understanding of the needs of the location I am serving. Whether it is through direct contact with clients and users or just by being part of a local community and learning about the reality of living there.

In addition, I want to use some of my income to hire local interns and junior developers and train them in order to pass on my experience. I also sponsor children that otherwise can't afford to go to school (see my website). If you want to support this, I would love to work with you. Also if you are interested in hiring African developers yourself. I can help you build up a team for you.
by artahian | 2026-02-03 18:49:43+00:00
Fair point, although we didn't choose MongoDB just because of schema handling. We've been using MongoDB in production since 2013, so it was a natural choice since we already know a lot more about it than any other database.

For the problems you're mentioning, what we've seen is that many people use it incorrectly, and we're building the framework in a way that prevents that in the app layer. But still curious about your experience - what are the biggest problems you've had in production MongoDB?
by blandflakes | 2026-02-03 18:49:47+00:00
Go seems to have some enduring affection and popularity for new projects and companies. I recently felt like a lot of the recent shift was less about GC and more about runtime characteristics (static binaries, lean resource consumption, lack of an in-your-face virtual machine).

It never felt like Nim, Pony, or Crystal were ever that popular that a diminished hype cycle registered as something thematic to me (not that I really intend to disagree with your perspective here).