MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by RIMR | 2026-02-02 23:07:53+00:00
I am with you 100%.

It was easy to support SpaceX, despite the racist/sexist/authoritarian views of its owner, because he kept that nonsense out of the conversation.

X is not the same. Elon is actively spewing his ultraconservative views on that site.

Now that these are the same company, there's no separation. SpaceX is part of Musk's political mission now. No matter how cool the tech, I cannot morally support this company, and I hope, for the sake of society, it fails.

This announcement, right after the reveal that Elon Musk reached out to Jeffrey Epstein and tried to book a trip to Little St. James so that he could party with "girls", really doesn't bode well.

It's a shame you can't vote these people out, because I loved places like Twitter, and businesses like SpaceX and Tesla, but Elon Musk is a fascist who uses his power and influence to attack some of the most important pillars of our society.
by nephihaha | 2026-02-02 23:07:54+00:00
I have heard that, however there is truth in the assertions. I know two people currently in psychiatric hospital, with one seeming to be relatively sane just now but trapped in there, and another whose mental health is being affected detrimentally by the hospital environment. I've no doubt the latter could have recovered last year but for the fact she is being kept in an environment where her only contact with the outside world or nature is at the behest of hospital staff (who vary a lot in terms of attitude and even fluency in English).
by jccooper | 2026-02-02 23:08:13+00:00
The idea here is that the economics of launch are changing with Starship such that the "incredible cost" and "overspeccing" of space will become much less relevant. There's a world where, because the cost per kg is so low, a data center satellite's compute payload is just the same hardware you'd put in a terrestrial rack, and the satellite bus itself is mass-produced to not-particularly-challenging specs. And they don't have to last 30 years, just 4-ish, when the computer is ready for retirement anyway.

Will that come to be? I'm skeptical, especially within the next several years. Starship would have to perform perfectly, and a lot of other assumptions hold, to make this make sense. But that's the idea.
by d--b | 2026-02-02 23:08:18+00:00
the employer raises the capital, so that you invest the someone else’s money.

This has 2 main advantages:

1. You have limited downside. if you lose all the investor’s money, you don’t lose any of your own money - and contractually you still get paud the management fee.

2. It’s way more lucrative to get a very tiny part of the returns on a 1bn investment, than to get all the returns on a 100k investment…
by pjdesno | 2026-02-02 23:08:25+00:00
Cambridge MA was rezoned in the mid-20th century to suburban standards, in a city where land in a mid-range neighborhood now costs $350-$400 per square foot. Besides putting in floor area ratio requirements that required most of the existing housing to be grandfathered, they added a requirement of one parking spot per unit.

If it's a traditional 1-car driveway that's about $70K worth of land, although in the end it's zero-sum because it takes away an on-street spot. Parking garages for larger developments probably cost as much or more per parking space - they use less land, but they're expensive to build.

It's insane, and they're trying to fix it, and approving special permits left and right to omit the spots.
by mwigdahl | 2026-02-02 23:08:35+00:00
It's not just a joke, it's a meta-joke! To address the substance of your comment, it's probably an opportunity cost thing. Programmers on staff were likely engaged in what was at least perceived as higher value work, and replacing the $250/mo subscription didn't clear the bar for cost/benefit.

Now with Claude, it's easy to make a quick and dirty tool to do this without derailing other efforts, so it gets done.
by BoorishBears | 2026-02-02 23:09:02+00:00
Consumer can eat all the GPUs they have and more if we stop trying to force B2B

Right we have a loop where AI is so expensive (because it's priced to feast on B2B margins) that the best consumer experiences aren't affordable, and they're not affordable so they don't go mainstream, and they're not mainstream so no one is willing to take less money and bank on the incredible volume that would emerge if it went mainstream.

If we can get model pricing cheaper AI entertainment alone will probably carry things (I'm 99% sure NovelAI is already one of their largest customers outside of major AI labs)
by mamcx | 2026-02-02 23:09:10+00:00
*Senior Rust / Database Engineer*

Location: Medellín, Colombia
Remote: Yes!
Willing to relocate: No

Technologies:

* System engineer: Rust · query engines · programming languages · VMs · transactions · storage · performance optimization · data modeling

* Databases: RDBMs · PostgreSQL · SQL Server · SQLite · SpacetimeDB

* Backend: Business logic · APIs creation · integration · orchestration · ETLs

* Additional: Python, F#, Swift, Web assembly, Git, Jujutsu, macOS, Linux (NixOS, Debian), Windows

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-alejandro-montoya-cortés-6...
Email: mamcx@elmalabarista.com
https://www.elmalabarista.com

Software engineer with 30+ years building production-ready business applications and 3+ years as a core database engineer building high-performance RDBMs.

Founder and principal engineer with a long track record of owning complex systems end-to-end, from low-level design to production reliability.

Driven to learn new domains quickly and choose the simplest effective architecture, tools and paradigms for each problem.
by voy707 | 2026-02-02 23:09:17+00:00
Too late to change the fact that EU is no longer competitive despite historically strong core competencies and no shortage of talented people.

Manufacturing? Energy is way too expensive.

Tech? Admirable attempts using relatively little financial resources to keep up with the US and China haven't worked out. An issue of scale, not talent.

The complex regulatory body and risk-averse politics slows everything down (except the process of creating new regulations)

Germany is a prime example of all of the above.

Oh, and let's also make our energy supplies dependent on an adversary after shutting down perfectly fine nuclear power plants while fantasizing about a green hydrogen future while operating coal plants into the 2040s. (Also Germany)
by XorNot | 2026-02-02 23:09:24+00:00
2 is wrong. At a Lagrange point you can do this. Not in low earth orbit - in LEO sunset is every 60 minutes or so, and you spend the next 60 minutes in darkness.

Satellites are heavily reliant on either batteries or being robust to reboots, because they actually do not get stable power - it's much more dynamic (just more predictable too since no weather).
by spikels | 2026-02-02 23:09:34+00:00
It has been widely reported for weeks that SpaceX is planning to go public in a few months. The reason is they have big plans to run a vast network of AI servers in orbit and will need to raise a massive amount of funding. xAI merger fits with that plan. I'd assume SpaceX still plans to go public.

Was ignored on HN but here's an article explaining:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/after-years-of-resisti...
by jll29 | 2026-02-02 23:09:52+00:00
Let's see:

do {
4 h HN;
4 h family;
4 h coding;
4 h sleep;
4 h emails;
4 h meetings;
4 h teaching/supervisions;
4 h grant/paper writing;
4 h reading;
}
while (breathing);
//
// ----------
// 36 h / day
// ==========

But only some of the meetings and grant writing feels like real "work"; the rest feels more like "I'm getting paid for my hobby" (including for reading HN, no kidding), and if it wasn't my job I would be
paying money to be allowed to do it.
by piskov | 2026-02-02 23:10:02+00:00
My dude, ISS has 200 KW of peak power.

NVIDIA H200 is 0.7 KW per chip.

To have 100K of GPUs you need 500 ISSs.

ISS cooling is 16KW dissipation. So like 16 H200. Now imagine you want to cool 100k instead of 16.

And all this before we talk about radiation, connectivity (good luck with 100gbps rack-to-rack we have on earth), and what have you.

—

Sometimes I think all this space datacenters talk is just a PR to hush those sad folks that happen to live near the (future) datacenter: “don’t worry, it’s temporary”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/technology/ai-data-center...
by ggm | 2026-02-02 23:10:20+00:00
If you wanted to defend an O&G field, wouldn't you need to consider a similar extent? per wellhead, yes. but the go to a concentrator for onshore feed don't they? or some kind of attached floating rig, which itself is a SPF.

I thought fields had 100s of square km of extent too. The exclusion zone after nordstream is now pretty big, albiet "temporary" according to the web its 5 to 7 nm so 9 to 13 km so close to 100 km^2
by bombcar | 2026-02-02 23:10:32+00:00
> because "the downtown area" just isn't that valuable of a destination

This is another point people miss - 50 maybe 75 years ago the downtown area was a valuable destination because stores were smaller and what you needed could only be found at one or two places in a city; often downtown.

Cities are much bigger, but so are stores - you can go for months shopping nowhere but a SuperTarget or Walmart; and half the remainder can be delivered.

You make downtown desirable and then begin fixing the traffic problems. It takes 20+ years, but it can be done.
by troad | 2026-02-02 23:11:07+00:00
> Complete rethink/reboot required.

Or, instead, keep building, so the UK actually gets experience with large scale projects? Establish an anti-corruption body that retrospectively investigates every pound spent on HS2, and places lifetime public-contract bans on contractors found to have acted dishonestly? If the graft is as extreme and obvious as you say, surely this is no hard task.

If the UK has no experience building things, there's only one way to get some, and it's not to stop building for ten years while the government 'rethinks and reboots' (i.e. pays McKinsey for expensive reports exculpating McKinsey for any cost overruns). Ten years during which all the people who were actually involved move on to other roles, often private sector, often overseas. That's how you throw away all the experience accrued during this construction.

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. In twenty years, when the HS2 is zipping around, bringing down the cost of logistics, making groceries cheaper, lowering house prices as people can live further out, no one will even remember how it was built.
by Marciplan | 2026-02-02 23:11:10+00:00
Location: Netherlands

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No, but very ok with working US-hours (SF/NYC)

Technologies: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Supabase, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Tailwind, Framer, Figma, REST APIs. Those things.

Website / Portfolio: https://www.marcia.no + https://www.middot.nl

Email: hn@marcianoplanque.nl

About:
Hey, I’m Marciano. I’m a designer, coder, prototyper, and creative technologist, or whatever box you wanna throw me in. I generally design and build products end-to-end, from first concept and interface design to working production code. I have multiple years of experience designing and shipping apps, platforms, internal tools, and consumer-facing products.

This year (2026) I’m exploring new directions (my own apps), and I would be very happy to spend about 16 hours per week contributing to something interesting, fun and important in the spaces of health, sustainability or community (I know, that's broad). I work fast, think in systems, and care deeply about clarity, quality, and usability. I am, in general, just a nerd who genuinely loves building things that make sense and actually get used. Cheerios <3
by nephihaha | 2026-02-02 23:11:33+00:00
Like I say elsewhere I have visited two people in our local psychiatric unit. I haven't encountered any of the shrinks but the nurses vary a lot in attitude. The whole place is underfunded and I believe most people would become more mentally ill by being kept in this environment, which has little more than a TV to keep people motivated. The only view of the outdoors is through windows and almost no one is allowed to smoke even though this causes immense tension.
by lmm | 2026-02-02 23:11:58+00:00
> Actors can be made to do structured concurrency as long as you allow actors to wait for responses from other actors

At which point they're very much not actors any more. You've lost the deadlock avoidance, you can't do the `become`-based stuff that looks so great in small demos. At that point what are you gaining from using actors at all?
by janice1999 | 2026-02-02 23:12:09+00:00
US wind farms are 30 miles from the coast at most? No country is attacking that under some plausible deniability and it not being seen as an act of war.There are more important power lines further from civilisation running through rural areas in the US. These are not fiber cables a 1000 miles from the coast.

Gas generators can be spun up to provide megawatts in seconds btw. With less than a quarter of the grid being renewable, intermittency is not an issue. Grids are built with resilience in mind (or at least should be...).
by kemotep | 2026-02-02 23:12:16+00:00
It’s hard to estimate what Starship’s actual costs will be when it isn’t fully operational. I am finding estimates of $100 to $200 per kilogram and even as low as $10 per kilogram.

Let’s say the costs in 5 years do get as low as $15 per kilogram or about 2 orders of magnitude improvement in launch prices. That means a 200-ton payload Starship would cost $3,000 to launch.

Do you honestly believe that? The world’s largest rocket cost a total of $3,000 to launch?
by alxlu | 2026-02-02 23:12:33+00:00
Location: Seattle/ NYC / Remote

Remote: Remote preferred, hybrid/onsite ok

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Next.js, Python, Go, Autogen, AG2, Terraform, AWS, Docker, K3s

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gcy1cb6eqc0o26e8omoc6/alx-res...

Email: alxhn@fastmail.com

Hi! I’m a frontend engineer with 8+ years of experience building large, production React and TypeScript web applications. My background includes leading user-facing web products from early prototypes through production, primarily in financial and business software for SMBs, across both large organizations and startups. I’m exploring new opportunities due to a possible move to Seattle and a broader push toward RTO at my current company, and I’m open to remote-friendly roles in the US or Seattle-based teams.
by adrianhollis | 2026-02-02 23:13:09+00:00
You've invested in dashboards, reports, and data systems. Your team tracks every metric. Yet you're still making major decisions based on gut instinct rather than predictive insights. Why? Because knowing what happened last quarter (business intelligence) isn't the same as predicting what will happen next quarter and knowing exactly what to do about it (business analytics). This guide cuts through the confusion. You'll learn the difference between business intelligence vs business analytics.
by 07 | 2026-02-02 23:13:43+00:00
Location: Sheffield, UK
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Python, C, C++, Postgres, Flask, Git, Embedded
Resume/CV: Name/phone number redacted (will gladly provide upon request) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p9LvU85JKHINtIHxCd8xVBVElgP...
Email: robmdsd \xff20 googlemail \x002e com
(my usage of 'googlemail' is a languishing attempt at defeating scrapers)

I have been programming since the age of 13 and graduated with an integrated master's degree in 2024, however since then I've been staying afloat on unstable work. My experience has been quite broad in that time but my recent focuses in my spare time have been Python/Flask, and C/C++ (for a homebrew project on an old console that I enjoy contributing to) but my initial experience was with Java; the first thing I wrote was a CraftBukkit plugin that ended up getting over a million downloads.

I'd consider myself very good at quickly familiarising myself with unfamiliar frameworks/languages, so even if it's something I'm not experienced in, I would be more than willing to do a take-home, or something similar (which I enjoy, esp. if it's something new to me).

Looking for and would be grateful for any opportunities, includingr non-SWE, e.g. I.T., or even something non-technical if your company is hiring for other roles.

I do not use LLMs for any work or projects of mine, or prose I've written (personal preference, not a moral viewpoint).
by Aachen | 2026-02-02 23:13:48+00:00
(Same person as above but felt that this part had a separate purpose so I've moved it into its own comment)

The ecosystem is currently such that it seems hard to enshittify it. They say they have no intention of doing that and I believe it, but their vision of a healthy and good product might involve a fair price (for rich countries at least) whereas it was always free so far

Time will tell; it sounds like there's currently no plans either way, but it's also simply open enough that users can always just install the open source software and share decks with each other by whatever file transfer/sharing means. Everything that's already there won't simply go away. I'm going to keep using AnkiDroid and building the language deck I am working on
by SAI_Peregrinus | 2026-02-02 23:13:58+00:00
"Computable" has a well-known standard definition in this context, meaning a computable function[1]. In a given model of computation, a computable function is one for which an algorithm exists which computes the value of the function for every value of its argument. For example, the successor function adds 1 to an input number, and is computable. The halting problem (determine whether a program given in the argument halts) is not computable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function
by RIMR | 2026-02-02 23:14:10+00:00
Look at how many layers of insulation are needed for the JWST to have a hot and cold side! Again, this is not particularly simple stuff.

The JWST operates at 2kw max. That's not enough for a single H200.

AI datacenters in space are a non-starter. Anyone arguing otherwise doesn't understand basic thermodynamics.
by FurProject | 2026-02-02 23:14:13+00:00
I’ve been building a long-running fictional universe called the Furuniverse — a worldbuilding project focused on alternate realities, anthropomorphic civilizations, planetary systems, dimensional rules, and speculative continuity across universes.

This hub collects public archives, GitHub repositories, experimental side projects, and creator-adjacent media into one place, including long-form PDFs, reference documents, taxonomy systems, and early developmental material.

The goal isn’t a finished story yet — it’s preservation and transparency: documenting how a fictional universe grows over time.

Some materials are being preserved with extreme long-term thinking in mind, including the idea of sealing parts of the archive in a hypothetical time capsule meant to remain unopened for ten thousand years — not as prophecy, but as a creative thought experiment about how worldbuilding survives across eras.

Everything in the Furuniverse is fictional and created for narrative and conceptual exploration.

Feedback, discussion, and archival-minded curiosity are welcome.
by krapp | 2026-02-02 23:14:13+00:00
>those outside “rural America”/“red states” simply do not understand those inside - and to only a slightly lesser degree, vice-versa.

I don't know, a lot of people say that "city-dwellers" (an obnoxious term) don't understand rural Americans and the left doesn't understand the right, but from where I sit the left has been trying to warn everyone about the creeping approach of fascism and the far right within the Republican party for years, and rural people are the ones just now realizing the leopards are coming for their faces too.

Rural Americans still talk about Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment as if it were the greatest insult to their honor and dignity since the burning of Atlanta, but she was spot on. And predictably, rather than clean their own house, rural Americans preferred to trauma bond with Nazis and pedophiles than admit a "New York liberal" could have a point.

Rural people aren't as special as they think, you'll find Gadsden and Confederate battle flags in big cities everywhere. I promise you that people in Portland and New York understand "Don't Tread on Me" and that "Defund the Police" came from just as serious a place. It just happens that black activism gets commoditized, sanitized and rendered inconsequential by the same system that romanticizes the Lost Cause and right-wing activism.
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-02-02 23:14:20+00:00
Previously:

US air travelers without REAL IDs will be charged a $45 fee

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115731

TSA's New $45 Fee at U.S. Airports Unfairly Punishes Families in the Fine Print

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46138101
by rstuart4133 | 2026-02-02 23:14:21+00:00
Not so long ago, I heard some expert explain how language evolves in our societies. She said something along the lines of "if you want to know how language will change in a decade or two's time, go and listen to a group of 15 year old girls chatting".

I thought it was one of the most profound things I had heard in a long while. For example, it suggests the evolutionary driver for invention of language in humans lies in the interactions between women. It also suggests an explanation of why boys are usually behind girls in reading skills. As an aside, when that's brought up in mass media (presumably in an effort to sell clicks) it rarely mentioned boys are normally ahead of girls in other skills.
by nine_k | 2026-02-02 23:14:26+00:00
A Falcon Heavy takes about 63 tons to LEO, at a cost of about $1,500 per kg.
A server with 4x H200s and some RAM and CPU costs about $200k, and weighs about 60kg, with all the cooling gear and thick metal. As is, it would cost $90k to get to LEO, half of the cost of the hardware itself.

I suppose that an orbit-ready server is going to cost more, and weigh less.

The water that serves as the coolant will weigh a lot though, but it can double as a radiation shield, and partly as reaction mass for orbital correction and deorbiting.
by hxii | 2026-02-02 23:14:37+00:00
Location: Israel
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Python, HTML, CSS, Some Crystal/Ruby, GitHub Actions and SourceHut builds, Liquid, Django, Jinja and so on, N8n. Getting more into AI/LLM.
Résumé/CV:

https://hxii.github.io or

https://0xff.nu or
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulglushak/

Email: cv <at> glushak <dot> net
by pjdesno | 2026-02-02 23:15:02+00:00
In the 70s the oil companies were furious that Venezuela (if my understanding is correct) revoked their leases and forced them to abandon their equipment investments.

That's basically what the administration was trying to do here, under a legal system which (unlike Venezuela in the 70s) is very keen on protecting corporate investment. It seems like a classic "takings" case.
by tw04 | 2026-02-02 23:15:16+00:00
Friendly reminder for anyone that forgot - xAI acquired Twitter, so now Space-X is the proud owner of a dying social media platform that they overpaid for.

Any claims that this is about putting compute in space is just a non-sense distraction. This was absolutely about bailing Elon out of his impulsive, drug-fueled Twitter purchase.

The only question now is: when they try to go public, will they be punished for wasting so much money or not? My guess is: not.
by awesome_dude | 2026-02-02 23:15:17+00:00
Musk has a pattern here - he used Tesla the same way, diverting resources to xAI and treating it as a funding vehicle for other ventures. Once he started doing that, Tesla's financials got murky and harder to trust. Now he's doing it with SpaceX right before the IPO. For investors, that's not 'too big to fail' protection - it's a red flag that the company finances are entangled with his personal empire instead of focused on the core business.