MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by 8note | 2026-02-10 00:21:37+00:00
i just imagine it as the swap between "human watching agent while it runs"

vs "agent runs for a long time, tells the user over human interfaces when its done" eg. sends a slack. or something like gemini deep research.

an extension would be that they are triggered by events and complete autonomously with only human interfaces when it gets stuck.

theres a bit of a quality difference rather than exactly functionally, in that the agent mostly doesnt need human interaction beyond a starting prompt, and a notification of completion or stuckness. even if im not blocking on a result, it cant immediately need babying or i cant actually leave it alone
by Brybry | 2026-02-10 00:21:41+00:00
For a more fair comparison to liquor stores and adult movie theaters: it would be requiring people to be 18 to sign up for internet service, which is how it already works.

Parents are buying the alcohol from the liquor store (internet service, which kids cannot buy themselves) and giving it to their kids.

If you don't approve of the alcohol you're giving to your kids then stop giving it to them (it is legal in my state for parents to buy alcohol for their kids).
So what if other kids are drinking too and it would be socially a pain for the kid? That's always been true of having a parent with stricter rules.

When I was a kid in the 90s my parents limited how much TV we could watch.
I knew other kids who could only use the family computer for a limited time and while their parents were in the room.

I sympathize with parents who do want to provide internet service to their kids and want better parental control software.

But making the internet worse for everyone is not the way. Discord has already had a partner leak IDs before. [1]

[1] https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide...
by kazinator | 2026-02-10 00:21:44+00:00
> Of course, a reasonable question is why are blue and violet absorbed so strongly by these dust particles?

> Well, those are the only photons with enough energy to bump the dust molecules’s electrons up to a new energy state.

This is also why posters in a window turn blue. The warm-colored organic pigments that produce the yellows and reds do that because they absorb blue light and UV. And that light has the energy to knock apart their bonds and break them down. The dyes that absorb the lower energy waves, passing through blue, last longer resulting in bluing.
by pyrale | 2026-02-10 00:21:45+00:00
> your government takes 57% of the total GDP to themselves

That's a lot of blackjack and hookers for the ministers, if you really believe that "the government" takes 57% of GDP for "themselves". No wonder we're at out 6th PM, they must fall like flies with the amount of drugs they have to snort in order to siphon this much money.
by kypro | 2026-02-10 00:22:44+00:00
Fair point. Just trying to analysis my thoughts a bit more here...

...

Before when writing music I could come up with something in my head and make that thing real with significant effort. Now anyone can do that, including myself using AI in just 15 minutes. That demotivates me because why would I put effort into something that AI can do as good, or better than me 10-20x faster? I think if I was such a good musician that the delta between myself and AI was significant it would make sense to continue making music, but in my case it is not.

I also really like music production and music production specifically increasingly feels too easy... Over the last 5 years there's been a huge range of "click and make it sound good" type plugins. I could spend hours trying to make something sound good, but I feel like it's less impressive these days because everything can sound good with minimal effort.

I feel the same about lots of creative stuff tbh... I used to like photography, but smart phone cameras and AI filters / editing are so good these days the delta between what I can take on my $3,000 camera + photoshop skills is actually quite minimal now vs someone with an iPhone. 10-20 years ago it would be completely incomparable.

I used to spend hours designing websites too... Thinking about the brand and UX was one my favourite parts of building new projects. I'll never do that again now. Claude Code is good enough that I can't add enough additional value to make it worth designing from hand.

Part of this is just me as a person being obsessed with how I can add something to the world. A lot of the digital creativity which I used to love are no longer productive or value-adding pursuits. And I think for that reason I'm naturally pivoting my time into other things. Specifically creating physical things.

Not saying everyone is like me obviously. If something brings you enjoyment personally then go do it. Just don't expect anyone to actually care if you spend weeks designing a website or writing some music anymore. It's just not impressive.
by maerF0x0 | 2026-02-10 00:22:44+00:00
In my place, there's a significant group of drivers who will ride your tail too close hoping you'll move over so they can get 1 car ahead. And if they see more than 0.9 car length in front of you they will do what they can (weaving other lanes) to try and get into that space, 1 car ahead of you.

As far as I can tell it's pure selfishness and competitiveness. Their desire isn't to cooperate and arrive it's to take from others for their own gain.

Also "Only pass in the left lane" only makes sense when the lanes aren't significantly full. The guy in the left lane wants to do 90mph but the average speed of traffic is <55mph. Should I move over just because I'm doing 55 (despite wanting to do 65) and they want to do 90? They can only do 90 if there's a cascading group of drivers in front of them who defer their own desires to the desire of the most aggressive. Seems obvious to me that moving over to let them pass is not the right move.
by eliasdejong | 2026-02-10 00:22:47+00:00
Checkout DataStar, it's also a hypermedia web framework but it subsumes the functionality of htmx, is faster, more efficient and fits inside 11 KiB. It uses SSE + brotli streaming compression to achieve compression ratios up to 4000x. It makes the web client completely stateless. Building a webapp cannoy be simpler really.
by insane_dreamer | 2026-02-10 00:22:51+00:00
rightly or wrongly, I'm quite confident the US will not go to war with China if it invades Taiwan - the American people simply wouldn't support it. It's one thing to get public support for dropping a few bombs on a tiny opponent with little risk, as the US regularly does, it's another entirely to go to war with a major power with a very high casualty rate. The US wouldn't have even entered WW2 (as much as the administration may have wanted to) if the Japanese hadn't foolishly attacked Pearl Harbor and then Germany declared war as well. But unlike Japan and Germany, China has the manufacturing capacity and access to raw resources that would make it a very different enemy.
by samcgraw | 2026-02-10 00:22:56+00:00
Hi HN!

I've come to think that in the future, the bottlenecks in the development lifecycle will mostly be related to the decisions of Product. In other words, if nearly everything is cloneable by Claude, CRUD is no longer a moat.

So: in the "efficient cloning market" hypothesis, everything able to be eaten by mimesis, who pushes the limits of "craft and beauty"?

Therefore, I've been wanting to grow in my sense of taste: having a palate for beautiful things and letting more of my life be characterized by their presence.

To that end, I built Flâneur; it's a simple site / newsletter that delivers a handful of beautiful things from museum archives across the world. It's very simple, but I found it to be a delight to work on and use.

Do have a look and send me your thoughts. Cheers!
sm
by DonHopkins | 2026-02-10 00:22:59+00:00
The record doesn’t say what you’re implying. Virginia Giuffre’s deposition is that Epstein told her to have sex with Minsky. It does not say that Minsky agreed, touched her, or did anything. That’s “he was instructed to be offered to,” not “he did it.”

What we have from people who were there:

Greg Benford (physicist and SF author, present that day) stated publicly: "I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me about it." [InstaPundit, Aug 2019, quoting Benford: https://instapundit.com/339725/ ]

>Typical Crap Journalism from NYT:

>“In a deposition unsealed this month, a woman testified that, as a teenager, she was told to have sex with Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, on Mr. Epstein’s island in the Virgin Islands. Mr. Minsky, who died in 2016 at 88, was a founder of the Media Lab in the mid-1980s.”

>Note, never says what happened. If Marvin had done it, she would say so. I know; I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me about it. She saw us talking and didn’t approach me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford

Minsky was there with his wife, told her about the approach, and told Benford right afterward. So we have a first‑hand, on-the-record account that he declined, plus the fact that he immediately told his wife and a colleague. There is no evidence he “did” anything.

So: (1) the allegation that he did something is unsupported by the testimony and contradicted by an eyewitness; (2) even if it weren’t, “a man is what he does” has nothing to do with whether Society of Mind or his other theories are valid. Newton’s physics and Minsky’s cognitive architecture stand or fall on evidence and argument, not on moral purity. Conflating a disputed personal allegation with the worth of his ideas is a smear, not an argument.

David Henkel-Wallace (gumby) has posted about this before on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22015840

>gumby on Jan 10, 2020 | next [–]

>I know several people who were at that island and have discussed this event; one even told me that he remembered it because Marvin came over to him and said "this woman just offered to have sex with me." Also Gloria, his wife, was there, though I haven't asked her about it (and wouldn't). This seems believable to me.

>OTOH I did read Giuffre's deposition and she says not just that she was told by Epstein to proposition various people but that it happened. I find that very hard to believe having known him so long, but she made that statement under oath. Also I'm not sure Marvin was famous enough to be worth making up a story about (as opposed to, say, a famous heir to a throne).

Gumby was mistaken in claiming the deposition says “it happened”; he was very likely inferring it from the same transcript. What "happened" is she was told to have sex with him, but there is absolutely no evidence or testimony that he did. Look for yourself here:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7010864-virginia-giu...
by nozzlegear | 2026-02-10 00:23:00+00:00
I use F# every day, both in my open source and professional work. Love seeing the language continue to improve without going off the rails! I'm looking forward to using the "and!" computations in this release in particular (though I swear they'd already been released).

Edit: oh this post is from November! That's why I thought I'd read about those computations before.
by its_magic | 2026-02-10 00:23:45+00:00
The people in question weren't angrily following me. If that were the case, there's no need for any theatrics.

The first weapon to be employed is a Middle Finger. If that proves ineffective, it's followed by a lugnut taken from a coffee can that I keep handy. If and when things get to that level, the person usually wises up quick and finds a new hobby. There are other tools available if the nutcase decides to escalate further.

No, in this case it was just people speeding along at 95 (in a 70) who were terribly offended at my dangerously slow driving, who wished to register their indignation as they flew by, momentarily held back but undeterred as they sped off to their Bright New Tomorrow. Message received, loud and clear.
by whackernews | 2026-02-10 00:23:47+00:00
Absolutely agree. I take it a step (probably too far) further and think if you’re breaking on the motorway at all, you’re a bad driver. Ok, sometimes you have to, it’s chaotic out there, I get it. If you’re paying attention to actually driving your two ton killing machine you can drive for 200 miles on a motorway and not touch the break once.
by genocidicbunny | 2026-02-10 00:24:27+00:00
Truckers sometimes have a good reason to do that -- they can't brake or accelerate as quickly as a small vehicle, and thus can end up going very slowly if they stick with the right lane. To a driver going 3 exits down the 205 it's not a big deal, to a truck driver doing the same they may be at the end of a long haul up the I5 and every minute starts to count since it can affect their pay. And if you can avoid hard braking/hard acceleration in the right lane, that can help your fuel costs quite a bit since slowly coasting behind someone doing 5 under in the left lane is more efficient than jerking around in the right lane.

There are plenty of ramps on I5 and 205 that I merge to the left for because I know they will spill into the right and (when it exists) middle lanes. Because of how traffic also reacts to brake lights (some people brake too hard even when they have sufficient distance to let off the gas and coast to a slower speed) it seems like it ends up making my experience through those stretches a bit better.

Ultimately, any individual behaviour is largely irrelevant, it's what the whole mass of cars moving along does that affects things the most. Often you don't want to be the (significantly) odd one out regardless of the situation.
by mothballed | 2026-02-10 00:25:00+00:00
OK so anyone fighting a stable tyrant country for political ends is a terrorist in your estimation. I think by some definition of "terrorist" you are correct.

But that's different than what the US uses for listed terrorist organizations.

And that's what I'm pointing out. The US is happy to support these groups when they're actually on board with eliminating tyrants. I think they publicly shit-talk China but low-key they are happy to list as terrorists any group that can credibly threaten them, because it buys them political points in dealing with China. I'm judging them with their value system in mind, which provides a better assessment of the motivations behind their actions than judging them with your value system in mind. That is, by the value system of the US government, if they actually support the overthrow of the government they will also not usually list as terrorists those who are tactically in a position to weaken the government in question, even though by your value system you might.

And I don't agree with your assessment that even if it ends with another tyrant in power, it was for nothing. The Kurds had a slice of relative freedom for a decade. In their estimation it was worth the violence. Obviously I agree with that, otherwise I wouldn't have fought for them. I always knew there was a good chance it ends with everyone slaughtered and I saw my share of artillery and rounds come at me, so I'm not just speaking as a hypothetical on behalf of someone else. Sometimes it's better to be alive for a moment than a slave for a lifetime. (The Chechens, also came to a similar conclusion, with similar ends and a period of relative freedom between the two Chechen wars; I find them to be a less palatable example though I don't blame them for the general idea behind their actions).
by mmooss | 2026-02-10 00:25:19+00:00
> the basic idea that all else equal dragging other people into your problems is a negative. If it helps them solve it, or helps lead to the problem being avoided in the future, that's great. If they're joining you in feeling bad from a place of powerlessness, that's bad.

People require empathy and compassion; we need others to mirror our emotions and indeed to share them with us. We are social creatures and it is not normal, healthy or effective to experience (strong) emotions alone. Connecting emotionally with others is not a luxury or weakness, and certainly not "bad"; it's how humans naturally and essentially function.. Yes, it can be done badly and you don't need to be powerless - if your partner comes to you terrified about a cancer diagnosis, acting terrified yourself isn't helpful; but accepting their emotions, seeing them, and responding with genuine emotions appropriate to the situation is essential.

Many highly analytical people - to use a vague, undefined term - tend to think that anyone who comes to them with a problem must want their problem analyzed and solved - if you have a big hammer then all problems are nails, I suppose. Sometimes that is desired but certainly not always, and it can work against what people really need.
by areoform | 2026-02-10 00:25:35+00:00
They're already using discord. It's a single click.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not here to argue particulars. I'm sharing my reality as a user. A user who runs multiple communities. Including one for my friends. And my friend group extends to 2k+ people (my friends, their friends, their friend of friends... It adds up).

It's not fair that the CTE friend uses discord out of the box, but that's the power of network effects. Any competing solution needs to be 10x better to incentivise the switch.

I can setup a new discord server in a click. Versus,

Sponsorship and discounts
Contact sales@zulip.com with any questions.

Community plan eligibility
Open-source projects
Research in an academic setting
Academic conferences and other non-profit events
Many education and non-profit organizations
Communities and personal organizations (clubs, groups of friends, volunteer groups, etc.)

Respectfully, I'm not emailing your sales team to create a movie night server. Or one for class / group notes. Actual use cases. https://zulip.com/plans/#self-hosted
by text0404 | 2026-02-10 00:25:57+00:00
Oh but they do [1][2]!

It's very suspicious that you're being so uncooperative. I'm starting a Flock competitor and we sell our products to law enforcement and private businesses [3]. You seem to be against giving me this data, which feels anti-American and against traditional American values which are clearly afoul of NSPM-7 [4]. This will earn you a label of "potential domestic terrorist" in our database [5]. This, in combination with your "ethnic"-sounding username is enough to gain the attention of our users [6][7], so I suggest you comply.

Why don't we start with something simpler? How about just your license plate number, current location, and a photograph of your vehicle? Flock collects this information (along with a history of where that plate was recognized), so surely this shouldn't be an issue?

[1] https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-i...

[2] https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-nova

[3] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-launches-first-ever-b...

[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46903556

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop

[7] https://www.404media.co/emails-reveal-the-casual-surveillanc...
by troad | 2026-02-10 00:26:12+00:00
> Has anyone defined a strict subset of C to be used as target for compilers? Or ideally a more regular and simpler language, as writing a C compiler itself is fraught with pitfalls.

The main reason you'd target C is for portability and free compiler optimisations. If you start inventing new intermediate languages or C dialects, what's the benefit of transpiling in the first place? You might as well just write your own compiler backends and output the machine code directly, with optimisations around your own language's semantics rather than C.

Imho, C89 is the strict subset that a compiler ought to target, assuming they want C's portability and free compiler optimisations. It's well understood, not overly complex, and will compile to fast, sensible machine code on any architecture from the past half century.
by ucerron1 | 2026-02-10 00:26:37+00:00
What happens in a world where the world population continues to shrink, where two empires face record high budget deficits, where people are faced with eroding values and hyper-financialization during another Industrial Revolution?

I’ve been diving into a Liquid Labor framework (liquid-labor.com), it’s a departure from traditional labor economics. It moves us away from measuring GDP via human headcounts and toward a National Autonomous Work Index (NAWI) treating machine hours as liquid labor with perfect elasticity of labor.

In this model, robotics isn’t just an efficiency gain; it’s the conversion of energy into a liquid labor reserve that can be deployed with perfect elasticity either as a policy or as a business model Robots as a Service(RaaS.)

I believe the industries of nations that successfully build a reserve of autonomous hours will survive a Great Stagnation. Those who rely on shrinking human labor pools will face a terminal liquidity crisis.

I believe this will lead to greater centralization as no single nation or business will be able to sustain the amount of depreciation ensued. Any honest feedback or thoughts more than welcome. https://www.liquid-labor.com/
by Marsymars | 2026-02-10 00:26:59+00:00
I'm not saying Google doesn't know if a company is in a particular market, I'm saying that a) Google doesn't know what market I'm searching for something from and b) even if they know both from context, it puts them in some awkward positions.

e.g. Vice Media has a trademark on "motherboard" that covers the tech news blog website service.

Is it now impossible for Asus to place an ad for the official Asus motherboard blog on the search term "motherboard"?

Is it legal to advertise for "motherboard" for any good or service other than a tech news blog website?

Is it now illegal to advertise a website featuring in-depth motherboard reviews using the term "motherboard"?

If I search for "motherboard website", what is Google allowed to show me for ads, given they don't know if I'm looking for the Vice website, or motherboard reviews, or the Asus homepage?

If a plain search for "motherboard" results in Vice's website not being in the top results, is Vice allowed to advertise on their own trademark to put it above other results? (Either above organic results, or above paid results for motherboard manufacturers, depending on whether you're allowing the latter.)
by bsder | 2026-02-10 00:27:00+00:00
Theoretical physics progresses via the anomalies it can't explain.

The problem is that we've mostly explained everything we have easy access to. We simply don't have that many anomalies left. Theoretical physicists were both happy and disappointed that the LHC simply verified everything--theories were correct, but there weren't really any pointers to where to go next.

Quantum gravity seems to be the big one, but that is not something we can penetrate easily. LIGO just came online, and could only really detect enormous events (like black hole mergers).

And while we don't always understand what things do as we scale up or in the aggregate, that doesn't require new physics to explain.
by terribleperson | 2026-02-10 00:27:08+00:00
Pass a law that requires devices and software to support a per-device or per user account 'child' or 'minor' flag. The flag must be lockable with a password or another account. Pass a law that mandates that websites and content handle the flag appropriately, whether that means denying service or limiting access.

This would protect children while only minimally infringing on privacy.

The mechanism by which we make everyone 'just' is laws. The laws that are being passed are telling of the actual goals.
by GMoromisato | 2026-02-10 00:27:14+00:00
The use of "AI" in particle physics is not new. In 1999 they were using neural nets to compute various results. Here's one from Measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in p¯p collisions using multijet final states [https://repository.ias.ac.in/36977/1/36977.pdf]

"The analysis has been optimized using neural networks to achieve the
smallest expected fractional uncertainty on the t¯t production cross section"