MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by luka | 2026-02-23 17:38:14+00:00
To clarify some misconceptions regarding what they do and don't have in their current motorcycles, as of Feb 2026:

All of current existing Verge motorcycles have a "traditional" lithium ion ~20kWh battery pack[0], very much on par with competition in all specs. They do exist and a few indeed appear to be in owners' hands (according to Facebook Verge fangroup posts and pics), and they can be test ridden. One of their showrooms is in Valley Fair in San Jose, CA. I have tested one of them. It feels and seems to perform well, as advertized and as physics allow, despite the hubless engine and skepticism around that. However, the test ride was ~30 minutes and there's so few of those bikes out there, that there's virtually no data on longevity.

What currently does not exist is a Verge motorcycle with the battery that they claim to be testing here. They have announced that all their offerings will feature their solid state battery later this year, increasing the energy capacity to ~30kWh. That remains to be seen.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20260223173926/https://www.verge...
by caconym_ | 2026-02-23 17:38:24+00:00
> if I read a thought-provoking, original, enriching comment on HN, do I really care if it was actually written by a dog?

I would rather just read the thought as it was originally expressed by a human somewhere in the AI's training data, rather than a version of it that's been laundered through AI and deployed according to the separate, hidden intent of the AI's operator.
by autoexec | 2026-02-23 17:38:25+00:00
In addition to collecting and selling every scrap of you your private data they can get their hands on, having 24 hour access to the internet also means that at any time they can push updates that disable features you paid for so that they can start charging you a monthly fee to regain access to them.

Any CEO whose company engages in spying and theft should be criminally charged and thrown behind bars just as you or I would be for those same acts, but right now companies can do pretty much anything they want to you and if they do happen to face any consequence it'll just be a slap on the wrist that costs them a fraction of the profit they made ripping you off and violating your privacy.
by lelanthran | 2026-02-23 17:39:07+00:00
> are you agreeing with me that laptops are probably worse than the books? Because it seems like your post are is rhetorically structured as a disagreement while reifying my main point. Which is somewhat weird.

Let me clarify - laptops/phones/tablets are objectively worse than books, because the intended design is to drive engagement, and not (as with books) to present learning material!

The fact that there may be a good teacher, a bad teacher, or no teacher at all is, frankly, irrelevant.
by RajT88 | 2026-02-23 17:39:10+00:00
The only way we own a web of our own is to develop much more of a culture of leaving smallish machines online all the time. Imagine something like Tor or BitTorrent, but everyone has a very simple way of running their own node for content hosting.

That always-on device? To get critical mass, instead of just the nerds, you'd need it to ship with devices which are always-on, like routers/gateways, smart TV's. Then you're back to being at the mercy of centralized companies who also don't love patching their security vulnerabilities.
by Seattle3503 | 2026-02-23 17:39:23+00:00
> Some observers present privacy-preserving age proofs involving a third party, such as the government, as a solution, but they inherit the same structural flaw: many users who are legally old enough to use a platform do not have government ID. In countries where the minimum age for social media is lower than the age at which ID is issued, platforms face a choice between excluding lawful users and monitoring everyone. Right now, companies are making that choice quietly, after building systems and normalizing behavior that protects them from the greater legal risks. Age-restriction laws are not just about kids and screens. They are reshaping how identity, privacy, and access work on the Internet for everyone.

This rebuttal to privacy preserving approaches isn't compelling. Websites can split the difference and use privacy preserving techniques when available, and fall back to other methods when the user doesn't have an ID. I'd go further and say websites should be required to prioritize privacy preserving techniques where available.

There is a separate issue of improving access to government ID. I think that is important for reasons outside of age verification. Increasingly voting, banking, etc... already relies on having an ID.
by Barbing | 2026-02-23 17:39:29+00:00
Sounds like this might be your area of expertise. For the rest of us, take a shoebox. How much ballpark extra weight we talkin’ to have a livable planet? (Maybe the mushrooms would be ~2x as heavy as standard shoeboxes for example, to meet existing spec.)

Or how about for the glasses box they show on the site in OP, or a plastic sleeve like Americans sell Oreo cookies in. Anybody have any guesses?
by rayiner | 2026-02-23 17:39:47+00:00
> At what point do you decide to go full El Salvador / Bukele on violent cartel members who are willing to put cities on fire when they cannot human and drug traffic at will?

The point for doing that was some time ago. It's like Islamists. They're so sophisticated that it makes more sense for governments to treat them like foreign military threats than domestic police issues. Don't listen to the "human rights" people in developed countries that became safe and stable by doing these exact same tactics hundreds of years ago.

In Bangladesh in 2016, there was a terrorist attack in a cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2016_Dhaka_attack. The government then went full Bukele on the Islamists. There hasn't been a significant terrorist attack in the country since then.
by friendzis | 2026-02-23 17:39:51+00:00
[Any] task is much easier if you have the tools. Do/did you have a baby monitor? A technological tool, that allows you to "monitor" the baby while not being within an arms reach.

Do you have an A+++++ oven with three panes of glass? It's [relatively] safe to touch and instead of monitoring if a child is somewhere near the oven you have to monitor if the child does not actively open the oven. That's much easier.
by vidarh | 2026-02-23 17:39:55+00:00
It's well-known books, yes, and even then with significant errors which means presumably lawyers for the AI companies would argue there is no possible damage. That said, US copright law has statutory damages for registered works that are not based on real, documented damages. I could totally see it being fought over, but I also agree it's probably not going to end up being game changing.

I suspect very works will be memorised enough to be an issue, and we'll see the providers tighten up their guardrails a bit for works that are well known enough to actually be a potential issue (issue in the form of lawsuits, not in the form of real damages to the copyright holders)
by butlike | 2026-02-23 17:40:26+00:00
GLP-1 drugs, as I understand it, reduce appetite. They don't magically add nutrients to the body. Of course the body will reduce cravings for alcohol, nicotine, and gambling. Nutrients would be prioritized over the poisons such as alcohol and nicotine. Additionally, why would the body prioritize what it considers fruitless dopamine release (gambling) when there are no nutrients coming in. The body literally can't afford to sit around and gamble since that resource isn't directly transferrable into food. It's literally in a starvation state.

But please, tell me how it's better than finally doing some exercise and eating right.
by fyredge | 2026-02-23 17:40:39+00:00
In the same way that they came up with the idea of divine being(s) in the image of man that rule nature.

In the same way that patriarchy rose amongst them all.

In the same way that a shared currency was deemed necessary.

Escpecially in matters of governance, there is something to be said about how humans like to organise themselves. No country has truly escaped capitalism so far.
by nateb2022 | 2026-02-23 17:40:44+00:00
Low cost, sub $200 automotive grade LIDAR sensors are already available.

Cepton Technologies offers Nova [0], Nova-Ultra [1] sensors both at a sub-$100 price point [2]. These feature a 120°(H) x 90°(V) FOV at 50m, with 2.7M points per second sampling.

Velodyne introduced Velabit in 2021, for $100. Boasting 100m range and a 60-degree horizontal FoV x 10-degree vertical FoV.

The article claims that:

> What distinguishes current claims is the explicit focus on sub-$200 pricing tied to production volume rather than future prototypes or limited pilot runs.

which is simply not true. Cepton (currently offering) and Velodyne (acquired by Ouster in 2023) have done this for years.

[0]: https://www.cepton.com/products/nova
[1]: https://www.cepton.com/products/nova-ultra
[2]: https://www.cepton.com/announcements/ceptons-nova-lidar-named-as-ces-2022-innovation-awards-honoree
[3]: https://lidarmag.com/2020/01/07/velodyne-lidar-introduces-velabit/
by spockz | 2026-02-23 17:40:50+00:00
> Good code still has a cost

> Delivering new code has dropped in price to almost free... but delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than that.

Writing code was always cheap to start with. Just outsource it to the lowest bidder. Writing good code remains as expensive.

The same when programmers from different languages are considered. How many Scala/Haskell engineers can I find compared to Java is not the question. It is about how many good engineers you can hire. With Haskell that pool is definitely denser.
by trashb | 2026-02-23 17:40:55+00:00
I would like to take the discussion in the other direction. How about we offer safe spaces instead of banning the unsafe spaces for kids.

Similar to how there is specific channels for children on the TV. Perhaps the government can even incentivize such channels. It would also make it easier for parents to monitor and set boundaries. Parents would only need to monitor if the tv is still tuned to disney channel or similar instead of some adult channels.

Similarly this kind of method could be applied to online spaces. Ofcourse there will be some kids that will find ways around it but they will most likely be outliers.
by sowbug | 2026-02-23 17:41:04+00:00
(We have descended into one of the deeper circles of grammar hell. I will remind you that you're free to leave at any time.)

Yes, exactly. English grammar actually doesn't require the "and" to end a list (leaving it out is called "asyndeton" if you're curious). A good example is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "... and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

So after all this, there actually is a way to analyze the example that is strictly valid. But most people would look askance at the standalone sentence "This product is fast, lightweight." That is, I suppose, unless someone like Abraham Lincoln worked it into his next speech.
by LurkandComment | 2026-02-23 17:41:08+00:00
My guess is that this is going to be everything other technology that's democratized. You see a flood of low quality output because you have a lot of new non-technical devs. Some of these are good enough to crowd out some of the prexisting tools. The volume creates noise which also makes the good stuff harder to find. Eventually an ecosystem starts forming around these low hanging products which fill the gaps between pros and amatures (think of what happened to video editing and Apple). Eventually you have more people creating a better product in the long run. There is a bit of a feedback loop here as AI gets better, it makes the products it outputs better, which inturn can benefit AI as it learns from improvements.
by kjkjadksj | 2026-02-23 17:41:14+00:00
The experiment to get to the root of this is forbidden. They’d have to perform double blind (kind of a fools errand when being high is so obvious) experiment where they gave matched patients and controls either weed or placebo. Then they’d measure effects long term with enough of a sample size to overpower latent factors.

But this study will never be approved for obvious reasons so we will never know one way or another.
by saturnite | 2026-02-23 17:41:46+00:00
That reminds me of a vending machine ran into as a little kid. It was in a private place and it had an out of order sign posted. Being hungry and young, I plugged it back in so I could take my chances. Every time I put in a quarter, three or four would fall into the coin return. When it was time to leave, all of the pockets on my cargo shorts were bulging so much that I had to hold my shorts up.
by everdrive | 2026-02-23 17:41:51+00:00
Marijuana legalization arguments were my first introduction to motivated reasoning. I was pretty inclined to agree that locking up non-violent drug offenders was a net-harm to society. But, the pro-legalization folks would argue patently crazy things: it cures cancer, the smoke isn't bad for you at all, there are no downsides! etc.

It seemed obvious to me that you could make a more realistic argument and just stick to an argument which states that due to drunk driving and domestic abuse, marijuana is less harmful overall than alcohol, but is treated as more dangerous. (and yes, the other side was a bit crazy too. "When you buy weed you're supporting the same terrorism that happened on 9/11")

Later research (such as this) has suggested a link between marijuana and psychosis, however the actual risk factors do seem difficult to nail down. (however, this is still a far cry from the claim that it's totally harmless)

What I ultimately learned is that in a pitched political battle, people actually damage their credibility because they're afraid to cede _any_ ground to the opposition, even when that means making unrealistic claims. A centrist (or just someone who is undecided) is not really taken in as much by these extremist argument, and to their eyes it damages the credibility of one or both sides.
by runarberg | 2026-02-23 17:42:08+00:00
I am not gonna blame parents while businesses are allowed to target children with ads about the newest mobile game. Children are very easy to influence, and this is exploited heavily by the tech industry, who shower children with advertising. This is predatory behavior, which the legislator and the regulator of western governments (including Europe) has allowed to proliferate.

We cannot expect every parent to be able to protect their children when they are being predated on by dozens of multi-million dollar companies, and the state is on the side of the companies.
by VoxPelli | 2026-02-23 17:42:12+00:00
Not only is Firefox using it for their CSS engine but Mozilla created Rust to build Servo and sadly only the CSS engine and maybe some other parts is what they kept around when they offloaded Rust.

“the Rust ecosystem around browsers is growing” – in the beginning pretty much 100% of the ecosystem around Rust was browser oriented

Thankfully Servo is picking up speed again and is a great project to help support with some donations etc: https://servo.org/
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2026-02-23 17:42:17+00:00
>We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable

The government took over most parenting functions, one at a time, until the actual parent does or is capable of doing very little parenting at all. If the government doesn't like the fact that it has become the parent of these children, perhaps it shouldn't have undermined the actual parents these last 80 years. At the very least, it should refrain from usurping ever more of the parental role (not that there is much left to take).

You yourself seem to be insulated from this phenomena, maybe you're unaware that it is occurring. Maybe it wouldn't change your opinions even if you were aware.

>If you want to actually protect children

What if I don't want to protect children (other than my own) at all? Why would you want to be these children's parents (you suggest you or at least others want to "protect" them), which strongly implies that you will act in your capacity as government, but then get all grumpy that other people are wanting to protect children by acting in their capacity of government?
by cpuguy83 | 2026-02-23 17:42:20+00:00
I don't agree that the code is cheap.
It doesn't require a pipeline of people to be trained and that is huge, but it's not cheap.

Tokens are expensive.
We don't know what the actual cost is yet.
We have startups, who aren't turning a profit, buying up all the capacity of the supply chain.
There are so many impacts here that we don't have the data on.
by simoncion | 2026-02-23 17:42:34+00:00
Your hypothetical 14-year-old needs to first be able to bypass the parental controls that come with every modern OS. You keep ignoring that.

(Also, like, did you ever go to college? Live in a dorm or apartment with underage students? It was super common for of-age people to buy and distribute booze to substantially underage students. Everyone knew it was happening all the damn time.)

> they are obviously not liable if i buy something legitimately, go home, and feed it to my kid. in that case, i am liable...

And if you changed up the rules to make them liable, you'd see serious attempts at controlling distribution.

What has been the state of the art in parental controls for quite some time is like the current regulatory regime for booze and tobacco. The single thing that needs to change to make it exactly the same would be to make it substantially illegal for US-based publishers to not tag the porn/violence/etc that they publish with age-restriction tags. [0]

What's being proposed and is currently implemented by several big-name sites is even more invasive.

> we are okay with how smokes and alcohol works right now.

I'm not. Either booze and tobacco need to be made into Schedule I substances, or their regulation needs to become much more lax. But I recognize that my opinion on the topic is considered to be somewhat out-of-the-ordinary.

[0] This might already be the law of the land right now. I haven't bothered to check.
by underlines | 2026-02-23 17:42:41+00:00
The reposts go on and on, while Japanese web design stays the same

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148942

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16254569

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523955

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33745146

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35209424

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16272392

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8975735
by embedding-shape | 2026-02-23 17:42:50+00:00
Slightly unrelated, but you take what (hn item) you can get: What is the smallest lisp (semantically/language-wise) people know, that could be used for implementing itself? Theoretical or practical/"real" is less relevant, mostly just curious. So far, it seems Bel (by pg) might get the closest, but can't claim to be an expert, surely could be something smaller out there?
by AquariuOS | 2026-02-23 17:43:14+00:00
Anonymous credentials and ZK-proofs are essential here — particularly for protecting the social graph from external traffic analysis. You're right that chains of custody can take this quite far.

The architectural tension we're navigating is Identity Coherence vs. Pure Anonymity. Symmetric Observation requires enough longitudinal coherence to detect patterns across time. If the system can't thread together "someone with these attributes has been involved in 23 correlated interactions over seven months," the WitnessCouncil can't flag the pattern of capture it exists to monitor. Pure anonymity breaks that thread. Anonymous credentials with chains of custody partially solve it — internal linkability without external identification.

But this leads straight back to the Root Credential problem: who issues the foundation of that chain? If the root is a government ID or a centralized liveness check — Worldcoin being the current live example of exactly this tradeoff — we've built a beautiful cryptographic layer on top of a legacy capture vector.

What's your take on the issuance layer? Have you seen a design that achieves Sybil-resistance and a genuine root of trust without recreating the asymmetric power the system is trying to dismantle?
by Ronsenshi | 2026-02-23 17:43:18+00:00
I'm very curious to see how this will affect the job market. All the recent CS grads, all the coding bootcamp graduates - where would they end up in? And then there's medium/senior engineers that would have to switch how they work to oversee the hordes of AI agents that all the hype evangelists are pushing on the industry.

Not an employee market, that's for sure.
by ffsm8 | 2026-02-23 17:43:26+00:00
Mmh, true...

I suspect there are errors on their announcement anyway, I mean there are rows like this on it

GEX131 (256 GB RAM) 1232,05
GEX131 (512 GB RAM) 1230,82
GEX131 (768 GB RAM) 2114,75

Which would mean the 256 version is slightly more expensive then the 512.

Hetzner often feels more like a mom-and-pop store then a corporation because of stuff like that
by matthewkayin | 2026-02-23 17:43:48+00:00
The rule of good fast cheap still applies the same as always, but business leaders consistently choose to ignore this reality and insist upon fast and cheap without acknowledging that it will come at the cost of good.

What's worse, is that these decisions are usually made on a short-term, quarterly basis. They never consider that slowing down today might save us time and money in the long-term. Better code means less bugs and faster bug-fixes. LLMs only exacerbate the business leader's worst tendencies.
by 7777777phil | 2026-02-23 17:43:50+00:00
This essay pulls together a few threads from pieces I've written over the past months on my blog, where I dig into rabbit holes like GLP-1 economics among other things.

If the pharma side interests you, I just wrote up Novo's rise and fall as Europe's most valuable company:

https://philippdubach.com/posts/novo-was-europes-most-valuab...
by themacguffinman | 2026-02-23 17:44:03+00:00
I think this mostly misses the biggest reason why writers would choose big tech platforms or other big platforms: discovery and aggregation. If you want to speak to be heard and not just for its own sake, then you want to go where the people are hanging out and where they could actually find your content.

This is like talking about how book authors don't need Amazon when you have a printer and glue at home.
by 2duct | 2026-02-23 17:44:20+00:00
I don't think it would have helped, given the outcomes for foster children are near universally worse except in the most extreme cases of abuse. I did threaten to call CPS but I was, of course, berated for it and threatened that I would be taken away, so that shut me up. Since I was never assaulted I doubt it would have reached the standard for foster care anyway, yet the consequences still endure to this day.

I was told over and over by in hindsight unqualified persons that emotional abuse wasn't real abuse, so after a few years I was disinclined to seek help.

If I had had even one person that supported me unconditionally instead of none at all, even if that person wasn't a parent, I'm fairly certain I would have turned out differently. That was just a matter of luck, and I came out empty-handed. I never felt comfortable talking about what I was exposed to online with anyone, and that only hurt me further, but I was a child and couldn't see another option.