MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by happymellon | 2026-02-03 08:26:58+00:00
> and end up in some Github Issue where Systemd Project heavyweights go "Wow. Yeah, that looks bad. Maybe we should document it. Or fix it? IDK." and they'd do neither.

Do you have a reference? Not that I don't believe you, but I hated this behaviour from Poettering (although he seemed to more often blame the user) and we should totally raise up issue like this. It's a mature product that shouldn't have sharp edges any more.
by mrweasel | 2026-02-03 08:27:06+00:00
Microsoft did do the experiment (Project Natick) where they had "datacenters" in pods under the sea with really good results. The idea was simply to ship enough extra capacity, but due to the environment, the failure rates where 1/8th of normal.

Still, dropping a pod into the sea makes more sense than launching it into space. At least cooling, power, connectivity and eventual maintenance is simpler.

The whole thing makes no sense and is seems like it's just Musk doing financial manipulation again.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/pr...
by Mentlo | 2026-02-03 08:28:10+00:00
Os x has a 10% market share, which is 2nd after Windows, but i agree on that one i conflated terms. I couldn’t quickly find device manufacturers stats. If wiki is to be trusted - apple is 4th, with share not far behind dell [1].

If half doesn’t make you leader what does? Maybe you should elaborate your definition of leader? For me it’s “has the highest market share”. And in that definition half is necessarily true.

It’s funny that for PC’s you went for manufacturers (apple is 4th) but for mobile you went for OS (Apple is 2nd). On mobile devices, Apple is 1st, having double market share compared to 2nd place (samsung).

The need to paint Apple as purely a marketing company always fascinated me. Marketing is a big part of who they are though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu...
by IanCal | 2026-02-03 08:28:18+00:00
> You can’t instruct individual agents to contribute to global knowledge

Of course you can. What makes you think you can’t? They can use task trackers like anyone.

Also you can have review on prs, stages where you ask for review and then have them create tickets for improvements (we’re using two http crates, refactor to just use this one).
by nmfisher | 2026-02-03 08:28:31+00:00
I always wanted to crunch the numbers but never got around to it, so I'm glad someone actually went and did it. YC company IPOs always smelled like pump-and-dump than a true liquidity/fundraising event, and if those numbers are correct, I was right. Or to put it another way, if someone asks "should I buy IPO shares in a YC company", the answer is "no".
by fpoling | 2026-02-03 08:28:41+00:00
I have found that using Cursor to write in Rust what I previously would write as a shell or Python or jq script was rather helpful.

The datasets are big and having the scripts written in the performant language to process them saves non-trivial amounts of time, like waiting just 10 minutes versus an hour.

Initial code style in the scripts was rather ugly with a lot of repeated code. But with enough prompting that I reuse the generated code became sufficiently readable and reasonable to quickly check that it is indeed doing what was required and can be manually altered.

But prompting it to do non-trivial changes to existing code base was a time sink. It took too much time to explain/correct the output. And critically the prompts cannot be reused.
by jeroenhd | 2026-02-03 08:28:51+00:00
I was referring to the day Nintendo stock fell 17% after they published a notice on their website (outside of trading hours) that they did not in fact make Pokemon Go: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/25/pokemon-g...

The Zoom story is even crazier. The idea of the SEC needing to step in because traders were absolute idiots throwing their money away is laughable.

Let the traders burn their cash if they're too stupid to Google a stock's name, I say. Let them prove that the markets are intelligently driven and not just gambling for those under the influence of cocaine on the job.
by motbus3 | 2026-02-03 08:29:04+00:00
No one is appreciating cheap working solution from good folks and prefer to accept the free spy-me stuff going around.

I see lots of people also moving stuff with AI that will clearly be biased and force products down your throat.
This might be the end of the internet as we know, but the next thing, although sometimes looks exciting, will be controlled by faceless greedy monsters.

I guess the fact that we all didn't prioritise those small businesses is getting somewhere
by d--b | 2026-02-03 08:29:21+00:00
SpaceX is too big to fail for sure. If it goes bankrupt, it'll be broken down, and trimmed down to the succesful launching operation. But I don't think it's the reason it's buying xAI.

SpaceX buying xAi means that xAI shareholders are cashing in on its current high valuation. It makes it look like Musk is not very confident that xAI can navigate through the AI cycle, so he might as well sell it to rake in the profits.

But he still needs control over it because of the Tesla plan and in case something else happens in the AI field that he doesn't want to miss. So he's buying it with SpaceX, because he can, freeing some of SpaceX cash to pay himself and his xAI investors.

That he managed to bullshit SpaceX investors into buying xAI is pretty crazy. But I guess that's his main talent.
by hvb2 | 2026-02-03 08:29:49+00:00
Falcon Heavy does not cost 100M when launching 60 metric tons.

At 60 metric tons, you're expending all cores and only getting to LEO. These probably shouldn't be in LEO because they don't need to be and you probably don't want to be expending cores for these launches if you care about cost.

The real problem typically isn't weight, it's volume. Can you fit all of that in that fairing? It's onli 13m long by 5m diameter...
by bigDinosaur | 2026-02-03 08:29:50+00:00
SM is claiming that the latest versions of the SM algorithm (namely SM-19) are vastly superior to FSRS (maybe it is?).

They state in contrast:

We do not dismiss the work behind FSRS. It is a commendable open-source effort and a marked improvement over ancient algorithms like SM-2.

For context, Anki uses SM-2's algorithm (albeit apparently heavily modified for various special cases) if FSRS is not enabled.
by lrvick | 2026-02-03 08:30:34+00:00
> printed maps?

For complex routes. Otherwise I just jot down a couple exits and an intersection and call it good.

> No ‘where are you?’ texts or the like?

No one expects this from me day to day because I am rarely away from home for more than a few hours at a time without a friend or family member, but when air traveling I have my tiny pocket laptop and check in at travel hubs from wifi. Everyone in your life will get used to it, especially if they see the results in it allowing you to be a more present person.

> No looking up nearby anything you’re curious about but didn’t know about before hand?

I tend to discover a lot of authentic hidden gems the travel guides don't mention, by just walking around a new area. Generally if I am traveling somewhere new, I go early to get a lay of the land.
by trhway | 2026-02-03 08:30:51+00:00
>the best we can

oh, we'll sure find a way to weaponize that energy for example - just imagine all those panels simultaneously turning their reflective back in a way to form gigantic mirror to focus reflected solar energy on your enemy, be that enemy in space or on the Earth/Moon/Mars ground. Basically space-scale version of 'death ray scyscrapper' https://www.businessinsider.com/death-ray-skyscraper-is-wrea....
by geraneum | 2026-02-03 08:33:05+00:00
People sometimes conflate inelegance with buggy code, where the market fit and value matter more than code elegance. Bugs still are not acceptable even in your MVP. Actually I think buggy software especially if those bugs destroy user experience, will kill products. It’s not 2010 anymore. There are a lot of less buggy software out there and attention spans are narrower than before.

edit: typo
by 2b3a51 | 2026-02-03 08:33:27+00:00
My 32 bit laptop is a Thinkpad T42 from 2005 which has a functioning CDROM, and which can run Slackware15 stable 32bit install OKish, so I haven't tried this but:

How about using a current computer to run qemu then mounting the Lenny iso as an image and installing to a qemu hard drive? Then dd the hard drive image to your 32bit target. (That might need access to a hard drive caddy depending on how you can boot the 32bit target machine, so a 'hardware regress' I suppose).
by IanCal | 2026-02-03 08:33:34+00:00
If your neighbours have so many kids that the newborn poop smell is filling your home if you
open the window for a while and making your curtains and clothes stink of it because it’s that strong you are well within your rights to complain.

Do you smoke? These comparisons are quite odd unless you don’t realise just how strong the smell is.
by jraph | 2026-02-03 08:34:10+00:00
> AI has changed nothing in terms of learning to program

In terms of what you should be doing when you learn to program, I fully agree.

In terms of the effects AI has on the activity of learning to program, I think it has: it has made it very tempting (and affordable - so far) to just make the AI build and even adapt the simple stuff for you that you'd be building and adapt by yourself. I suppose it can even give you the false feeling you understand the stuff it has built for you by reading the generated code. But this make you never go through the critical learning steps (trial and error, hard thinking about the thing, notice what you are missing, etc).

We already had the possibility to run web search and copy paste publicly available stuff, but I think that this came with more friction. I think Gen AI has made it way easier to be lazy in the learning and it's a trap.

But from the rest of your comment it seems we mostly agree.
by mc3301 | 2026-02-03 08:34:17+00:00
Fully self-taught, my first time ever working with someone on real-world code, I was interning for a open-source python CRM. The owner said to me, "anytime some code is difficult, just break it into smaller pieces. If it is still difficult, break it into smaller pieces."

This has stuck with me since; it is indeed applicable to many facets of life.
by lrvick | 2026-02-03 08:35:07+00:00
Still 30s, but also I make new friends all the time from 20s to 70s by just trying to say yes to go new places and hang out with new people. Board game nights, concerts, bars, video game nights, hackerspace events, movie nights, puzzle parties, and hosting events myself.

All sorts of places to make friends at any age once one is willing to put a phone down long enough to say hi to someone new!
by varshar | 2026-02-03 08:35:14+00:00
@dworks: Good insights. Thanks!

If you add a dialectic between Opus 4.5 and GPT 5.2 (not the Codex variant), your workflow - which I use as well, albeit slightly differently [1] - may work even better.

This dialectic also has the happy side-effect of being fairly token efficient.

IME, Claude Code employs much better CLI tooling+sandboxing when implementing while GPT 5.2 does excellent multifaceted critique even in complex situations.

[1]

- spec requirement / iterate spec until dialectic is exhausted, then markdown

- plan / iterate plan until dialectic is exhausted, then markdown

- implement / curl-test + manual test / code review until dialectic is exhausted

- update previous repo context checkpoint (plus README.md and AGENTS.md) in markdown
by weinzierl | 2026-02-03 08:35:22+00:00
The four most prolific writers are:

1 15.95 dragonwriter
2 14.37 tptacek
3 12.80 jacquesm
4 11.15 dang

Take this (and OP) with a grain of salt, if for no other reasons than it does not account for how long someone has been commenting here.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-02-03 08:35:47+00:00
That sort of makes sense though? It's the minimal level of government involvement required. Presumably you can't carry out a fair election without some form of gatekeeping. Whereas why exactly should ID be required to do mundane daily things including traveling long distances?

That said I'm generally fine with the current voting laws and don't see any need to increase scrutiny. But all states have at least some level of verification to get added to the voter rolls.
by jabl | 2026-02-03 08:36:34+00:00
Someone was still working on some minor cleanups in August 2025: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250825163545.39303-1-andriy.s...

(That mail also mentions the floppy driver is "basically orphaned" though. But evidently it's still there and builds.)

Maybe you're thinking of the floppy tape (ftape) driver, which was removed back in the 2.6.20 kernel. Though there's a project keeping an out-of-tree version of it working with recent kernels at https://github.com/dbrant/ftape
by anon1094 | 2026-02-03 08:37:01+00:00
Location: United States
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies:
- JavaScript, TypeScript
- Vue.js, Nuxt.js, Docusaurus, Mintlify, React, Express, GraphQL, HTMX
- OpenAI, AWS, GCP, Docker, MongoDB, SQL
- Technical Writing, SEO, Content Marketing, Documentation, Developer Experience (DX), Docs, Markdown, Git
Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bNOAK6viJSaHEltnQrjGc6JHyb4qHSEp/view?usp=sharing
Email: derick.realwebdev[at]gmail.com
GitHub: https://github.com/dericksozo/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derick-ruiz-413061128/

Hi, I'm Derick Ruiz, a Documentation Specialist and JavaScript Developer with over 5 years of experience. I've written articles, emails, and developer docs for startups at different stages, including YC companies, helping them grow by using my technical knowledge and writing skills. With over 5 years of experience in technical writing, I've contributed to various companies including:
- Crossmint (web3 payments): Helped attract more web3 NFT developers through a complete overhaul of technical documentation and new technical posts on Medium, leading to a 1.4x increase in onboarded developers in July 2022.

- Amplication (>13K GitHub stars): Revamped developer docs, wrote high-quality technical content, and doubled documentation engagement, resulting in a 53% increase in average documentation page visits per user and 63,478 total documentation page visits within 6 months.

- Vue Mastery: Grew Medium traffic by over 479,000 views through 8 educational, SEO-focused articles, achieving a total read time of 161 hours and 18 minutes.

- Text Blaze (YC W21), DigitalOcean, and The Startup (a top publication on Medium).

Are you looking for a technical writer who understands developers and can write you articles, emails, and developer docs that actually convert? Email me. I look forward to talking with you!
by mrln | 2026-02-03 08:37:14+00:00
My attempt at a definition of a desktop shell would be:
The collection of all the software that aids a compositor (or a window manager on X11) in providing a more complete desktop experience.
Now that's kind of vague and probably also not quite correct, so a more concrete explanation would be: A program or collection of programs that gives you desktop notifications, a taskbar (with a system tray), volume controls and more stuff like that, maybe even a neat menu to configure most of this. Usually for standalone compositors/window managers you'd usually use a collection of tools like dunst, polybar, and the like, but with newer tools like quickshell, which was used here, it's reasonably easy to build a single tool which handles most of that. And that's what we're looking at here ^^
by rcarmo | 2026-02-03 08:37:18+00:00
I think that the premise is wrong (and the title is very clickbaity, but we will ignore that it doesn’t really match the article and the “conclusion”): coding agents are “solving” at least one problem, which is to massively expand the impact of senior developers _that can use them effectively_.

Everything else is just hype and people “holding it wrong”.
by bayindirh | 2026-02-03 08:37:55+00:00
That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable.

Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible.

We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.
by zephen | 2026-02-03 08:38:23+00:00
On the one hand, yeah, immigration and trade issues push the buttons of the hard right.

On the other hand, our hard right has a trifecta of business, gun culture, and religion.

You're lacking the religion and gun culture, and trying to take away your health care would be the third rail, so in some respects, it would be difficult for you to follow us.

Also, without that trifecta, it seems that it would be somewhat more difficult to push the sort of anti-education agenda that gets pushed here, both at the university level and at lower levels (e.g. giving equal time to science and creationism).

You have to remember that the US was, in large part, founded by dogmatic malcontents who couldn't get along with their neighbors.
by Tor3 | 2026-02-03 08:38:35+00:00
The model is not yet decided, we're in the finalizing stage with the building company. What we have been focusing on is a well insulated house, unlike the old one which has no insulation at all.. if we tried to heat that it would not only be extremely expensive, it's impossible to even heat the small bathroom with an electric heater. So instead you kind of get used to it. Took me a year to stop feeling like I was freezing, at 4C in the bathroom on February mornings.
We have been using a gas heater (plug in the floor) in certain places on the ground floor, but we limited that as well.
So, with an insulated, small house, we believe we will be able to keep the costs down, using heat pumps and heat exchangers, plus solar and battery (using the car battery).
by noam_k | 2026-02-03 08:38:36+00:00
I'd like to draw a parallel to carpentry:

A carpenter uses tools to shape wood into furniture. Each tool in the toolbox has different uses, but some are more efficient than others. For example, a table saw lets the carpenter cut more quickly and accurately than a hand saw. Nobody would say "that's not a real carpenter, he cheats by using a table saw".

A carpenter can also have an assistant (and I'm specifically not talking about an apprentice) who can help with certain tasks. The assistant might be trained by someone else and know how to perform complex tasks. When the carpenter builds something with the assistants help, is that considered a team effort? Does the carpenter need to take responsibility for the assistants mistakes, or the trainer? Who gets credit for the work?

I don't have answers for these questions, but I think the parallel to software is straightforward: we have a new tool (assistant) that's available, and we're trying to use it effectively. Perhaps it's going to replace some of our older tools, and that's a good thing! Some of us will be lazy and offload everything to it, and that's bad.

I do think that learning the fundamentals is as necessary as ever, and AI is a great tool for that as well.

(Disclaimer: I've been programming for about 15 years, and haven't integrated AI into my workflow yet.)
by joe_mamba | 2026-02-03 08:38:37+00:00
>They are still selling it.

Good, very good! Better to still be able to own it legally some way even if it's not been updated.

> Selling games you know have such dangerous security issues is not good.

They are selling it "AS IS", so the risks are up to you, especially given that the game does not run on modern OSs out of the box so it's not like your average grandma is gonna get hacked from this. It's a niche product for enthusiasts and tinkerers at this point. Is ID software pushing security fixes to Doom so you don't get hacked from running a 30 year old piece of SW?
by 2b3a51 | 2026-02-03 08:39:54+00:00
Small, medium and large colleges in the UK ran on Novell servers and 386 client machines with windows for workgroups and whatever Office they came with. I think the universities were using unixy minicomputers then though. Late 80s early 90s. Those 386 machines were built like tanks and survived the tender ministrations of hundreds of students (not to mention some of the staff).
by Nevermark | 2026-02-03 08:40:16+00:00
> Yes, this is not some sort of hard-fought wisdom.

By basic I didn't mean uninteresting.

In fact, despite the pervasiveness and obviousness of the control and efficiency benefits of push-pull, generating-reducing, cooperation-competition, etc., I don't think I have ever seen any kind of general treatment or characterization that pulled all these similar dynamics together. Or a hierarchy of such.

> In some sense, it is a product of laziness to automate human supervision with more agents, but on the other hand I can't argue with the results.

I think it is the fact that the agents are operating coherently with the respective complementary goals. Whereas, asking one agent to both solve and judge creates conflicting constraints before a solution has begun.

Creative friction.

I am reminded of brainstorming sessions, where it is so important to note ideas, but not start judging them, since who knows what crazy ideas will fit or spark together. Later they can be selected down.

So we institutionalize this separation/staging with human teams too, even if it is just one of us (within our context limits, over two inference sessions :).
by rob74 | 2026-02-03 08:40:16+00:00
It kinda does make sense if you consider that solar panels in space have been used for a very long time (to power satellites). However, getting the electricity they generate down to Earth is very complicated, so you end up having to use it in space, and one of few things that would make sense for that is indeed data centers, because getting the data to Earth is easier (and Elon already handily has a solution for that).

However I'm curious how many solar panels you would need to power a typical data center. Are we talking something like a large satellite, or rather a huge satellite with ISS-size solar arrays bolted on?
by skytreader | 2026-02-03 08:41:15+00:00
Location: EU
Remote: Yes, EU timezones preferred

Willing to relocate: Depends on the location (but with a strong bias for EU-Schengen/US locations)

Technologies: Java, Python (and variants thereof like Groovy, Clojure, Pypy), Node/TS | AWS/Lambda Serverless, GCE/Kubernetes | Redis, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB

Resume: https://bit.ly/3B3o65M (It links to my CV repo at Github, pinky promise. You can also visit github.com/<hnusername>.)

I'm not actively looking (hence why my resume link is obfuscated like that) but I'm at least interested in getting a feel for the market right now. That said, I'm willing to consider a position with a great fit for my skill set and career goals.

Here's my pitch: I have experience in a multitude of industries and positions. From improving legacy infra and processes in an established telco company to scaling a fast-moving startup from 200K to 2M users. In my free time, I love writing Code That Is Poetry but day-to-day I am not an idealist engineer who doesn't compromise. Well-engineered code is clean and correct but correct above all else.

Oh, also, I'm great at writing documentation. I consider myself introverted but apparently my communication skills are above average for Software Engineers. I also pride myself on my humility and modesty.

I'm currently a backend engineer developing features and improving infra for an online game with millions of daily active users. I'd love to explore other technical positions in the games industry short of joining a AAA studio because (a) I don't want to crunch and (b) my skill set does not lay that way; other tech-creative industries would also appeal to me! Another particular interest is in B2C businesses where the 'C' is software developers. I'd love to chat and network about opportunities; if you think you have a product that could benefit from my skill set, drop me a line!