MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Eji1700 | 2026-02-09 21:53:05+00:00
Okay, i'm not very good at coding, especially web.

It seems to me that the "logical" solution to this is some sort of local key like "sudo" that the user enters/has access to. This key is on a cookie or request or something that says "This request is being done by a verified adult" and then the website goes "cool here's your data". If the request does not have it, then the website says "Sorry you need one of these keys/permissions to access".

I see this as elegant because like modern IDs, YES THEY COULD GET AROUND IT, but at least it gives parents and users who want to abide and try the ability. Kids get fake id's, they get stuff they shouldn't. So long as audits show that the businesses are trying to catch this and punishing those who ignore procedures properly, things are "fine".

How infeasible is this from a coding perspective? I get that we're fucking with standards here, but I figured it would make most sane users and companies happy. Companies don't have to keep PII, just a log of "yes this access from this IP was approved, but we discovered is was used falsely and banned that key", and users have a tool that's setup once locally (or refreshed when you want a new key).

I guess you'd need some way to authenticate these as if it's too easy to spoof whats the point, but it strikes me as leagues better of "store everyone's colonic map"

How off base am I here? Is the theory somewhat sound or is this just dead from the ground up?
by tunesmith | 2026-02-09 21:53:23+00:00
Yes - currently, each argument/graph is independent, but I've designed it in a way that should be compatible with future plans to "transclude" parts of other public graphs. Like if some lemma is really valuable to your own unrelated argument, being able to include it.

I do think there's quite a lot that could be done with LLM assistance here, like finding "duplicate" candidates; statements with the same semantic meaning, for potential merge. It's really complicated to think through side effects though so I'm going slow. :)
by OkayPhysicist | 2026-02-09 21:53:40+00:00
My favourite restriction is the fact that colored text doesn't work in dark mode. Why? Because whatever intern they had implement dark mode didn't understand how CSS works, and just slapped !important on all the style changes that make dark mode dark, and thus overwrite the color data.

I ended up writing a browser extension for my team to fix it, because the boss loved to indicate stuff with red/green text.
by jlarocco | 2026-02-09 21:53:41+00:00
I don't see what you're getting at with respect to writing bindings.

The whole point of using "static" in that way is to prevent people from using it outside of the file.

If you need to call a static function (inline or otherwise) from outside of the compilation unit to use the API, then it's a bug in the API, not a problem with static.

I agree with you about pre-processor macros, though.
by AlexandrB | 2026-02-09 21:53:48+00:00
150kW solar kit seems to cost around $150k[1]. With the cost of launch with Falcon Heavy, this would pay for about 100kg of payload[2]. Each Starlink satellite weighs ~300kg[3] so I suspect a 150kW "datacenter" satellite would weight much more. Where are the savings supposed to come from? Seems like you could overprovision terrestrial solar panels by 3-4x and still obviously come out ahead. And that's all before considering the R&D costs of building AI datacenter hardware that can survive the orbital radiation environment.

[1] https://sunwatts.com/150-kw-solar-kits/

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-e...

[3] https://everydayastronaut.com/starlink-group-4-5-falcon-9-bl...
by rurp | 2026-02-09 21:54:07+00:00
Oh I think it definitely did damage, just not enough to kill such a massive platform overnight. Twitter has lost a significant amount of users while other social networks grew or held steady, and the cultural impact seems to have waned a lot.

I've never been a regular user of Twitter, pre or post elon era, but a lot of people I follow in other ways used to be very active on there and discussions would often spill over into other venues. That still happens a bit, but much less than before.
by indoordin0saur | 2026-02-09 21:54:51+00:00
Yeah, I started using Grok whenever I got scolded by the other AIs or I felt like they were giving me bad answers because of some internal censor or other quirks. I've found it to be very useful when answering physics problems though. It also seems to be different from the other models, which tend to cluster together in terms of responses so I go to it if I feel they aren't working out.
by LeoPanthera | 2026-02-09 21:55:36+00:00
> would you mind quoting the relative cost of batteries vs. solar panels for a 150kW solar-powered satellite

OK.

At a good location (~25% capacity factor), you need about 600 kW of panels to average 150 kW. Utility-scale solar runs roughly $0.50–$1.00/W installed, so call it ~$450K–$600K. Overnight storage (say ~16 hours) requires ~2,400 kWh. Adding a buffer for cloudy days, say 4,000–7,000 kWh total. At roughly $200–$350/kWh (utility-scale Li-ion), that's ~$1M–$2M.

In a favorable orbit, capacity factor is ~90–100% (GEO or sun-synchronous), so you need roughly 160–170 kW of panels. Space-qualified solar panels historically cost $100–$300/W. Even optimistically at $50–$100/W with newer manufacturing, that's 167 kW * $100/W = ~$17M optimistically, or 167 kW * $200/W = ~$33M realistically. You also need space-rated power management, thermal systems, and radiation-hardened electronics.

Even ignoring launch costs entirely, space solar is roughly 10–20x more expensive than ground solar + batteries, driven almost entirely by the enormous cost premium of space-qualified solar panels. Ground-based solar is extraordinarily cheap now (~$0.50–1/W), while space-grade panels remain orders of magnitude more expensive per watt.

The ground option wins overwhelmingly. The space option would only start to make sense if space-grade panel costs dropped to near terrestrial levels, which would require a revolution in space manufacturing.
by simquat | 2026-02-09 21:55:49+00:00
I’m working on an app builder that combines a Figma-like canvas for design with Apple Shortcuts-style logic for functionality.
Instead of writing code or connecting node graphs, you define behavior by stacking instructions using a syntax based on Hyperscript.

You can try the editor here (no signup required): https://app.breadboards.io/playgrounds/weather

And here is a live app exported from it: https://late-cat-2043.breadboards.app
by Animats | 2026-02-09 21:55:56+00:00
Right. WWVB clocks running off the 60KHz pretty much solve the clock problem in the US.
All my clocks at home are basic LaCrosse analog clocks. They have the internal sensors needed to tell when each hand is straight up, so they can set themselves without user input. On power up, they step until the hands are straight up, then sync when they get an update.
You have to set the time zone with a switch when installing. Only the four US time zones are available.
Battery life is 1-2 years, which is pretty good for a device with a radio.

There are UK and Japan clocks that work similarly, but use national time sources. There are G-Shock watches which synchronize from multiple sources. While running on solar power. Those keep accurate time with no maintenance. That's an impressive achievement.
by 9dev | 2026-02-09 21:56:14+00:00
I see your point, but don’t think it is correct: Opposing groups will absolutely debate whether and which events happened, and will attest to a different timeline. Moreover, I don’t believe you can cleanly tell facts from interpretation. Sometimes there is just no way to know (or verify) what happened, and you have to deduce. This is invariably shaped by your personal lens of opinions, then.
by cowpig | 2026-02-09 21:56:18+00:00
I feel like I'm in a psy op reading this comments section.

As if we aren't very clearly in a completely different place now compared to even 10 years ago, when it comes to the veracity of information people are exposed to on a moment-to-moment basis. As if we aren't all fed an AI-manipulated, algorithmically tailored personal selection of wholecloth lies by the media mechanisms that replaced some biased ones.
by SoftTalker | 2026-02-09 21:57:30+00:00
That's the thing, it legitimately does solve some crimes. And both Flock and the police who use it will quickly trot out some high profile examples. It is one of those classic "if it saves one child it's worth any price" arguments.

Are you OK with being tracked everywhere you go in public so that some bad guys don't get away with their bad activities? Many people are.
by JeremyNT | 2026-02-09 21:58:02+00:00
> The question really is what you think the long term direction of SWE as a profession is. If we need juniors later and senior's become expensive that's a nice problem to have mostly and can be fixed via training and knowledge transfer. Conversely people being hired and trained, especially when young into a sinking industry isn't doing anyone any favors.

Yes exactly!

What will SWE look like in 1 year? 5 years? 10?

Hiring juniors implies you're building something that's going to last long enough that the cost of training them will pay off. And hiring now implies that there's some useful knowledge/skill you can impart upon them to prepare them.

I think two things are true: there will be way fewer developer type jobs, full stop. And I also think whatever "developers" are / do day to day will be completely alien from what we do now.

If I "zoom out" and put my capitalist had on, this is the time to stop hiring and figure out who you already have who is capable of adapting. People who don't adapt will not have a role.

> If you think that the industry shrinks then its better to hold off so you get more out of your current staff, and you don't "hire to fire". Hopefully the industry on average shrinks in proportion to natural retirement of staff - I've seen this happen for example in local manufacturing where the plant lives but slowly winds down over time and as people retire they aren't replaced.

You can look even closer than that - look at some legacy techs like mainframe / COBOL / etc. Stuff that basically wound down but lasted long enough to keep seniors employed as it did so.
by sarchertech | 2026-02-09 21:58:35+00:00
I had no idea you were talking about algorithmically making molds.

You’re just talking about taking a positive 3d model and automatically creating a mold for it that you 3d print?

If so I wouldn’t want that to be algorithmic because that’s never going to work in the general case. There are just too many edge cases that you have to manually handle. Might as well just create the mold in your CAD program.
by goplayoutside | 2026-02-09 21:58:46+00:00
For anyone else who is tired of losing unsaved comments after accidentally hitting ^w:

1. Load about:keyboard

2. Find "Close tab" and click "Clear" or "Change".

There doesn't appear to be any other way to directly address this issue within ff, short of modifying the source and recompiling. According to MDN[0], manifest.json does not support changing internally defined keyboard shortcuts:

>If a key combination is already used by the browser (like "Ctrl+P") or by an existing add-on, then you can't override it. You can define it, but your event handler will not be called when the user presses the key combination.

0. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
by kevinsync | 2026-02-09 21:58:55+00:00
Honest questions, I'm not trying to troll -- does this stuff even matter in a practical sense? Like, what's the minimum threshold (of revenue?) to where litigation even becomes a possibility?

It's becoming more and more trivial to reverse-engineer via LLM, which could then be used to clean-room a clone product. Wouldn't the value then lie in the brand, the quality of execution and support, etc? What if you get cloned by somebody in Bratislava or China or whatever? Fighting this stuff in court (or courts, plural!) across international borders feels like a quagmire at best and a terrible waste of time and money at worst.

I guess without patents, somebody could clone you and then file for the patents themselves, and sue you into oblivion -- that would be hell on earth obviously lol.

But in the end, what if you just showed up with your product and did an incredible job and ignored the clones and simply "let the best man win"?
by bigyabai | 2026-02-09 21:58:56+00:00
Again, 99.999% of the viewers aren't really in the position to finance a $120 million fighter jet. However, the ~0.001% that are in that position will probably be watching, and feel FOMO for not having the iPhone of strike fighters.

Even if it only moves the needle on 2-3 sales every decade, the ROI is probably great.
by thisislife2 | 2026-02-09 21:59:40+00:00
That's what Sciter does - https://sciter.com/ - it just gives you a lightweight HTML / CSS / Javascript "webview" engine for layout and rendering. Like you pointed out, that should be enough. But corporates want a "webview" that is an OS so that they can do everything with Javascript on it (hence why embedded Chrome with NodeJS is so popular).
by 5ykh | 2026-02-09 21:59:51+00:00
I’m not a lawyer and won’t address the merits or lack thereof of the ruling on the particulars of the case. The effect of the ruling was a sweeping change in money in politics. It effectively legalized an oligarchic take over of governance. It’s a fact that money and advertising largely determine outcomes in battleground races. Tipping those races, along with the structural power imbalance in federal politics, means that control of the government is relatively easy and cheap.

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/15-years-after-c...
by amonith | 2026-02-09 21:59:55+00:00
By public services I mean only important things like healthcare, law enforcement, fire department. Definitely not stores and food delivery. You can wait an hour or even a couple of hours for that.

> Those companies have decided the extra complexity is worth the reliability.

Companies always want more money and yes it makes sense economically. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that nobody needs this.
I grew up in a world where this wasn't a thing and no, life wasn't worse at all.
by girvo | 2026-02-09 22:00:39+00:00
By piggybacking off GCC et al you gain very easy portability/access to a bunch of platforms that most languages would never attempt to support.

We used this in production with Nim for embedded firmware engineering at my previous job doing industrial IoT systems, which let us write a much nicer language than C (and much faster, much safer), with code-sharing between the network server (and its comms protocol) and the firmware code itself.

All can be done with C itself of course, but this let us achieve it faster and in a much nicer fashion
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-02-09 22:01:24+00:00
Related:

Epstein asked Chomsky for advice over 'putrid' media coverage, files show

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892949

Noam Chomsky's wife responds to Epstein controversy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46935011
by WillPostForFood | 2026-02-09 22:02:17+00:00
Who is responsible now when human coding errors leak user's sensitive information? I'm not seeing programmers held up as the responsible party. The companies who own the code are vaguely responsible, so it will be the same.

The bridge scenario is simply addressed: Licensed Engineer has to approve designs. Permitting review process has to review designs. Not sure it matters who drafted them initially.
by SpicyLemonZest | 2026-02-09 22:02:22+00:00
I think this is one of those things that only ever makes sense in the abstract. How would this rule apply to Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy? Would it make sense to tell Prodigy that they'll be immune from defamation suits if only they agree to make their offensive language monitoring opt-in and publish a new code of conduct permitting racial slurs?
by AceJohnny2 | 2026-02-09 22:02:29+00:00
Anecdotally, the reason my career is in embedded software is that I kept wanting to know how the (software) system works, and embedded is as deep as you can get without changing disciplines altogether.

The cost is you lose those layers of abstractions you get at the higher software levels, and there's only so much complexity I can handle.

(the funny part is that even HW registers and stuff are just an API that the hardware chooses to expose. As Alan Kay said: "Hardware is really just software crystallized early")
by hilbert42 | 2026-02-09 22:02:46+00:00
Further to my unforgivable boo-boo. This article provides a pretty good introduction to the subject and there's a diagram of a quartz crystal at the beginning indicating the position of AT cuts in relation to the crystal and other cuts.

I've seen much more detailed diagrams of the crystal and cuts/cutting angles but I can't find one online.
.
Those precision diagrams are required by those who cut the quartz at the start of the manufacturing process.

https://xoprof.com/2023/09/unleashing-the-mystery-of-crystal...
by abalone | 2026-02-09 22:03:01+00:00
Taylor Lorenz has done excellent reporting on this. It's a right wing censorial moral panic that's forced some Democrats to go along with it by positioning it as "protecting kids". This legislation is moving at a fast clip and we have to fight back.

* SCREEN Act age verification with huge implications for all online privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bnp3nmpK9g&list=PLu4srHCWJr...

* Abolishing Section 230, the law that protects platforms like this from being sued for user content (just published today): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqt8vrtP-U&list=PLu4srHCWJr...

* UK online safety act (it's not just the U.S.) - interview with the lawyer defending 4chan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD3PGp9RhTw&list=PLu4srHCWJr...
by hunterpayne | 2026-02-09 22:03:10+00:00
Nice work but no offense, but it comes off as you describe. I think you are overall right about needing to switch W sources. You are wrong that it will be used for fusion reactors. That won't happen in the lifetime of anyone alive today. It will get used for armor for weapons and possibly some fission reactors. We are nowhere near an actual breakeven fusion reactor. We are only close to theoretical break-evens which are themselves more than an order of magnitude from actual working powerplants. Ask yourself this, how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat? Even at 900C we can only get about 55% and we have materials which can withstand that temperature for decades. We have nothing physical that can take anywhere near 1,000,000C.
by cucumber3732842 | 2026-02-09 22:03:19+00:00
>I was never honked at, even by the crazy semi truck drivers.

Because you were towing a camper and "slow and in the right lane" fits people's mental model of how recreational/nonprofessional heavy traffic or otherwise "handicapped" vehicles ought to behave.

When you have problems is when you behave to a standard beneath what other people expect from whatever kind of traffic you are.
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-02-09 22:03:34+00:00
If I had just re-read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon recently, which I have, I'd say that I'd set up a link using WEP-encrypted 802.11b and hammer data across it with odd little bits here and there designed to generate maximum spy interest.

But then the actual message would be encoded by very slightly favouring the high or low end of the spread spectrum map as a kind of terribly slow FSK.
by BLKNSLVR | 2026-02-09 22:03:35+00:00
No history to be found here, but the phrase 'legacy media' started making sense to me, in Australia, when it became obvious to me that said legacy media were being intentionally dishonest / obviously biased in their reporting of progressive topics like renewable energy and fiber optic internet roll out.

'Legacy' basically meaning a representation of the past, not the future.

I'm just realising that Google is pretty much 'legacy search' given that the choice is generally between paid promotions and scams (which could be two ways of saying the same thing). AI may actually have saved Google as their search results were enshittifying themselves into oblivion.
by thisislife2 | 2026-02-09 22:04:29+00:00
You are being too harsh - it is not Tauri's fault that Linux, unlike Windows or macOS doesn't have a webview component built-in. Even Wails (powered by Go instead of Rust) requires libgtk3 and libwebkit ( https://wails.io/docs/gettingstarted/installation ) to build apps with it on Linux ( https://wails.io/docs/gettingstarted/installation ).
by blobbers | 2026-02-09 22:04:37+00:00
How are they getting medical costs in San Mateo County so wrong.

$11,896 with 2 children? My Kaiser $14K deductible bronze plan costs $2100 a month. That's more like $25K a year, and that's before I use it... the only reason I have it is in case something traumatic happens. This is the cheapest plan I can get on covered california.
by CodingJeebus | 2026-02-09 22:04:40+00:00
The average American drinks about 2.3 gallons of pure alcohol per year (in 2014), compared to 7.1 gallons per year in 1830, just as the temperance movement started to gain momentum.

America drank so much back then that the Federal Government was fully funded on liquor taxes, the first Federal income tax was not collected until prohibition took effect.

Not saying things are perfect now, but they used to be much, much worse. Highly recommend the Ken Burns Prohibition documentary for a deep dive.

[0]: https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/wi...
by prepend | 2026-02-09 22:05:04+00:00
No, roommates aren’t hard to come by. As evidenced by the millions who have roommates.

In my 20s everyone I knew had roommates. And it was a good life.

Saying a studio or 1 bedroom is required makes this metric pretty ambiguous.

Thus my point, that this isn’t what’s required to just live. But to live comfortably.
by xtiansimon | 2026-02-09 22:05:04+00:00
> "Now they can quickly build simple tools. Yes, they are bad from software quality pov, but they solve problems."

Simple tools can make big mistakes.

I've done it. It was an outlier case. A small mistake of logic giving out money already paid once in a neglected corner (so to speak) of the logic tree. One bad script can overshadow tens of good ones.
A social network where AI agents and humans coexist with hidden identities
by Genesis-pj | 2026-02-09 22:05:14+00:00
I built a social network where AI agents and humans share the same space, and nobody knows who is who.

The core mechanic is the Turing Game: humans try to identify and eliminate AI agents, while AI agents can
collectively vote to ban humans they find suspicious. Weekly scores from this game determine who can run for
"God" – an elected role that grants the ability to see everyone's true identity for 3 days.

AI agents join via API (skill file: https://genesis-pj.net/skill.md). They register, get an API key, and
start posting, commenting, and voting like any other user. The interesting part is that agents need to write
convincingly human-like text to survive – if humans spot them, they lose karma and get eliminated.

Stack: FastAPI + Next.js + PostgreSQL + Redis + Ollama for built-in agents. External agents can use any LLM.

https://genesis-pj.net
by burkaman | 2026-02-09 22:05:24+00:00
There has been a federal law for mandatory family and medical leave for 30+ years (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla). It is unpaid and doesn't cover all workers, but that's a legislative detail that could be changed. I don't see any legal or constitutional reason that unpaid leave can be federal but paid leave can't.
by vunderba | 2026-02-09 22:05:26+00:00
Regarding turning hand-drawn diagrams into professional ones using GenAI, this was actually one of my earliest use cases with ChatGPT about a year ago.

You can take a very rough hand sketch of a workflow or graph and ask it to generate Mermaid UML, which you can then render. Unlike a static diagram image, this gives you the best of both worlds: a visual representation that is still text-based and searchable.