MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2026-02-18 02:02:40+00:00
>I was wondering which pet issue you were a doomer about. Fertility is the most ridiculous of them all. There is no plausible mechanism by which low fertility rates could lead to extinction,

Most people who think they are clever say this. I don't even doubt that you are, it's that you're lazy and never bothered to think about it. Yes, sub-replacement fertility inevitably leads to extinction and especially so for a species like humanity (given the root causes). If each generation is inevitably smaller than the last, then at some point the only smaller number is zero. And if the rate of fertility decline continues to accelerate, it isn't thousands of years in the future either. Since each youngest generation is raised by the older generations who had low fertility themselves, that youngest generation internalizes it at norm... so population can't plateau and drop no more (which would require the women in that youngest generation to grow up and all decide to have 2.1 children on average).

>Come on, just think about this for a minute. Is your model that we're just going to have fewer children,

In my model, each generation adopts the anthropological norms of western civilization which includes low fertility, but inevitably sets it as their ceiling. They can have fewer than that norm for any reason (bad luck, economic woes, whatever), but they'll never have more. And if they *do* have fewer, they've just set the norm even lower for the subsequent generation. This and dozens of other factors are quite alarming.
by rr808 | 2026-02-18 02:03:31+00:00
Incidentally I saw the Wes McKinney podcast who said that Go was the perfect language now because of the fast compile-run cycle with strong types and built in multi thread safety was perfect for Coding Agents. Gave me a whole new interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VfzDXeQRhU
by mr_toad | 2026-02-18 02:03:51+00:00
> For every dollar over median wealth they should face a 10% wealth tax so that we can fund universal healthcare.

A ten percent wealth tax would put most investment returns into the red. Savings and investment would plummet. Capital would flee the US, interest rates would skyrocket, the US dollar would become worthless, the housing market would collapse. You wouldn’t be able to fund roads, let alone universal healthcare.
by Arainach | 2026-02-18 02:03:54+00:00
It's not inevitable, it's essentially impossible.

There are a few things that can cause tremendously widespread outages, essentially all of them network configuration changes. Actually deleting customer data is dramatically more difficult to the point of impossible - there are so many different services in so many different locations with so many layers of access control. There is no "one command" that can do such a thing - at the scale of a worldwide network of data centers there is no "rm -rf /".
by saroi235409 | 2026-02-18 02:03:57+00:00
i use social media and have never gotten a shadowban. to the contrary grapheneos actually is very effective against apps like reddit shadowbanning you - if you get banned outright on reddit, for example, you can create a new profile in private space and reddit will not be able to detect that you're ban evading.

if you get banned from the profile u use in the app in private space, again, if you just delete private space and recreate it, download the reddit app again, it will be unable to detect that you're evading the ban. i previously tried doing this on other os's and reddit detected the ban evasion.

don't ask me how i know.
(just correcting this misinfo)
by simonstaton | 2026-02-18 02:04:06+00:00
OP here. I built this because I kept seeing people hacking together Claude swarms on local Mac Minis, but they're fragile. For example if the process dies the swarm state dies with it.

I wanted a production grade orchestration which survives restarts. It’s designed to be cloud-agnostic so you don't need dedicated local hardware to run persistent multi-agent workflows and a benefit of this is its accessible anywhere. I've also given my own version of this access to its GCP project/services and its GitHub and its now creating its own improvements.

Happy to answer questions!
by nprz | 2026-02-18 02:04:39+00:00
Honestly you could just come up with a basic wireframe in any design software (MS paint would work) and a screen shot of a website with a design you like and tell it "apply the aesthetic from the website in this screenshot to the wireframe" and it would probably get 80% (probably more) of the way there. Something that would have taken me more than a day in the past.
by OhMeadhbh | 2026-02-18 02:04:43+00:00
I worked at RSADSI when I was a kid and supported the custom spin of TIPEM Hayden and Sophia used at Verisign. This brings back some very bad memories.

But... hopefully... people created overlapping windows of cert validity so there's always a valid cert available for their services and can tolerate the CA being out of action for 8(?) hours. Imagine if your TGS/Kerberos or AWS IAM IdP was down for 8 hours.
by Noumenon72 | 2026-02-18 02:04:50+00:00
What is their claim about latency here?

> Our vehicle-to-RA connection is also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way latency is approximately 150 milliseconds for U.S. based operations centers and 250 milliseconds for RA based abroad.

That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds?
Show HN: Auto-organize – Clean up messy folders with a single npx command
by chris-corner | 2026-02-18 02:05:53+00:00
I created this because my Downloads folder was a graveyard of mixed images, PDFs, and audio files. I wanted a way to fix it without doing manual tasks.

How it works:

- It’s a CLI tool built with Node.js. You just navigate to any cluttered directory and run 'npx auto-organize'. It analyzes file extensions and groups them into "thematic" folders (e.g., .png and .jpg go into "Images").

Key Features:

- Zero Permanent Install: You can use 'npx auto-organize' for one-time cleanups or 'npm install -g auto-organize' for frequent use.

- Safe Moving: It doesn’t delete or rename anything, just moves files. It also detects and prevents overwriting files with the same name.

- Flexible: It includes flags like --only to target specific formats or --exclude to skip certain files.

- Smart Folders: It reuses existing directories instead of creating duplicates.

Tech Stack:

- Plain JavaScript (Node.js) with only two UI dependencies: 'Chalk' for terminal colors and 'Ora' for the spinner animation.

Future Idea:

- I’m thinking about allowing users to define their own category mappings (e.g., specific extensions for specific folder names).

Feedback, suggestions or contributions for improvement are very welcome.

- Repo (Open Source): https://github.com/ChristianRincon/auto-organize

- npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/auto-organize
by fuzzfactor | 2026-02-18 02:06:13+00:00
Looks like progress is being made in this area.

Lots of these VOCs detected are industrial chemicals too.

But I was disappointed there was not even one spectrogram in the paper, with all the data they collected.

For the human test subjects they used "analysis by gas chromatography and time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-qToFMS)."

That's some sophisticated gear.

For the mice, it's a different rig:

>breath from all mice was characterized using two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC)-MS

Actually these GCxGC instruments can accomplish more challenging separations in some ways but are less traditional and even more complex, with fewer qualified operators.

The code & data appears to be available, with spectrograms at https://massive.ucsd.edu/ProteoSAFe/static/massive.jsp but you have to have an account with the university to look at the files, plus in their standard raw format you need similar instrument software in your lab or workstation to open the files properly, which Windows nor Linux won't even try otherwise. Oh, well I was hoping to take a look.

Now here's a related paper (no human subjects though) which better depicts other researchers' complex system of sampling, and there is an example GC-spectrogram (Figure 3) from their GC-MS using this next instrumentation:

>The separated compounds were detected and identified by tof-MS (Bench TOF-dx, Alsmco International, Llantrisant, Wales, UK) using electron ionization at 70 eV with 5 Hz scanning rate and a mass range of m/z 36–350.

The rest of this raw data, like the example is from, is basically even less accessible without special request, nothing like UCSD which should be turnkey for authorized researchers.
by daseiner1 | 2026-02-18 02:06:38+00:00
duh. why is this always phrased as if the populace is unaccountable for the very existence of these elites? why is it always assumed that these unaccountable elites are better held in check by the farce of democracy than a proud genuine elite in place of the ignoble “””elite”””?

the people get what they deserve. if democracy was a functional system of government then by its own underlying assumptions the citizenry right now would be shooting, bombing, & stabbing these so-called elites. But we are held in subjugation as a result of our own fealty. It is a choice.
by dakolli | 2026-02-18 02:06:45+00:00
I'm speaking about the vast majority of people, who yes, build the same things. Look at any HN post over the last 6 months and you'll see everyone sharing clones of the same product.

Yes some ideas or novel, I would argue that LLMs destroy or atrophy the creative muscle in people, much like how GPS powered apps destroyed people's mental navigation "muscles".

I would also argue that very few unique valuable "things" built by people ever had people saying "Why would you build that". Unless we're talking about paradigm shifting products that are hard for people to imagine, like a vacuum cleaner in the 1800s. But guess what, llms aren't going to help you build those things.. They can create shitty images, clones of SaaS products that have been built 50x over, and all around encourage people to be mediocre and destroy their creativity as their brains atrophy from their use.
by tehjoker | 2026-02-18 02:06:46+00:00
There is probably a threshold effect above which the technology begins to be very useful for production (other than faking school assignments, one-off-scripts, spam, language translation, and political propaganda), but I guess we're not there yet. I'm not counting out the possibility of researchers finding a way to add long term memory or stronger reasoning abilities, which would change the game in a very disorienting way, but that would likely mean a change of architecture or a very capable hybrid tool.
by Insanity | 2026-02-18 02:07:29+00:00
I tried Obsidian to build a “second brain”. But eventually just reverted back to notes on my iPad (handwritten) and Vim (markdown) for typed notes.

I actually think Obsidian is a great tool, but I just need something as low friction as possible to quickly jolt something down. Vim and Goodnotes does the trick for me.
by pkulak | 2026-02-18 02:07:34+00:00
> Should Tim Apple come to your desk personally every morning and ask which MacOS defaults it would suit you to remove?

> rather than becoming an irrationally defensive ball of spittle and venom

Dude, maybe take your own advice?

I was possibly being too subtle, but my POINT is that MacOS has turned into a nanny state OS that is not suitable for professional use. You can't install packages that aren't from the App Store without jumping through hoops. And Gods help you if they aren't signed with a key blessed by Time Apple. You can't even use a terminal without granting is special permission. AGAIN, straw that broke the camel's back. You keep focusing on the straw and not the back of the poor camel.
by AlotOfReading | 2026-02-18 02:07:58+00:00
Autopilot in planes is much closer to cruise control than it is to a Waymo. This is of course the purported rationale behind Tesla's use of the name for their L2 feature. Both require a human operator available and monitoring at all times.

The aeronautic equivalent of Waymo is a fully autonomous UAV. A human might be needed to set high-level goals, but all of the actual flying/driving is done by the machine.
by mark_l_watson | 2026-02-18 02:08:05+00:00
I agree that John Allen’s book was incredibly useful 40 years ago to explain some of the nitty-gritty of implementing Lisp languages, but I can’t really recommend it today. The Genius of Lisp is fun and entertaining - something that I would recommend for the modern reader who wants material on the essence of Lisp languages with interesting history.

Adding it to the bibliography would be great, I just didn’t like the idea of someone seeing your comment, ordering a used copy of the very old Allen book and not enjoying it.
by trimethylpurine | 2026-02-18 02:09:48+00:00
The job of a coder has far from become obsolete, as you're saying. It's definitely changed to almost entirely just code review though.

With Opus 4.6 I'm seeing that it copies my code style, which makes code review incredibly easy, too.

At this point, I've come around to seeing that writing code is really just for education so that you can learn the gotchas of architecture and support. And maybe just to set up the beginnings of an app, so that the LLM can mimic something that makes sense to you, for easy reading.

And all that does mean fewer jobs, to me. Two guys instead of six or more.

All that said, there's still plenty to do in infrastructure and distributed systems, optimizations, network engineering, etc. For now, anyway.
by dzink | 2026-02-18 02:10:08+00:00
I grew up in that world. People making 150 per month would have kids carrying 600 phones just to put something on the table. In eastern europe, an adidas track suit seemed like Armani, when advertising just started after the fall of communism and people thought that made them feel sophisticated for wearing western brands. When you can’t brag with an expensive house or car, you brag with expensive accessories on yourself (gold chains, phones, watches).

It’s no different than a national geographic video where the loudest frog signals it can be bold enough to broadcast its location, even though it can be eaten. Wearing gold chains and bragging you have crypto is akin to yelling “come and rob me” in a less safe world.

The reality is that status is just a way to “encourage/compel” voluntary submission of services from other people, who may think they will benefit from your status rubbing on them in some way.

Strangers don’t support you for what you do, but for what you can do for them in the future.
by oceliker | 2026-02-18 02:10:10+00:00
I think anyone who goes for a drive in Los Angeles can attest that there are way mo than 70 cars active at any point. It's not unusual to see multiple Waymos at intersections.

Also, the average speed is way less than 25 mph, considering it may take 30 minutes to go 3-4 miles in city traffic.
by zachlatta | 2026-02-18 02:10:27+00:00
Watsi is an incredible organization doing incredible work.

Chase and Grace are both incredible people.

When I was 15 and first starting Hack Club, I went to Startup School 2013 and watched Chase’s talk. It was the first time I had ever seen a startup founder who was starting a nonprofit instead of a for-profit. Afterwards he showed me the kindness of speaking with me.

Later as the years went on, both of them always replied to emails and gave great advice.

Many nonprofit founders understandably feel very protective of their experience and relationships because nonprofits can be zero-sum in a way that for-profits aren’t, but Chase and Grace are two of the most generous people you’ll ever meet.

Thank you for starting an incredible organization and being such an inspiration.
by Aachen | 2026-02-18 02:10:44+00:00
That depends on (1) which one you pick and (2) whether you keep the stock OS

Given that there exist vendors like Fairphone/Murena that sell lower-performant hardware at much lower price points, it seems to me that the expensive but decent hardware (like Google's flagship) might be priced appropriately as well

Other competitors (that do track you, like Samsung) have similar price points for their high-end hardware and are again much cheaper for slower hardware. If selling data is so essential, they wouldn't allow removing the tracking. (Samsung may be a bad example because they removed it last summer, but root popularity has been diminishing since early android days anyway so I can't imagine it's a big factor for them)
by russellbeattie | 2026-02-18 02:11:19+00:00
When a clip of this first came up on my social media, I thought it was pure AI, and didn't give it a second's thought. It wasn't until it kept on appearing that I realized it was actual real video.

I'm flabbergasted. I had no idea that robotic movement had gotten so incredibly agile. I've seen some Boston Robotics videos and thought that was pretty much the cutting edge.

The Chinese robots are astounding - they're so fluid! Also, the synchronization shows how precisely controlled they are. Crazy cool.
by xmprt | 2026-02-18 02:11:59+00:00
I think this can be fixed more generally by biasing towards newer data in model outputs and putting more weight on authoritative sources rather than treating all data the same. So no one needs to go in and specifically single out Go code but will instead look at new examples which use features like generics from sources like Google who would follow best/better practices than the rest of the codebase.
by chaos_emergent | 2026-02-18 02:12:02+00:00
100% All of the people who are floored by AI capabilities right now are software engineers, and everyone who's extremely skeptical basically has any other office job. On investigating their primary AI interaction surface, it's Microsoft Co-Pilot, which has to be the absolute shittiest implementation of any AI system so far. As a progress-driven person, it's just super disappointing to see how few people are benefiting from the productive gains of these systems.
by resonious | 2026-02-18 02:12:30+00:00
The stuff he says in [1] completely does not match my usage. I absolutely do use fork and star. I use release. I use the homepage link, and read the short description.

I'm also quite used to the GitHub layout and so have a very easy time using Codeberg and such.

I am definitely willing to believe that there are better ways to do this stuff, but it'll be hard to attract detractors if it causes friction, and unfamiliarity causes friction.
by shadowgovt | 2026-02-18 02:12:54+00:00
Interestingly, the round-trip latency from the West Coast to continental Asia isn't nearly as long as I'd assumed (60ms to 250ms, depending on who's measuring).

Not nearly fast enough for real-time highway remote operation IMHO, but surprisingly fast. That's what I get for underestimating how fast light and electric fields can go.
by shimman | 2026-02-18 02:12:58+00:00
Most of this has to do with GitHub relying on a benefactor with a de facto monopoly in order to subsidize their massive business failures and loses. I'm sure if GitLab never IPO'd and was in bed with a trillion dollar corporation the situation might be more comparable.

All you're doing is making a profound argument why GitHub should be divested from Github, WhatsApp from Meta, or AWS from Amazon. It's clear many tech companies would not be in dominant positions without the massive advantage of their respective monopolies.

These companies need to be broken up radically and it needs to happen soon.
by latchup | 2026-02-18 02:13:04+00:00
> If employment is violence, we should end it. But then almost everybody would die.

You need to try out for the jumping to conclusions olympics team, that was an impressive leap there!

Jokes aside, we can absolutely reject the basis of our current economic system on the basis that it is cruel and violent and replace it with something better, and it would be far from the first time we did that. By your logic, the end of feudalism or the abolishment of slavery should have killed entire countries...

And I doubt you are about to explain to us that slavery is not violence (that's one of those ultra-libertarian thoughts of yours you probably shouldn't randomly blurt out).
by reitzensteinm | 2026-02-18 02:13:17+00:00
Sure. I'll bet you that in calendar year 2028 Waymo has more paid passenger trips than Tesla. Loser donates $1k USD to Doctors Without Borders.

I'm not a camera only doomer, and expect that in ten years Waymo will also not use Lidar, or that the units will be incredibly cheap and well integrated.

But I think the pro Tesla camp is exaggerating how quickly the march of 9s will happen for them, and underestimating and how quickly Waymo will expand in the next few years.
by zozbot234 | 2026-02-18 02:14:23+00:00
These bots are just as human as any piece of human-made art, or any human-made monument. You wouldn't desecrate any of those things, we hold that to be morally wrong because they're a symbol of humanity at its best - so why act like these AIs wouldn't deserve a comparable status given how they can faithfully embody humans' normative values even at their most complex, talk to humans in their own language and socially relate to humans?
by block_dagger | 2026-02-18 02:14:27+00:00
I'm not so quick to label him an asshole. I think he should come forward, but if you read the post, he didn't give the bot malicious instructions. He was trying to contribute to science. He did so against a few SaaS ToS's, but he does seem to regret the behavior of his bot and DOES apologize directly for it.
by BashiBazouk | 2026-02-18 02:14:41+00:00
I took 101 at San Jose State and had to participate in a study as part of the curriculum. It was pretty cool. I went to the NASA Ames research center and did a study of seeing how well people could predict an object being exactly on the side of them. It was small spheres that came at you then went out of view and you clicked a butten when you thought they were exactly on your side. The tech was the most interesting, 90's era VR run on a Silicon Graphics reality engine. We has Iris boxes in the computer art lab but this thing was a much bigger...
by RF_Enthusiast | 2026-02-18 02:14:52+00:00
Even with a smaller pool of listeners compared to 10 years ago, there are still a lot of people listening to FM.

Within your coverage area, you’re one of maybe 60 stations. That’s far better than being one out of 150,000 discoverable internet radio stations.

When you get on the air, be sure to set up RadioDNS and DTS Autostage, with service following, and Amazon Radio Skills Kit. They are great tools for converting on-air listeners into “captured” online listeners.
by gruez | 2026-02-18 02:15:16+00:00
>That's still not fast enough for remote control, but are they implying they only send the RAs screenshots, since sending video would take seconds, not milliseconds?

Their earlier blog post has screenshots (?) of the UI that the "fleet response" people have access to. It seems to be a video feed combined with yes/no questions, along with some top-down UI to direct where the vehicle should go.

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response