MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vladdoster | 2026-02-04 16:13:39+00:00
Location: Nashville, TN
Remote: true
Willing to relocate: boston || nashville
Technologies: Python, Django, IaC, Terraform, Golang, CI/CD, Azure/AWS, {ba,z}sh, Lua, Springboot,
Redis, Docker, Open Service Broker, {,non}relational & vector dbs, shared services, SOA
Email: mvdoster@gmail.com

resume: https://linkedin.vdoster.com && http://github.com/vladdoster

sr. cloud software engineer @ Mastercard (5 years)

Designed and built Platform-as-a-Service for microservice workloads running on Azure and AWS
to migrate on-prem workloads to the cloud. The platform operates globally, allowing teams to
deploy to several Azure-backed regions worldwide. Helped plan and create regional landing zones
in Azure for application teams wanting to perform globally. Designed platform components using
Terraform, Go, and Node; developed support tooling using Bash, Python, and Azure CLI. De-risk the
platform by addressing security vulnerabilities and ensuring the platform is PCI compliant.

api/devops software engineer @ Harvard Medical School (2 years)

Worked as part of the DevOps team to manage a 15k core CentOS HPC cluster. Designed and implemented
Python-based security scanning pipeline to securely deploy & run Apptainer images via SLURM.
Coordinated cross-team emergency patching eﬀorts. Collaborated with researchers and engineers across
3-letter institutions to deliver secure research infrastructure. Built CI/CD Pipelines with GitHub, Jenkins,
to automate code builds, testing, and deployments. Wrote Puppet modules to manage configuration of HPC fleet.
Wrote custom Puppet module & Python scripts to automatically remediate Tenable findings.

full-stack software engineer @ Global Prior Art (3 years)

Used Django, Celery, Selenium grid, and AWS API Gateway for IP rotation to scrape USPTO patent PDFs,
apply CV for data extraction, and generate reports with relevant claims, saving employees 4-5 hours daily.
Wrote E2E black-box/fuzzing unit tests. Automated on-premise deployment via Github Actions and Ansible.

maintainer @ Zinit (5 years)

Develop and maintain a zsh plugin manager on Github with 4k stars. Implemented unit tests,
containerization, bug fixes, and new features.
See: https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/zinit

contributor @ Open-source documentation (5 years)

Contributed hundreds of documentation corrections and enhancements to 400+ open source projects.
by theodric | 2026-02-04 16:13:45+00:00
It's a tidy build, and I guess it's a fun kid's toy. Wood is a baffling choice of material for a (lawn) tractor chassis by someone who clearly owns a welder. Don't start lecturing me about Morgans and ash-- that's a whole different thing, and there's a reason they're basically the only serious company still shipping a wooden vehicle chassis.

I'm a farmer, I know what working vehicles are subjected to over time, and I know that when plywood gets wet, it swells, warps differentially, splits at its layer boundaries, and starts to twist. Tractors are for driving over land that is often at least damp. This is not a recipe for durability.
by bluescrn | 2026-02-04 16:13:46+00:00
Last time I looked, the MK3->MK4 upgrade kit is basically the same price as a complete MK4 kit (very little can be reused. New electronics, motors, extruder)

The upgrade kits are definitely a good thing, going from MK3 to MK3S to MK3.5S was a worthwhile upgrade path and has prolonged the useful life of the printer. But they have their limits.

(And with 3D printing going more mainstream, there's a large segment of the market that has no interest in building printers from kits or stripping down printer to install upgrades - even though some of us find that quite enjoyable)
by kayo_20211030 | 2026-02-04 16:14:01+00:00
How do these managers deploy the code? Is it run locally, or sent to some server?

Excel used to be, and probably still is, the primary competitor to enterprise-developed apps - a lot of businesses run on it. But, that was a locally deployed phenomenon, with an added ability to deploy it somewhere else by simply emailing the workbook to someone else.

In your organization, how do your managers turn their code into working software?
by globular-toast | 2026-02-04 16:14:14+00:00
Curious how AI is giving people the confidence that they can maintain custom software. Is this Dunning-Kruger at work? It gives me great confidence in being able to stand up a new system, but as someone who has maintained software and databases for 5+ years it gives me nightmares about future maintainability.

Companies have always been able to hire software engineers as well. At least that's my impression in the UK. Is this different in other parts? Not enough engineers left after big tech has hired them all?
by ProllyInfamous | 2026-02-04 16:14:17+00:00
Start on the farthest-right column [see chart] — notice how difficult purchasing a house is exponentially becoming, for all modern generations.

Empathy through data.

[chart] <https://i.imgur.com/lMGF4f3.png> has an obvious typographical error but general trend of right-column is true
by gunsle | 2026-02-04 16:14:22+00:00
I can tell you from years of first hand experience, it certainly makes you far dumber. The biggest factor is loss of memory. Most stoners (myself included) have terrible memory. I used to have near photographic memory, where I’d only have to read things once to remember them nearly verbatim for months after. I genuinely wonder at times where I’d be in my life if I had never got sucked into it years ago. I’m doing great despite the problems it’s caused me, but who knows where I’d be without it.
by crazygringo | 2026-02-04 16:14:46+00:00
What forced revisionism?

Things like hard drives often used decimal/metric sizing from the start. Because their capacity has always been based on physical platter size and density, not powers of two the way memory is.

So this confusion has been with computing since the beginning. The attempt to introduce units like KiB isn't revisionism, it's an attempt at clarity around something that has always been ambiguous.

And obviously, if you need two separate prefixes, you're going to change the one whose unit of measurement differs from all the rest of science and technology.
by 83 | 2026-02-04 16:14:50+00:00
I don't think its unreasonable to ask politicians to be familiar with how the machinery they are regulating functions and is used.

To use your heroin example, this is akin to banning spoons or needles because they heard those are tools of the heroin addict. It shows a lack of understanding on the part of the regulator and has a far reaching effect on people legally using the items.
by Ajedi32 | 2026-02-04 16:15:50+00:00
I'm not talking about the whole idea, just the heat dissipation part. So many people in this thread seem so sure this is impossible because you can't radiate heat in space, completely ignorant to the fact that SpaceX is already dissipating over 20 MW of solar power in LEO in a reasonably cost-effective manner.

The advantage of 24/7 solar power is clear, obvious, and undeniable, it's just a question of whether that's outweighed by the other disadvantages.
by andrewjf | 2026-02-04 16:16:06+00:00
Author argues against strong typing systems and language features to prevent classes of bugs and instead encourages developers to "writing lots of tests" for things that a type system would prevent.

The authors thesis seems to be that it's preferable to rely on the programmer who wrote bugs to write even more bugs in tests in order to have some benefit over a compiler or type system that can prevent these things from happening in the first place?

So obviously it's an opinion and he's entitled to it, but (in my own opinion) it is so so so, on-its-face, just flat out wrong, I'm concerned that that it's creating developers who believe that writing so many tests (that languages and compilers save you time (and bugs) in writing) is a valid solution to preventing null pointer defeferences.
Show HN: Implementation of Google's PaperBanana (diagram generation from text)
by dippatel1994 | 2026-02-04 16:16:14+00:00
The original authors haven't released code yet, so I built it from the paper. It takes a methodology section as input and generates a publication-style diagram.

The pipeline uses five agents: a retriever selects reference diagrams via in-context learning, a planner drafts the layout, a stylist adjusts for conference aesthetics, a visualizer renders with Gemini, and a critic evaluates and refines over three rounds.

The part that took the most effort was the reference dataset. The paper curates 292 (text, diagram, caption) tuples from 2,000 NeurIPS papers, filtering by aspect ratio and human review. Reproducing that required PDF layout extraction with MinerU, positional heuristics to identify methodology sections (paper headings are wildly inconsistent), and manual verification of each example.

Output quality depends heavily on reference set quality. Requesting community to submit their papers via issues so we can add them. Quality examples in, quality output out!

Runs on Gemini's free tier. Also includes an MCP server if you want to use it from your IDE. https://github.com/llmsresearch/paperbanana
by louiereederson | 2026-02-04 16:16:21+00:00
i don't know this author but ian bremner does this. it's as if he's conveying what he believes are serious and important thoughts in an unserious and casual way, to make it appear as if the thoughts - which again he probably thinks are brilliant - just come quickly and naturally. it comes across as performative though again not making claims against this author. and yes i am not using sentence case here, but this is not an essay.
by RC_ITR | 2026-02-04 16:16:49+00:00
Yeah, I've found AI 'miracle' use-cases like these are most obvious for wealthy people who stopped doing things for themselves at some point.

Typing 'Find me reservations at X restaurant' and getting unformatted text back is way worse than just going to OpenTable and seeing a UI that has been honed for decades.

If your old process was texting a human to do the same thing, I can see how Clawdbot seems like a revolution though.

Same goes for executives who vibecode in-house CRM/ERP/etc. tools.

We all learned the lesson that mass-market IT tools almost always outperform in-house, even with strong in-house development teams, but now that the executive is 'the creator,' there's significantly less scrutiny on things like compatibility and security.

There's plenty real about AI, particularly as it relates to coding and information retrieval, but I'm yet to see an agent actually do something that even remotely feels like the result of deep and savvy reasoning (the precursor to AGI) - including all the examples in this post.
by cf100clunk | 2026-02-04 16:17:11+00:00
> because all the systemd daemons come from the same shop, you get a lot of creature comforts if you use them together. Nothing bad about that.

That's how vendor lock-in works, in which a myth is propagated that having it all come from under one roof is best. In fact, it is a guarantee that best-of-breed alternative solutions cannot be used. Interoperability is thwarted. This is why sensible Unix admins historically knew to keep options open for mixed-vendor sourcing as long as the bosses didn't get roped in to a single vendor or source.
by reaperducer | 2026-02-04 16:17:34+00:00
Android has work profiles

Never ever use your personal phone for work things, and vice versa. It's bad for you and bad for the company you work for in dozens of ways.

Even when I owned my own company, I had separate phones. There's just too much legal liability and chances for things to go wrong when you do that. I'm surprised any company with more than five employees would even allow it.
by dcminter | 2026-02-04 16:17:56+00:00
So honestly I don't quite remember if I encountered this with the Wangs, or if I'm recalling my Dad telling me about it from his experiences.

If the latter then odds are that it was either a machine from Wang and in that case most likely the 2200, or otherwise it will have most probably been equipment associated with the Gamma 10 from De La Rue Bull, or possibly the Ferranti Pegasus - both of which I know he worked with.

Of course, he might have been telling me a third-party anecdote in which case it's possible the IBM Display Station was the machine in question.

That all said, last time I was discussing this with someone they mentioned that the 2200's terminal had a "solenoid" trace on its PCB so it's quite possible that this really was the relevant device. Last time I personally had hands on a live 2200 was about 1993 though, so I really can't be sure.

There's a chap in the Netherlands with a Wang 2200 museum - perhaps I should just write to him and ask :D
by delecti | 2026-02-04 16:18:13+00:00
> including how much they pay their employees

Highlighting that was actually part of my point. What utility does insurance add to justify its existence as a middle man? How are we better off with a middle man taking a cut vs nationalizing the industry? And that 14% is at best, given the other externalities of the existence of insurance and its perverse incentives.

You're saying "how is that worse than other industries", but I'm saying, why is there an industry there at all?
by tialaramex | 2026-02-04 16:18:15+00:00
It probably helps that the worms don't care. That is, a worm whose ancestors lived in dogs can live in a human no problem and vice versa.

If you eradicate GWD in your region but, eh, not in dogs, well people in your region keep getting GWD anyway. But if you eliminate it entirely you're just done. So that's a strong incentive to ensure the latter.

Most drastic options are probably available in the afflicted countries than would be acceptable in many places that haven't had GWD for a hundred years or more. If you tell the population of rural France that military and police are going to start shooting wild animals dead as a disease control measure there will be mass protests. But in South Sudan hey, at least you aren't proposing to shoot all the members of some minority ethnic group.
by mmh0000 | 2026-02-04 16:18:36+00:00
The problem with lights like that is the CRI[1].

Getting just lumens is cheap. Getting a full spectrum of light is where costs increase.

This is the reason I chose to go with the specific Cree bulbs (linked in original post) that get a 90+ CRI rating

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
by eggy | 2026-02-04 16:18:50+00:00
I've been coding since the late 70s (Commodore PET 2001), and I've always paired it with real-world physical work—mechanical engineering, rigging, technical diving, hydraulics, welding, electronics, controls, you name it. Programming was just one of the tools, never the whole job.
What I've learned is that the best thinking almost never happens staring at a screen. It happens when you're away from it: reading something deep, building something with your hands, debugging why the thing you designed doesn't work in reality.
I love the updated saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none—but often better than a master of one." In a world obsessed with hyper-specialization, that range is a real advantage.
What bothers me most is how quickly people—especially younger ones—now reach for a phone the second there's any friction. Forgotten a name? Phone. Stuck on a small logic puzzle? Phone. A group of engineers at the lunch table can't remember an actor and within seconds everyone's just silently googling instead of laughing and piecing it together from their collective memory. Where's the fun in that?
Yeah, you get the answer instantly. But you skip the actual mental workout—and the fun of it. Remembering and reasoning are muscles. Use them or lose them. And honestly, the shared back-and-forth is usually the best part.
by whilenot-dev | 2026-02-04 16:18:52+00:00
> Saying 'this makes enforcement of other laws harder' does not do that. You could use the same reasoning against encryption.

I don't understand how that's the same reasoning at all... Encryption serves ones individual privacy and preserves it against malicious actors. I'd guess that's a fundamental right in most jurisdictions, globally.

We're talking CSAM here and shifting its creation into the virtual world through some GenAI prompts. Just because that content has been created artificially, doesn't make its storage and distribution any more legal.

It isn't some reductionist "this makes enforcement of other laws harder", but it's rather that the illegal distribution of artificially generated content acts as fraudulent obstruction in the prosecution of authentic, highly illegal, content - content with malicious actors and physically affected victims.
by guywithahat | 2026-02-04 16:19:45+00:00
Unless I'm mistaken reading this, it looks like they never set a date and this this is the prior conversation to him trying to invite himself over and being told no. I don't see any plans in this article, just Epstein saying he'll send a heli and then never setting a date or making actual plans. I feel like if there's no evidence he went, Elon denies it, and Elon was a big supporter of releasing the files then it would probably be premature to suggest he went.
by tonio67 | 2026-02-04 16:19:46+00:00
Hey HN — I’m Anthony, building WebCad, a free browser-based CAD tool with AI to speed up the repetitive stuff.

What it is

CAD in the browser (no installs, no GPU workstation)

AI-assisted modeling helpers (fast iterations, repetitive edits, quick starting geometry)

Export STEP (.stp) so you can open the result in SolidWorks / Fusion 360 / Inventor / etc.

Why we made it
A lot of people (students, makers, contractors) don’t have access to “proper” CAD licenses or they’re stuck on locked-down computers. We wanted something you can open anywhere and still get a clean STEP output.

It’s free
We’re currently pushing free access to maximize feedback + user acquisition.

If you try it, I’d love blunt feedback:

What’s the first feature that would make you switch from your current CAD?

What’s the #1 workflow you wish AI handled (constraints, feature patterns, hole/thread rules, etc.)?

Link: https://app.webcad.ca/
by whynotminot | 2026-02-04 16:19:54+00:00
I didn’t say he was the first to abuse powers. Indeed it’s kind of silly to even have to clarify “but other administrations…” because that’s fairly obvious to anyone old enough to have seen more than one president.

But the article is literally referencing the Trump administration seizing a reporter’s phone so the current administration’s overreach seems relevant here.
by hluska | 2026-02-04 16:20:06+00:00
The web had little to do with APA’s decision to adopt one space as the standard. It was desktop fonts in the mid-eighties. Two spaces emerged as a standard when fonts were monospaced - they were a readability hack. When proportional fonts started to be introduced, two spaces began to look visually odd. That oddness was especially apparent in groups of sentences like.

“It’s hard to learn how to spell. It takes practice, patience and a lot of dedication.”

^ In a proportional font the difference in width between ‘ll’ and ‘ ‘ is noticeable. In a monotypes font, two spaces after a period provide a visual cue that that space is different.

I think this is why this all lowercase style of writing pisses me off so much. Readability used to be important enough to create controversy - nobody cares anymore. But, I didn’t care enough to read the whole article so maybe I missed something.
by ExoticPearTree | 2026-02-04 16:20:11+00:00
> It's a real world example of how these security features aren't just for "paranoid people" but serve a legit purpose for people who handle sensitive info.

Because they're in the US things might be easier from a legal standpoint for the journalist, but they also have precedent on forcing journalist to expose their sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branzburg_v._Hayes

In other parts of the world this applies https://xkcd.com/538/ when you don't provide the means to access your phone to the authorities.

It just depends on how much a government wants the data that is stored there.
by jojohack | 2026-02-04 16:20:22+00:00
Thanks for sharing. I went through a similar process recently, manually stitching together fire insurance maps from my hometown. A large part of the business district burned down in 1916, but maps from a couple of years earlier survived. It worked, but it was tedious. This would have saved a lot of time. Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out: https://fire.gorch.com/
by verdverm | 2026-02-04 16:20:47+00:00
the vibe I get is someone who can't put in the effort to make my job reading easier (i.e. hard to find sentence breaks)

It is on a human seeing level, harder to parse. If they don't want to use proper grammar and punctuation, it reflects on their seriousness and how serious I should take their writing (not at all because I'm not going to read difficult to parse text) The same goes for choosing bad fonts or colors that don't contrast enough
by sanderjd | 2026-02-04 16:21:08+00:00
I relate to this. But also, isn't it just that every human endeavor goes through an evolution from craft to commodity, which is sad for the craftsmen but good for everyone else, and that we happen to be the ones living through that for software?

For instance, I think about the pervasive interstate overpass bridge. There was a time long ago when building bridges was a craft. But now I see like ten of these bridges every day, each of which is better - in the sense of how much load they can support and durability and reliability - than the best that those craftsmen of yore could make.

This doesn't mean I'm in any way immune to nostalgia. But I try to keep perspective, that things can be both sad and ultimately good.
by simonw | 2026-02-04 16:21:17+00:00
This demo is really impressive: https://huggingface.co/spaces/mistralai/Voxtral-Mini-Realtim...

Don't be confused if it says "no microphone", the moment you click the record button it will request browser permission and then start working.

I spoke fast and dropped in some jargon and it got it all right - I said this and it transcribed it exactly right, WebAssembly spelling included:

> Can you tell me about RSS and Atom and the role of CSP headers in browser security, especially if you're using WebAssembly?
by rtkwe | 2026-02-04 16:21:18+00:00
Put them in jail until they do or charge them with whatever the local flavor for "obstruction" is. In places where they're allowed by law to require you to give up a password not doing so when the proper steps are taken would usually be it's own crime, usually phrased as some sort of "obstruction" charge with it's own sentence. And that's just places where the law and citizen rights are a meaningful concept in restraining state power.
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-02-04 16:22:15+00:00
So apparently they're going to run a Super Bowl ad about ChatGPT having ads (without saying ChatGPT of course)........ Has doing an ad that focuses only on something about your competitor ever been the best play? Talk about yourself.

Obviously it's a play, honing in on privacy/anti-ad concerns, like a Mozilla type angle, but really it's a huge ad buy just to slag off the competitors. Worth the expense just to drive that narrative?

Ads playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf2m23nhTg1OW258b3XBi...