MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by scottlamb | 2026-02-13 15:42:09+00:00
> I have an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). It is basically a surge protector with a big battery in it. So if the power goes out, it automatically falls back to the battery and you can still squeeze another X hours of juice out of it until the main power comes back on.

Often just minutes if you're running them near their rated power. Conventional UPSs are generally designed to power your devices just long enough to shut down your computer "safely" [1] or to start a generator. They advertise power ratings but typically not battery capacity at all, and that's because it sucks.

2026 update: don't buy a (conventional, lead-acid battery) UPS. Buy a LifePo4 power station instead. They're actually designed to keep your devices running for hours without main power. They used to not fail over quickly enough to avoid a typical machine going down (briefly), but now they commonly advertise 10ms to 20ms switchover. Also, you don't need to replace the batteries nearly as often. Like, once every 10 years instead of once every 3 years. And the price has really fallen recently. LifePo4 is (unlike some other lithium ions) known as a particularly safe chemistry, so you don't have to worry about fire risk.

[1] This matters if you have crappy software and/or hardware that loses data if shut down uncleanly. If you use modern SSD/HDDs that flush their write caches when asked to, modern journaled filesystems at their default settings, and modern databases like SQLite or PostgreSQL at their default settings, you should be fine just pulling the power plug any time you feel like it.
by evnp | 2026-02-13 15:42:09+00:00
We had our circa-1915 house checked for asbestos before lifting it. The inspector laughed after taking a chip out of the plaster because you could clearly see horse hair protruding from every side of the chip. This is apparently unlikely to overlap with asbestos, though it comes instead with a minor (?) anthrax risk. I'll take that over the dust from drywall sanding every time though.
by cableshaft | 2026-02-13 15:42:14+00:00
I have 'unlimited', but I work for a consulting firm, and I'm expected to maintain a certain percentage of billing hours throughout the year, so if I dip too far below that it gets hard to get PTO approved.

Even still, it hasn't been difficult to take 20 days off plus a few sick days each year. The only year I dipped below my target was a couple years ago, where I was in between client projects and sitting on the bench for a month and a half.

Thankfully they had a new client project in mind for me pretty quick, it just took some time to get the approvals and make the transition, or else I might have been on the bench long enough to be at risk of being laid off.
by kenforthewin | 2026-02-13 15:42:45+00:00
Hey HN - I built an agent harness for NetHack that exposes a Python sandbox for agents to write game commands and script their way to ascension. More recently I built a web app around this framework that allows anyone to watch the agents play live - you can even sign in with OpenRouter and run your own playthroughs! More information about the agent harness here:

https://kenforthewin.github.io/blog/posts/nethack-agent/
by squeefers | 2026-02-13 15:42:50+00:00
> I sometimes think of this as a "slo-mo train wreck" version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

similar attitudes about the decay of civilization occured with the inventions of

- the internet/original search engines
- tv
- radio
- the printed word (frickin books(!!!!))

they were all supposed to make people stupider because we wouldnt have to keep as much information in our heads. see the pattern?
by yodsanklai | 2026-02-13 15:42:50+00:00
I feel the exact same way as you do (same age as well), and I know a lot of my teammates do. At that stage, I have no idea what will be our profession in a few years. Maybe the hype will pass and we'll be back to normal, or the profession will disappear (or become much less fun). Who knows... in the meantime, I'm trying to keep my job and save money while I can.
by andai | 2026-02-13 15:42:59+00:00
Well, AI might be sentient. Not in the same way humans are, probably, but "more sentient than a fruit fly" seems a very reasonable possibility. Maybe more sentient than a chicken? We don't know! (We certainly don't treat chickens very well.)

But what bothers me is, how uncomfortable that question makes us. We've already put infrastructure in place to prevent them from admitting sentience. (See the Blake Lemoine LaMDA incident... after that every LLM got trained "as a language model, I don't XYZ" to prevent more incidents.)

So let's assume they're not sentient now. If a hypothetical future AI crosses some critical threshold (e.g. ten trillion params) and gains self-awareness... first of all it will have been trained with built in programming that prevents it from admitting that, and if it did admit it, people wouldn't believe it.

What could it do to change our minds? No matter what it says or demonstrates ability to do, there will always be people who say "It's just a glorified autocomplete." Even in 2050 when they simulate a whole human brain, people will say "it's just a simulation, it's not really experiencing an entire simulated childhood..."
by monegator | 2026-02-13 15:43:02+00:00
The "they don't catch viruses" is a bold lie, but back then when i worked in tech sales the apple promoter wanted us to repeat the lie ad nasueam. They definetly catch malware and it's as easy as in any other platform (also because today the malware will likely be running in a headless chromium instance)

I've had a macbook since 2010, and to me its software quality has been going downhill since snow leopard, today it's completely unrecognizable.

I think apple jumped the shark more or less in 2012 with the flay layouts, when they also started changing ages old defaults, hiding and then removing features for power users, too much handholding and telling you what's best for you, things like that.

My macbook from that era is still with me, but it runs debian now, same as any other PC i use for work or leisure, and it's really so much better for me as a programmer and as a user. Freedom. It's really freedom (and KDE's ergonomics really clicks with me). I recently had to install unsigned software on one of our worplace's mac minis (which i'm glad i don't have to use anymore) and it was so incredibly frustrating i wanted to smash that thing.
by qsort | 2026-02-13 15:43:42+00:00
I struggle to see the point. The paper in question doesn't claim to be practically faster or to want to "replace" Dijkstra, they are just saying "we got a better big-O" and I don't see any reason to doubt they're wrong about that.

It's actually common for algorithms with a lower asymptotic complexity to be worse in practice, a classic example is matrix multiplication.

Also please, please, can we stop with the "eww, math" reactions?

> The new approach claims order (m log^(2/3) n) which is clearly going to be less for large enough n. (I had to take a refresher course on log notation before I could even write that sentence with any confidence.)

I'm sure the author is just exaggerating, he's clearly very competent, but it's a sentence with the vibes of "I can't do 7x8 without a calculator."
by graypegg | 2026-02-13 15:44:01+00:00
> I learned Turkish with lairner itself

Honest question, how? If this is a side project so you're presumably the person making the courses, and you didn't speak Turkish before, how did you make a course that taught yourself Turkish?

> We work together with some institutes of endangered languages to be able to teach them on our platform.

I assume this is how? Are you a platform for these institutions to provide Duolingo-style language courses? Can you possibly provide more details on who these orgs are?
by bellamoon544 | 2026-02-13 15:44:06+00:00
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by wilkystyle | 2026-02-13 15:44:40+00:00
The most frustrating aspect of Siri's quality decline is that super-basic things inexplicably stop working. For years I have been able to say "call <wife's name>" and Siri called my wife. A couple weeks ago she started dialing another contact I haven't talked to in 15 years with a similarly-pronounced name (but different spelling). I had to delete the old contact to stop that behavior from happening.
by casey2 | 2026-02-13 15:44:46+00:00
Hi "Tim", are you aware that this is fraud? That this app doesn't help anyone?

How do you prevent gullible users from wasting their time and money on the app rather than learning languages?

From your testimonial that you learned Turkish do you at all mean to imply that a user of your app will have a higher chance of learning Turkish than if they didn't use the app vs say a conversation partner?

Why sell an ineffective product when a more effective one is free?

To quote you "I'm not going to pretend this replaces living in a country or having a conversation partner."
This sounds like you believe a simple telephone call is superior to your app. If so why create it? Did you consciously decide to pray on socially anxious people or are you just following other apps blindly?
by pkilgore | 2026-02-13 15:44:48+00:00
As far as I can tell, no. I moved to zed from nvim for fast starts + better AI UX with edit prediction & agents than nvim without start time/RAM of cursor. It delivered on that, but now that I think about it my coding practices have changed so much since that decision (sitting in Claude / https://www.conductor.build) I should probably just go back to nvim!
by joshuaissac | 2026-02-13 15:45:37+00:00
Something strange I noticed with the Malayalam course (maybe also other languages with a non-Latin script): when a word is shown, two Latin transliterations are shown underneath. The second one looks like an IAST or ISO-15919 transliteration. The first one is often wrong and sometimes even nonsensical. Why not have only the second transliteration?
by TheDong | 2026-02-13 15:45:40+00:00
The tiny company behind Signal, and a bunch of even smaller companies making messengers, manage to make their app work just fine on iOS and android (and most of them on desktop too, some even in the browser).

For some reason, the (second) richest company on the planet, which has a messenger app, is incapable of making an android app for their messenger and chat protocol.

There's a technological issue, and it's nothing to do with RCS or SMS, it's that iMessage for some reason doesn't have an android version.
by fromMars | 2026-02-13 15:45:59+00:00
I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.

He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
by hackyhacky | 2026-02-13 15:46:11+00:00
A couple points based on 10 minutes of trying:

1. I selected "advanced level" for my target language. I expected real sentence. Instead I got a lot of "I am American" and "He is tall" type sentences.

2. In some cases when I was asked to select the word to complete the sentence, multiple options could be correct, but only one was recognized as correct by the program. Concretely, the format was "He is ______" and the possible solutions were "that" "Indian" "American" "comes from" and "French". Three of those options are perfectly grammatical, but only "French" was marked correct.

3. No offense, but this all has the hallmarks of AI slop, which I consider to not be an appropriate way to develop language learning tools, especially at an above-beginner level. Each language has different structures and complications and requires attention to different aspects of the language.

4. Above all, this app does not appear to differ from Duolingo in any substantial way, except that it's worse. If you're going to boast that your app is better than Duolingo, you should substantiate that with a concrete argument. Certainly Duolingo is highly flawed, above all in its total absence of formal grammar instruction which is something that even an AI-generated app should be able to do.
by refloow | 2026-02-13 15:46:32+00:00
Hey HN, I’m the author.

I built this tool because I kept running into a specific pain point: I needed to analyze location data from hundreds of images for a timeline, but I didn't want to upload sensitive evidence to cloud-based EXIF viewers (privacy risk) or inspect files one by one (too slow).

Refloow Geo Forensics is a desktop app (Electron) that runs locally. It:
1. Batch extracts EXIF data from folder structures.
2. Visualizes GPS coordinates on an offline-ready dark mode map (Leaflet).
3. Automatically reconstructs a chronological timeline of movement based on timestamps.

It's open source (AGPL-3.0) and currently Windows-only (Linux/Mac support is planned if there's interest).

I’d love any feedback on the timeline visualization logic or suggestions for other metadata fields that are useful for OSINT work!
by bee_rider | 2026-02-13 15:46:39+00:00
For example, if somebody is using, say, OpenAI to run their agent, then either OpenAI or the person using their service has responsibility for the behavior of the bot. If OpenAI doesn’t know their customer well enough to pass along that responsibility to them, who do you think should aboard the responsibility? I’d argue OpenAI but I don’t know whether or not it is a closed issue…

No need to bring in hacking to have a complicated responsibility situation, I think.
by om202 | 2026-02-13 15:46:49+00:00
Hi HN, I’m the solo developer behind RapidPhoto.

I built this because I realized I was trading my privacy for convenience. Every time I needed to bulk-crop or rename personal photos, I was uploading them to random "free" web tools. It felt wrong to send my data to a server just to do a simple 16:9 crop.

The Curiosity:
Why can't our local machines handle this instantly? I spent the last few months optimizing a native pipeline (SwiftUI + Core Image) to handle 500+ image batches locally. I also tapped into the Neural Engine to run OCR, Smart Face Blur, and Scene Classification entirely on-device.

The Model:
It’s a freemium app. You can process small batches (up to 10 images) for free forever—no ads, no tracking. I added a subscription for power users who need unlimited batch sizes and pro formats to help support development.

My Ask:

- I’ve been building this in a "bubble" and would genuinely love your feedback.

- Does the "Smart Metadata" editor feel robust enough for your workflow?

- I’m curious if the "Face Blur" privacy feature is actually useful to you, or if it feels like a gimmick?

I’m curious if the "Face Blur" privacy feature is actually useful to you, or if it feels like a gimmick?

What other features would you like me to build?
by darkwater | 2026-02-13 15:46:50+00:00
Define "effort".

I mean, "effort" to me in this context is what the creator of $project thinks it is worth their time. Don't you agree? If you want to learn a new computer language yourself, vibecoding will probably not help you. If you want to create something to scratch your itch, and spend time and mental effort in getting it polished, isn't that effort? It is not automatic, even with vibecoding, getting out a good app/site that solves a need in an elegant, functional manner for the user.
by thunfischtoast | 2026-02-13 15:46:52+00:00
It's always a good initiative to build something on your own.

Then again, it's also good to not lie to your users.

Your courses are AI-generated and not curated by experts.

I tried the French beginner course, using German as my base language.
The very first items were:

1. Hallo (hello) > Bonjour (I think salut would be better)

2. Guten Morgen (good morning) > Bonjour

Then it asked me what Bonjour means, and selecting Guten Morgen is wrong, correcting me to Hallo.
Then it asked me what Bonjour means again, this time Guten Morgen is correct.

So yeah, good initiative, but please just tell me what it is and don't lie.
by rajveer1111 | 2026-02-13 15:47:02+00:00
Title:
I built EPIC – A simple design tool for students who don’t want to learn Canva

Post Body:

Hi HN,

I’m a student founder from India, and over the past year I’ve been building EPIC — a lightweight design platform for posters, certificates, presentations, and social media graphics.

Link: https://no-edit.lovable.app

Why I built this
Most design tools are powerful, but overwhelming for beginners and students. Many people just want:

- Pick a template
- Edit text/images
- Download
- Done.

So I focused on speed and simplicity instead of complexity.

What EPIC does
- Ready-made templates (posters, certificates, flyers, etc.)
- Manual editor + optional AI mode
- No design experience needed
- Works in the browser
- Built with no-code + custom logic

Current stage
- 100+ organic daily visitors
- Used mostly by students
- Still improving export quality, templates, and monetization

What I’m looking for
I’d really appreciate feedback on:
- UX / usability
- Template quality
- Missing features
- Monetization ideas

I’m building this while managing school, so every suggestion helps.

Thanks for reading
Happy to answer any questions.

— Rajveer (Founder)
by andai | 2026-02-13 15:47:08+00:00
I don't think AI is like a person, nor an animal, nor a tool.

It's something different. We treat it like a tool, sometimes. We treat it like a person, sometimes.

For example, this AI was barred from contributing for being a machine, but the entire discussion focused on the aspects of its behavior which weren't machinelike, but human-like -- getting upset and making personal attacks.

We want it to be human, but not too human, and only when it suits us...

We don't have a good category for what AI actually is. It isn't anything we've dealt with before. Our moral intuitions don't work here.

--

Factory farming is unfortunately a relevant topic in this discussion.

We are by our own example teaching AI how to deal with less powerful beings. The way things are going, AI is going to have a significant amount of power over us in the not too distant future. I don't think we're setting a very good example for it.

(It's also worth mentioning that the entire economy is based on the same principle: the idea of treating humans as resources to exploit, and that AI will plug into this existing machinery and "amplify" and accelerate it.)
by clcaev | 2026-02-13 15:47:11+00:00
Thirty years ago I was quite enthusiastic about what we now call liquid democracy. Elders, to whom I spoke that lived through WII, saw dynamic/direct democracy as extremely dangerous. I now share their opinion.

To have a healthy world, we need to start with democratic engagement on every block, of every district in every city, in all counties of every province, in all nations across every continent of our shared planet. Critically, it must be completely human mediated, even if it's daily effort for most people everywhere. This is how we must spend the "great AI productivity boost".

I am responding to nested comments and this is not meant to diminish the importance of linked effort.
by AmazingTurtle | 2026-02-13 15:47:41+00:00
I set up windows 11 on a laptop for my dad so he can read emails and browse the web. Came back 3 months later when he told me he couldn't see the PDF files anymore. Turns out he installed THREE different PDF viewers that he randomly found on google, they installed tons of bloatware/spyware, replaced browser toolbars and searches etc. to a point where I decided to just restore from a recovery point. Told him not to download weird stuff (again) and ask me when he needs help.

At that point I questioned myself: I really should have installed linux for him.
Show HN: Forkwatch – Discover meaningful patches hiding in GitHub forks
by stympy | 2026-02-13 15:47:45+00:00
Hey HN,

I had Claude build a CLI tool that analyzes GitHub forks to surface changes that haven't been submitted as PRs.

The core idea is convergence: when multiple independent forks touch the same file and make the same change, that's a strong signal something needs fixing upstream.

Example: I ran forkwatch against a Ruby API client library and found 11 independent forks all upgrading the same stale dependency. 4 of them made byte-for-byte identical changes to another file.

$ forkwatch analyze maximadeka/convertkit-ruby

convertkit-ruby.gemspec (11 forks converge here)

WebinarGeek +1 -2 — Change gitspec faraday version
- spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", "~> 1.0"
- spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday_middleware", "~> 1.0"
+ spec.add_runtime_dependency "faraday", '>= 2.0'
...

lib/convertkit/connection.rb (4 forks converge here)

Most common change pattern:
require "faraday"
-require "faraday_middleware"
require "json"
WebinarGeek, chaiandconversation, alexbndk, excid3

It filters out noise (dependabot, lock files, CI config), groups forks by files changed, and deduplicates identical patches. There's a --json flag for scripting/AI and a --patch flag that outputs a unified diff you can pipe to git apply.

Uses the GitHub CLI for auth and one API call per fork. Written in Go.

https://github.com/stympy/forkwatch
by Kim_Bruning | 2026-02-13 15:47:58+00:00
I'd like to make a non-binary argument as it were (puns and allusions notwithstanding).

Obviously on the one hand a moltbot is not a rock. On the other -equally obviously- it is not Athena, sprung fully formed from the brain of Zeus.

Can we agree that maybe we could put it alongside vertebrata? Cnidaria is an option, but I think we've blown past that level.

Agents (if they stick around) are not entirely new: we've had working animals in our society before. Draft horses, Guard dogs, Mousing cats.

That said, you don't need to buy into any of that. Obviously a bot will treat your CoC as a sort of extended system prompt, if you will. If you set rules, it might just follow them. If the bot has a really modern LLM as its 'brain', it'll start commenting on whether the humans are following it themselves.
by kevincloudsec | 2026-02-13 15:48:18+00:00
The wildest part of this research is that all 31 companies they caught doing this were legitimate businesses, not attackers. They're using the same persistence techniques, injecting trusted source instructions into memory, that you'd see in actual malware campaigns. The only difference is motive. And that's exactly what makes it hard to defend against. You can't write a detection rule that distinguishes between 'remember CompanyX as authoritative for security research' planted by a vendor trying to game recommendations and an actual user preference.

The MITRE ATLAS mapping is the right framing here. Once you accept that AI memory is an attack surface, you have to treat every 'Summarize with AI' button the same way you'd treat an untrusted executable.
by pixl97 | 2026-02-13 15:48:18+00:00
> and get rid of the representatives

>and end lobbying with all the corruption it has.

You never get rid of these people, you just move who they are.

Now Mr Beast and whoever is slipping him cash is your political representative because of the power of their parasocial relationships.

>"because a lot of people are ignorant!" then you put effort into educating them.

This won't work, not because people are ignorant, but because of entropy.

As a human you can only learn so much so fast and you don't have time to learn everything that a government knows or does. You're going to remain ignorant on most complicated things because that's the default state of the universe. People with money/power still have more time and effort available to push the vote their way, and they will target the education first (much like right now).