MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pwdisswordfishs | 2026-02-08 21:10:41+00:00
> The real problem are reputation-farmers. They open hundreds of low-effort PRs on GitHub in the hope that some of them get merged. This will increase the reputation of their accounts, which they hope will help them stand out when applying for a job. So the solution would be for GitHub to implement a system to punish bad PRs.

GitHub customers really are willing to do anything besides coming to terms with the reality confronting them: that it might be GitHub (and the GitHub community/userbase) that's the problem.

To the point that they'll wax openly about the whole reason to stay with GitHub over modern alternatives is because of the community, and then turn around and implement and/or ally themselves with stuff like Vouch: A Contributor Management System explicitly designed to keep the unwashed masses away.

Just set up a Bugzilla instance and a cgit frontend to a push-over-ssh server already, geez.
by BiteCode_dev | 2026-02-08 21:10:53+00:00
Under the EU’s GDPR, any processing of personal data (name, contact, identifiers, etc.) generally requires a legal basis (e.g., consent, legitimate interest, contractual necessity), clear purpose, minimal data, and appropriate protection. Doing so without a lawful basis is unlawful.

It is not a cookie banner law. The american seems to keep forgetting that it's about personal data, consent, and the ability to take it down. The sharing of said data is particularly restricted.

And of course, this applies to black list, including for fraud.

Regulators have enforced this in practice. For example in the Netherlands, the tax authority was fined for operating a “fraud blacklist” without a statutory basis, i.e., illegal processing under GDPR: https://www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/current/tax-adm...

The fact is many such lists exist without being punished. Your landlord list for example. That doesn't make it legal, just no shutdown yet.

Because there is no legal basis for it, unless people have committed, again, an illegal act (such as destroying the pub property). Also it's quite difficult to have people accept to be on a black list. And once they are, they can ask for their data to be taken down, which you cannot refuse.
by digiown | 2026-02-08 21:11:01+00:00
Corporate interests HATE general purpose computing, and the freedom to run what you want. With that freedom, you can hurt their interests by blocking ads, stripping out spyware, or avoiding giving up your privacy, and they can't let you have that.

It's a death by thousand cuts that's finally starting to come together:

- Remote attestation like Play "integrity"

- Hardware backed DRM like Widevine

- No full access to filesystem on Android, and no access to filesystem at all on iOS

- No ability to run your own programs at all on iOS without Apple's permission.

- "Secure" boot on Android and iOS that do not allow running your own software

Ever wondered why Windows 11 have a TPM requirement? No, it's not just planned obsolescence.

If they get their way, user-owned computers running free software will never be usable again, and we'll lose the final escape hatch slowing down the enshittification of computers. The only hope we have is that they turn up the temperature a little too quickly that normies would catch on before it gets far enough.
by D-Machine | 2026-02-08 21:11:09+00:00
LLMs are language models, something being a transformer or next-state predictor does not make it a language model. You can also have e.g. convolutional language models or LSTM-based language models. This is a basic point that anyone with any proper understanding of these models would know.

Even if you disagree with these semantics, the major LLMs today are primarily trained on natural language. But, yes, as I said in another comment on this thread, it isn't that simple, because LLMs today are trained on tokens from tokenizers, and these tokenizers are trained on text that includes e.g. natural language, mathematical symbolism, and code.

Yes, humans have incredibly limited access to the real world. But they experience and model this world with far more tools and machinery than language. Sometimes, in certain cases, they attempt to messily translate this messy, multimodal understanding into tokens, and then make those tokens available on the internet.

An LLM (in the sense everyone means it, which, again, is largely a natural language model, but certainly just a tokenized text model) has access only to these messy tokens, so, yes, far less capacity than humanity collectively. And though the LLM can integrate knowledge from a massive amount of tokens from a huge amount of humans, even a single human has more different kinds of sensory information and modality-specific knowledge than the LLM. So humans DO have more privileged access to the real world than LLMs (even though we can barely access a slice of reality at all).
by zelphirkalt | 2026-02-08 21:12:03+00:00
What kind of application do you write in Gauche?

I am asking, because I might want to get more familiar with it, if it is great for something like GUI or web app. I know there is Guile Golf, but to me it feels unfinished, and I experienced segfaults and crashes, when not doing things exactly as shown in examples and using standard GTK procedures, so that one is kind of out for me, and guile-gi is still changing and seemed kinda complicated to use. On the web front, there is Artanis, but it is too opinionated for me, not a minimalistic framework. Still can build things on top of guile fibers concurrent web server, but then have to build lots of things myself.

Recently, I used Python and tkinter, which works really well, and I would love to have good bindings for tk in Guile.

On my search for Scheme and GUI, I also found stklos, but I have no idea how ready it is and what kind of libraries I would have available, if I built an application with it.

Racket of course also has a GUI framework, that I have tried to use in the past, but it does not have a treeview widget. Has listbox though, with multiple columns.

What does Gauche have to offer, specifically for application development? (GUI, or web, or other)
Show HN: Datui – TUI for data exploration (local files, S3, HTTP)
by derekwisong | 2026-02-08 21:12:18+00:00
Datui is a terminal UI for exploring tabular data. Point it at a file or URL (S3, GCS, or HTTP) and you get a
keyboard-driven view: scroll, chart, query, filter, sort, pivot, export, and run stats without leaving the terminal.

It's powered by Polars streaming API under the hood, so evaluation is lazy. Supports Parquet, CSV, JSON,
NDJSON, Avro, Arrow, ORC, Excel.

Hive-partitioned directories work too!

There's also a Python binding: `pip install datui` then `datui.view(your_lazyframe)`.

I got tired firing up a notebook just to peek at, or run a quick analysis on, a potentially large partitioned dataset.
I wanted something in between: stay in the terminal, but with real query power and a bit of analysis.

Try it:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/derekwisong/datui/main/scripts/install/install.sh | sh
datui yourfile.parquet

There are more installtion options in the GitHub README.md if you dont want to pipe to shell.

GitHub: https://github.com/derekwisong/datui

Docs: https://derekwisong.github.io/datui/

First open-source project I'm sharing. UI is still rough in places. Would love feedback on what to improve next.
by notepad0x90 | 2026-02-08 21:12:21+00:00
The problem is you still have to type prompts. That might require less word-count, but you still have to type it up, and it won't be short. For a small code base, your llm code might be a couple of pages, but for a complex code base it might be the size of medium-length novel.

In the end, you have text typed by humans, that is lengthy. and it might contain errors in logic, contradictions, unforeseen issues in the instructions. And the same processes and tooling used for syntactic code might need to apply to it. You will need to version control your prompts for example.

LLMs solve the labor problem, not the management problem. You have to spend a lot of time and effort with pages and pages of LLM prompts, trying to figure out which part of the prompt is generating which part of your code base. LLMs can debug and troubleshoot, but they can't debug and troubleshoot your prompts for you. I doubt they can take their own output, generated by multiple agents and lots of sessions and trace it all back to what text in your prompt caused all the mess either.

On one hand, I want to see what this experimentation will yield, on the other hand, it had better not create a whole suite of other problems to solve just to use it.

My confusion really is when experienced programmers advocate for this stuff. Actually typing in the code isn't very hard. I like the LLM-assistance aspect of figuring out what to actually code, and do some research. But actually figure out what code to type in, sure LLMs save time, but not that much time. getting it to work, debugging, troubleshooting, maintaining, those tend to be the pain-points.

Perhaps there are shops out there that just crank out lots of LoC, and even measure developer performance based on LoC? I can see where this might be useful.

I do think LLM-friendly high-level languages need to evolve for sure. But the ideal workflow is always going to be a co-pilot type of workflow. Humans researching and guiding the AI.

Psychologically, until AI can maintain it's own code, this is a really bad idea. Actually typing out the code is extremely important for humans to be able to understand it. Or if someone wrote the code, you have to write something that is part of that code base and figure out how things fit together, AI can't do that for you, if you're still maintaining the codebase in any capacity.
by yunohn | 2026-02-08 21:12:59+00:00
> “hey remember that conversation about birds? Send an email to Steve and ask him what he thinks about it”

Isn’t the “what he thinks about it” part the hardest? Like, that’s what I want to phrase myself - the part of the conversation I’d like to get their opinion on and what exactly my actual request is. Or are people really doing the meme of sending AI text back and forth to each other with none the wiser?
by seanwilson | 2026-02-08 21:13:08+00:00
A tool for creating CSS color palettes for web UIs that pass WCAG accessibility standards for color contrast:

https://www.inclusivecolors.com/

Unlike most tools based around autogenerating colors, this is more of an editor that lets you fully customise all the tint/shades to your liking and with a focus on accessibility. This is important when you've got existing brand colors to include and want to find accessible color combinations that work together.

Would love feedback in general and especially from designers/devs who have different needs in how they go about creating branded palettes!
by gordonhart | 2026-02-08 21:13:11+00:00
Personally I’m less bullish on oil as the metaphor given how much of the modern world is underpinned by cheap and ubiquitous oil. If oil disappeared tomorrow, society would collapse — if tobacco disappeared tomorrow, it would make some subset of the population very unhappy for a few weeks.

Software engineering AI API dependence seems to have already screamed past the tobacco mark but we’re still a long ways away from oil. Though I would bet that we hit it sometime in the next few decades once the bulk of the industry has never written code in any serious capacity.
by troupo | 2026-02-08 21:13:33+00:00
> Are you implying that movie theaters are a better experience than home theaters?

I don't have an IMAX screen at home. I don't even have the smallest theater screen at home.

Oh, and that "home theater"? Good luck getting the advertised 4k on it from any streaming platform, and very few will have a handy BluRay/Torrents set up at home. Neither do I have Dolby surround at home. Or a way to make the room fully dark.

> I'd argue movie theaters dug their own graves with greed shovels.

I seriously doubt that. Covid maimed theaters, and then streaming dealt the killing blow.
by andrew_mason1 | 2026-02-08 21:13:43+00:00
As an aside:

> If you haven't spent at least $1,000 on tokens today per human engineer, your software factory has room for improvement

is an insane utility function. That would be like saying you get more nutrition the more you spend per calorie. Sure, true sometimes (fresh veggies are pricier than mcdonalds), but you can also go out to a bar and run up a much bigger tab for less nutritional value.
by dotancohen | 2026-02-08 21:14:30+00:00
> Abstaining from killing animals is about the sober realization that we can have perfectly healthy and happy lives without killing animals,

Maybe, maybe not. If one is lacking a hobby and happy to spend much time learning and obsessing and fiddling with what they eat, while accepting that they may be missing some vital things that we don't yet know about, then sure.

But I have enough hobbies and I don't want to risk missing some things we don't yet know about. I just eat what I evolved to eat.
by bazodedo | 2026-02-08 21:14:49+00:00
The "premium request" billing model where you pay per invocation and not for usage is very obviously not a sustainable approach and creates skewed incentives (e.g. for microsoft to degrade response quality), especially with the shift towards longer running agentic sessions as opposed to simple oneshot chat questions, which the system was presumably designed for. Its just a very obvious fundamental incompatibility and the system is in increasing need of replacement. Usage linked (pay per token) is probably the way to go, as is industry standard.
by adrian_b | 2026-02-08 21:16:30+00:00
If you consume "algal" oil of 50 cents per day, that must be some kind of capsule with a small amount of oil, e.g. a few hundred mg of DHA+EPA.

This is much better than nothing, but it is far from a daily intake comparable to that of the populations who live in places with access to cheap sea fish, where such fish are a significant fraction of their food (e.g. Japan).

If your target is to match the diet of such populations, that means e.g. 5 mL per day of non-diluted "algal" oil, i.e. a teaspoon of such oil (or 10 mL of fish oil), which contains around 2 grams of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

That would be much more expensive when using "algal" oil, at least judging after the prices seen e.g. on Amazon.

In order to not scare the customers, many sources of "algal" oil have a similar price with fish oil, but only because they contain much less omega-3 fatty acids per capsule. If you read the fine print, then you discover the true price ratio.
by tptacek | 2026-02-08 21:17:15+00:00
Without commenting on the racial biases of IQ tests (we probably directionally agree), the idea that IQ tests in employment are legally risky is an Internet myth. The companies that offer employment-screening general cognitive tests have logo crawls of giant companies that use them.

They're not unusual because they're legally risky; they're unusual because they don't work well.
by tjr | 2026-02-08 21:17:40+00:00
I’m glad cheap stuff exists. Sometimes I really do need something quickly, and borderline-disposable quality is good enough. But I also want the option to buy better than that.

I installed some drywall a few years ago. I plan to install a room of drywall exactly never again. Not worth it for me to buy the best drywall tools.

But I have installed multiple wood floors, replacing old carpet, and would do so again if needed. I’d rather get higher quality tools there so I can keep them and reuse them for years.
by pstuart | 2026-02-08 21:19:02+00:00
She wasn't qualified per the program requirements/expectations.

And then you deflect on complaining about "third-world cultural enclaves", which is rich. Every wave of immigrants have tended to cluster in communities comprising others of their origin. That is not an unreasonable thing and the "third world" part is thinly veiled racism.

Older adults who come here are likely to be slower in assimilation of language and culture, but their children very much grow up as "americans".

And now they're saying the quiet part out loud in demanding that America is only for white people, and the goal is to purge all non-whites to "Make America Pure Again".

None of this is to deny that there are serious immigration issues, but a lot of this is ginned up to continue having the masses angry at each other rather than our overlords who deserver more scrutiny and accountability.

Here's some interesting takes on the situation from that notorious woke group, the Cato Institue:

https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-system-broken-short-list-problems

Note that the current administration has no interest in fixing the problem, only in purging non-whites and using the problem as a cudgel to demonize the Democrats (who are definitely not above reproach).
by netsharc | 2026-02-08 21:19:17+00:00
Last paragraph:

> The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation into Amazon’s drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco.

Looks like the rest of that sentence has been cut off: "... but the company doesn't expect to be punished, since it spent $75 million dollars bribing President Trump in the form of the Melania movie.".
by idw | 2026-02-08 21:19:30+00:00
Saw this mentioned in a comment recently, I just downloaded, installed and used it to find a file while Windows Search was still saying 'Working on it...'. So I thought others might like to know.

Previously on HN a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337268 and probably other times

Thank you, whoever you were!
by II2II | 2026-02-08 21:19:36+00:00
> I don't mean we need one, just that tech is no longer fun

Or maybe the whole thing goes in cycles. For example: the 1980's were a fairly significant time for computer themed books for kids (teaching us how to program from a variety of angles). I don't remember that much kid oriented stuff in the 1990's, but then there was the panic of kids not knowing how to program in the early 2000's, which may have been where those shows came from.

Another factor is that a lot of kid's programming is recycled from generation to generation (either outright rebroadcast or developing new programming under the same franchise). That's really hard to do with tech oriented stuff. Even futuristic gadgets would appear to be dated.
by D-Machine | 2026-02-08 21:19:39+00:00
It isn't a misnomer at all, and comments like yours are why it is increasingly important to remind people about the linguistic foundations of these models.

For example, no matter many books you read about riding a bike, you still need to actually get on a bike and do some practice before you can ride it. The reading can certainly help, at least in theory, but, in practice, is not necessary and may even hurt (if it makes certain processes that need to be unconscious held too strongly in consciousness, due to the linguistic model presented in the book).

This is why LLMs being so strongly tied to natural language is still an important limitation (even it is clearly less limiting than most expected).
by ctoth | 2026-02-08 21:20:42+00:00
Ah, we have converted a technical problem into a social problem. Historically those are vastly easier to solve, right?

Spam filters exist. Why do we need to bring politics into it? Reminds me of the whole CoC mess a few years back.

Every time somebody talks about a new AI thing the lament here goes:

> BUT THINK OF THE JUNIORS!

How do you expect this system to treat juniors? How do your juniors ever gain experience committing to open source? who vouches for them?

This is a permanent social structure for a transient technical problem.
by benjiro | 2026-02-08 21:21:41+00:00
Even something like MS Paint can turn a laptop in to a aircraft.

The issue is actually very simple. In order to gain more performance, manufactures like AMD / Intel for a long time have been in a race for the highest frequency but if you have some knowhow in hardware, you know that higher frequency = more power draw the higher you clock.

So you open your MS Paint, and ... your CPU pushes to 5.2Ghz, and it gets fed 15W on a single core. This creates a heat spike in the sensors, and your fans on laptops, all too often are set to react very fast. And VROOOOEEEEM goes your fan as the CPU Temp sensor hits 80C on a single core, just for a second. But wait, your MS Paint is open, and down goes the fan. And repeat, repeat, repeat ...

Notice how Apple focused on running their CPUs no higher then 4.2Ghz or something... So even if their CPU boosts to 100%, that thermal peak will be maybe 7W.

Now combine that with Apple using a much more tolerant fan / temp sensor setup. They say: 100C is perfectly acceptable. So when your CPU boosts, its not dumping 15W, but only 7W. And because the fan reaction threshold is so high, the fans do not react on any Apple product. Unless you run a single or MT process for a LONG time.

And even then, the fans will only ramp up slowly if your 100C has been going on for a few seconds, and while yes, your CPU will be thermal throttling while the fans spin up. But you do not feel this effect.

That is the real magic of Apple. Yes, their CPUs are masterpieces at how they get so much performance from a lower frequency, but the real kicker is their thermal / fan profile design.

The wife has a old Apple clone laptop from 2018. Thing is for 99.9% of the time silent. No fans, nothing. Because Xiaomi used the same tricks on that laptop, allowing it to boost to the max, without triggering the fan ramping. And when it triggers with a long running process, they use a very low fan rpm until it goes way too high. I had laptops with the same CPU from other brands in the same time periode, and they all had annoying fan profiles. That showed me that a lot of Apple magic is good design around the hardware/software/fan.

But ironically, that magic has been forgotten in later models by Xiaomi ... Tsk!

Manufactures think: Its better if millions of people suffer from more noise, then if we need to have a few thousand laptops that die / get damaged, from too much heat. So ramp up the fans!!!
by amazingman | 2026-02-08 21:22:11+00:00
> Yes, we substantially disagree on a contentious policy question.

Ours is not merely a policy disagreement, you failed to provide a reasonable case for violating the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 15th amendments. Indeed, you only seem to respond to comments when you can find a way to nitpick semantics and/or tone.
by a-dub | 2026-02-08 21:23:26+00:00
this highlights the saddest thing about this whole generative ai thing. beforehand, there was opportunity to learn, deliver and prove oneself outside of classical social organization. now that's all going to go away and everyone is going to fall back on credentials and social standing. what an incredible shame for social mobility and those who for one reason or another don't fit in with traditional structures.