MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by _fs | 2026-02-04 20:19:07+00:00
Funny how this pops up on hacker news today. I have been working on an off and on again project in the same vein. But instead of sanford maps, I have been ripping and downloading GLO surveys. I now have about 3TB worth of 200k+ mid 1800 surveys done by the USGS (GLO at the time). My next step was to create a method of presenting this data. Do you think that your OHMG would help me here?

Its a similar problem that you faced, stripping off the extra image data from the map, then overlaying them on a base map. I might have a slightly easier time, since these surveys mostly line up to existing township/ranges of the PLSS, not at individual house/street level like the sanborn maps. I've manually done the process many times, most in ArcGIS, but have used a few others (like oldmapsonline). Your site was new to me, and the presentation looks great.

Here's an example of the type of survey I'm working with. https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/maps/06317a09-5426-41e0-aa8...
by stego-tech | 2026-02-04 20:19:30+00:00
I love how myopic the knee-jerk reactions to these pleas of modesty and decency tend to be.

"If AI replaces all jobs, none of us will have to work!" Alright, let's extrapolate a bit.

Society is currently organized around working to survive. AI suddenly replaces all work. How do people survive?

"Well everything will just be free now" Will it? Will the Capitalists who built these systems and replaced that labor now suddenly just give away product? Housing? Food? Care?

"Well, we'll just have to reconfigure society!" I mean, yeah, sure, obviously that'll have to happen. Will the Capitalists who empower the current systems of governance now cede said power when work is no longer available but still necessary to survive?

"Oh, well, people need to cooperate then, speak up for themselves, take action now." I don't disagree, and I think these sorts of Op-Eds, the "AI Doomers" making pleas for decency and civility in comments sections, the artisans demanding compensation for the theft of their work, and the myriad of folks who recognize the pace we're on will get people killed - nevermind the folks highlighting AI's disproportionate use in mass surveillance, genocide, and inflicting harm on "undesirables - are doing exactly that: speaking up, taking action, and attempting proactive reform.

"But they're hindering AI!" That's the fucking point you colossal numpty. The point is to slow it down so we have time to adapt.

Like...jesus, I expected more/better from folks who digest mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies, yet so many people here just cannot think critically about complex issues that involve people other than themselves.
by johanvts | 2026-02-04 20:19:34+00:00
The reason it doesn’t work as a currency is that the transaction costs are way way to high for that. A single transaction it is literally the price of 1-2 million visa transactions. This is by design, bitcoin will never be a competitive system for payment processing, without adding centralized “2nd layer” systems, and at that point why not just use a centralized system to begin with. It makes sense, a distributed system that does the same work millions of times cannot compete with a centralized system that does it once.
by Joker_vD | 2026-02-04 20:19:51+00:00
Reminds me of a review (written somewhere in the early 60s, I believe) by some Soviet sci-fi writer of Hamilton's Star Kings (1949) and the Western sci-fi in general; to paraphrase, "it's astonishing that those writers would set their decorations thousands years in the future, with wildly imaginative technological advances and inventions, yet when they come to the social systems, all they can imagine is either the feudal order of the past, or the modern style of capitalism".
by noslenwerdna | 2026-02-04 20:20:05+00:00
Are you saying I was incorrect for feeling that way?

The reason is that you no longer really know what's going on. (And yes, that feeling would be the same if C++ had as rich a library of packages as python for numerical analysis.)

If you are doing something that requires precision you need to know everything that is happening in that library. Also IIRC, I think not knowing what type something is bothered me at the time.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2026-02-04 20:20:53+00:00
Check this out: https://imgur.com/a/aVxryBf

It's a carved wooden dragon that my dad got from Indonesia (probably about 50 years ago).

It's hard to appreciate, if you aren't holding it, but it weighs a lot, and is intricately carved, all over.

I guarantee that the carver used a Dremel.

I still have a huge amount of respect for their work. That wood is like rock. I would not want to carve it with hand tools.

There's just some heights we can't reach, without a ladder.
What questions do you have about using MCP servers with Postgres?
by pgedge_postgres | 2026-02-04 20:21:09+00:00
What questions do you have about using MCP servers with Postgres?

We've also created an open source MCP server FOR PostgreSQL (works with any greenfield app or existing database) called pgedge-postgres-mcp (https://github.com/pgEdge/pgedge-postgres-mcp) - questions & feedback are very welcome here as well.

This February, there'll be a webinar scheduled with the engineer behind the project. He'll be answering questions, both ones asked here in this thread and ones asked at the end of the session during a Q&A.

Keep an eye out here for it to be scheduled: https://www.pgedge.com/webinars

Let's make this interesting for everyone - reply or reach out to community (at) pgedge.com if you have a question or feedback
by waldopat | 2026-02-04 20:21:13+00:00
You may not like this sources, but both the tomato throwers to the green visor crowds agree they are losing money. How and when they make up the difference is up to speculation

https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-everybody-is-losing-money-on...
https://www.economist.com/business/2025/12/29/openai-faces-a...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openais-own-forecast-predicts...
Show HN: TimeTracker PWA built with GunDB – 100% privacy friendly with sync
by hrkucuk | 2026-02-04 20:21:48+00:00
I built TimeTracker, an offline-first time tracking Progressive Web App that runs entirely in your browser.

It’s aimed at freelancers (and anyone else who just wants a simple tracker) who don’t want accounts, cloud sync, or their work history living on someone else’s server. Your data stays on your device, and you can export it anytime.

What it does today:

Start/stop timers quickly, and track time across multiple projects

Timesheet-style view to review and edit entries by project/date

Calendar view to visualize daily/weekly work

Reports & analytics, including generating PDF reports

Import/export as JSON for backup/migration

Project management: hourly rates + basic cost tracking

Any UX friction you hit (especially on mobile, install-as-app, etc.)
by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE | 2026-02-04 20:23:00+00:00
> A judge telling me to give up my password is different than a dozen armed, masked secret police telling me to.

Yes, a judge is unlikely to order your execution if you refuse. Based on recent pattern of their behavior, masked secret police who are living their wildest authoritarian dreams are likely to execute you if you anger them (for example by refusing to comply with their desires).
by derektank | 2026-02-04 20:23:07+00:00
If you broach subjects Anthropic considers sensitive (cyber security, dangerous biotech, etc) Claude is very likely to shut you down completely and refuse to answer. As someone that works in cybersecurity and uses Claude daily, it is annoying to ask a question regarding some feature of Cobalt Strike and have it refuse to answer, even though the tool’s documentation is public. I would have cancelled my ChatGPT subscription at this point if once or twice a month I didn’t need to ask it to look up something when Claude refuses.
by helly25 | 2026-02-04 20:23:25+00:00
Local!

I do not mind the cost honestly. And a bit slower also works. I just use one older mac ultra 2/192G ram and another with an rtx5060/16G and an and r9700/32G. Between those I get my models working fine.

That also gives me full privacy. And that is worth way way way more than any cost.
by elevation | 2026-02-04 20:23:27+00:00
As niche SaaS provider, I'm trying to avoid succumbing to the same fate. The product I built carefully for years would now be within the reach of a senior dev with a couple focused weeks -- if they knew all the requirements. To avoid being overtaken, I'm working to increase my customer's requirements -- getting them hooked on new reports and features I never had time to build before LLMs could do it for me. This makes it less likely for a competitor to be able to afford to quickly replace me.

At the same time, I have no idea what the cost of LLMs usage will be in the future. So I'm working to ensure the architecture stays clean and maintainable for humans in case this kind of tooling becomes untenable.
by stego-tech | 2026-02-04 20:23:36+00:00
> We just have to jump ahead with automation and figure out the rest as we go.

Get that accelerationist fatalism outta my face. Just because you personally have no qualms with harming others in the name of some facsimile of progress, doesn't mean it's the only option available to us. Slowing things down through regulations, through employment mandates, through pleas for cooperation instead of immediate replacement, all of those and more are ways of gradual reform and adaptation.

We're proposing letting the organism (humanity) adapt to traditional work and employment being wholesale eliminated in a society that demands work for basic survival through gradual and continuous reforms as circumstances change. Your proposal is the functional equivalent of telling an endangered species, "lol get gud bruv".

We are not the same.
by scotty79 | 2026-02-04 20:23:37+00:00
Do you know anything better for Polish language, low quality audio than Whisper large-v3 through WhisperX?

This combo has almost unbeatable accuracy and it rejects noises in the background really well. It can even reject people talking in the background.

The only better thing I've seen is Ursa model from Speechmatics. Not open weights unfortunately.
by throwway120385 | 2026-02-04 20:23:51+00:00
I've found in the embedded space that people sell lots and lots of products that do everything you could ever want, and the most efficient thing to do is not buy those things and instead find a way to do just the subset of things you care about with your own back-end systems. The upshot of that is that because you're in total control if something goes wrong you can fix it without getting 6 people on a phone call to point fingers at each other.
by panarky | 2026-02-04 20:23:58+00:00
Keep everyone precarious and fearful, stringing together multiple bullshit jobs to make the rent, always one car repair or health scare away from the abyss.

Let owners/exploiters suppress the wages they pay workers in the name of efficiency.

Encourage owners/exploiters to relentlessly raise the prices workers pay owners/exploiters in the name of shareholder value.

Then say "there is no alternative", our civilization is predicated on systematic exploitation to survive, and if you try to change it now "everyone will die".

The owner/exploiter class is going to replace labor with capital like they always have.

The worker's enemy isn't the automation that eliminates work, the worker's enemy is is the owner/exploiter who weaponizes automation in their class war.
by manishsharan | 2026-02-04 20:23:58+00:00
I used to be a big advocate for Salesforce in my organization. And it was really great .. allowing us to deliver new functionality without the usual IT procurement bureaucracy.

Now with cloud maturity and Vibe coders who will get better and cheaper, I think it's possible to replace all the features we use on Salesforce at a fraction of the cost of our Salesforce licensing cost.
by _wire_ | 2026-02-04 20:23:59+00:00
Three Idle Words essays on space exploration:

Lunacy of Artemis

https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

Why Not Mars?

https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm

Shape of a Mars Mission

https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...
by ActorNightly | 2026-02-04 20:24:10+00:00
Wrong way to look at it.

Generally there are 2 types of human intelligence - simulation and pattern lookup (technically simulation still relies on pattern lookup but on a much lower level).

Pattern lookup is basically what llms do. Humans memorize the maps of tasks->solutions and statistically interpolate their knowledge to do a particular task. This works well enough for the vast majority of the people, and this is why LLMs are seen as a big help since they effectively increase your

Simulation type intelligence is able to break down a task into core components, and understand how each component interacts and predict outcomes into the future, without having knowledge beforehand.

For example, assume a task of cleaning the house:

Pattern lookup would rely on learned expereince taught by parents as well as experience in cleaning the house to perform an action. You would probably use a duster+generic cleaner to wipe surfaces, and vaccum the floors.

Simulation type intelligence would understand how much dirt / dust there is, how it behaves. For example, instead of a duster, one would realize that you can use a wet towel to gather dust, without ever having seen this used ever before.

Here is the kicker - pattern type intelligence is actually much harder to attain, because it requires really good memorization, which is pretty much genetic.

Simulation type intelligence is actually attainable by anyone - it requires much smaller subset of patterns to memorize. The key factor is changing how you think about the world, which requires realigning your values. If you start to value low level understanding, you naturally develop this intelligence.

For example, what would it take for you to completely take your car apart, figure out how every component works, and put it back together? A lot of you have garages and money to spend on a cheap car to do this and the tools, so doing this in your spare time is practical, and it will give you the ability to buy an older used car, do all the maintenance/repairs on it yourself on it, and have something that works well all for a lower price, while also giving you a monetizable skill.

Futhermore, LLMs can't reason with simulation - you can get close with agentic frameworks, but all of those are manually coded and have limits, and we aren't close to figuring out a generic framework for an agent that can make it do things like look up information, run internal models of how things would work, and so on.

So finally, when it comes to competing, if you chose to stick to pattern based intelligence, and you lose your job to someone who can use llms better, thats your fault.
by falloutx | 2026-02-04 20:24:21+00:00
They didnt, dont make the mistake of thinking Saas companies are just software companies. They are Sales companies who happen to sell software. Companies like Dropbox & Atlassian have long been surpassed in Tech but they live only because they continue selling even when demand was hard to get. Their moat is sales & networking and software has to be just good enough. And other part is service, these companies still have one of best costumer service since the start of early 2010s. You can still get refund on Uber quite easily, but if you try doing that at a regular old school company you would require a prayer and couple of business weeks.
by beloch | 2026-02-04 20:24:37+00:00
A velvet glove conceals the iron fist.

It may be that successful mean people just hide it well enough to seem nice and the "x-ray vision" of the author's wife doesn't work on everyone. Once a mean person's position is unassailable, the velvet gloves come off. Alternatively, money is power and power corrupts.

The current crop of billionaires are at the pinnacle of success (depending on how you define it), but most sure don't seem very nice, and that's with a large PR team working overtime to hide the meanness.
by sharifhsn | 2026-02-04 20:24:37+00:00
I’m not finding a single article with a good summary, but you can find coverage on Bloomberg of all the twists and turns. FX markets are complicated, so you’ll need to do some research on how they operate as well. It’s not too hard to plug the keywords and concepts from these articles into AI and get a reasonably good background, though.

You can start here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-02/yen-carry...
by tolerance | 2026-02-04 20:25:18+00:00
Everyone talking about this being out of touch with the present and how figures in proximity to Graham don’t fit the description of nice he’s referring to should think about this passage:

> For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, or metaphorically in the case of Gilded Age financiers contending with one another to assemble railroad monopolies. For most of history, success meant success at zero-sum games. And in most of them meanness was not a handicap but probably an advantage.

> That is changing. Increasingly the games that matter are not zero-sum. Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things.

What’s changed?

Edit:

The paragraph after should be included also, I think
by TheGRS | 2026-02-04 20:25:22+00:00
I've worked in SaaS for most of my career, only recently working at a big corp who is largely the buyer and user of SaaS tools to meet their objectives. From the perspective of the corp business buyer, they want something that works for their needs and they want to buy something instead of build it because the support costs are gnarly. They already have engineers dedicated to the tools they've purchased. Much better to put the risk on someone else they can yell at. And the permissions and access to these tools, reports, data, is usually its own special problem to manage. Building a lot of one-off tools is going to just give IT a huge headache and they will push the org to buy before vibe coding a solution.
by dwb | 2026-02-04 20:25:23+00:00
> Work brings dignity and purpose to people’s lives.

Speak for yourself! For me, and in my experience many others, work is a necessary evil. I’ve experienced more indignities in the workplace than anywhere else (though fortunately not as consistently as some people), and the thought of work being my life’s purpose is too bleak to entertain. I’m very happy for those who have a more positive experience, but some of us don’t fit so well.
by stickfigure | 2026-02-04 20:26:14+00:00
I don't think Amazon treats their employees badly. Warehouse workers aren't compensated like software engineers, but what do you expect?

I'm sure there are shitty managers at Amazon (in warehouses and in software) but by and large I believe blue collar Amazon workers have it about as well as blue collar workers everywhere. Maybe better.

I don't really see the problem here.
by raincole | 2026-02-04 20:26:20+00:00
> 8 Books - Average number of books Americans read in 2025. However, the median American only read 2 books, showing that heavy readers significantly increase the overall average.

I don't know, my reaction is "wow, Americans truly love reading," or alternatively, "they really like to boast their numbers even in anonymous surveys."

Even if you only read fiction, 8 books are like 500k to 100k words. That's a lot of words!
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-04 20:27:27+00:00
>Rudeness, plays against yourself.

I don't mind you expressing your (ignorant) opinion, and I wouldn't stoop so low as to call it rude. It's just you're not knowledgeable.

>I directly know people who lived in China, have been jailed and beaten there, and have literal scars to prove it. Hard to brush this away easily from my mind.

I directly know people from prison in the US who have similar if not worse injuries and scars. They have also told me of people who have died due to prison violence. I understand how it's easy to selectively brush away the atrocities done in the US while only focusing on the Chinese. If I were like you, I would label it as "self centered" because you don't give a shit about prisoners in the US, you only care about your Chinese friends because they serve as evidence for your biased views against China. I'm so sorry but there's no other way to look at it.

>Not all people who express negative views on China are alike.

No, I never claimed this. But I did claim that you're wrong and ignorant. That being said... You do fit a typical trope that does often come from people who have negative views against China and it's selective focusing on certain things without looking at the big picture.

You have to know that I know people in the US who were in prisons where the prison guards allowed rape and violence to occur and turned a blind eye to it because it served their ulterior objectives. Does that action characterize the entire US? No. It doesn't.
by linkjuice4all | 2026-02-04 20:27:42+00:00
I think it's a combination of budgeting, upward price pressure from the SaaS companies themselves, plus bringing things in-house through vibe coding, but there's another factor that I think is harming existing SaaS products. Many of them are becoming legacy solutions with AI bolted on top so they don't really feel that effective or next-level. The underlying tech might even be a generation older too - but the SaaS value-add is providing support, scaling, etc to maintain whatever some old tech that's still a requirement. At some point someone looks at all of these interconnected systems and just says 'start over'.

Vibe coding might not be supplanting all SaaS solutions but it's definitely shaking out "last-gen" solutions.
by znnajdla | 2026-02-04 20:28:02+00:00
It is entirely possible for someone to be 2x faster at coding with AI without increasing their throughput. I believe Claude Code has made me at least 2x as productive. But I can easily see why a 2x increase in individual development speed may not translate to any increase overall at the level of the whole organization. Because at most organizations the bottleneck is not code, it’s everything else from politics to external blockers to bike shedding and people’s egos. So a developer who is 2x faster at their work may just end up having more free time on their hands. The greatest increases in productivity and throughput are where there are no external blockers, like random side projects, which is exactly where people report the greatest productivity with AI.
by exceptione | 2026-02-04 20:28:12+00:00
If that would be true, expect in the next decade a frantic search for seclusive grey beards, those who haven't given up their rituals and ancient languages.

If your workforce is vibing all day, they will have no capacity for maintenance, because it isn't their code. So the maintenance that happens will be slop and more spaghetti. I am not saying cases like that never existed before, but such companies will face a moment of truth sooner or later.
by dtdynasty | 2026-02-04 20:28:13+00:00
I was also one who spent their time playing dota in high school. In my experience one can learn more from playing dota than the average social media experience. Understanding team dynamics and emotional regulation to negative experiences outside your control. If you take the game seriously even prioritization and deliberate practice.

Of course not everyone learns from playing dota but at least it's a focused experience that doesn't steal focus away like short form videos.
by guidoism | 2026-02-04 20:28:27+00:00
> ChatGPT is saying they will mark ads as ads and keep answers "independent," but that is not measurable. So we'll see.

Yeah I remember when Google used to be like this. Then today I tried to go to 39dollarglasses.com and accidentally went to the top search result which was actually an ad for some other company. Arrrg.