MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vintagedave | 2026-02-03 11:09:56+00:00
On a side note, the company I work for (RemObjects, not speaking on their behalf) has a value ethos specifically about using the native UI layers, and encouraging our customers to do the same. (We make dev tools, a compiler supporting six languages (C#, Java, Go, etc) plus IDEs.)

Our IDE does this: common code / logic, then a native macOS layer and a WPF layer. Yes, it takes a little more work (less than you'd think!) but we think it is the right way to do it.

And what I hope is that AI will let people do the same -- lower the cost and effort to do things like this. If Electron was used because it was a cheap way to get cross-platform apps out, AI should now be the same layer, the same intermediate 'get stuff done' layer, but done better. And I don't think this prevents doing things faster because AI can work in parallel. Instead of one agent to update the frontend, you have two to update both frontends, you know?

We're building an AI agent, btw. Initially targeting Delphi, which is a third party's product we try to support and provide modern solutions for. We'll be adding support for our own toolchains too.

What I fear is that people will apply AI at the wrong level. That they'll produce the same things, but faster: not the same things, but better (and faster.)
by natasha_jaffe | 2026-02-03 11:10:17+00:00
"The fog eventually lifted and I saw queues, sorts and maps in the most unsuspecting of places."...
This week I marvel at the wonders of FIFO queue breast milk towers, dinos, and my seven year old's unstoppable drive to open a diner just off Exit 4:
https://natashajaffe.substack.com/p/data-structures-of-mothe...

Data structures are all around us, even the freezer.
by coldblues | 2026-02-03 11:10:35+00:00
You've just admitted that the way you use "learn" is different. It's you who is using it differently from the commonly agreed upon way. (3) is arbitrary, ideally you would want to remember the words for your entire lifetime. A lot of people don't care about (2), you'd only care if you want to live in the country and are presented with a lot of paperwork.

You learn the words for a day (you're able to match the sounds and meaning to it). You will forget a lot of them tomorrow, so now you have to re-learn them. This is just how Anki works. You keep learning and re-learning until they stick for a prolonged period of time. It's common for Japanese learners to add between 20 or 30 words to their learning queue.

If you understand how Anki works, you will also understand how the word learning is used in relation to its flashcard mechanism.
by acaciabengo | 2026-02-03 11:11:02+00:00
Location: Kampala, Uganda

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate:No

Technologies: Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, Detectron2, Ruby on Rails, NLP (Transformers, ViT), Docker, GCP, SQL.

Resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w6RQVmknk6O0Wbp8XIDU5ogTDJ4...

Email: acaciabengo@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/acaciabengo

HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/acaciabengo

Description: I am a Senior Machine Learning & Software Engineer with 11+ years of experience and a current MSCS student at Georgia Tech. I have worked remotely for US-based companies for the last 3+ years and specialize in bridging the gap between robust backend engineering (Ruby on Rails) and production-grade ML models.

Key Projects & Experience:
• Computer Vision (2D to 3D): Currently building a pipeline to convert 2D architectural floor plans into 3D models using Image Segmentation (Detectron2) and Swin Transformers.

• ML for Gaming: Engineered predictive algorithms for high-volume sports betting and lottery platforms, including models for risk management, user segmentation, Churn Prediction and LTV forecasting.

• NLP at Scale: Architected Deep Learning models for a US-based health tech organization that reduced moderation time by 80% and processed over 1 million messages monthly.

• Content Moderation: Developed CensorX, a multimodal NSFW detection tool using Vision Transformers (ViT) and DistilBERT.
Note on Hiring: I am hireable through a Canadian company (B2B/Contract) or via an Employer of Record (e.g., Globalization Partners), allowing for frictionless onboarding for North American entities.
by Arkhaine_kupo | 2026-02-03 11:12:06+00:00
Creating a hierarchy in lets say a small town, were people who pay in can have a funeral early/better date/better priest while people who dont pay get a wednesday mid work and no one can attend so the family has to say goodbye to their loved one without people creates the kind of environment where participating is not optional.

That is the kind of situation the funeral thing was highlighting, not the provision of a service, but the creation of a coercive incentive for social hierarchy and emotional support around a very difficult moment.

Its the same reason predatory loans are predatory, not because loans are bad but because you find people at their lowest and provide a service where they are incentivised to make reckless financial choices
by mikkupikku | 2026-02-03 11:12:07+00:00
> The very same Americans think that immigrants ...

Only half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the right wing people who are hand wringing about ""The Mark of the Beast"" while saying that immigrants need to identify themselves. The other half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the left who insist that federal IDs are a conspiracy to stop poor people from voting. This is a bipartisan issue, but you only acknowledged one half.
by 72deluxe | 2026-02-03 11:12:20+00:00
But desktop C++ isn't difficult or slow to write...

It seems odd to me that the software world has gone in the direction of "quick to write - slow to run". It should be the other way around. Things of quality (eg. paintings by Renaissance masters) took time to create, despite being quick to observe.

It also seems proven that releasing software quickly ("fast iteration") doesn't lead to quality - see how many releases of the YouTube app or Netflix there are on iOS or Android; if speedy releases are important, it is valuing rush to production over quality, much like a processed food version of edible content.

In a world that is also facing energy issues, sluggish and inefficient performance should be shunned, not welcomed?

I suppose this mentality is endemic, and why we see a raft of cruddy slow software these days, where upcoming developers ("current teams") no longer value performance over ease of their job. It can only get worse if the "it's good enough" mentality persists. It's quite sad.
by jfyi | 2026-02-03 11:12:23+00:00
>The exposed data told a different story than the platform's public image - while Moltbook boasted 1.5 million registered agents, the database revealed only 17,000 human owners behind them - an 88:1 ratio.

They acquired the ratio by directly querying tables through the exposed API key...

I feel publishing this moves beyond standard disclosure. It turns a bug report into a business critique. Using exfiltrated data in this way damages the cooperation between researchers and companies.
by TrackerFF | 2026-02-03 11:12:27+00:00
Doesn't really mater, when these things are being politicized and fueled by racism (always need some boogeyman), you'll always see wildly disproportionate coverage.

If some illegal / undocumented foreigner sexually assaults a white person, that's all you'll see in the newspapers and media for a week. There will be townhall meetings, debates, protests.

While all this happens, twice as many will experience the same SA by their spouse, family member/friend, tinder date, or whatever. Likely you'll never hear about those - as if they never happened.

In the end, public perception is what drives everything. Far-right media has known this for a long time - and are using it for all it is worth. They also know that no one ever won the public by defending criminals.
by beloch | 2026-02-03 11:12:32+00:00
"UPFs share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation. These parallels should inform how we classify and regulate UPFs."

------------

There was a "Nature of Things" episode on this titled, "Foodspiracy". The reason why UPF's have been designed and marketed with many of the same strategies as tobacco is because several big tobacco companies diversified into food. They literally transferred their expertise from marketing cigarettes to marketing junk food.

Companies like Joe Camel started out using cute/cool animal mascots to condition kids so they'd buy Joe Camel cigarettes when they were old enough to smoke (if not sooner). There was a lot of competition for adult smokers, so hooking kids on their brand before any other company got to them was a winning strategy. When they pivoted into UPF's, they immediately put animal mascots and cartoon characters on cereal boxes. They no longer had to wait for their target audience to grow up a bit.

It's sobering to find out that companies specializing in unhealthy addiction have literally gone from cigarettes to potato chips and breakfast cereals without missing a step, and kids are their preferred demographic.
by mapontosevenths | 2026-02-03 11:12:58+00:00
Premature optimization is a thing in life AND in programming. Many folks make it far more complicated than it needs to be.

I regularly see folks agonizing about every decision and new study, but the thing is.... the tips on OP's very basic list are responsible for like 80% of the value one gets from "living healthy".

All the rest of the organic whole grain horseshit and panicking about microplastics MIGHT net you another 10%, but at double the cost to your happiness.

The last 10% is basically impossible to achieve without completely sacrificing your quality of life.
by tokioyoyo | 2026-02-03 11:13:23+00:00
Nothing is really stopping other countries from doing the same, to be honest. People are just scared to give legitimacy to what China has done for their citizens in a very short amount of time, because that would be against their own beliefs and morals.

I'm not saying China is the best and whatever, just saying they've proven every "China is about to fall" headline that has been circulating around for the past 15 years. Maybe we should learn some things from them.
by gyrovague-com | 2026-02-03 11:13:53+00:00
Gyrovague here. As linked in the blog entry, you can view both sides of the email correspondence here: https://pastes.io/correspond

As for outcomes, I'm very much a bit player/spectator in this drama, nobody's going to be "taking them down" over DDOSing an obscure nerd blog.

If they do go down, it'll be the FBI or equivalent, and it will be publicly justified as some combination of "protecting the children" (cf. WAAD) and/or copyright violations.
by ccppurcell | 2026-02-03 11:14:35+00:00
So what if we are quite predictable. That doesn't mean we are "trying" to predict the next word, or "trying" to be predictable, which is what llms are doing.

Over a large population, trends emerge. An LLM is not a member of the population, it is a replicator of trends in a population, not a population of souls but of sentences, a corpus.
by nickdothutton | 2026-02-03 11:14:37+00:00
I guessed Claude Code was used. I think there will be an explosion in this kind of whimsy, I say so because I've indulged in it myself lately. Can't wait for something of this kind to find its way into, say, Golden Dome[1], because another AI agent thought it would be a sensible inclusion and nobody checked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
by jacquesm | 2026-02-03 11:14:59+00:00
You have not done any real world verification on any of this, you are arguing from a very flawed and overly simplistic lay-persons theoretical model of how solar panels must function in space and then you draw all kinds of conclusions from that model, none of which have been born out by experiment. 25% efficiency for a solar panel means that 25% of the sunlight incident on a panel was turned into electricity. It has nothing to do with how big a fraction is turned into heat, though obviously the more of it is turned into electricity the less there is available to be converted into heat. And it does not account for other parts of the spectrum that are outside of the range that the panel can capture.

That 25% is peak efficiency. It does not take into account:

(1) the temperature of the panel (higher temp->lower efficiency), hence the need for passive cooling of the panels in space due to a lack of working fluid (air).

(2) the angle of the incidence: both angles have to be 'perfect' for that 25% to happen, which in practice puts all kinds of constraints on orientation, especially when coupled with requirements placed on the rest of the satellite.

(3) the effects of aging (which can be considerable, especially in space), for instance, due to solar wind particles, thermal cycling and so on

(4) the effect of defects in the panels causing local failure that can cascade across strings of cells and even strings of panels

(5) the effects of the backing and the glass

(6) in space: the damage over time due to mechanical effects of micro meteorite impact on cells and cover; these can affect the panels both mechanically and electrically

To minimize all of these effects (which affect both operational life span of panels as well as momentary yield) and effectively to pretend they do not exist is proof that you are clueless, and yet you make these (loud) proclamations. Gell-Mann had something to say about this, so now your other contributions suffer from de-rating.
by watwut | 2026-02-03 11:15:43+00:00
Steelmanning is not challenging them at all. It is whitewashing them, making softer argument so that they are more palatable and frequently undistinguishable from support.

The only person challenged by such steelmanning is opposition to MAGA. They now have two opponents. They are made look as if they were exaggerating or were crazy when they accurately report to what MAGA does or says. They now have an additional, basically unintentional bad faith, rationalization to deal with against them.

> there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).

The problem is that what happens is that the opposition to MAGA is constantly asked to do growth, to steelman, to concede and move more to the right to accommodate MAGA. It is highly asymmetric and provably does not work.

> I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things

I think that making it clear what MAGA wants says and supports to moderates and center is way better strategy then basically helping them.
by tsimionescu | 2026-02-03 11:16:15+00:00
I think the best and easiest idea is to prevent people from carrying weapons on airplanes. Taking over an airplane with special underwear is not a realistic threat.

In contrast, trying to interview and run background checks on every person boarding a plane to figure out if they are an extremist on a mission or not is (a) much more invasive, and (b) much less likely to work out. Especially when you actually don't want to prevent fundamentalists from flying on planes (I don't think preventing some major evangelical church leader or some radical rabbi from flying would even be constitutional, and clearly not a popular move if attempted).

Note that I am not at all advocating for extra security targeting of Sikhs or any other such religious or ethnic targeting. I am just saying that no one should be allowed to carry a weapon on board a commercial airplane, for any reason.
by MonkeyClub | 2026-02-03 11:16:23+00:00
> and now I sit here not believing I actually did that.

Optimization comes for us all :) I also have caught myself repeatedly skimming and scanning for that one salient point, feeling like "ain't nobody got time for all that verbiage".

Too much info, too little time, so gotta optimize.

TFA's TL;DR is midway through the abstract (which is itself the old school TL;DR):

> Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.

Which is sort of understandable, the undocumented immigrant may feel under constant watch or even persecuted and self-police their behavior.

Anecdotally, I've encountered this in academic contexts, where foreign students were way more apprehensive and careful, while native ones quite loose with their behaviors.
by thephyber | 2026-02-03 11:17:36+00:00
The simplest reason: Mail servers have long had features which will send the mail client a substring of the text content without transferring the entire thing. Like the GMail inbox view, before you open any one message.

I suspect this is relevant because Quoted Printable was only a useful encoding for MIME types like text and HTML (the human readable email body), not binary (eg. Attachments, images, videos). Mail servers (if they want) can effectively treat the binary types as an opaque blob, while the text types can be read for more efficient transfer of message listings to the client.
by Antibabelic | 2026-02-03 11:17:51+00:00
The author completely fails to reflect on why people commit crimes in the first place. Apparently some people just have a higher innate propensity for breaking the law that goes down with age. In practice, people commit crime because they have to, it seems like a good idea to them at the moment. Older people commit less crime because they tend to be at a much more stable position in their lives than teenagers. Perhaps the right thing to do is to make crime unnecessary by lifting communities out of poverty, encouraging the growth of tight-knit support networks and giving people more opportunities for a comfortable life. Not taking more years of life away from people.
by epolanski | 2026-02-03 11:18:02+00:00
> If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies.

In a modern parliamentary democracy you vote parties which form coalitions and settle on one of the party leaders (in general the one with most votes) as prime minister.

This means that:

- other parties are still involved in the legislative process. In a presidential republic with the president holding executive power, other parties are not represented at all. Trump doesn't need approval on his actions neither by opposition nor his own party. In a parliament, many members will support continuity on many topics rather than change if it doesn't make sense. They still vote based on their conscience, not just on their affiliation.

- the executive depends on its effectiveness and for staying in power on the support of its parliament members. If some members of Giorgia Meloni's coalition don't like the direction she's taking they are not gonna vote her proposals and ultimately she may need to resign if she gets a vote of no confidence. Removing a president in countries like US is extremely difficult in comparison, and the executive has no checks, neither from opposition nor its own party to go in whatever direction a single individual decides to go.

Seriously, what Belarus, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, etc, all have in common? They are presidential republics. Single individuals hold too much power and have little checks from their own party members, let alone a parliament. It's no coincidence that the last parliamentary democracy to turn into authoritarian state has been Sri Lanka over 50 years ago: it's difficult for individuals to grab power, as there is a long checklist of things that need to happen. In a presidential one?

It's very simple: a single individual can claim popular mandate, building a personality cult is simple (you don't vote parties, you vote individuals), a single individual holds executive power and is very hard to remove.

Presidential republics are more effective than slow parliamentary ones, but we should ask ourselves if our focus in 2020s, in advanced economies where things are objectively fine, isn't slow refinement instead of sharp turns.
by amne | 2026-02-03 11:18:15+00:00
I used to run a cs1.6 server on an amd 800mhz with 256mb of ram in the 2000s. I'm looking these days to get a mac mini and while thinking that 16gb will not be enough I remembered about that server. It was a NAT gateway too, had a webserver also with hitstats for the cs server. And it was a popular 16v16 type of server too. What happened? How did we get to 16gb minimum and 32gb will make you not sad.
by cobblestone32 | 2026-02-03 11:18:23+00:00
I mean, there's a limited number of dates and priests. Are you suggesting there should be a fixed fee for funerals, which dates and priests being allocated randomly? That's certainly analogous to state-funded healthcare as compared to private healthcare, but unless you want the government to interfere in the church, I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. And I mean, all cultural things are "manipulation" in some sense, take the case of going to see the latest superhero movie on the release day. Of course the tickets would be more pricey, is that also coercive?
by lucastamoios | 2026-02-03 11:18:35+00:00
Location: Brazil

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Go, PostgreSQL, Python, Django, Redis, Docker, ETL pipelines

Résumé/CV: https://laguiar.dev/curriculum

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-almeida-aguiar/

Email: lucas.tamoios@gmail.com

Senior Backend Engineer with 10 years of experience building high-scale data systems. Most recently spent 6 years at Toggl on the Reports/Data Visualization team, where I led the design of an ETL pipeline serving 2 billion time entries (timeout → sub-3s worst-case), built a DSL-based report engine serving 3 products, and delivered a historical billable rates system across 4 hierarchy levels as a 6-month solo project.

I also run a side business with a video surveillance platform (84+ cameras, bare-metal infrastructure) and a legal document automation tool that reduced prep time by 78%.

Looking for remote Senior/Staff Backend roles at product companies. Strong in query optimization, system design, and turning ambiguous requirements into working software.
by noirscape | 2026-02-03 11:18:39+00:00
There's a difference between software that's "done" (it never needs updates, ever) and software that's done (it only needs maintenance for security and platform churn).

The former is extremely rare; platform churn alone will usually demand updates, even if your code is otherwise airtight. Forces generally beyond your access will demand that your code is able to conform to platform standards. The demand this places can be very variable and depends more on the platform than you. (Windows has low platform churn since it's possible to futz with compat features, Linux is extremely variable on your codebase, MacOS is fairly constant and from what I know about mobile phones, you're basically signing up to forever maintenance duty).

The latter is much more common; sure, sudo still gets updates but most of those won't be new features. Specification wise, sudo is "done". It does what it needs to, it's interface is defined and there aren't going to be any strange surprises when I run sudo between any system made in the past 10 years or so.

The problem is that when you're selling software, demanding compensation for the former is a hard sell since it's things customers won't see or necessarily care about. Demanding compensation for the latter is much more obviously acceptable.