MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by OkayPhysicist | 2026-02-19 22:14:09+00:00
Calling anything about gun control laws "common sense" is disingenuous at best. I'm coming at this from the "you go left enough and you get your guns back" side of the whole debate, but it's extremely difficult to solve a problem that consists of "tool used for its intended purpose, but in the wrong context".

Guns kill things. That's their primary purpose, it's why they exist. The people who aren't interested in guns for that purpose are easy to please: they don't really care about gun laws except in so much as they stop them from buying fun toys. They'd probably be fine with wildly invasive processes (being put on lists, biometric safeties, whatever), so long as they were given something in return. Something like, "You can have machine guns, but they need to be kept locked up at a licensed gun range".

People who just want guns for hunting are likewise easy to please. I'm not aware of any gun laws that have seriously effected the people who just want to shoot deer, because the tool you use to shoot an animal that isn't even aware you're there is pretty fundamentally different than those you to shoot someone who doesn't want to be shot.

The problem is people who want guns because of their utility against people, whether that means self defense, community defense, or national defense, fundamentally need the same things ( a need that is very expressly protected by the second amendment) as the person who wants to shoot a bunch of innocents. The militia folk might be fine with restrictions on handguns, but handguns are bar none the best choice for the self defense folk. The self defense folk might be fine with the existing machine gun ban, or other restrictions on long guns, but the militia folk need those for their purposes. The self dense folk are probably fine with being put on a list, but the militia folk who are concerned about the holders of that list are rightfully opposed to that.

IMO, the most effective gun law that isn't a complete non-starter to any legitimate groups of gun owners is the waiting period. It's an effective policy that substantially reduces suicide. That's a good thing. Requiring sellers to not sell to people under 18, or those who are obviously a threat to themselves and others is also largely unobjectionable. Punishing parents who fail to secure their weapons from their children, also a good thing.

No one's in favor of mass shootings, but it's not anywhere as simple as saying "common sense gun regulations".
by iamnothere | 2026-02-19 22:14:32+00:00
> In addition to facial recognition, Persona’s software is able to perform checks on financial data — including running checks on sanctions lists, running checks on cryptocurrency activity via the blockchain analysis firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs, and an interface to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) directly with US and Canadian federal agencies.

Can anyone explain why age verification software would need to file SARs? Is this a separate product line or something?
by KK7NIL | 2026-02-19 22:14:42+00:00
> I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US.

"Expats" living in Europe?
I ask because "expat" usually refers to someone who moved to a lower cost of living country that may also have significantly lower income tax compared to the EU.

> It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income.

$130k/yr is absolute bank in Europe.
From a quick Google search, that would put you well in the top 5% of earners in Berlin, just as an example.
So, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
by GlibMonkeyDeath | 2026-02-19 22:15:05+00:00
I will note that 1.6 Gbit/mm2 in 301 layers works out to about 5 MBit/mm2 - compare that to mag tape which is 300 MBit/mm2 (30 Gbit/cm2). I bet tape at this areal density would last a long time too...
by wpm | 2026-02-19 22:15:13+00:00
Sure, but I get my OS upgrades from the System Settings app now, what was stopping me from doing that in the early 2010s?

And yes, the Mac App Store was brand new, what better way to boost engagement than to move a fairly standard and typical function into it even though it was unrelated? Sounds like a good way to trick people into using your new thing. Like a boost, to engagement, one could say.
by hintymad | 2026-02-19 22:15:28+00:00
In the latest interview with Claude Code's author: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lennys-podcast-product..., Boris said that writing code is a solved problem. This brings me to a hypothetical question: what if engineers stop contributing to open source, in which case would AI still be powerful enough to learn the knowledge of software development in the future? Or is the field of computer science plateaued to the point that most of what we do is linear combination of well established patterns?
by ErikCorry | 2026-02-19 22:15:33+00:00
I like the coins idea. I don't subscribe because I know I'll forget about it and it will turn into a recurring charge on my credit card. But I would buy $10 of coins, knowing the paywall just comes back if I don't buy more, and if I lose interest it won't keep costing me anything.

When I see the "$1 introductory offer" I just think they are trying to trick me.
by bwestergard | 2026-02-19 22:15:38+00:00
Self-conscious efforts to formalize and concentrate information in systems controlled by firm management, known as "scientific management" by its proponents and "Taylorism" by many of its detractors, are a century old[1]. It has proven to be a constantly receding horizon.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
by onion2k | 2026-02-19 22:16:32+00:00
Right not coding with AI requires a lot of skill in understanding where the AI is going wrong, so it's still coding. Someone who can't code isn't going to make a good app with AI (although a 'working' app is definitely possible.)

In the future though, sure,it'll be possible to build a decent app without ever seeing or understanding the code.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2026-02-19 22:16:47+00:00
The GIGO principle in computing was invented in the 1950s but still applies today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out . If a developer gives garbage prompts to the AI, they will get garbage results. You, yourself, still need to develop expertise in all the areas a software engineer was traditionally strong in, ranging from languages to architecture, because you need that expertise to craft LLM prompts that are not garbage and to recognize the LLM output that is worth keeping instead of discarding. Otherwise you will wind up as a sockpuppet operated by the LLM. (Many AI advocates will suffer that fate.)

Fortunately, LLMs can be your ally since it can be an effective explainer, search engine to find learning resources, and provider of demo code. But you have to do the work to get the expertise into your own head.

Either you become the master of AI tools or AI tools will become your master, those are your choices.
by bluegatty | 2026-02-19 22:17:07+00:00
Yes, this is very true and it speaks strongly to this wayward notion of 'models' - it depends so much on the tuning, the harness, the tools.

I think it speaks to the broader notion of AGI as well.

Claude is definitively trained on the process of coding not just the code, that much is clear.

Codex has the same limitation but not quite as bad.

This may be a result of Anthropic using 'user cues' with respect to what are good completions and not, and feeding that into the tuning, among other things.

Anthropic is winning coding and related tasks because they're focused on that, Google is probably oriented towards a more general solution, and so, it's stuck in 'jack of all trades master of none' mode.
by metadat | 2026-02-19 22:17:17+00:00
Ranking Codex 5.2 ahead of plain 5.2 doesn't make sense. Codex is expressly designed for coding tasks. Not systems design, not problem analysis, and definitely not banking, but actually solving specific programming tasks (and it's very, very good at this). GPT 5.2 (non-codex) is better in every other way.
by conductr | 2026-02-19 22:17:17+00:00
I tend to agree with this. The logic should be the same with different rate tables for each taxing body. What I don't want though is the Fed govt being the collector and distributor of all the funds. They already weld too much power with their various funding influences for transportation, healthcare, etc. The states and local govts shouldn't need to pander so heavily to the federal govt for funds.
by krapp | 2026-02-19 22:17:28+00:00
Just a reminder, Donald Trump is mentioned over a million times in the Epstein files. He likely not only raped but participated in the murder of children. He probably had Jeffrey Epstein killed as well. Don't let yourself get distracted. None of this alien shit is real. Donald Trump being a rapist, pedophile and criminal is real. His administration's coverup of Epstein's crimes and his own complicity is real.
by zaptheimpaler | 2026-02-19 22:17:34+00:00
They're happy to fund the military, they have a list of words [1][2] that they use to flag grant applications, including "female", "bias", "political" and others. Cuts seem to be directed at biomedicine, health and social studies.

[1] https://grant-witness.us/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-fede...
by autoexec | 2026-02-19 22:17:36+00:00
> A Meta engineer involved in the torrenting wrote a script to prevent seeding, but apparently not leeching.

Wrong. Michael Clark testified under oath that they tried to minimize seeding and not that they prevented it entirely. His words were: "Bashlykov modified the config setting so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur" (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41...)

They could have used or written a client that was incapable of seeding but they didn't.

> no if you had leeched its is very unlikely that you would face time in prison.

Not the one who claimed that, but if I think it's fair to say that doing what they did, at that scale, could easily result in me (and most people) being bankrupted by fines and/or legal expenses.
by aspenmayer | 2026-02-19 22:18:00+00:00
I’m not arguing for using an AI, I’m simply asking you to write your own comment. I don’t have a “AI preference” but a preference to read comments as opposed to placeholders and shorthand stopgapped by prompts. There’s a reason why “let me Google that for you” style replies are frowned upon here.

It’s fair to ask you to write your comment, which was all I was suggesting. I am interested in what you had to say, and am genuinely curious in the point you were trying to make.

Otherwise what are we even doing here? The site is for human interaction, not AI mediated interactions steered by humans.

Please don’t take my line of inquiry as being opposed to you, rather can curious about what your prompt was alluding to. I’d rather get the information from the person who wrote the comment than assume any potential AI output generated by your prompt was what you meant, which is why I asked for clarification.
by dantegrassi | 2026-02-19 22:18:20+00:00
Hi all! I’m the person behind EU Tech Map.

First of all, thank you Puppion for posting here! Was happy to see EU Tech Map being talked about on one the most interesting corners of the web.

A few things upfront:

1) What the site is (and isn’t)

The goal is to make it easier to discover European tech companies (EU/EEA/EFTA/UK for now) and, where relevant, find alternatives to commonly used tools. It’s not attempting to claim “we have a European Google/Amazon/Nvidia” today. It’s a directory that helps people answer: “If I want a European vendor in category X, who exists and where are they based?”

2) Accuracy concerns are fair

A couple of you pointed out incorrect entries (LibreOffice classification, CockroachDB origin, etc.). Those are real issues and I’m fixing them. The site is only as useful as the trust people can place in the data.

What I’m doing in the near-term:

- Adding source/provenance per field (HQ, license model, pricing model, category, etc.) so it’s obvious what’s confirmed vs inferred.

- Tightening the validation rules (e.g. OSS status should never be wrong for well-known projects).

- Making it easier to submit corrections and see what changed.

- If you spot bad entries, the most helpful thing you can do is drop the company page + what’s wrong + a source (official docs/site/Wikipedia is fine). I’ll prioritize the ones mentioned here first.

3) The map clustering / addresses

Yep — geocoding is currently too naive in some cases (a few cities end up pinned centrally). That’s being addressed by improving address parsing and allowing companies to set a more accurate location when they claim their page.

4) Performance

The slow load and delayed map pins are on me. I’m already working on:

- better caching

- loading pins progressively

- reducing initial payload

- a simpler “list-first” mode for people who don’t care about the map

5) “Why not use existing sites?”

There are great lists out there. Some focus on product alternatives, some on buy-European movements, some on OSS. This one is trying to combine “ecosystem discovery” (who exists, where, what they do) with “alternatives” browsing. If it ends up redundant, it’ll deserve to lose.

6) Sovereignty / nationalism

I’m not trying to sell nationalism or “Europe first because vibes.” People have different reasons for caring: procurement rules, data residency, risk management, legal exposure, preference for local support, or simply curiosity about the EU tech scene. The directory is just an information layer. Use it if it helps, ignore it if it doesn’t.

Finally, appreciate both the feedback and to some degree criticism — if this becomes genuinely useful, it’ll be because people here kept the quality bar high.

I built this as a hobby project myself and launched it "for fun" just 3 days ago, and it has really exploded online, more than I would ever anticipate. So, please bear with me as I'm working day and night to improve the site.

Super grateful for everyone input! / Dante
by sigmoid10 | 2026-02-19 22:18:29+00:00
For me it's Opus 4.6 for researching code/digging through repos, gpt 5.3 codex for writing code, gemini for single hardcore science/math algorithms and grok for things the others refuse to answer or skirt around (e.g. some security/exploitability related queries). Get yourself one of those wrappers that support all models and forget thinking about who has the best model. The question is who has the best model for your problem. And there's usually a correct answer, even if it changes regularly.
by yunohn | 2026-02-19 22:19:01+00:00
The solution is called centralization by a middle man that takes a massive cut - eg YouTube Premium. Only Google makes real money off that, and the content creators rely on sponsors instead for their own revenue. So does it really work? I would despise a future where we solve micro transactions by giving up control to yet-another unnecessary body. Especially not even at the level of Visa or Mastercard, despite how much I dislike crypto.
by Yizahi | 2026-02-19 22:19:24+00:00
Asking LLM programs to "not do the thing" often results in them tripping and generating output including that "thing", since those are simply the tokens which will enter the input. I always try to rephrase query the way that all my instructions have only "positive" forms - "do only this" or "do it only in that way" or "do it only for those parameters requested" etc. Can't say if that helps much, but it is possible.
by oxag3n | 2026-02-19 22:19:43+00:00
Ah, don't take me wrong - I don't believe it's possible for LLMs to replace 90% or any number of SWEs with existing technology.

All I'm saying is - why to think what AI is (exoskeleton, co-worker, new life form), when its owners intent is to create SWE replacement?

If your neighbor is building a nuclear reactor in his shed from a pile of smoke detectors, you don't say "think about this as a science experiment" because it's impossible, just call police/NRC because of intent and actions.
by Gormo | 2026-02-19 22:19:43+00:00
> okay it's not a slippery slope, but it's something similar (that's why I said "feels like"). He's trying to establish a continuum of things that have a variety of addictive properties in an attempt to discredit the whole idea of addiction ("Don't try to make your video game fun, or some people may become addicted")..

But he actually is correct. Use the same term to describe the effects of ingesting biologically active chemicals and the effects of emotionally engaging activity -- which in this case mostly consists of exposure to information -- absolutely is disingenuous equivocation. People in this very thread are comparing Instagram with ingestion of alcohol or tobacco products, and that absolutely is a prevarication.

It's not unreasonable to observe the course of these debates, and suspect that the people invoking the language of addiction are doing so as a pretext for treating what is actually a cultural issue instead as a medical one, so as to falsely appeal to empirical certainty to answer questions that actually demand normative debate.
by cmrdporcupine | 2026-02-19 22:19:53+00:00
People's objections are not the quality of code or analysis that Gemini produces. It's that it's inept at doing things like editing pieces of files or running various tools.

As an ex-Googler part of me wonders if this has to do with the very ... bespoke ... nature of the developer tooling inside Google. Though it would be crazy for them to be training on that.
by bluegatty | 2026-02-19 22:20:00+00:00
You can pay 1 cent for a mediocre answer or 2 cents for a great answer.

So a lot of these things are relative.

Now if that equation plays out 20K times a day, well that's one thing, but if it's 'once a day' then the cost basis becomes irrelevant. Like the cost of staplers for the Medical Device company.

Obviously it will matter, but for development ... it's probably worth it to pay $300/mo for the best model, when the second best is $0.

For consumer AI, the math will be different ... and that will be a big deal in the long run.
by tracker1 | 2026-02-19 22:20:11+00:00
I'll be honest, I've always been mixed on prohibiting parolees and ex-cons from owning firearms in the first place. I think the right itself as part of self-defense is pretty clear and self-evident. I also don't like secondary crimes in general.

Killing is bad... killing because you don't like $group is double-bad. Speeding is bad, speeding without a seatbelt is double-bad. etc.

If you are such a danger to society that you shouldn't be allowed to be armed in case of defense, then you probably shouldn't be in society and remain locked up. That's just my take on it. I feel similarly on taking away voting rights after prison as well. I may not like how you vote, but I'm just not a fan of taking away people's rights outside prison/jail.
by olivdums | 2026-02-19 22:20:37+00:00
Hey HN,
Oli here, Software Engineer for 7+ years now,

I've been building developer courses for my open learning platform and decided to open-source all the lesson content.

What's inside:

- 15 React courses (hooks deep dive, server components, performance, testing, patterns...)
- 6 Next.js courses (app router, API patterns, i18n, auth, optimization)
- 4 TypeScript courses (advanced types, architecture, production patterns)
- All with TypeScript code examples and links to official docs
- More courses on modern technos

The repo is organized by technology → course → section, each lesson is a clean markdown file you can read directly on GitHub.

What content I'm planning to add:
- Skills roadmaps
- Public technical tests repositories
- Most famous newsletters per technos
- Am I missing something?
by duchenne | 2026-02-19 22:20:45+00:00
If they are worried about firearms, why don't they target CNC mills rather than 3d printer? Can you even make a firearm in plastic?

Some US company specialize in selling CNC mills specifically for firearms.

Ex: https://realghostguns.com/product/gg3-s-cnc-deposit/

It is sold with the cut codes for the AR-15, AR-.308, 1911, Polymer80 and AK-47 receivers and frames.
by scuff3d | 2026-02-19 22:20:57+00:00
I think there's some digital equivalent of the old "pay 25 cents for a newspaper" model buried in the discussion somewhere.

If I had a quick, anonymous way to pay a site 5 cents to read an article, or a dollar to read all the articles I want for some time period, or something to that effect, I'd happily pay that from time to time. What I don't want is a million subscriptions I have to pay 3 or 4 dollars a month for, when I don't read any individual site often enough for that to make sense.

And I definitely don't want them to model the system after fucking video game transactions. The fact that the author mentions the buying it in game currency as something to base this on blew my mind.
by localbulldog57 | 2026-02-19 22:21:08+00:00
The article getting flagged should answer all one needs to know.

It's extremely concerning that the 'courage we've lost' refers to former Stanford students not being reprimanded for saying outwardly offensive things, but for someone who writes about cowards, it's a shame that he would rather write reactionary points about an arguably very courageous startup acceleration program than construct strong arguments. Part of the 3.7% of those accepted into Stanford, as he refers to, are sure, manicured, but many also simply just have their parents pay their way to get barely or unqualified students in. For context, Bassel is of the latter. Once he achieves something, anything, on his own merits, I will reconsider the material of the article.
by SllX | 2026-02-19 22:21:18+00:00
Demanding your friends engage in a financial transaction with a third party is a different vibe. The reality of what would actually happen is this: if I can’t read it, I can’t read it. If I ask and they’re willing to provide it, then I’ll read it, and I would do the same with them.

But the truth is, that would grate on people, and not just with me and mine, but for everyone if we all had to engage in financial transactions to read the links that are shared with us or posted on the web. So people would just stop sharing links. I’d think twice before sending someone a link, and others would as well. We’d probably just swap to copying the whole article in another form and sharing that instead, but the extra steps would reduce the amount we would be willing to share over time cuz trading PDFs we have to generate ourselves is not as much fun as trading links.
by cogman10 | 2026-02-19 22:21:32+00:00
No it's not that.

Tell me, when was the last time you visited your shoe cobbler? How about your travel agent? Have you chatted with your phone operator recently?

The lump labour fallacy says it's a fallacy that automation reduces the net amount of human labor, importantly, across all industries. It does not say that automation won't eliminate or reduce jobs in specific industries.

It's an argument that jobs lost to automation aren't a big deal because there's always work somewhere else but not necessarily in the job that was automated away.
by giantrobot | 2026-02-19 22:21:35+00:00
This is exactly my problem with ads. They've turned into a spying mechanism that eats my battery, bandwidth, and privacy. Not only do the ad platforms want to track me but then sell their data to an innumerate number of "partners". I have no control or influence over how any of the data is used. I also have no meaningful way to opt out.

Clicking a link on the web is not tacit permission to endlessly surveil me. Viewing a blog post is not informed consent to be tracked. Even a cookie banner isn't informed consent.

While I never enjoyed magazine or television ads I never minded them. Some were even useful and introduced me to a product I ended up wanting/needing. They also didn't track me all over the web. I don't mind ads, I do mind surveillance.