MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by anonymous908213 | 2026-02-04 05:09:49+00:00
> All protest is aimed at intimidating someone.

This isn't entirely true, but insofar as some protest is aimed at intimidation, protest should be aimed at intimidating the government as a whole, not a specific individual, unless perhaps that specific individual is the government as a whole, in which case they'll probably have tanks guarding their palace from unruly protestors and this discussion is moot.

> I'd absolutely support anyone protesting something I agree with

Even in a mob with 500 torches and pitchforks outside your family's house?

> There are no special rights given to "journalists" that aren't already given to all people. Journalists are just regular people and everyone has the freedom of the press.

This is correct in a technical sense but not really correct in a reality sense. Journalists are not privileged with legal rights, but they absolutely have many special social rights. Journalists are given access to places regular people would not be given access to all the time, and people are willing to talk to and divulge information to journalists that they would not be willing to give to random individuals. For an established journalist, it would be trivial to obtain a politician's address even if it were not public record. This social trust is earned by a record of professionalism.

> There are extremely few public servants being assassinated in their homes. There are far more cases of public servants killing innocent people.

The latter statement seems like a non-sequitur. It is true, but not really connected to the topic at hand. Knowing a politician's address doesn't stop them from killing people. It simply results in more total killing in the world, not less. We should strive to reduce all sources of senseless violence, and giving out politician's addresses is absolutely one of those sources.
by mickael-kerjean | 2026-02-04 05:10:01+00:00
> France is not adopting existing open source software

As a Frenchman, this stings. I have been working since 2017 in creating an open source alternative to Dropbox (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash), the reality is out of 60 customers, only 2 are French and most contacts I've had with French entities only shown interest onto open source because they were not willing to spend a dime on anything.

Customers are mostly US entities and other countries in Europe. The gist is our technology is already working accross every possible storage technology and every identity provider, has a clean modern UI, has gateway capabilities to expose your data with open protocols like SFTP, FTP, S3, MCP, with virtual filesystem capabilities that enables a decentralized approach through federation and tons of other advanced setup, is deployed in production in places like US military, MIT, European Commission and many other othher high profile places.

We just launched https://www.filestash.eu a few days ago hoping to talk to people in France who are interested in translating the talk of data sovereignty onto actual actions.
If anybody who is reading this is truly interested onto a sovereign Dropbox, reach out to me, I'd love to talk to you
by KomoD | 2026-02-04 05:10:03+00:00
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

> Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.

> If your work isn't ready for users to try out, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then. Don't post landing pages or fundraisers.

This is a blog post and going to the homepage I only see a waitlist.

It also makes claims about transparency, open-source, self-hosting but the Github repo has no code, there's only a LICENSE and README... so I can't do any of that.
by senectus1 | 2026-02-04 05:10:13+00:00
its how you use the tool... reminds me of that episode of simpsons when homer gets a gun lic... he goes from not using it at all, to using it a little, to using it without thinking about what hes doing and for ludicrous things...

thinking is tiring and life is complicated, the tool makes it easy to slip into bad habits and bad habits are hard to break even when you recognise its a bad habit.

Many people are too busy/lazy/self-unaware to evaluate their behaviour to recognise a bad habit.
by ai_critic | 2026-02-04 05:10:30+00:00
> I think what plagues a lot of pure STEM types in this tumultuous period of AI (or "AI") is that they've spent a majority of their lives mulling over some problem until they've worked out every possible imperfection, and once they've achieved something they consider close to that level of perfection, that's when they say they're done.

These people are miserable to work with if you need things done quickly and can tolerate even slight imperfection.

That operating regime is, incidentally, 95% of the work we actually get paid to do.
by bruce511 | 2026-02-04 05:11:00+00:00
Yes I think some of what he's doing isn't new, and yes some of it isn't new, just more brazen, but I think there's also a lot of new.

For example, pardons are for sale. Thats pretty obvious. maybe it's been done before (?) but certainly not on this scale and not so soon in the term.

Secondly he's set up a direct method for paying him, TrumpCoin. That's different to campaign contributions. And indeed quite a bit of trumpcoin is being sold to foreign govts. I'm gonna put that in the "new" column.

In terms of international relations it's all new. He's blowing up trust in the US, via tarrifs, threats to invade a NATO country and so on. This is long term damage at unprecedented scale for no apparent actual gain.

There are plenty of laws which say he can't do any of this. Adding more laws is not the solution. A weak congress, and a weak Supreme Court unwilling to enforce the laws is the problem.
by m463 | 2026-02-04 05:12:17+00:00
I used to really enjoy musk's talks when he was spooling up tesla. He was an engineer and obviously the world is missing what engineers see clearly.

But now looking back and accounting for the claims he made there's a pattern.

I saw this article:

https://www.wired.com/story/theres-a-very-simple-pattern-to-...

that said... he did jumpstart the EV industry. He has put up satellites every week for years. He is still a net benefit to all of us.
by findalex | 2026-02-04 05:12:29+00:00
Intended as analogy - but it is essentially a description of the DMRG algorithm (quantum chem). Only pair-wise operators there but the theory approaches exact when there are enough terms in your tensor product (iterations ~ depth) and a large enough embedding dimension.

> There are no constraints on how the data transforms.

Except those implicit in your learned representation. And that representation could be the MB WF.
by wvenable | 2026-02-04 05:12:53+00:00
Since everything ultimately ends up inside a base-2 computer across base-2 bus that even if these media aren't subject to the same considerations it still makes sense to measure them that way.

The choice would be effectively arbitrary, the number of actual bits or bytes is the same regardless of the multiplier that you use. But since it's for a computer, it makes sense to use units that are comparable (e.g. RAM and HD).
by hackit2 | 2026-02-04 05:13:38+00:00
The plan is to put everything into a repo on github, this includes documentation on the file format, and also the rewrite of the original code in modern C++ and DirectX or Vulkan. I don't see much point in reverse engineering the old rendering engine - I can do it but I've got everything I need right now that I can just rewrite the game inside the browser.
by numpad0 | 2026-02-04 05:14:20+00:00
> Due to a miscommunication with the factory, the injection pins were moved inside the heatsink fins, causing the cylindrical extrusions below.

Never done casting let alone worked with Chinese factory to ship hundreds of units but: this sounds potentially intentional at factory's end. It's plausible that these fins didn't pass factory guy's manufacturability gut DRC who would made changes thinking the customer would just give in. IIUC molding people in general don't like corners and narrow channels with no sprues and/or gas escapes. Especially the outer ring of pins appear to be exactly where they like to place sprues.

I wonder how this problem was eventually solved. The final product seem to retain the number, height, draft angles of the fins, but fillet radii appear to have increased(2mm -> 5mm?) and the entire body shows more material shrinkage at the outer edge of the body as well. Was it just no pins and higher defect rate, or something else entirely?
by throw3e98 | 2026-02-04 05:16:05+00:00
> Get grass roots support for it.

You know that line from the Mandalorian, "Weapons are part of my religion"?

That is true in the most literal possible sense for a large portion of Americans. And not all of them right-wing, either- if anything, the past 5 years have convinced many of my left-wing friends to get concealed weapons training and being carrying pistols.
by harrisonjackson | 2026-02-04 05:16:15+00:00
I believe it is a type of burnout. AI might have accelerated both the work and that feeling.

I found that doing more physical projects helped me. Large woodworking, home improvement, projects. Built-in bookshelves, a huge butcher block bar top (with 24+ hours of mindlessly sanding), rolling workbenches, and lots of cabinets. Learning and trying to master a new skill, using new design software, filling the garage with tools...
by armchairhacker | 2026-02-04 05:16:22+00:00
Personally: technical problems I usually think for a couple days at most before I need to start implementing to make progress. But I have background things like future plans, politics, philosophy, and stories, so I always have something to think about. Close-up technical thinking is great, but sometimes step back and look at the bigger picture?

I don't think AI has affected my thinking much, but that's because I probably don't know how to use it well. Whenever AI writes a lot of code, I end up having to understand if not change most of it; either because I don't trust the AI, I have to change the specification (and either it's a small change or I don't trust the AI to rewrite), the code has a leaky abstraction, the specification was wrong, the code has a bug, the code looks like it has a bug (but the problem ends up somewhere else), I'm looking for a bug, etc. Although more and more often the AI saves time and thinking vs. if I wrote the implementation myself, it doesn't prevent me from having to think about the code at all and treating it like a black box, due to the above.
by boredtofears | 2026-02-04 05:18:07+00:00
I dunno, when you've made about 10,000 clay pots its kinda nice to skip to the end result, you're probably not going to learn a ton with clay pot #10,001. You can probably come up with some pretty interesting ideas for what you want the end result to look like from the onset.

I find myself being able to reach for the things that my normal pragmatist code monkey self would consider out of scope - these are often not user facing things at all but things that absolutely improve code maintenance, scalability, testing/testability, or reduce side effects.
by Sparyjerry | 2026-02-04 05:18:52+00:00
I've never once seen any CSAM or nazi things except the highly publicized Ye postings on Twitter, who also did a super bowl commercial that linked to a nazi tshirt by the way, so go ahead and boycott the NFL too if you like. You simply don't use the service if you think these things. Also, I recall that day that the internet was all a buzz with how twitter is down, obviously only because Elon haters wanted so badly to be right, but I used it all day uninterrupted and wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't read an article about it. You are seriously being brainwashed to hate Elon by mostly democrat mouthpieces who make hit piece articles about how he waved while saying thank you wrong. I defend innoent and wrongly accused people like Elon because so many people clearly making this up out of no where, you literally linked to an article here claiming he has ties to Epstein, like seriously if you ever decide to exit your bubble you'll find out how many people are lying to you.
by cyberax | 2026-02-04 05:19:05+00:00
Hydrogen containment: you might want to look at topping up hydrogen along the way. Have a small compartment inside the gas bag with lithium shavings and a small servo that can release water into this compartment.

You'll get about 1/15-th of the lithium+water mass as hydrogen. So if you want to replenish 1 m^3 of hydrogen at STP (or around 1/8-th of the gas bag volume), you'll need around 600 grams of reagents.
by beeflet | 2026-02-04 05:19:05+00:00
In 3D modeling, there are parametric files where the end user is expected to modify the input parameters to fit their needs. So for example, if you have multiple parts that need to fit together, you may need to adjust the tolerances for that fit, because the physical shape will vary depending on your printer settings and material.

Making tiny modifications isn't just a method of circumvention, it's like part of the main workflow of using a 3d model.
by sublinear | 2026-02-04 05:21:40+00:00
> I have tried to get that feeling of mental growth outside of coding

A few years before this wave of AI hit, I got promoted into a tech lead/architect role. All of my mental growth since then has been learning to navigate office politics and getting the 10k ft view way more often.

I was already telling myself "I miss thinking hard" years before this promotion. When I build stuff now, I do it with a much clearer purpose. I have sincerely tried the new tools, but I'm back to just using google search if anything at all.

All I did was prove to myself the bottleneck was never writing code, but deciding why I'm doing anything at all. If you want to think so hard you stay awake at night, try existential dread. It's an important developmental milestone you'd have been forced to confront anyway even 1000 years ago.

My point is, you might want to reconsider how much you blame AI.
by tombert | 2026-02-04 05:22:04+00:00
A lot of us were victims of the FTX/Gemini Earn bullshit, where we were taken in by "stablecoins" and promises of safety only to have our stuff stolen.

You could say "bad apples" and fair enough, but even with that as a given, I haven't seen any utility out of cryptocurrency as a whole. I'm sure you can find to a nifty little tech demo for something, but I haven't seen any large adoption for cryptocurrency outside of a "greater fool" investment scheme or buying drugs.

Stablecoins are kind of a cute idea, but as I learned from the unregistered security scam from Gemini, they're basically just a farce.
by rcvassallo83 | 2026-02-04 05:22:41+00:00
Thinking harder than I have in a long time with AI assisted coding.

As I'm providing context I get to think about what an ideal approach would look like and often dive into a research session to analyze pros and cons of various solutions.

I don't use agents much because it's important to see how a component I just designed fits into the larger codebase. That experience provides insights on what improvements I need to make and what to build next.

The time I've spent thinking about the composability, cohesiveness, and ergonomics of the code itself have really paid off. The codebase is a joy to work in, easy to maintain and extend.

The LLMs have helped me focus my cognitive bandwidth on the quality and architecture instead of the tedious and time consuming parts.
by tired-turtle | 2026-02-04 05:24:12+00:00
> We're all Linus Torvalds now.

So...where's your OS and SCM?

I get your point that wetware stills matter, but I think it's a bit much to contend that more than a handful of people (or everyone) is on the level of Linus Torvalds now that we have LLMs.
by buchanae | 2026-02-04 05:24:27+00:00
A lot of tech debt I've seen stems from people tacking things onto a loose foundation – adding API endpoints when there's no clear pattern, adding validation or defaults in different ways, organizing layers of code in various ways, multiple implementations of the same business need.

This is compounded when people come and go. The software/tech industry, in my experience, does not encourage long tenure – layoffs, reorgs, and the general trend of people hopping between employers every 2-3 years.

Startups also love the idea of building things fast and ugly, and 5 years later that leaves the company with a successful product (hopefully), a team that's grown fast (and turned over multiple times), and a shaky foundation.

Engineering generally seems open to paying down tech debt, but there's an overwhelming amount of it sometimes, and someone needs to deeply understand the problem and lay out a clear plan for taking care of it, and that takes serious effort.
by encom | 2026-02-04 05:25:03+00:00
Electrician here. When I went to school around 2006 or so, we actually learned how to do this. Except more like a historical curiosity. It certainly looks beautiful when done right. Sadly, nobody has time or budget for beauty any more, and that goes for all the trades. And so, I carry around bunch of cableties in my toolbag every day.

If only people would learn to cut the ends off correctly, so the next guy doesn't tear his arms to shreds.
by fishgoesblub | 2026-02-04 05:26:19+00:00
So the author doesn't want to cough up the money to buy a VPN but will instead write a custom Tor client that is intentionally weak on anonymity so they can run their own exit node on a VPS they bought. Why not setup Wireguard and use the VPS as a VPN? More power to them, seems like they learned some things and are happy with the results, I just don't get it though.
by b1temy | 2026-02-04 05:27:49+00:00
This article reminds me of some of the stories in the "The Hardware Hacker" book by Andrew Huang [0], which went a bit about the author's experience in Shenzhen manufacturing some hardware.

There are a bit over similarities with the article, like miscommunications occurring or needing to specify in exact terms what is required. But I think it is slightly different now, the stories in the book was from a while ago and in shenzhen instead of zhongsan, so I am sure things have changed, and this article is more up to date.

[0] Despite the title, it is not entirely solely about hacking in the security sense. But also the traditional use of the word "hacker".
by KomoD | 2026-02-04 05:27:59+00:00
https://travelsafetydata.com/country/SE

How are these "scams & fraud"?

> Make sure your health insurance plan provides coverage overseas. Most care providers overseas only accept credit card payments. See our webpage for more information on insurance overseas. Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information on the type of insurance you should consider before you travel overseas.

> Gas stations in rural areas can be far apart. Some stations are unattended and require a credit card with a chip to purchase fuel.

Same with https://travelsafetydata.com/country/NO

It lists child protection laws as "scams & fraud"
by shit_game | 2026-02-04 05:29:11+00:00
Complex manufacturing of improvised firearms has been practically made obsolete by the commodification of both steel tubing and cartridges. "Pipe guns" are incredibly easy to make, and require little more than a pipe, a cap, and a drill (which can sometimes be omitted as well). Many common cartridge diameters very closely or exactly match commercially available pipe diameters, and the hardware to make a single-shot firearm is ubiquitous in any store that sells plumbing supplies. Pipe guns are simple and cheap enough to make that some people abuse gun buy-back programs by deliberately manufacturing pipe guns for pennies and pocketing the money these programs offer [0]. These are real, functional guns, and I promise they're simpler, faster, and cheaper to manufacture than any 3d printed gun.

0: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/11/17/handing-zip-g...
by throw3e98 | 2026-02-04 05:29:41+00:00
> because you still can't get the other parts that aren't printed

Every part except the firing pin is now printable (you can print quite strong carbon-fiber reinforced parts at home). The firing pin can be made from a nail or similar piece of metal.

> You can't get bullets

Bullets are mostly easy enough to make. One of my neighbors growing up was a competitive shooter who competed nationally and internationally. He manufactured his own ammo in his home shop, using tools any boomer dad had access to, like a lathe, presses and very accurate scales. He didn't really pay any more for ammo than we did per round. The only reason criminals don't do it is because buying factory ammo on the gray and black market is so easy.

The most difficult part to make would probably be the primers, but that still isn't difficult for any chemist.

Here's a (old) video of someone in Europe making their own ammo at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Cx4idIIe0
by sampullman | 2026-02-04 05:30:25+00:00
I did not find this to be the case, except with a few low quality vendors we ended up dropping.

It was mostly the same as anywhere else, you go talk to them in person, tour their facilities/processes, and see what else they've built.

I was warned strongly about IP theft and cost cutting, but didn't find that expectation quite met reality. It may have been that our products were mostly un-copyable, and we specified everything precisely, or were just lucky.
by Harishita | 2026-02-04 05:30:47+00:00
Hey, I'm Harshita, a Software engineer with 4+ years of engineering experince and currently pursuning Master's in Software Engineering specialization in Enterprise distributed systems.

I am looking for summer 2026 SWE internships and full-time backened/full-stack roles.

Location: San Fransisco Bay area, CA
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Backend & Distributed Systems (Java, Python), REST, Microservices, Event-Driven Systems, APIs, React, JS, AI/LLMs, AWS, SQL and NoSQL, Github.

Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gvcKYGkxgG2XfYEz7qghyguQyt4...

Portfilio - https://harishitagupta.github.io/MyPortifolio/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshita-gupta-sse/

Email: harshita.gupta1502@gmail.com
by Aurornis | 2026-02-04 05:31:29+00:00
> Similar with cars that have to have self-stopping when they almost run into another car (for example on your phone and person in front breaks).

The US regulations on Automatic Emergency Braking systems requirements for new cars are actually several years behind many other markets like the EU and Japan.

This isn’t really an American thing and it’s not for blocking Chinese manufacturers. Chinese automakers can make AEBs too.
by ggm | 2026-02-04 05:31:32+00:00
A lot of productive thinking happens when asleep, in the shower, in flow walking or cycling or rowing.

It's hard to rationalise this as billable time, but they pay for outcome even if they act like they pay for 9-5 and so if I'm thinking why I like a particular abstraction, or see analogies to another problem, or begin to construct dialogues with mysel(ves|f) about this, and it happens I'm scrubbing my back (or worse) I kind of "go with the flow" so to speak.

Definitely thinking about the problem can be a lot better than actually having to produce it.
by miki123211 | 2026-02-04 05:31:41+00:00
This vindicates the pro-AI censorship crowd I guess.

It definitely makes it clear what is expected of AI companies. Your users aren't responsible for what they use your model for, you are, so you'd better make sure your model can't ever be used for anything nefarious. If you can't do that without keeping the model closed and verifying everyone's identities... well, that's good for your profits I guess.