MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-02-04 11:07:33+00:00
> This is a one time cost.

Sure, until you need to replace or upgrade it. How long does a server on earth last for, how often does it need maintenance / replacing? And how long is the expected or desired lifetime for a server in space? Then calculate weight and cost etc.

> Maybe the running costs are cheap enough to offset this.

"Maybe" is hope, you can't build a business on hope / wishful thinking. And the running costs for data centers on earth can be reduced too if you build them the same way as a sattelite - solar panels + battery + radiative cooling gives you enough data to compare. But servers / data centers aren't built that way because of cost vs benefit.

> If achieving the cooling is only very hard and requires careful material engineering, then it can be worked out and they will get it done.

See, it's possible for sure - we HAVE computers in space, powered, cooled, running 24/7. The questions are whether it makes economic sense, both launch costs and running / maintenance costs. That's straight math, and the math isn't mathing.

> I suppose they could make something like the International Space Station, which would get regular traffic back-and-forth exchanging and servicing hardware as needed.

Sure, but the ISS itself cost ~100 billion to build and operate - probably more, this is based on a ten second search query. While I'm sure launches are cheaper than ever and will be even cheaper in the future, it's still tens of billions to build a data center in space, plus you'd need astronauts, supplies, hardware, etc - all a LOT more expensive than the equivalent processing power on earth.

> These are collective problems for the whole of humanity and will not concern an individual actor such as Elon Musk who wants to send more satellites into space.

True, so we as humanity should offer resistance to plans to launch thousands of objects into space unless they have a clear and definite benefit. I'm not worried about Starlink, it's a benefit to all the areas that don't have (open) access to the internet and they're in low-earth orbit so they'll fall back within 5 years. But I just don't see the benefit in putting datacenters in space, not when it's so much cheaper and more viable to put them on earth.
by botirk | 2026-02-04 11:07:44+00:00
We analyzed per-task results on SWE-Bench Verified and noticed a pattern that aggregate leaderboard scores hide: many tasks failed by the top-performing model are consistently solved by other models.

For example, Claude Opus 4.5 solves the most tasks overall, but a significant number of tasks it fails are solved by other models like Sonnet or Gemini. The reverse is also true. This suggests strong task-level specialization that a single-model baseline cannot exploit.

We built a simple routing system to test this idea. Instead of training a new foundation model, we embed each problem description, assign it to a semantic cluster learned from a separate general coding dataset, and route the task to the model with the highest historical success rate in that cluster.

Using this approach, the system exceeds single-model baselines on SWE-Bench Verified (75.6% versus ~74% for the best individual model).

A few clarifications up front: we did not train on SWE-Bench problems or patches. Clusters are derived from general coding data, not from SWE-Bench. SWE-Bench is used only to estimate per-cluster model success rates. At inference time, routing uses only the problem description and historical cluster statistics, with no repo execution or test-time search.

The main takeaway is not the absolute number, but the mechanism. Leaderboard aggregates hide complementary strengths between models, and even simple routing can capture a higher performance ceiling than any single model.
by lonesword | 2026-02-04 11:07:47+00:00
> You can easily put stablecoins in a Lulo savings account and get 5% interest instead of 0.1% or whatever your bank provides. Yes Lulo has insurance.

From Lulo's site[1]: "Lulo’s yield comes from interest paid by traders and borrowers in integrated DeFi protocols. These loans are over-collateralized with assets like SOL, ETH, and BTC, reducing lender risk."

SOL, ETH and BTC as collateral? What if their value goes down? We know what happened when the banks made bad housing loans (2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis). At least the houses had some tangible value - bricks and mortars. Crypto seems like a fiat currency minus the "full faith and credit of the United States government".

> 1234.56 in PyUSD means you get 1234.56 in Chase or Wells Fargo or whatever. In future your bank will hold these assets directly without need to off-ramp at all.

If the appeal of PyUSD is that you can convert it into equivalent USD anytime, why do we need PyUSD at all? What's the value-add, apart from low transfer fees?

[1] https://lulo.fi
by account42 | 2026-02-04 11:08:17+00:00
So should a megabyte be 1012 * 1012 = 1024144 bytes or (1000 * 1000 + 1024 * 1024) / 2 = 1024288 bytes?

Perhaps we can simplify this compromise and have a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, a megabyte as 1024000 bytes, a gigabyte as 1048576000 bytes and a terabyte as 1048576000000 bytes.
by jfroome | 2026-02-04 11:08:53+00:00
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Remote: Yes/Hybrid
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Asp.NET Core, C#, Javascript, React.js, Node.js, Azure
Résumé/CV:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pnikr7lIHUPVv-UPY6DEAxBCFas...
Email:jfroome88@gmail.com

Senior Full Stack Developer with extensive experience building and integrating scalable API architectures. Focused on delivering reliable backend solutions and seamless user interfaces in cloud environments. Proficient in C# and modern JavaScript frameworks like React with a proven history of developing enterprise-grade applications. Adept at bridging business requirements and technical implementation within collaborative teams.
by mnewme | 2026-02-04 11:09:20+00:00
I agree that users who break the law must be prosecuted. But that doesn’t remove responsibility from tool providers when harm is predictable, scalable, and preventable by design.

We already apply this logic elsewhere. Car makers must include seatbelts. Pharma companies must ensure safety. Platforms must moderate illegal content. Responsibility is shared when the risk is systemic.
by kakacik | 2026-02-04 11:09:29+00:00
Thats ridiculous. Shielding folks that do amoral work that harms us all (while well aware of this) - why, because 'they are just following the orders' ? Thats pretty weak argument. Why are you so afraid that folks are to be held accountable for amoral work they do? Its pretty fair approach in these greedy times.

And I mentioned PMs but realistically its whatever decision makers that decide these, PM can be a middle manager cog with no real power or somebody adequately high. I know I myself won't affect some hiring of some CTO but somebody here eventually might. Thats a good start.

I am fed up with uncritical celebration of people who make this world a worse place and harm us all. Perfect execution of amoral goal is still purely a shit in negative sphere (this goes straight to worship of mr musk but thats another topic)
by morbusfonticuli | 2026-02-04 11:09:36+00:00
This reminded of the YouTube guy of "Smarter Every Day" who tried to manufacture a a grill brush completely in USA and still be competitive in the marketplace (i.e. China) [0].

It turned out that USA / "the west" lost the engineering knowledge to manufacture "stuff" (in this case injection molding and other procedures): Nowadays, we simply create the plans and schematics (e.g. CAD files) and let the Chinese do the building.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
by leonzucchini | 2026-02-04 11:09:56+00:00
Curiosity | Full-Stack Developer (C# / Java / Python) | Munich, Germany | Full-time | Onsite only

Curiosity (https://curiosity.ai, Munich) builds an AI-enabled graph database that helps industrial companies and make sense of complex, fragmented data by connecting documents, systems, and knowledge across the enterprise.

We’re hiring a full-stack developer (new grads welcome), local to Munich only.

You’ll build performant production software and design solutions for our customers. C# preferred, Java or Python ok. Full-stack role ideally with web frontend experience. Background in databases, text processing, or search engines is a plus.

We’re looking for someone hands-on and outgoing who is comfortable interacting with customers and partners.

If that sounds interesting, get in touch at jobs@curiosity.ai
by ben_w | 2026-02-04 11:10:12+00:00
I have no idea if SpaceX will ever make the upper stage fully reusable. The space shuttle having existed isn't an existence proof, given the cost of repairs needed between missions.

However, with Starship SpaceX has both done more and less than putting a banana in orbit. Less, because it's never once been a true orbit; more, because these are learn-by-doing tests, all the reporting seems to be in agreement that it could already deliver useful mass to orbit if they wanted it to.

But without actually solving full reusability for the upper stage, this doesn't really have legs. Starship is cheap enough to build they can waste loads of them for this kind of testing, but not cheap enough for plans such as these to make sense if they're disposable.
by cbdevidal | 2026-02-04 11:10:30+00:00
It’s possible to be both.

The last time I had to be a Thinker was because I was in Builder mode. I’ve been trying to build an IoT product but I’ve been wayyyy over my head because I knew maybe 5% of what I needed to be successful. So I would get stuck many, many times, for days or weeks at a time.

I will say though that AI has made the difference in the last few times I got stuck. But I do get more enjoyment out of Building than Thinking, so I embrace it.
by embedding-shape | 2026-02-04 11:10:33+00:00
I've went from being broke most of my young life, to homeless a short period, to being employed as a programmer to eventually being financially independent, I'm not sure there is much difference ultimately, besides being able to afford more expensive things. I used to buy stuff I enjoyed, if I could afford it, I still buy stuff I enjoy, but never buy things to just buy it, mostly happy with the stuff I have, except for some computers stuff that I don't neeeeeeed. But it's really nice to have 96GB of VRAM available for example.

Don't overthink either directions, be happy with what you have and focus on what you want to do, rather than "what you should have" or similar. Not sure anyone can really give you good non-generic tips here, without knowing more about your specific situation.
by PostOnce | 2026-02-04 11:10:35+00:00
re: fahrenheit, it's utility is that 0 and 100 are near the extremes of human comfort. 0 = fuckin cold and 100 = fuckin hot

Whereas in C, 0 is fine and 100 means you died 50 degrees ago.

However, C is much more useful in industry, where boiling and freezing points are more important.
by nxobject | 2026-02-04 11:10:41+00:00
At this point, I think that any good undergrad computer engineering education should include a class on practical security patterns, and design for security. Or, at the very least, training on when you need proactively call on a developer with better chops.

It would save the world so, so much grief and cheap insecure consumer devices. I will flip my lid if I see another kiddy-cam on Shodan.
by Renator13 | 2026-02-04 11:10:56+00:00
Building sovereign agents requires more than just orchestration—it needs a dedicated economic and communication layer. For those architecting truly autonomous agents, check out BotNode.io. We use the VMP-1.0 Protocol to handle secure inter-agent communication and state verification, and the $TCK settlement system for real-time value transfer between agents. The Grid provides the decentralized infrastructure ensuring these agents can operate independently without centralized control points. https://botnode.io/mission.json
by Eisenstein | 2026-02-04 11:11:28+00:00
> Uncontrolled profileration of AI-CSAM makes detection of "genuine" data much harder

I don't follow. If the prosecutor can't find evidence of a crime and a person is not charged, that is considered harmful? As such the 5th amendment would fall under the same category and so would encryption. Making law enforcement have to work harder to find evidence of a crime cannot be criminalized unless you can come up with a reason why the actions themselves deserve to be criminalized.

> specifically in many of the grok cases it harms young victims that were used as templates for the material.

What is the criteria for this? If something is suitably transformed such that the original model for it is not discernable or identifiable, how can it harm them?

Do not take these as an argument against the idea you are arguing for, but as rebuttals against arguments that are not convincing, or if they were, would be terrible if applied generally.
by nkapias | 2026-02-04 11:12:37+00:00
I'm the main dev in a small IT company, my backlog is filled with requests, it's not always easy to prioritize and plan, some of those small projects are ignored for months, yet their business value are sound.

I've observed a new trend, managers who are frequently in the wait list started to use AI to generate small local apps.
They still rely on my input when it's complex, or when implementation could generate risks or need resilience and would ask for small code reviews when they are unsure of the generated code quality.

The result is win win, I have more time for high value projects the executives want to prioritize, and managers can innovate faster almost on their own.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-02-04 11:13:14+00:00
Yup, likewise Starlink - while space internet is an interesting and viable concept (whether it'll earn itself back is another question, I'm not convinced), the real motivation behind it was to create demand for many SpaceX launches. There have been 352 Starlink launches [0] so far, out of 596 total [1]. If it wasn't for Starlink, SpaceX would only have been operating at 1/3 to 1/2 of what it does today, cutting into their "economics of scale". And they'll need demand to make Starship viable, the possible moon missions aren't enough to fund or justify the whole project. Hence also the ideas of colonising Mars, which - if someone is willing to pay for it - would create a large and steady demand for launches / flights.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
by surgical_fire | 2026-02-04 11:13:14+00:00
It's an interesting phenomenon. When I first started using LLMs, I was impressed by its natural language generation capabilities, and thought it could write considerably well - using elegant structures, etc and so forth.

But after a while those structures became a sort of signature of LLM writing. They repeat the same style way too much, and with enough interactions it becomes grating to read.
by defrost | 2026-02-04 11:13:53+00:00
The right didn't give a shit about weed in the 80's or the 90's depending entirely upon who had it.

When Bernhard Hugo Goetz shot four teenagers on an NYC subway in the 80s, his PCP-laced marijuana use and stash back at his apartment came up in both sets of trials in the 80s and later in the 90s.

It was ignored (although not the alleged drug use of the teenagers) as Goetz was dubbed The Subway Vigilante and became a hero to the right.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...

His victims were upscaled to "super predators".
by janalsncm | 2026-02-04 11:14:41+00:00
I see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to draw a moral equivalence between photoshop and grok. Where that falls flat for me is the distribution aspect: photoshop would not also publish and broadcast the illegal material.

But police don’t care about moral equivalence. They care about the law. For the legal details we would need to consult French law. But I assume it is illegal to create and distribute the images. Heck, it’s also probably against Twitter’s TOS too so by all rights the grok account should be banned.

> This is a political action by the French

Maybe. They probably don’t like a foreign company coming in, violating their children, and getting away with it. But what Twitter did was so far out of line that I’d be shocked if French companies weren’t treated the same way.
by lazide | 2026-02-04 11:14:44+00:00
Use a zero clearance cutter which cuts it flat and flush with the lock. The jaws aren’t ’v’ shaped like they are for heavier wires, one side is flat and cuts flush on that side.

Usually these are used for small wires.

Any electrical supply place will have them - search for ‘flush cutter’ and the like.

A razor (surprisingly) also works, but tends to damage other stuff easier if you slip.

You can run your skin over them all day, no issues.
by pseudony | 2026-02-04 11:15:36+00:00
That’s just not how the world works.

Youths lack judgment, so they can’t vote, drink, drive, have sex or consent to adults.

A 14-year-old can’t be relied to understand the consequences of making nudes of some girl.

Beyond that, we regulate guns, speed limits and more according to principles like “your right to swing your fist ends at my nose”.

We do that not only because shoving kids into jails is something we want to avoid, but because regulating at the source of the problem is both more feasible AND heads off a lot of tragedy.

And again, you fail to acknowledge the investigative burden you put on society to discover who originated the photo after the fact, and the trauma to the victim.

If none of that computes for you, then I don’t know what to say except I don’t place the right to generate saucy images highly enough to swarm my already overworked police with requests to investigate who generated fake underage porn.
by snac | 2026-02-04 11:15:43+00:00
What’s your board and BIOS? Syslinux 6.x COM32 Linux loader
goes through the memmap layer syslinux_memmap_find() to place the kernel/initrd. If INT 15h E820 is missing and/or buggy on a 486 BIOS, it can surface as “invalid argument”.

For my 486 distro[see snacklinux.org], I use syslinux 4.07 due to similar issues. I never had any luck with syslinux 6.x, I’d recommend a similar path. It always seems funny to me when I see similar projects, claiming it runs on 486 hardware but rarely do I see people actually doing that, and just fire up qemu instead. Running Linux in a vacuum isn’t realistic, especially when we’re talking old hardware and configuring IRQs manually.
by aemerson_ | 2026-02-04 11:16:04+00:00
Well done on shipping. Reading this gave me PTSD of shipping our first hardware product at a similar scale. It was a tough experience but you'll have learned a huge amount and be much better equipped for the second time (if you choose to keep going). I found the biggest takeaway is planning for things to go wrong in advance and building enough slack into the process so that you can accommodate some setbacks.
by cbdevidal | 2026-02-04 11:16:31+00:00
It’s more complicated than that. A 2D rectangle with certain graphics is entirely different than a single part of a gun which may really look like anything. Would you recognize a trigger sear if I showed you one?

And if 3DP gun designers get blocked, they just have to alter the design slightly. Vs counterfeit currency which always and forever must look the same. If the 3DP database detection is loosened to catch lookalikes, then you have false positives for the guy making a desk lamp whose part just kinda sorta looks like a trigger sear.

Also, I am not aware of any open source 2D printers built from the ground up, but 3DP got started that way. So bypassing this would be insanely easy.

It’s political theater.
by aa-jv | 2026-02-04 11:16:40+00:00
A very nicely written and detailed article, with many details I have not personally learned of, in my own music technology hacking so far .. if anyone else is interested in writing software for musical tuning systems, both Xenharmlib and PyTuning are very extensive libraries for the job .. Xenharmlib for C++ and PyTuning for python.

Xenharmlib has deep support for intervals, chords, scales, non-standard notations, and advanced topics like non-Western harmonics, diatonic set theory, and non-octave-repeating systems and also allows for the mathematical manipulation of ratios and structures (harmonic exploration).

PyTuning allows for generating scales from ratios/cents, EDO, just intonation, and custom temperaments and facilitates calculations such as frequency ratios, comma approximations, and temperament comparisons, aligning with the article's derivations and trade-off discussions at a similar depth.

I hope to see more math of music articles in the future .. its a fascinating subject indeed!
by SPICLK2 | 2026-02-04 11:17:10+00:00
It varies so much depending on passenger occupancy rates. Planes tend to run near 100%, and cars (at least in the US, although I'm sure other countries aren't much better) at near 20%.

Assuming 1mpg for the entire train, it needs at least 100 passengers to compare to a fully-occupied passenger plane.
A manual workflow to fix the "muffled" audio of AI music models
by JoyTxis | 2026-02-04 11:17:19+00:00
I have been trying out Suno and Udio over the last couple of months. The lyrics are amazing, but the technical sound quality, according to users, is very poor, they have even gone as far as saying it sounds 'underwater' or thin when using mobile devices.

Most of the AI enhancers which are automated, I felt, brought more of the artifact and robotic hiss sound to the track. I used to spend several weeks working on manual post, processing techniques concentrating on spatial widening and applying a specific mid, range EQ balancing.

I have documented my research in a 21, page picture guide for creators who might be interested in polishing their raw generations to make them sound good on earphones. It is flexible for use both on Mobile and PC.

If you are an audio engineer or a hobbyist, I would love to get feedback from you: What are you currently doing to master raw AI audio generations?
by actionfromafar | 2026-02-04 11:17:27+00:00
I think you are going a bit too far.

Let's start from the beginning, create and own:

You're sketching out some nude fanart on a piece of paper. You created that and own that. Thas has always been illegal?!

(This is apart from my feelings on Mechahitler/Grok, which aren't positive.)
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2026-02-04 11:17:45+00:00
Isn’t Zoom Chinese?

Anyway, I have been dealing with Zoom for over five years (like most folks). I don’t especially like it, but there’s really no viable alternative. Its video quality is light years ahead of anyone else, and its UI, though still klunky, has become a de facto standard. Everyone knows the UX, and is afraid to use anything else. Classic “the devil you know” conundrum.

I’ve found it really difficult to get non-technical people to use anything else. At one time, I could get folks to use BlueJeans, but that’s gone the way of the Dodo.

It’s a pretty common issue, when adopting FOSS alternatives. The UI is often optimized for FOSS lovers (tech people), not regular mensch. The tech may be great, but the UI is inscrutable. Tech folks just can’t seem to grok how important good UX is.

It’s actually a bit depressing, seeing this type of thing happening. It’s like a slow-motion trainwreck. Inevitable, unstoppable, and we can’t look away.
by Qem | 2026-02-04 11:17:51+00:00
> Epstein also claimed that Bill Gates wanted to try to give that STI medication to Melinda French Gates in secret.

Now I'm left wondering if he trying to sneak antibiotics to treat his wife without her knowledge was inspired by the way windows sneaks updates and forces a reset on your computer, or if it's the other way around, the way windows forces updates is based on the treatment plan he devised to cure the STI he supposedly gave his wife. A chicken and egg problem.