MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tialaramex | 2026-02-05 00:29:03+00:00
Have you noticed you don't have Guinea Worms where you live?

It's trivial to not have this problem, the fact that a relatively large fraction of the world's population needed intervention to fix this is an indictment on our collective will.

You may have read, or at least heard about John Green's book "Everything is Tuberculosis". Treating TB is, by comparison to Guinea Worm, really hard. When medics tell John that - all being equal - nobody should die of TB because we could just fix it, they mean with like a hospital full of doctors to diagnose and prescribe treatment, pharmaceutical companies to make the drugs, stuff that looks like technology to you.

To eradicate Guinea Worm Disease you need basic clean water. I'm not talking "Wait, does this tap water meet current national standards for UV treatment?" clean water, I'm talking like, "don't drink directly out of the village pond" clean water. That's really what it takes for this to just go away on its own. The interventions are because crazily in 2026 large numbers of humans do not have ready access to clean drinking water.
by prewett | 2026-02-05 00:31:43+00:00
What bothers me is that the Left is quick to shout "fascism!" but cannot see their own soft, creeping totalitarianism. Don't think gender operations are a healthy thing? That's not an option, it's either "celebrate!" or "hate speech". And then places like Canada and the UK enshrine this into law.

If you make the opposing opinion illegal (the US has not, but the trend is obviously there), don't be surprised if people with the opposing opinion do something about it. The current administration is a hacked mess, of course, but the universities got themselves into it with things like requiring "diversity statements". What if you want to be a professor but you don't think that implementing progressive diversity is important? Too bad, no choice. If a private Christian or a Muslim university requires a statement of faith, well, it's kind of in the name. But a State-funded university that requires a "statement of faith" implementing a progressive political policy, seems like a clear overreach.

I am not defending the Trump administration, which may very well contain fascist elements. But don't go crying "fascist!" and ignore the other side's self-righteous totalitarianism.
by maskin | 2026-02-05 00:31:48+00:00
Hi HN,

We’re releasing MEDF (Mutable Expression Description Format) —
an open document format designed for the AI era.

The core idea is simple:

AI-generated documents are not the problem.
Unverifiable documents are.

Instead of trying to detect or ban AI-generated text, MEDF focuses on
fixing the canonical meaning of a document, while allowing its expressions
(PDF, Markdown, indexes, summaries) to remain mutable.

What MEDF does

Documents are split into semantic blocks

Each block and the document as a whole are hashed and signed

Offline verification is possible (no external services required)

Indexes and views are explicitly non-canonical and regenerable

AI usage is optional metadata — not a requirement for validity

What MEDF does NOT do

No AI detection

No watermarking

No blockchain dependency

No centralized trust service

We believe this approach works better for:

government and administrative documents

academic papers and citations

long-term archives in the AI era

Repository (spec + early foundation):
https://github.com/maskin/medf

This is not a final standard — it’s a starting point.
Critical feedback is very welcome.
by hmokiguess | 2026-02-05 00:32:13+00:00
I feel like for some people these chatbots are sort of becoming something like their "service animals". They fill a void, a gap, some core loneliness, reduce anxiety from dealing with the uncertainty and challenges of life.

As others mentioned here, a lot of the value add from his workflow is just relocating things from one place to another and micro optimizing.
by torginus | 2026-02-05 00:32:21+00:00
> Here's my general mantra regarding AI: NEVER take suggestions about AI from people who have a vested interest in it

I get where you're coming from, but let's say you're talking to a HVAC installer, and he recommends you a system to get - I'm sure there's financial self-interest on his part, but I do like to think that he knows quite a bit about what he does, and believes what he's selling is genuinely good stuff (and has reason to), even if he oversells it a bit.
by whattheheckheck | 2026-02-05 00:33:20+00:00
If infirmation arbitrage is the game then it's now a race to distribution channels and trust.

Also what does society need? Smart workers and people who believe in the system... so where does that leave us? We need to make something that would better enable children to want to grow up in the world and participate. Otherwise were doing nothing of value and in a death spiral
by defrost | 2026-02-05 00:33:42+00:00
Ahhh, I mean that's all very well .. but I'm over 60 and I've literally never used or needed to use Fahrenheit - and I had a long career in geophysical and physical data aquisition, ran several kinds of furnaces and annealing ovens 24/7 for a decade, do a lot of cooking, etc.

So, I appreciate your rendition of things I have tables for already but any actual need is sadly non existant.
by tedd4u | 2026-02-05 00:33:53+00:00
My guess is they want to have a PIN as a short-term credential analogous to the Touch ID, that is, it only works for X hours per password auth before needing password auth again, and then you only get X tries on the PIN before it either locks the PIN out and you need the full password to reactivate it (or I guess it could wipe the laptop à la iPhone).
by zhubert | 2026-02-05 00:33:58+00:00
I'm trying to bring a slightly different take to the pricing of ShipItAI (https://shipitai.dev, brazen plug). I've got a $5/mo/active dev + Bring Your Own Key option for those that want better price controls.

Still early in development and has a much simpler goal, but I like simple things that work well.
by Dylan16807 | 2026-02-05 00:34:02+00:00
> Serial local reads are not a plausible cause, because the autor describes working on NVMe SSDs which have so low latency that they cannot explain that reading 59 GB across 3000 files take 8 minutes.

But the people you responded to were talking about slowdowns that exist in general, not just ones that apply directly to the post.

For the post, my personal guess is that per-file overhead isn't a huge factor here, and it's mostly rsync having trouble doing >1Gbps over the network.

> In fact, it is even highly likely that rsync will not / cannot pipeline reading files that appear local to it, because normal POSIX file IO does not really offer any ways to non-blocking read regular files, so the only way to do that is with threads, which rsync doesn't use.

Makes sense.

> it absolutely would wait for network trips between files

I don't see why you're saying this. I expect it to serially read files and then put that data into a buffer that can have data from multiple files at the same time. In other words, pipelined networking. As long as the transfer queue doesn't bottom out it shouldn't have to wait for any network round trips. What leads you to think otherwise?
by steve_adams_86 | 2026-02-05 00:34:13+00:00
Something I think we should teach ourselves to do is never believe we know someone until we see their character tested. It's very easy to present as having good character under typical circumstances, but much harder when you're pressured by stress, duress, lust, impulse, or other forces. A good measure of someone's character is how they respond to these things, not only how they function in ideal circumstances.

Of course, there are more common measures like how they treat people they don't necessarily need to respect, but even that can be conjured on demand according to situational needs by cunning people. Getting to know people and drawing conclusions about them should be a longer process than it tends to be.
by jongjong | 2026-02-05 00:34:32+00:00
Japan is interesting because it has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of any developed country and most other countries in the world are increasing their debt-to-GDP ratio; in effect, they're all moving towards a Japanese reality due to the fiat system's lack of hard monetary constraints.

If you look at Japan, the aspects of its economy and society which stand out the most are:

- Rigid economic structure and processes.

- Economy dominated by huge corporations, without much room for startups.

- Highly concentrated urban population.

- Population decline. Many young people are not dating and not getting married, can't afford much on their salaries working in the city.
by Nition | 2026-02-05 00:35:09+00:00
Oh I see. I can explain my confusion: They come in two varieties, one is E40 an the other is bayonet (B22). Here in NZ interior home light sockets are sometimes E27 and sometimes B22. I have a couple of the bayonet Philips 40W bulbs here and they do fit a normal socket size, so I figured the screw version would be the normal size as well. But I see you're right that it's a larger size, and I know you guys don't use bayonet. Sorry!
by jart | 2026-02-05 00:35:12+00:00
Because I'm speaking for the millions of people who lost homes, who lost jobs, and lost hope in a society where the only answers they're being given are distractions. Folks deserve to hear a more plausible explanation of why Wall Street has crashed the economy yet again than Trump going to war in Greenland. I'm also speaking for the millions of tech workers whose RSUs are going to be worth a whole lot less because of the yen traders being liquidated, even though those workers have done nothing wrong and have been marvelous at their jobs. Worst of all, the media will pin the blame on them for the crash. The rest of the working class has already been whipped to the brink of death, so tech is the new whipping boy for everything that goes wrong these days.
by brucehoult | 2026-02-05 00:35:16+00:00
I've been using a K3 for a few weeks now. It's quite pleasant, and if I use all 16 cores (8x X100 and 8x A100) then it builds a Linux kernel almost 3x faster than my one year old Milk-V Megrez and almost 5x faster than K1.

Build Linux kernel 7503345ac5f5 defconfig

14m25.56s SpacemiT K3, 8 X100 cores + 8 A100 cores
16m55.637s SpacemiT K3, 8 X100 cores @2.4 GHz
19m12.787s i9-13900HX, 24C/32T @5.4 GHz, riscv64/ubuntu docker
39m23.187s SpacemiT K3, 8 A100 cores @2.0 GHz
42m12.414s Milk-V Megrez, 4 P550 cores @1.8 GHz
67m35.189s VisionFive 2, 4 U74 cores @1.5 GHz
70m57.001s LicheePi 3A, 8 X60 cores @1.6 GHz

Even using just the "AI" A100 cores is faster than the Megrez!

It's also great that it's now faster than a recent high end x86 with a lot of cores running QEMU.

Note that the all-cores K3 result is running a distccd on each cluster, which adds quite a bit of overhead compared to a simple `make` on local cores. All the same it shaves 2.5 minutes off. In theory, doing Amdahl calculation on the X100 and A100 times, it might be possible to get close to 11m50s with a more efficient means of using heterogenous cores, but distcc was easy to do.

Or, you could just run independent things (e.g. different builds) on each set of 8 cores.

Or maybe there's a lower overhead way to use distcc, or something else that is set up to distribute work to more than one set of resources.

I've written a small (~40 instructions) statically linked pure asm program [1] that switches the process to the A100 cores [2] then EXECs the rest of the arguments.

So you can just type something like:

ai bash

or

ai gcc -O primes.c -o primes

or

ai make -j8

... and that command (and any children) run safely on the A100 cores instead of the X100 cores.

It would be great if the upstream Linux kernel got official nicely-worked-out support for heterogenous cores -- more and more RISC-V is going to be like this, but Intel would also benefit with e.g. some cores having AVX-512 and some not, or even I recall one Arm (Samsung) SoC with big.LITTLE cores with different cache block sizes.

But in the meantime, this is workable and useful.

[1] so there is no possibility of the dynamic linker, C start code, or libc using the V extension and putting the process into a state dangerous to migrate to the different-VLEN cores.

[2] by getting the PID and writing it to to `/proc/set_ai_thread`
by pixelpoet | 2026-02-05 00:36:16+00:00
God this site is cancer on phone, I'm reading the article and suddenly the whole screen is full of some signup crap and the onscreen keyboard, so I try to bail and no fewer than 3 times does it prevent me from swiping back. Serves me right for not browsing on desktop...

Anyway, back to the topic: the 8 TB SN850X I bought for 530 Eur is now 1k Eur from some random eBay listing, not very trustworthy: https://geizhals.de/western-digital-wd-black-sn850x-nvme-ssd...
by thallavajhula | 2026-02-05 00:37:47+00:00
True. That's the case with almost any commodity in life. That's why I was specific about AI.

The difference is, in other sectors, there's no fear-mongering. If you don't use their HVAC, it's fine. Your job isn't getting replaced. The air you breathe in your home isn't going to be fully polluted. You have other options.

With AI though, there's no middle ground. You either use their tool and become extremely successful (so much that you don't know what to do with that much success) or you're out of a job and become obsolete in like the next 3 seconds.
by codinghorror | 2026-02-05 00:37:52+00:00
it's "yes, and". Help those people who are selling their blood to buy happy meals first. I am not exaggerating. I wish I was. Check out the book "$2.00 a day: Living On Almost Nothing in America" for so much evidence. Disclaimer: I know the author now. Because I have to. It's related to the work we're doing. https://www.google.com/search?q=%242+a+day%3A+living+on+almo...

Beyond that, maybe SF really is too expensive a place to live in.
Show HN: All in One AI Assistant
by rainel | 2026-02-05 00:38:50+00:00
Different model providers offer different models, and I constantly found myself switching between vendors, which was a hassle. Plus, I had to pay for separate subscriptions for each. To save my wallet, I built a one-stop platform aggregating GPT, Claude, Gemini, Suno, Veo, and other models, supporting AI chat, image/video/music generation. The current version isn't perfect yet, but I'll keep improving it over time. Looking forward to your feedback.
by brewdad | 2026-02-05 00:39:04+00:00
Can anyone speak to the relative safety or lack thereof using FaceID on individual apps while requiring a PIN to login to the device?

I have my phone setup this way because FaceID can be so convenient. I know it opens up more attack vectors than not using it but is it possible for a powerful actor to utilize the fact that it is enabled at all to gain access to a locked phone?
by exogeny | 2026-02-05 00:39:06+00:00
Interesting that this author was out ahead of this theme a full twelve years ago. Kudos.

It's not all that complex though, really. Just a bunch of adult children who were bullied mercilessly and now have convinced themselves, through the magic of Dunning-Kruger, that they are both eminently more suitable to run things and eminently justified in using that power to exact revenge on their (largely imagined) tormentors.
by fluidcruft | 2026-02-05 00:39:08+00:00
I don't think it will replace SaaS but I do think it can replace the need for a lot of the consultant work that goes around configuring and integrating the SaaS. It will be much easier to have a spec that defines how things need to be configured and the machines can implement it (using the SaaS as tools). Frankly this is the most annoying part. It's not that the B2B stuff can't do whatever, it's that it never gets implemented in ways that aren't a pain in the ass because it's all handled by people who aren't actually using them.

I really don't think it's not going to become "these prompts are specs" and then you have processes of reviewing implementations. It's one thing when you have randos building stuff and they leave etc. Having stored prompts and managed code that uses tools is a different beast.
by codinghorror | 2026-02-05 00:40:18+00:00
I strongly recommend you check out the book "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America". People -- in this country, not in the third world -- are regularly selling their blood so they can afford to eat. https://www.google.com/search?q=%242+a+day%3A+living+on+almo...

What difference does it make if the government is "capable" when it's not happening in practice?

A lot of areas in this country resemble the third world more than the rest of America. Don't take it from me. Try the book reference I provided and its citations.
by nickff | 2026-02-05 00:40:21+00:00
Canada announced an intent to purchase F-35 in 2010, at which point their F-18 were old and worn-out. The current government has been delaying a purchase for over 10 years now, and just needs to do something. The F-18 are too old to be useful, and there is still no clarity on what the intended mission is. Canada needs to either buy something now, or just abandon the idea of maintaining a tactical air force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
by keybored | 2026-02-05 00:41:17+00:00
People fought back. Who is fighting back now?

Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Discussing incentive structures?

SC coders paid hundreds of thousands a year are just letting this happen to them. “Nothing to be done about another 15K round of layoffs, onlookers say”
by eek2121 | 2026-02-05 00:41:21+00:00
I am kind of hoping that AI will kill the startup grab for money TBH. Too many wannabe CEOs I've met in the past 2 decades have gotten rich thanks to a lucky pitch without a clear path to a viable product. At least 6 of those I know did so at the expense of developers that accepted equity over cash...and the developers wasted a ton of time and 2 even were briefly homeless as a result...and none of them live in California.

Hopefully wannabe senior leadership will try and take advantage of AI without taking advantage of developers, because most of us just want to write code and build something great.
by jancsika | 2026-02-05 00:41:40+00:00
> It fueled extremism and populism, both on the left and on the right.

I think you're confusing the Occupy Movement with the housing crisis itself.

Any anti-establishment/libertarian right-wingers would have already gotten energized years before by the Tea Party movement. Even Ron Paul's million dollar "money bomb" in donations happened a few months before Occupy. And what's the path from Occupy to right-wing extremism? Even on Fox News Occupy was a short-term blip.

The "one percent" slogan made its way directly into Bernie's campaign, so that tracks with what I assume you're calling left-wing populism. But what do you mean by "extremism" here? If it's violent extremism I don't see the connection. And if it's left-wing anarchist movements, have those grown in any significant way since the 2010s?
by yalogin | 2026-02-05 00:42:03+00:00
AI, as do most things, help the big players get bigger. If someone is automating small parts of the b2b layer they get dropped, but it’s harder to drop an automation that companies are used to. I don’t see how AI is changing that, companies spent a lot of time and money to set up the automation because it’s needed and because they can write a potential replacement cheaply doesn’t mean they are going to rip away something that works and is reliable.
by black_puppydog | 2026-02-05 00:42:37+00:00
honestly the inability to correctly transcribe the 4 language mix i use in my everyday life is one of the major blockers for adopting ASR tech in my own tooling. this coming from someone who literally works in that field.

turns out, outside the US, many people speak more than one language. :)

edit: I should say was a major blocker, because the last iterations of open-weight models actually work better and better. it's often the UX that's not thought for these usecases.
by consumer451 | 2026-02-05 00:42:45+00:00
Just like when I discounted cryptocurrency in 2012, yet again I may be overthinking things.

That is the lesson that I would like to share on this platform: If you have an idea, any idea, just do it. Do it now. Build now.

It turns out that there are a lot of morons. Role the dice, you are likely not one of the bag holders, as one of the readers of this comment. I wish I had been younger when I had realized this circle of life.
by jhanschoo | 2026-02-05 00:42:51+00:00
Off the top of my head due to proximity, Mainland Chinese requirement for Joint Ventures for foreign entrants trying to participate in their market led to a lot of technology and human capital transfer; the case of ARM China comes to my mind. I don't remember details beyond that, but instead of spending time reviewing sources I think this Gemini conversation on this topic should suffice for an introduction and overview https://gemini.google.com/share/42b75fbf2e61

I suppose that there is room to make argument to be made that less protectionism in these respects would have been more sustainable, but it won't be easy. It seems to me that one would have to point to one of:

- enormous short-term benefits of allowing foreign entities to enter the market while controlling their intellectual capital / capital equipment

- a reason why they would acquire such intellectual capital / capital equipment anyway through less protectionist means

- a reason why they would obtain a substitute for the long-term value represented by such intellectual capital / capital equipment
by codinghorror | 2026-02-05 00:43:19+00:00
"Why rural Americans? The same amount of cash will go a lot further and likely be more effective in rural areas of other countries." Again, the data goes into an open global repository that DOES help the entire world. We will all learn from it. When our house is currently on fire, I think we should deal with that first.

It's also "yes, and". Gates Foundation (among others) is working on other areas of the world and has vastly more money.
by crystal_revenge | 2026-02-05 00:43:41+00:00
> we are not even close to what we can do in a non-suicidal way.

I'm honestly not sure how anyone can be remotely aware of the other major consequence of our energy consumption, climate change, and make this statement.

We're far more likely to be extinct in 100 years than see any of your sci-fi proposals come to fruition.

But I guess that gets to the point of all of this discussion: belief in a technological singularity is just a different flavor of the religious tools we have used to avert existential dread for thousands of years. You need to believe these things are true so there's nothing that can ever be said to convince you otherwise.
by heymijo | 2026-02-05 00:43:45+00:00
Balaji Srinivasan is one of those guys who I don't get. Specifics elude me but I recall his activities getting memory holed, his twitter timeline getting scrubbed, and completely new narratives being written about him.

I was also never quite sure why he was in the orbit of influence and power. He had a failed bitcoin mining hardware company and that's about all I know of, and yet he kept seeming to fail upwards.