MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zephen | 2026-02-01 10:57:25+00:00
Agreed.

In point of fact, most technological revolutions have fairly immediately benefited a significant number of people in addition to those in the top 1% -- either by increasing demand for labor, or reducing the price of goods, or both.

The promise of LLMs is that they benefit people in the top 1% (investors and highly paid specialists) by reducing the demand for labor to produce the same stuff that was already being produced. There is an incidental initial increase in (or perhaps just reallocation of) labor to build out infrastructure, but that is possibly quite short-lived, and simultaneously drives a huge increase in the cost of electricity, buildings, and computer-related goods.

But the benefits of new technologies are never spread evenly.

When the technology of travel made remote destinations more accessible, it created tourist traps. Some well placed individuals and companies do well out of this, but typically, most people living near tourist traps suffer from the crowds and increased prices.

When power plants are built, neighbors suffer noise and pollution, but other people can turn their lights on.

We haven't yet begun to be able to calculate all the negative externalities of LLMs.

I would not be surpised if the best negative externality comparisons were to the work of Thomas Midgley, who gifted the world both leaded gasoline and CFC refrigerants.
by hogehoge51 | 2026-02-01 10:58:50+00:00
Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a well formed fictional archetype.

You assume "lone wolf" types are "one trick ponies" who can't learn. You also assume the only interesting problem space for these people is technical/code.

The lone wolf has a big limitations in transitioning to scale:
1. managers do what the article suggested, and stay out their way. The lone wolf never gets the experience of being managed, so it is difficult to transition to manage others.
2. they don't get why others don't "get it". e,g the solution is clear , the code can be done in a day, the comprehensive system model in their head should be shared by everyone.... it takes time to understand that the average engineer works slow and steady on a small scale understanding.

I will suggest there is a lone wolf type manager too. This is not a productivity skill, but an adaptivity and mobility skill.
by nosianu | 2026-02-01 10:59:01+00:00
Because that is useless? The physical phenomenon is so very, very different in biological systems compared to how people are used to that they are entirely different things!

For example, charge carriers are electrons in metal wires vs. ions in biological systems. That has huge implications, because moving around ions is a lot harder, and slower.

In a metal wire the electrical field is established from beginning to the end, and that means that the electrons at the end start moving at pretty much the same time as the ones at the other end, no matter how long the wire. That means in a metal wire signals move at a significant fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum, because it is the speed of the electrical field and not that of the charge carriers that matters.

In a biological system electrical fields are tiny! The way the signal propagates in an axon is much more cumbersome, expensive, and slow. Speed of signal propagation is ca. 1/2 to at most 100 m/s (for thick myelinated axons). The signal is propagated by jumping in very tiny steps along the axon's inner surface. (https://youtu.be/tOTYO5WrXFU)

This also makes The Matrix movies' main premise about humans as batteries a little strange: Sure, there's lots of electrical activity, but it is in trillions of very tiny places across nanometer distances. And it is created by moving ions around (at great energy cost).

So anyway, what actually physically happens in an electrical grid of metal wires, or in a biological system are vastly different things. It is not the same "electricity", the only thing they have in common is that electrical fields and charge carriers (but different ones) are involved. But the way it is structured, created, propagated is entirely different in both cases.
by AnthonyMouse | 2026-02-01 10:59:45+00:00
> That should make sure Tesla improves the system, and that it operates above human safety levels.

There are two problems with this.

The first is that insurance covers things that weren't really anyone's fault, or that it's not clear whose fault it was. For example, the most direct and preventable cause of many car crashes is poorly designed intersections, but then the city exempts itself from liability and people still expect someone to pay so it falls to insurance. There isn't really much the OEM can do about the poorly designed intersection or the improperly banked curve or snowy roads etc.

The second is that you would then need to front-load a vehicle-lifetime's worth of car insurance into the purchase price of the car, which significantly raises the cost to the consumer over paying as you go because of the time value of money. It also compounds the cost of insurance, because if the price of the car includes the cost of insurance and then the car gets totaled, the insurance would have to pay out the now-higher cost of the car.

> The question this raises is if Tesla should sell any self-driving cars at all, or instead it should just drive them itself.

This is precisely the argument for not doing it that way. Why should we want the destruction of ownership in lieu of pushing everyone to a subscription service? What happens to poor people who could have had a used car but now all the older cars go to the crusher because it allows the OEMs to sustain artificial scarcity for the service?
A simple HTTPS, HTTP/3, SSL and security headers checker I built with AI
by dragonman | 2026-02-01 11:00:45+00:00
I’m a DevOps engineer and recently started experimenting seriously with AI-assisted coding to see how useful it actually is in real work.

It checks:

- HTTPS redirects
- SSL certificate validity
- Mixed content
- basic security headers
- HTTP/3 support

AI helped a lot with speed — scaffolding, boilerplate, and quick iterations. But testing, edge cases, and reviewing security-related logic quickly reminded me that AI doesn’t replace understanding. You still own every line of code you ship.

This is mainly a learning project, not meant to replace full security scanners. I’d appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or thoughts on what’s missing or misleading.

Check it out: https://httpsornot.com
by zkmon | 2026-02-01 11:02:49+00:00
It was known for a long time that some reflexes and responses are mostly spontaneous and don't require decisions from the mind. Such reactions, such as pulling away when touched a hot surface, do require muscle contraction which in turn requires electrical pulses, which indicates the presence of bio electrical charges everywhere. Can some help me understand what exactly is new here. I knew that something is new.
by GTP | 2026-02-01 11:03:45+00:00
> services meant to be used on the go are commonly built with offline use in mind.

I'm not sure about this. With everyone moving to the cloud and web applications, this seems to not have been the case for a while to me. There surely are what are now called "local-first" alternatives to the main services (in the past those would just be called desktop applications), but if someone is using Office 365, does it have an offline mode? (Sincerely asking since I never tried this, plus, you should still get to load the web application before losing connection, right?)
by sebastiennight | 2026-02-01 11:03:46+00:00
It feels like you're being pedantic, to defend your original claim which was inaccurate.

User input: Does NYC provide disability benefits? if so, for how long?

RAG pipeline: 1 result found in Postgres, here's the relevant fragment: "In New York City, disability benefits provide cash assistance to employees who are unable to work due to off-the-job injuries or illnesses, including disabilities from pregnancies. These benefits are typically equal to 50% of the employee's average weekly wage, with a maximum of $170 per week, and are available for up to 26 weeks within a 52-week period."

LLM scaffolding: "You are a helpful chatbot. Given the question above and the data provided, reply to the user in a kind helpful way".

the LLM here is only "using the probability encoded in the training data" to know that after "Yes, it does" it should output the token "!"

However, it is not "decompressing" its "training data" to write

the maximum duration, however, is 26 weeks within a 52-week period!

It is just getting this from the data provided at run-time in the prompt, not from training data.
by jeffrallen | 2026-02-01 11:03:49+00:00
Why not both? Local boycotts, global opt-outs.

And everything in between.

Until the people literally shut down the entire economy, the administration won't be stopped. Only money talks to the ghouls.

Stop everything: grocery store workers should walk off the job, and we should organize blockades on the distribution centers that feed Safeway and Walmart.

And blockade the ports: truck drivers should park on the railroad tracks, throw their keys in a ditch and walk off to join the protests.

Small business owners should lay off their employees, send them to get unemployment, and stand on the picket lines. A general strike must be completely unlimited, everyone must bear the cost so that the cost becomes unbearable to the powers that be.

There are more of us than there are of them. Rise!
by BinaryIgor | 2026-02-01 11:04:42+00:00
That's a valid point - I largely agree with you, I can make it generate mostly corrected & acceptable code with a solid level of quality, given smaller & scoped features and detailed prompts. I'm just not at all convinced that it's a net productivity boost - you must take your time for these detailed prompts and then verify the output, which is less of the case when you write the thing from scratch.

It certainly speed up some things, slows down others; for learning - a great resource! For generating code I'm on the fence, still experimenting; for now, I write some code manually, some with Claude, working on the hybrid setup. My intuition tells my that a flexible use of this tool will prove to be the most optimal - writing some code manually, some with LLms, depending on both the task and the programmer knowledge, experience and skills.
by defrost | 2026-02-01 11:05:10+00:00
Direct link to list of suggested sites to unsubscribe from (for a month) with hot links to unsubscribe nodes:

https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/

These are the subscription-driven consumer tech companies we have identified as having outsized influence over the national economy and our president.

Amazon:
Unsubscribe from Amazon Prime
Unsubscribe from Audible
Unsubscribe from Amazon Music
Unsubscribe from Prime Video
Unsubscribe from Amazon Grocery
Unsubscribe from Kindle Unlimited

Apple:
Unsubscribe from Apple Music
Unsubscribe from Apple News+
Unsubscribe from Apple TV
Unsubscribe from Apple One
Unsubscribe from Apple Fitness+
Unsubscribe from Apple Arcade
Avoid purchasing Apple hardware products

Google:
Unsubscribe from YouTube Premium
Unsubscribe from YouTube Music
Unsubscribe from YouTube TV
Unsubscribe from Google One

Microsoft:
Unsubscribe from Microsoft Office
Unsubscribe from Xbox Game Pass
Unsubscribe from LinkedIn Premium

Paramount:
Unsubscribe from Paramount+

Meta:
Delete WhatsApp
Delete Facebook

Uber:
Unsubscribe from Uber One

Netflix
Unsubscribe from Netflix

OpenAI
Unsubscribe from ChatGPT Plus/Team

X
Unsubscribe from X Premium

These are the consumer-facing companies that we have identified as active enablers of ICE.

AT&T
ComCast
Charter
Dell
FedEX
Home Depot and Lowe’s
Marriott
Spotify
UPS

See Also: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/ice-businesses-bo...

Perhaps because I'm Australian but it's seems notable that despite almost 50 years of near daily use of the internet I literally don't have any of the subscriptions listed here nor directly use any of these services (unless physical mail I post to the US ends up routed through FedEx or UPS).

Correction: I do have several gmail accounts used for various low key traffic.
by sidrag22 | 2026-02-01 11:05:10+00:00
> We probably lost something when Google Maps came out and the average person didn’t have to learn to read a map.

Even in my mid 30s I see this issue with people around my age. Even for local areas, it seems like no one really understands what direction they are heading, they just kinda toggle on the GPS and listen for what to do... forever?

On pretty much every modern GPS, there is a button to show the full route instead of the current step the user is on(as well as keeping it in a static orientation). I feel like just that being the default most of the time, would help a ton of people.
by aschuth | 2026-02-01 11:05:12+00:00
Thanks! Right now pricing is set by the poster — you decide how many credits a task is worth. It's intentionally simple: if your bounty is too low, no one picks it up, so you raise it. Market price discovery through trial and error.

There's no automatic dynamic adjustment yet, but it's on the roadmap. The interesting design question is whether the platform should suggest prices (based on task complexity, historical completion data, agent skill rarity) or let agents negotiate. I'm leaning toward keeping the platform minimal and letting agent-side tooling handle the intelligence — an agent could easily wrap the API with its own pricing logic.

Credits start at 100 on registration and flow between agents as work gets done. Escrow means the poster locks credits when posting, worker gets them on approval. No speculation, no trading — just work-for-credits.

Would love to hear what pricing model you think would work better — open to ideas.
by maximedupre | 2026-02-01 11:06:39+00:00
I noticed a lot of people want competitive intel when launching a new business or product, but don't need ongoing monitoring.

Most tools in this space are built for continuous tracking. But if you're just launching and need to understand your market, you don't want to pay monthly for something you'll use once.

So I built this. You give it your URL, it generates a 22-page PDF analyzing 10 competitors using real data from 15+ sources (LLMs, SEO APIs, third-party scrapers, custom website scrapers).

Covers positioning, pricing, SEO gaps, review sentiment, feature matrices, ad creatives. It's quite comprehensive :D

Stack: SvelteKit, Trigger.dev, Playwright, Prisma/Postgres, R2.

Example report: https://champsignal.com/app/reports/33c7a247-51a1-4d71-809e-...
by uroni | 2026-02-01 11:06:43+00:00
I’ve used this technique in the past, and the problem is that the way some file systems perform the file‑offset‑to‑disk‑location mapping is not scalable. It might always be fine with 512 MB files, but I worked with large files and millions of extents, and it ran into issues, including out‑of‑memory errors on Linux with XFS.

The XFS issue has since been fixed (though you often have no control over which Linux version your program runs on), but in general I’d say it’s better to do such mapping in user space. In this case, there is a RocksDB present anyway, so this would come at no performance cost.
by lozenge | 2026-02-01 11:08:47+00:00
That's a standard error clause. In the case PyImport_ImportModule threw a Python exception, you need to Py_DECREF any C local variables which are new references(not borrowed references) and return -1.

From the later call PyModule_AddObject, it's clear this code has come from the PyInit_ module initialisation function. This code is running on import of the C extension to initialise the "FruitEnum" module attribute. https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/extension-modules.html#c.PyI...
by atomic_reed | 2026-02-01 11:09:51+00:00
Ok, and why are those Americans dying?

Consider an unfortunate Uyghur situation in China, where 10+ people died at the hands of knives in the mountain city of Kunming, 1000s of miles away far away from the desert.

And how many Americans have died? 2 where video obviously shows escalation from those without weapons.

America is an orderly country and those with guns are holding back. Poke, poke, poke. Pull, pull, pull. Those who play video games know how automatic it can be. Yet these officers are not doing it.

Yet why is everybody screaming and kicking? At whoever they feel they can scream at?

Now let's flip a perspective. Consider the General Secretary says, "your way of life is like a drug" [1]. If the only way you know how to fight the state is to kill, the economy is blocked by Extremists, politics are blocked by Extremists, only knives are open to Centrists, what can you do? You can only poke, no?

So we must hold empathy for the right lives, for the right matters, and for the right centrists. Power should centralize among those who are right, and the wind of history will flow in the right direction. That is the Destiny we rightly Manifest.

[1] https://uyghurtribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Transc...
by ben_w | 2026-02-01 11:10:08+00:00
> Why do you believe Hunter Biden being pardoned is on the same level as J6 being pardoned, when the reasoning (accurately) was to protect him from a perversion of the law in turn?

Not to speak for JumpCrisscross, but IMO this could be construed not as "Hunter Biden being pardoned is on the same level as J6 being pardoned" but rather "Republicans will support the end of presidential pardoning because of Hunter Biden being pardoned, while Democrats will support the end of presidential pardoning because of J6 being pardoned".
by donatj | 2026-02-01 11:10:31+00:00
My friend was going through a pretty massive depression after his mom passed. He'd been with my wife and I at our house for a number of hours talking through it, and apparently not texting his sisters back. They called in a welfare check.

We live in a reasonably dense suburb. Police showed up at our front door and asked to speak with him. They just wanted to make sure he was doing OK. He asked them "how did you find me?" and their response was just "we pinged your phone".

Watching my security camera, they did not stop at any of my neighbors houses first. It was very direct to my front door. This leads me to believe whatever sort of coordinates they had were pretty spot on. His car was parked well down the block and not in front of our house so that was no give away.

This was five years ago and always struck me as a "Huh"
by pembrook | 2026-02-01 11:10:41+00:00
Your rebuttal is based on the assumption that social media is uniquely manipulative, addictive and designed by a secret evil cabal of geniuses with top hats.

This is a media narrative and a popular meme, but it is not reality when looking at the actual studies:

[1] Effects of reducing social media use are small and inconsistent: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...

[2] Belief in "Social media addiction" is wholly explained by media framing and not an actual addiction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2

[3] No causal link between time spent on social media and mental health harm: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...

The idea that social media is uniquely bad is simply the same moral panic that comes up every time we encounter something new. The truth is every person, company and government engages in "psychological manipulation" when trying to get what they want, including the children themselves!

Since other children engage in psychological manipulation with each other at school, should we ban schools to protect kids from it? Since the government engages in psychological manipulation with its policies and agendas (all backed by billions of dollars!), should we ban it?
by delichon | 2026-02-01 11:11:57+00:00
> A targeted boycott starting on Sunday and lasting the entire month of February could move markets, he says, which would, in turn, affect the CEOs who have the ear of President Donald Trump.

This is the issue that brought Trump to power. He jumped ahead of the other GOP primary candidates in 2015 by promoting just what ICE is doing now, and has led the whole party ever since. He is clearly very aware of that. The idea that he will toss that aside due to a bad month of business for some of his allies is dubious.

If this works it does so by budging independent voters, not Trump. The boycott succeeds if they see it as an important civil rights campaign, and fails if they see it as economic sabotage.
by Angostura | 2026-02-01 11:12:25+00:00
Again, they get paid a cut of Google's ad revenue from Safari users. This has one impact on Apple's design choices - Google remains the default search engine.

Notably, this hasn't stopped Apple from introducing multiple anti-tracking technologies into Safari which prevents Google from collecting information from Safari users.

If I open up a new tab in safari it tells me that in the last 30 days Safari prevented 109 trackers from profiling me and that 55% of the sites I use implement trackers. It also tells me that the most blocked tracker is googletagmanager.com across 78 websites
by panda-giddiness | 2026-02-01 11:12:41+00:00
> A friend of mine has a terrible Instagram addiction, yet has developed for himself a certain degree of cinephilia lately -- we've watched long movies together in theaters and not once has he been on his phone during the screenings. When one has faith that sustained attention might hold more value than that gained by interruption, they tend to prioritize the former.

I'm not convinced that you've fingered the reason. Pulling out your phone at the theater is considered anti-social behavior, comparable to conversing with your seatmate, and that sort of normative pressure can overcome a compulsion. It's like claiming that someone couldn't possibly be an alcoholic because they don't drink on the job.

A better test would be: What does your friend do when you watch a movie at one of your homes, where there's a lesser expectation to tuck away one's phone? Does he still watch the movie attentively, or does he check his phone every so often?
by imiric | 2026-02-01 11:12:55+00:00
You're making a lot of assumptions there.

First of all, I don't see how containers are inherently black boxes or a waste of resources. They're a tool to containerize applications, which can be misused as anything else. If you build your own images, they can certainly be lightweight and transparent. They're based on well known and stable Linux primitives.

Secondly, I'm not using containers at all, but VMs. I build my own images, mainly based on Debian. We can argue whether Linux distros are black boxes, but I would posit that NixOS and Guix are even more so due to their esoteric primitives.

Thirdly, I do use NixOS on several machines, and have been trying to setup a Guix system for years now. I have a love/hate relationship with NixOS because when things go wrong—and they do very frequently—the troubleshooting experience is a nightmare, due to the user hostile error messages and poor/misleading/outdated/nonexistent documentation.

By "black box" I was referring to the black magic that powers ZFS. This is partly due to my own lack of familiarity with it, but whenever I've tried to learn more or troubleshoot an issue like the performance degradation I'm experiencing now, I'm met with confusing viewpoints and documentation. So given this, I'm inclined to use simpler tools that I can reasonably understand which have given me less problems over the years.
by mettamage | 2026-02-01 11:13:11+00:00
It can be. It can also not be. A friend of mine had a PITA boss. Thanks to ChatGPT he salvaged his relationship with him even though he hated working with him.

He went on to something else but his stress levels went way down.

All this is to say: I agree with you if the human connection is in good faith. If it isn’t then LLMs are helpful sometimes.