MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aix1 | 2026-02-21 06:05:56+00:00
> we will look back at the algorithmic content feed as being on par with leaded gasoline or cigarettes in terms of societal harm

I agree 100%.

However, I think the core issue is not the use of an algorithm to recommend or even to show stuff.

I think the issue is that the algorithm is optimized for the interests of a platform (max engagement => max ad revenue) and not for the interests of a user (happiness, delight, however you want to frame it).

And there's way too much of this, everywhere.
by bruce511 | 2026-02-21 06:06:41+00:00
I concur.

>> Why don't our overworked, underpaid open-source developers license their software

Of course they absolutely can license their software any way they like. That is their prerogative. Personally I write software for a living and it's all licensed with a commercial license.

By definition then I am not an Open Source Programmer. (I work on the odd Open Source project, but that's not the same thing.)

So any programmer can license things anyway they like. If their license is Open Source compatible then they're free to call themselves an Open Source programmer.

Your suggestion is equivalent to asking why an amateur golfer can receive prize money in a professional tournament. They very much can though, but then they're no longer an amateur.
by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF | 2026-02-21 06:06:51+00:00
> if ownership of a company was by law distributed among employees according to the amount of time and skill level they worked there.

Those are so hard to quantify that I think you'd really have better luck instituting UBI. Both in terms of encoding it into law and getting voter support.

I also want to say, as a market socialist who owns stock, owning stock in your own company is the least diverse investment you can make, except maybe buying a house and then living in it.

And if it's based on time at the company, do I keep the stock when I leave? Am I punished by losing stock if I'm fired? How much of the company is owned by former employees? A lot? None?

If I only own stock while I work there, and I can't sell it, then it's not worth much. It's just a profit-sharing bonus with extra steps.
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-02-21 06:08:18+00:00
That’s not what I’m disputing, of course. I’m disputing that the grandparent’s assertion that if we (by your stats) simply lock up 1% of the population that violent crime would drop by 60%.

I mean, trivially, using our brains for a nanosecond, what if that 1% of the population is almost always 16-18 year olds when they commit those violent crimes. The 16-18 demographic is roughly 4% of the US population (Google). That would mean locking up 1 in 4 high school students for 6-20 of their most formative years, and thrusting them back into society with a “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind you.

Play with the numbers a bit (maybe it’s 1 in 20), but the point stands. Using imprisonment to try to quarantine a demographic that is perceived as irreparably violent is a barbaric, sophomoric idea that has very little evidence of success in the modern era.
by vasco | 2026-02-21 06:08:38+00:00
> Treating DoS as affecting availability converts the issue into a "do I want to spend $X from a shakedown, or $Y to avoid being shaken down in the first place?"

> Then, "what happens when people find out I pay out on shakedowns?"

What do you mean? You pay to someone else than who did the DoS. You pay your way out of a DoS by throwing more resources at the problem, both in raw capacity and in network blocking capabilities. So how is that incentivising the attacker? Or did you mean some literal blackmailing??
by anonym29 | 2026-02-21 06:09:26+00:00
While ICE is the most well-funded law enforcement agency in the entire country now, their budget is still really just a drop in the bucket, and wouldn't make a meaningful difference in the fiscal picture. In fact, you could not only defund ICE, but the entire US armed forces, and that still wouldn't even eliminate the deficit - we'd still need to borrow over a trillion dollars a year.

That said, I'm all for the peaceful, lawful, orderly dissolution of as many federal government agencies as we can agree on dissolving. My preference would be "all of them", but I have no problem starting with ICE and revisiting the rest later :)
by xracy | 2026-02-21 06:10:38+00:00
you're asking them to enforce the rule. I'm asking them to enforce the rule consistently if they're going to enforce the rule.

Otherwise it's a first amendment violation. I'm opposed to violations of the first amendment.

I don't care "who is going to listen to it?" if it's a rule, it's applied consistently or not at all. No "special case" for conservatives.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2026-02-21 06:10:42+00:00
It's from an haproxy configuration file

This unfamiliarity is why I try to use programs that more HN readers are familiar with, like curl or wget, in HN examples. But I find those programs awkward to use. The examples may contain mistakes. I don't use those programs in real life

For making HTTP requests I use own HTTP generators, TCP clients, and local forward proxies

Given the options (a) run a graphical web browser and enable Javascript to solve an archive.today CAPTCHA that contains some fetch() to DDoS a blogger or (b) add a single line to a configuration file and use whatever client I want, no Javascript required, I choose (b)
by stuffoverflow | 2026-02-21 06:12:35+00:00
I've not seen any evidence of them editing archived pages BUT the DDOSing of gyrovague.com is true and still actively taking place. The author of that blog is Finnish leading archive.today to ban all Finnish IPs by giving them endless captcha loops. After solving the first captcha, the page reloads and a javascript snippet appears in the source that attempts to spam gyrovague.com with repeated fetches.
by makalin | 2026-02-21 06:13:02+00:00
Digital data was supposed to be permanent. Instead we may be entering a phase of slow informational decay.

This essay introduces the idea of the Entropy Trap; as large language models increasingly generate, summarize and filter online content they subtly compress nuance and amplify statistical averages. When AI generated material feeds future AI training, recursive dilution begins. Rare facts, edge cases and original human signals get smoothed out. Over time knowledge does not disappear but erodes.

The central argument is simple; if prediction systems become the dominant stewards of knowledge, we risk optimizing away the very anomalies and outliers where discovery and meaning live.
by acuozzo | 2026-02-21 06:13:32+00:00
One possible solution is to intentionally introduce Ancient Rome's "Brittania Problem".

Specifically, fund a distant vassal state which requires a military so enormous to maintain peace that any general in charge of said military would pose a legitimate threat to the executive back home.

Enforcement could, then, simply be accomplished by Congress, et al. incentivizing said general to stage his coup.

Now that I think of it... this could be one practical way to accomplish something akin to Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution".
by adriel_d | 2026-02-21 06:13:36+00:00
In practice, it’s closer to a “perceptual compiler” than a spatial engine: it aims to keep mixes intelligible, non-fatiguing, and subjectively powerful even after aggressive streaming compression or on tiny transducers. By managing minimum-phase temporal coherence (IIR, not linear-phase), it tries to preserve the somatic intent of a mix through the codec-decay that usually destroys presence in fast-upload pipelines.
by culi | 2026-02-21 06:14:13+00:00
I have an accessibility shortcut to turn my screen greyscale with triple taps but I kept turning it off so I could see the clues on sudoku and now I've forgotten I even had this for almost a year

Low brightness is great though. I didn't realize most of the battery drain on a phone is often just the screen. Lowering the brightness to as little as I need has been great for battery life
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-02-21 06:14:14+00:00
Nah man I’m going to continue to proudly call out people who skirt the line of racism by advocating for the same policies that racists have championed since the fall of the Confederacy. Say it with your chest next time, there’s a reason that it’s not tolerated in polite company. I guess maybe some of YCombinator would enjoy it though, judging by their investments and the rhetoric of those they are associated with.
by drdaeman | 2026-02-21 06:14:36+00:00
> AI feels more like an organized sniffing tool here.

"AI" on its own is an almost meaningless word, because all it tells is that there's something involving machine learning. This alone doesn't have any implied privacy properties, the devil is always in the untold details.

But, yeah, sure, given the current trends I don't think this device will be privacy-respecting, not to say truly private.

> A product can most assuredly violate privacy.

That depends on the design and implementation.
by fragmede | 2026-02-21 06:14:45+00:00
It's the rat race. I gotta get my cheese, and fuck you, because you getting cheese means I go hungry. The kindergarden lesson on sharing got replaced by a lesson on intellectual property. Copyright, trademark, patents, and you.

Or we could opt out, and help everyone get ahead, on the rising tide lifts all boats theory, but from what I've seen, the trickle of trickle down economics is urine.
by Glyptodon | 2026-02-21 06:15:28+00:00
It's interesting and very annoying. I use FB basically to follow a couple groups that I've followed for like 15 years and a couple family members. Most of what it shows me seems to be related to interests I have or anything I slow down for even 5 seconds to process. Like "slow down when scrolling to see if I really am seeing the insane thing I think" and it'll show me more. Sometime I report stuff. Like a real (I think) thirst trap holding up a sexual innuendo/come on with the writing reversed. But they never actually take action on anything I report no matter how fake, false, or innaproproate it is. I also routinely block everything it ever shows me with AI (photorealistic AI images of history with a chapter of writing seem common).

It's all a big joke of spam and scam.

...but engaging even slightly in a few specific topics or interests seems to make the worst of it go away for more of those topics.
by pogue | 2026-02-21 06:15:34+00:00
The same thing is happening to end users, the consumers that they maybe want seeing those ads. Random, totally out of the blue bans on Meta platforms for no rhyme or reason. It's all over reddit:

r/facebookdisabledme

r/FixMyInstagram

r/InstagramDisabledBans

r/MetaLawsuits
Show HN: OffKit – an iOS app blocker that adds friction
by nickfthedev | 2026-02-21 06:16:08+00:00
Hi HN,

I built OffKit after noticing something about app blockers:
they fail the moment unblocking is too easy.

Most blockers rely on willpower.
But the apps they block (Instagram, TikTok, etc.) are engineered by teams optimizing retention with massive resources. That’s not a symmetric fight.

So instead of “motivation”, I experimented with friction.

OffKit lets you:
• Select apps to block (social media, games, etc.)
• Add a forced countdown when disabling the block (e.g. 30 seconds where you just have to wait)
• Generate a QR code that must be scanned to block/unblock apps

The QR code part is interesting:
You can print it and put it somewhere physical — another room, your office, a drawer.

Now unblocking isn’t:
tap → dopamine

It becomes:
stand up → walk → scan → wait 30 seconds → reconsider

That small layer of friction changes behavior more than I expected. The delay gives your “rational” brain time to catch up to the impulse.

Technically, it’s built as a straightforward iOS app using Apple’s Screen Time / Family Controls APIs. No VPN tricks, no device management profiles.

Some observations so far:
• Even 10–30 seconds of forced delay drastically reduces impulsive unlocks.
• Physical distance (QR in another room) works better than purely digital barriers.
• Users don’t want extreme lockdown — they want lightweight boundaries.

Curious what HN thinks about “friction design” vs. pure self-control tools.

Open to feedback on the concept and implementation.

App Store link:
https://apps.apple.com/app/offkit-app-blocker/id6758268708
by somenameforme | 2026-02-21 06:17:06+00:00
In 2016 there was an organized, and partially successful, effort to get 37 electoral voters to change their electoral vote to somebody other than whom they were pledged to vote - Trump. It was intended to change the result of the election by forcing a "contingent election", in which the House of Representatives would determine the President, owing to the esoteric nuances of US electoral law.

Would you consider this an insurrection? In your terms it was "a naked attempt to change the outcome of the election."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-02-21 06:18:39+00:00
What absolute creeps. Major major amplification of the war on general purpose computing. It's absurd how governments are so willing to just make demands of products, are so intent on being product managers making their lists of how they want the world to run.

There's just shy of 200 countries in the world. That's a lot of product managers already! But if provinces/regions/us states all decide they too can define how software has to work, we are up to thousands of little emperors all telling the world how we have to think, how we have to compute.

It's frelling disgusting.

This effort here has similar vibes to Chrome's Digital Credentials API. Which can be privacy preserving, but where site's can demand basically whatever they want. Either way, each site is returned material, that it then has to verify. So we are back to only approved identity working. And it seems unlikely credential issuers will willingly work with anything but 1st tier browsers/OSes.
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/digital-credentials-api-sh...

It feels like a sure creeping doom that the internet is not going to be available in many places, except by commercial OSes that use DRM and attestation to deny users access to their own systems. This is against mankind, and imo, against every spiritual fiber that made man a great creature & arose us to what we are. To deny us a view of the world is to deny us from being toolmakers, is to mame our senses. This is an affront to our humankind. This making the machines infernal.
by odie5533 | 2026-02-21 06:19:47+00:00
We spend $80 billion a year on incarceration in the US, and have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Your plan increases both. Do you honestly think that if we spend $160 billion or $240 billion a year and double or triple our incarcerated population that we'd solve crime?

Look at places and countries with low crime. They don't have the most Flock cameras, the most prisoners, or the most powerful surveillance evidence because while those may solve a crime, they don't solve crime as a whole.
by scott_w | 2026-02-21 06:20:22+00:00
No they absolutely did. Trump promised tariffs on multiple occasions: https://www.export.org.uk/insights/trade-news/us-presidentia...

When you vote, you vote for an entire platform and you especially vote for central campaign promises. You don’t get to say “I voted for a world where I’m on top” and then say “but not for the primary method the candidate promised to use!”
Show HN: How much has the ad industry spent targeting you?
by withshakespeare | 2026-02-21 06:21:09+00:00
I wanted to share some things most people outside the industry don't know, and a tool I built as a way to make the scale of it visible.

When you visit a site like NYTimes, your browser fires off 30-80 ad requests before the page even finishes loading. Each request broadcasts your device type, screen size, approximate location, browsing context, and a bunch of behavioral signals to dozens of ad exchanges simultaneously. This happens in under 200 milliseconds. Advertisers bid on you in real time before you've read a single headline.

But it goes beyond your browser. Walk past a digital billboard in a mall or on a highway and your device's mobile advertising ID can be picked up through location data. That DOOH screen doesn't know your name, but it knows a device with your behavioral profile was within range. Later that day you might see a retargeted ad on your phone related to a store near that billboard. That's not a coincidence.

None of this requires your name, email, or any PII. The industry doesn't need to know who you are. It just needs enough signal to understand what kind of person you are. Device graph matching, probabilistic ID resolution, contextual signals, and cross-device tracking build a shadow profile that follows you across screens without ever knowing your real identity.

I built a tool that estimates how much money the industry has spent targeting you personally based on your age, screen time, and country. It uses real CPM rates and impression estimates from the industry.

The site uses GoatCounter for anonymous page view counts, it's open source, cookieless, collects no personal data, and doesn't even need a GDPR notice. Your inputs never leave your browser. I built it this way because I know what the alternative looks like from the inside.

attentionworth.com

Happy to answer any questions about how the ad tech pipeline actually works.
by shablulman | 2026-02-21 06:21:45+00:00
This shift toward OS-level verification is an interesting architectural pivot. It’s arguably more privacy-preserving to have a "local-first" verification—where the device confirms a threshold age without sharing the underlying identity documents with every third-party site.

The real challenge will be ensuring this doesn't inadvertently entrench the gatekeeping power of major OS vendors or create a single point of failure for identity tracking. However, from a data-minimization standpoint, it feels like a more robust approach than the current fragmented landscape of requiring users to upload sensitive IDs to dozens of different websites.
by dwohnitmok | 2026-02-21 06:21:52+00:00
Gemini is an LLM. It playing chess is not relying on a non-LLM module of some sort. I'm just saying that as an LLM, Gemini has a peculiar profile compared to other LLMs (likely an artifact of its post-training process). In particular Gemini is very capable, but also quite misaligned (it will more often actively sabotage users).

> then all we can conclude is that Gemini can play chess well, and we cannot generalize to other LLMs who play about the level of random bot

That's overly reductive. That would be true if we didn't see improvement over time from the other LLMs but we clearly do. In particular, even if Gemini is benchmarkmaxxing, this means that LLMs from other labs will eventually get there as well. Benchmarkmaxxing can be thought of as "premature" reaching of benchmarks. But I can't think of a single benchmark that was benchmarkmaxxed that wasn't eventually saturated by every single LLM provider (because being able to benchmarkmaxx serves as an existence proof that there is an LLM capable of it and as more training gets done on the LLMs the other ones get there).
by davorak | 2026-02-21 06:22:52+00:00
> No, they do not delegate the power to lay (set) taxes to the executive, they do assign the executive the function of collecting the taxes laid by Congress.

The quote from the constitution is "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes," not for the executive to collect taxes. If they can delegate collecting to IRS in the executive branch, why not can they not delegate the "Power To lay" taxes?
by bruce511 | 2026-02-21 06:23:01+00:00
I feel like there's no market for this. Or at the very least, it's an incredibly niche market. Hear me out :)

Firstly, this is a pretty expensive approach to cooking, so you're already in a narrow space (people with money). There are a lot of products in this space already, from restaurants to (high quality) frozen meals etc.

(Aside - meals for 4 implies kids, and people with kids tend to have financial boundaries.)

Second you want health food. So again, more niche inside your niche. My instinct (since I've done no actual market research) is that people who are into health food aren't great candidates for subscriptions. They're into provenance, minimizing waste, and so on.

Thirdly, you're asking people to cook the meal. (Which I applaud, cooking meals is a good thing.) But cooking is easy. Once you've learned 10 dishes it's easy to learn another one. And you tweak to suit your taste. At which point your "service" is little more than grocery delivery.

Prepping food actually takes minimal time (in the real world). To a novice getting an onion peeled or chopped might be a time saver, but in reality it takes seconds to do it manually. Honestly the time spent ordering etc would dwarf savings here.

Lastly, there's little incentive for people to remain on this service long-term. Maybe it's useful in the learning phase. But it's a quick cut as skills develop. So short term, high turnover customer base.

Obviously it could be done. In a rich neighborhood you might even get enough customers to keep a delivery guy busy. But outside of SF I don't see it catching on.

But don't worry about what I think, I've been wrong many times. All I suggest is lots of market research first (perhaps outside California. )
by DeathArrow | 2026-02-21 06:23:16+00:00
>These platforms need to be shut down and people with a conscience need to stop using them, regardless of their own positive experiences, to deny them the power of network effects and their impact on the vulnerable.

In places where media is very biased to one political idea, online platforms like Facebook can be a breath of fresh air, people can share their ideas, voice their thoughts and concerns and express their opinions.

This is invaluable for democracy and it does have effect in the real life as it shapes the elections.

People don't depend just on the media anymore to have an informed opinion and the propaganda is much less effective.
by duriantaco | 2026-02-21 06:25:00+00:00
First off, thanks a lot for taking the time to run Skylos against its own repo! Getting those flagged at confidence=60 is why deeper framework awareness is an immediate priority for us.

The 2 pass approach with Swynx is cool! Doing a BFS for file-level reachability first to sidestep the AST dynamic dispatch nightmare makes sense. If the module isnt even in the import graph then the confidence is practically 100%. And great callout on `__getattr__` and `importlib`.. Those dynamic edge cases are really sleeper problems for Python static analysis.

Thanks for the check on the pytest hooks and for sharing the Swynx architecture! It’s great to see how you guys tackled the dynamic nature of Python.
by agoodusername63 | 2026-02-21 06:25:28+00:00
Another issue is that you actually need a lot of money to meaningfully run for most federal office roles, so that's one filter which promotes rich guys who don't care about doing the job well.

To put it another way, I have not participated in a federal election where I was excited about my options, ever. I have always been triage voting in federal elections ever since I was old enough to vote.

So yes, we do vote for our clowns, but only because we're not given any decent options to vote for.

Fortunately, the US giving a lot of power to states means that our more local elections are a lot more interesting to participate in and at least in my state, I have several decent options to vote in people who will make a real difference.
by Glyptodon | 2026-02-21 06:25:59+00:00
I tried signing up for Instagram once because for some reason there are a lot small businesses in artsy spaces (jewelry, etc.) who basically make it the main way to interact with them (or did) and I got banned almost instantly for no reason I could discern. Kind of gave up at that point (well, after trying to go through their "show an ID process" and it not working) and if I want to see some artist's insta I ask my wife. Don't care that much about the agency stuff, but their account management situation is indeed totally broken.