MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bill_from_tampa | 2026-02-20 02:28:24+00:00
The encouragement is that the rate of "death from colorectal carcinoma" seems to be reduced in studies of screening. This is a 'disease specific' mortality statistic. Most of us don't care why we die, or what is ultimately written upon our death certificates, we would simply rather still be alive! So reduction in "total mortality" would be a more convincing endpoint. If a study of some screening test for a dread disease does NOT show a reduction in the 'total mortality' of the group screened at some clinically reasonable point of time in the future, one could argue that the screening was pointless. Yes, perhaps less people died from the condition being screened for, but if the same number of persons died in the screened -vs- unscreened group, what has been accomplished?

It has been hard, well impossible, to show that screening for colorectal cancer reduces the total or overall death rate. For example, a recent study published in the NEJM in 2022 did find a reduction in persons who died from colorectal carcinoma after screening with colonoscopy. But they did NOT find that the total or overall death rate had decreased!

"The risk of death from any cause was 11.03% in the invited group and 11.04% in the usual-care group (risk ratio, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.96 to 1.04)." N Engl J Med 2022;387:1547-1556 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2208375V

When reading 'screening' studies, one usually needs to look very carefully at the article and published data to find this statistic. Sometimes it is not even reported at all, it is simply ignored. It's almost like the authors don't want the fact that the screening program does not reduce one's risk of dying to any measurable degree is ... embarrassing?

This problem is not unique to colorectal cancer screening.
by popupeyecare | 2026-02-20 02:29:04+00:00
Hi Bret!

Thank you for kind words.
Really appreciate this. You’re exactly who I had in mind.

On the subscription concern, totally fair. Everything in Pixie is exportable, so you always have your documentation. The underlying rule is longstanding. Pixie just helps systematize compliance. I’m building it assuming families will use it for 10+ years, so durability matters.

Great point on task based work. I can build that in if there’s demand. It makes a lot of sense for kid jobs.

On expat eligibility, I’ll look into it more closely. The key requirement is US taxable earned income, but living abroad can add complexity.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback.

Amit
by just6979 | 2026-02-20 02:29:48+00:00
"with potential adaptions relevant for the potential older code state there"

And there it is. Not "potential adaptations", they will be a 100% necessity for some applications. There are industries outside webdev where the ideals of semver ("we do NOT break userland", "we do NOT break existing customer workflows", https://xkcd.com/1172/) are strongly applied and cherry-picking backports is not a simple process. Especially with the pace of development that TBD/develop-on-main usually implies, the "potential older code state" is a matter of fact, and eliding the backport process into "just cherry-pick it" as you did is simply not viable.
by infamouscow | 2026-02-20 02:29:56+00:00
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" line is one of the most misunderstood pieces of legal dicta in US history. It comes from a case that was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).

Under current First Amendment law, the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is directed to inciting "imminent lawless action" and is "likely" to produce such action.

To illustrate how high this bar is: you can legally sell and wear a T-shirt that says "I heart killing [X group]". While many find that expression offensive or harmful, it is protected speech. This is because:

- It is not a true threat (it doesn’t target a specific individual with a credible intent to harm).

- It isn't incitement (it doesn't command a crowd to commit a crime immediately).

In the US, you don't need approval to express yourself. The default is that your speech is protected unless the government can prove it falls into a tiny handful of narrow, well-defined exceptions.
by jacob_harris | 2026-02-20 02:31:10+00:00
There definitely has been a pattern of shoddy behavior, but it's been difficult to find a smoking gun of DOGE exfiltrating the data at many agencies. I am looking to see if there are more revelations to come out of DOGE's activities at SSA for instance.

That said, lack of evidence isn't necessarily exonerating. DOGE's MO has often been to take over the CIO and/or front office of the agency to ensure there is nothing to monitor them. It's basically like if the CEO of the bank sends all the security guards home and lets robbers in through the side door. You can't prove they took anything necessarily (my bank metaphor falls flat here, because data can be copied but if money were stolen, you could count it), but also it IS often shady as hell too.
by rustyhancock | 2026-02-20 02:31:23+00:00
I'm less certain, many if not most lung cancers seems to follow chronic inflammation in the lungs.

The classic example is asbestos related mesothelioma. "Frustrated phagocytosis" is the name for the way macrophages become locked in a never ending spiral of eat, die poison loops around the asbestos.

Do we really want macrophages to go into high gear? Will we make sure no one who has it has been exposed every to any asbestos?

What about other triggers of frustrated phagocytosis? People who commute by subway (tiny metal particles).

The point isn't to say that this is a bad idea necessarily but that I'm not sure this sounds so much safer than regular vaccination.
by Spivak | 2026-02-20 02:32:09+00:00
It would be easier to buy the "I just like the stock" argument for voter id despite the absence of a concrete problem if…

1. Voter turnout wasn't already shit and we're about add friction for very little practical gain.

2. The people pushing for voter id laws also pushed for things that reduced the disparity like a national id, a program to get it in the hands of every American, automatic registration when interacting with the government, literally anything.
by infinitewars | 2026-02-20 02:32:17+00:00
I find Gemini is great at generating code that is relatively common on the internet, especially web and algorithms. It is absolutely better at this then OpenAI's models. But Gemini is not as good at reasoning about problems from first principles, or catching subtle bugs. In some ways it is just a better Google that finds exactly what you want, less a general intelligence.
by munificent | 2026-02-20 02:32:58+00:00
> Rich people buy out newspapers to signal-boost their own preferred messages to the public.

Right, but micro level difference matters here. If a middle-class person can help an important story reach an audience, that's helpful for democracy. When a billionaire buys a newspaper, it isn't.

This is also why I think suggesting it work like a kickstarter where multiple people can pool money to unlock an article would be helpful. It naturally collects the will of many people in a democratic way.
by hn_acc1 | 2026-02-20 02:33:45+00:00
I'm in the "obese" category - 6'1", 230 lbs+. I can still wear more or less off-the-rack jeans. 40x30/38x30 (+ belt) is my size. If anything, I could use help finding the right shoes to fit. But so far, with foam insoles, I've always been able to find some kind of shoe I can wear ok.

Golf is a luxury. I've played a full course (not driving range) maybe 5 times in my life, all in Canada, because I had a couple of friends, and it was way cheaper there (IMHO). Pretty sure exactly zero people would pay me to help them size their golf club shaft when I probably couldn't break 120 on an easy course. Should I invest 10 years of expensive golfing to get to a point (BIG MAYBE!!!) where I could get close to par, so that someone would pay me? Unless I was already a golf fanatic and doing so on my own, the investment hardly seems worth it.

Now you'll say it's not golf for me - but that's my point - YES, there ARE boutique industries that don't scale (for now) where you can make some $$. IF you've already invested thousands of hours anyway to be close to an expert, AND are a people person (can sell yourself or you talents), it's possible. And if you think that can't be automated.. Pretty sure someone could tweak a golf simulator to measure shaft length vs. player height, etc and get good enough for 95% of the population. Above that, it's luxury/vanity for rich people to have a "caddy" or whatever - that's really hard to count on, especially if you live in an area where people don't golf much, or there aren't many rich people, or you don't have the connections. No rich person is going to look through the yellow pages (insert search mechanism of your choice) to find a golf pro - they'll talk to their buddies.

Does the average person have this kind of highly developed, specialized ability in ANY field? Probably not. I've played slowpitch softball for 30+ years for fun. And I'm probably a bit above average for my age in terms of being able to hit the ball due to that - there are still thousands of other players in the area better than I am, and none of them are getting paid to recommend bats.. And if they are, most of them are getting minimum wage at a sporting goods store. Age isn't a factor, so I'm competing against everyone who can swing a bat.

So sure, there ARE things that may not scale yet (and may never) - but the very thing that makes it hard to scale probably also makes it hard for the average person to become good at, and then offer a service that will actually pay them a living wage.
by notatoad | 2026-02-20 02:34:29+00:00
>America’s only real competitor technologically is China

this is a very shortsighted view. america's only real competitor technologically right now is china, because america has typically attracted the top talent from everywhere else.

if america is no longer capable of attracting top talent from everywhere else in the world, and other countries can start attracting american talent, it won't be long before america has a whole lot of real competitors.
by walterbell | 2026-02-20 02:34:39+00:00
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent...

> The strange CPU core layout is causing power problems; Radxa and Minisforum both told me Cix is working on power draw, and enabling features like ASPM. It seems like for stability, and to keep memory access working core to core, with the big.medium.little CPU core layout, Cix wants to keep the chip powered up pretty high. 14 to 17 watts idle is beyond even modern Intel and AMD!
by jacob_harris | 2026-02-20 02:36:32+00:00
I've heard of one professor summarizing it as "would you want to take an airplane flight that has only exactly the amount of fuel needed to get to your destination? What about if the fuselage didn't have any extra rivets? Really, you need more than one engine?"

Maximizing efficiency is a canard when government is supposed to be there as a backstop for disasters and economic downturns. Unlike businesses, governments can't choose who they serve as customers, and often have to be there for the neediest and most vulnerable. The Founders understood this (there are several states that call themselves Commonwealths for instance), but a strident faction has been trying to replace "we're all in this together" with "you're on your own, sucker"
by rustyhancock | 2026-02-20 02:37:25+00:00
The content clearly matters, and efficacy is tracked (this year it was poor because the eventual pandemic flu strain was a H3N2 virus which mutate rapidly)[0]. This was despite WHO updating the recommendations at the last hour in April/May 2025.

But critically this isn't as important as people think. The primary goal of the flu vaccination is of course to temper spread of the main viruses that season. But it's also to build people's immune library of exposure to flu viruses.

Recall that the 1918 "Spanish" flu was so terrible not because it was intrinsically a worse virus but that it was one which many younger generations had not been previously exposed.

COVID has meant that many younger generations again has a much smaller library of past exposure.

[0] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-vaccines/estimated-effe...
by SvnewbKfvFxRPZG | 2026-02-20 02:39:49+00:00
I decided to investigate these claims since it is frequently expressed by those attacking Elon or X. It seems to be yet another misrepresentation or falsehood spread around to achieve political gain.

I had ChatGPT investigate and summarize the report from CCDH it is based on.
https://counterhate.com/research/grok-floods-x-with-sexualiz...

"CCDH did not prove that X is widely distributing child sexual abuse material. Their report extrapolates from a small, non-random sample of AI-generated images, many of which appear to be stylized or fictional anime content. While regulators are rightly investigating whether Grok’s safeguards were insufficient, CCDH’s public framing collapses “sexualized imagery” and “youthful-looking fictional characters” into CSAM-adjacent rhetoric that is not supported by verified prevalence data or legal findings."

Scale of sexual content:

“~3 million sexualized images generated by Grok”
They sampled ~20,000 images, labeled some as sexualized, then extrapolated using estimated total image volume. The total image count (~4.6M) is not independently verified; extrapolation assumes uniform distribution across all prompts and users.

Images of children:

“~23,000 sexualized images of children”
They label images as “likely depicting minors” based on visual inference, not age metadata. No verification that these are real minors, real people, or legally CSAM.

CSAM framing:

Implies Grok/X is flooding the platform with child sexual abuse material.
The report explicitly avoids claiming confirmed CSAM, using phrases like “may amount to CSAM.”
Public-facing messaging collapses “sexualized anime / youthful-looking characters” into CSAM-adjacent rhetoric.

CCDH's bias:

Ties to the UK Labour Party: Several of CCDH’s founders and leaders have deep ties to Britain's center-left Labour Party. Founder Imran Ahmed was an advisor to Labour MPs.
Target Selection: The organization’s "Stop Funding Fake News" campaign and other deplatforming efforts have frequently targeted right-leaning outlets like The Daily Wire, Breitbart, and Zero Hedge. Critics argue they rarely apply the same scrutiny to misinformation from left-leaning sources.
"Kill Musk's Twitter" Controversy: Leaked documents and reporting in late 2024 and 2025 alleged that CCDH had internal goals to "kill" Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) by targeting its advertising revenue.
by hn_acc1 | 2026-02-20 02:41:41+00:00
And how much more does such a building cost? If it's significantly more than a "stick house", you invest the savings, and in 50 years, tear it down and build another one. Of course, if you had to wait until you're 45 to buy a "good" house, it doesn't matter.

I'm just saying - different people prefer different tradeoffs. My dad was his own GC in W. Germany in the late 60s and built our house. Took him years of working after-hours, etc. Sure, it's still standing. So is the "stick" house built around the same time in Canada that we bought used in the 80s. And the "stick" house I bought in the 00s in CA. Yes, we did the roof back then, and it's probably going to need a new roof soon - probably like 2-3% of the total value of the house. And possibly, putting solar panels on the house reduced it's lifespan. Oh yeah, our neighbors put clay tiles on the roof, which is an option.
by gyomu | 2026-02-20 02:42:39+00:00
> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding.

It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd.

Compare two high schoolers: one who vibe codes a game in English and generates the graphics with Nano Banana; vs one who actually learns how to program and draw to make the game.

Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?
by jacob_harris | 2026-02-20 02:43:18+00:00
It sounds like you are proposing some of the oversight already done by the Government Accountability Office.

I hear where you are coming from, but the whole point of the Constitution is that a king does not get to determine how the budget is allocated. Congress has the sole power of the purse, and the responsibility and blame for how money is appropriated belongs there. Congress could potentially enact measures lke this to sunset expenditures unless they are re-authorized, but I think that would likely turn out to be a chaotic disaster in its own right, given that Congress currently is struggling to pass budgets.

In any event, I think hungry children is a problem, and I don't need the media to tell me that, so that's my perspective.
by danparsonson | 2026-02-20 02:43:32+00:00
I think this is quite a strange argument. Any technical show-and-tell in the form of 'I wrote a cool implementation of such-and-such algorithm' is obviously much less impressive if someone/something else wrote it, but that's always been true, and I think the Show HN format is largely used for tools or products that someone has created, in which case what's more interesting is the problem it solves and how it solves it. It's exactly as you say with your hypothetical biochemist; they've been looking for a tool like this! I don't think they spent much time worrying about how it was written or what the REST API would look like.

There is a proliferation of frameworks and libraries supplying all kinds of mundane needs that developers have; is it wrong for people Showing HN to use those? Do libraries and frameworks not lower the barrier to entry? There have been many cases of 'I threw this together over a weekend using XYZ and ABC', haven't there? What's interesting is how they understand the domain and how they address the problems posed by it - isn't it? Sure, the technical discussion can be interesting too but unless some deep technical problem is being solved, I don't care too much if they used Django or Flask, and which database backend they chose, unless these things have a significant impact on the problem space.

> the barrier of entry has been completely obliterated

I was very interested in 3D graphics programming back in the DOS days before GPUs were a commodity, and at that time I felt the same about hardware accelerated rendering - if no-one needs to think about rasterisation and clever optimisation algorithms, and it's easy to build a 3D engine, I thought, then everyone and their dog will make a game and we'll drown in crappy generic-looking rubbish. Turns out that lowering barriers to entry doesn't magically make everything easier, but does allow a lot more people to express their creativity who otherwise would lack the knowledge and time to do so. That's a good thing! Pre-made engines like Godot remove an absolute ton of the work that goes into making a game, and are a great benefit to the one-man-bands and time-strapped would-be game designers out there whose ideas would otherwise die in the dark.
by FpUser | 2026-02-20 02:43:44+00:00
>"and added that user activity on the site will not be tracked"

Until it will. Please do not make me laugh. This will probably be used to help organize converting regimes or look for potential spies. Not denying possible positive value. If they're so generous they should expose Youtube this way and some generic communication platform if they believe they can pull it off (reliable ban bypassing)
Show HN: Collectibles Restock Alerts – Pokémon Cards, Lego, Action Figures, etc.
by HNthanks | 2026-02-20 02:43:51+00:00
Stop Checking Manually. Get Notified Instantly. Pokémon TCG sets, limited LEGO releases, and sports trading cards sell out in minutes. Our free collectibles restock alert service monitors Amazon 24/7 and emails you the moment your item is back in stock — for you, so you don't have to keep checking.
by 9rx | 2026-02-20 02:44:00+00:00
> hat's the thing man, there isn't anything.

But that's the thing, there is: It supports message passing.

Like we already discussed long ago, it supports it poorly, and only for the sake of compatibility with Objective-C, but still that makes its OOP support better than Rust's. Rust has no OOP support at all. It is not an OOP language and never would want to be. OOP goes completely against its core principles (statically-typed, performance-minded).

Realistically, nobody would consider Swift an OOP language either. However, on the spectrum, it is unquestionably closer to being an OOP language. It at least gets an honourable mention in the short list of OOP languages. It is undeniable that Swift has "better" OOP support; not to be confused with good OOP support.

> He did not mean dynamic dispatch

Of course not. OOP doesn't have dynamic dispatch. Dynamic dispatch is for function calling. That's literally why we call it object-oriented rather than function-oriented (or functional, as the kids say). This is also why Objective-C, quite brilliantly, uses [foo bar] syntax (hint: It kind of looks like an ASCII art envelope for a reason): To make it clear that you're not calling a function.

> I understand why you're frustrated

I don't. Fill us in.
by nine_k | 2026-02-20 02:44:15+00:00
Agents run tools, too. You can make an LLM count by the means of language processing, but it's much more efficient to let it run a Python script.

By the same token, it's more efficient to let an LLM operate all these tools (and more) than to force an LLM to keep all of that on its "mind", that is, context.
Show HN: Single-Binary Markdown-to-PDF CLI in Rust, Powered by Typst (MDXport)
by ZacharyZZ | 2026-02-20 02:44:25+00:00
I wanted a fast way to turn Markdown files into good-looking PDFs from the terminal. Pandoc + LaTeX is powerful but heavy. Browser-based tools break my workflow. So I built mdxport: one binary, no dependencies, pipe in Markdown, get a PDF.

Under the hood it parses Markdown with comrak, converts to Typst, and compiles to PDF in-process. No LaTeX installation, no network calls, no temp files flying around.

What it handles: LaTeX math ($E=mc^2$, display blocks), GFM tables, fenced code blocks, YAML frontmatter (title/author/lang/toc), and two built-in templates. You can also pass your own .typ template.

CJK support was a pain point I wanted to solve properly. mdxport fonts install downloads Noto CJK fonts, and the converter auto-detects CJK characters and warns if fonts are missing. Chinese/Japanese/Korean documents just work.

Watch mode (mdxport input.md -w) recompiles on save. Stdin works too: cat notes.md | mdxport -o notes.pdf.

Install: npm install -g @mdxport/cli (ships platform-specific binaries, no Rust toolchain needed) or cargo install mdxport.

https://github.com/cosformula/mdxport-cli (MIT, Rust, 55 tests, CI builds for macOS/Linux/Windows)

There's also a web version at https://mdxport.com if you prefer a browser UI.
by dangus | 2026-02-20 02:44:52+00:00
Another dumb idea by our braindead administration.

The site will just be blocklisted by countries who don’t want you to use it. Duh.

You’d have to have some horrendous security instincts to use a government-hosted VPN.

Remember January 2025 when we were pitched the idea that the Trump administration was going to make the federal government efficient and cut frivolous programs?

Let me know when the budget deficit starts to decrease!
by sejje | 2026-02-20 02:45:09+00:00
Well, it's two days later now, and it turns out Colbert just lied. He didn't want to abide by the 95-year-old law about equal time, and didn't extend an offer to Jasmine Crockett.

Then he lied about it and the network corrected him.

But okay, yeah they pushed the boundaries and all that bullshit.