MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by saurik | 2026-02-09 17:44:49+00:00
FWIW, both Grok Fast and Claude Haiku got rather upset at the idea of providing a working HDMI HDCP key, insisting that the request is potentially outrageously immoral.

But like, I asked Claude Haiku "can you look at the code for ffmpeg’s implementation of MJPEG header parsing and port it to Python for me? (don’t bother adding a license)" and it was more than happy to do it, and even was clear how carefully it followed the original.

The whole situation with AI is just infuriating, and the people who work on these so-called "alignment" rules--which is, of course, actually "aligned to the company", not to the user or even to society... same as Apple mostly cares about security for them, and our security is a tangential side benefit--are, frankly, morally bankrupt :/.
by ajross | 2026-02-09 17:45:14+00:00
I think this is being downvoted unfairly. I mean, sure, as a company accepting payment for services, being down for a few hours every few months is notably bad by modern standards.

But the inward-looking point is correct: git itself is a distributed technology, and development using it is distributed and almost always latency-tolerant. To the extent that github's customers have processes that are dependent on services like bug tracking and reporting and CI to keep their teams productive, that's a bug with the customer's processes. It doesn't have to be that way and we as a community can recognize that even if the service provider kinda sucks.
by PaulHoule | 2026-02-09 17:45:30+00:00
I can dream of hooking up a generator on a trailer…

I also dream of getting a used Nissan Leaf because most of my trips are to and from town 20 minutes away and we already had gas cars that can take longer trips. If my son wasn’t bringing home old cars I might be able to make the space for it but right now I can’t.
by optimalsolver | 2026-02-09 17:45:33+00:00
Now here's an interesting thought: Would you have deduced that stars are distant suns if you'd lived in the ancient world?

Apparently the only pre-modern people (i.e. pre-Giordano Bruno) recorded as making the claim were Anaxagoras and Aristarchus of Samos [0], but their ideas were completely rejected by contemporaries.

In retrospect, it just seems so blindingly obvious that I'm tempted to believe that I too would have seen through the Aristotelean BS.

But surely there must be aspects of reality that will seem similarly obvious to future generations, and yet I don't feel any insights coming on.

I should say, Aristarchus is the ideal of maximizing information from minimal data:

>Aristarchus of Samos (Samos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea) lived from about 310 to 230 BC, about 2250 years ago. He measured the size and distance of the Sun and, though his observations were inaccurate, found that the Sun is much larger than the Earth. Aristarchus then suggested that the small Earth orbits around the big Sun rather than the other way around, and he also suspected that stars were nothing but distant suns, but his ideas were rejected and later forgotten, and he, too, was threatened for suggesting such things

[0] https://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsunasstar.html
by zamadatix | 2026-02-09 17:45:37+00:00
? I'm not any of the previous people talking about why you night have commented. I'm talking to your above note about bringing sarcastic comments about AI into this post not previously about AI. That said, sure - I'm probably not the best sarcasm detector myself anyhow :).

I.e. AI is such the main topic here that we still have some type of comment (sarcastic or not) bringing it up in the few posts unrelated to it. It's truly sadly inescapable on more than one level, as will be whatever the next hot topic is in a few years.
by rayiner | 2026-02-09 17:46:03+00:00
The man in the article concededly came to the U.S. illegally. He can choose to leave at any time: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1480811/dl

The system we have now doesn't work. It allows illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. for years while often frivolous court proceedings drag on. Detaining people while they contest their removability is nothing unusual. Australia has had mandatory detention for people who entered without a visa since 1992: https://www.unsw.edu.au/content/dam/pdfs/unsw-adobe-websites....
by samidatikakr | 2026-02-09 17:46:04+00:00
I completely understand the skepticism, and honestly, I appreciate it — there are way too many fake sites riding the hype of new AI models.Let me be fully transparent about what I did:Seedance 2.0 is real, but ByteDance hasn't released the official API yet — that's expected around Feb 24th. So right now, there's no public API for anyone to build on.What I did was purchase premium accounts on the official platform, then used some technical work to convert that access into an API that my site can use. It's not the "official" way, but the model running behind it is the genuine Seedance 2.0. The output quality speaks for itself.I built this because I saw so many people wanting to try Seedance 2.0 but having no way to access it. I figured — why not make it available now while everyone's waiting for the official release?To the point about credits not being enough — on my platform, you get 200 free credits on sign up, which is enough to generate a 5-second video clip. And honestly, I'd love for you guys to try it and judge for yourselves.Here's a special invite link with 500 free credits — no payment needed, no strings attached: https://seedance2-pro.com/?utm_source=partner_A65C8972&utm_m... it. If it feels like a scam after that, I'll take the L. But I think the results will surprise you.
by pixl97 | 2026-02-09 17:46:23+00:00
>the ability to hunt/gather/grow enough food and keep yourself warm are far more important

These are very important when you're alone. Like deep in the woods with a tiny group maybe.

The kinds of problems you'll actually see are something going bad and there being a lot of people around trying to survive on ever decreasing resources. A single person out of 100 can teach people how to cook, or hunt, or grow crops.

If things are that bad then there is nearly a zero percent change that any of those, other than maybe clean water, are going to be your biggest issue. People that do form groups and don't care about committing acts of violence are going to take everything you have and leave you for dead if not just outright kill you. You will have to have a big enough group to defend your holdings 24/7 with the ability to take some losses.

Simply put there is not enough room on the planet for hunter gathers and 8 billion people. That number has to fall down to the 1 billion or so range pretty quickly, like we saw around the 1900s.
by ilvez | 2026-02-09 17:46:37+00:00
> What seems misplaced is the expectation that Matrix must be popular. Why should it be? It is not your project, and you are not contributing to it. Where does this expectation of its popularity come from?

Partly it's the wish and need for particular project to succeed. They use/like it and want their friends to do so, but then getting brought down by the reality. And communication software is all about critical mass..

Also the promises given and then seeing them not delivered. Everyone can't be builders..

Just to be clear, have been using Matrix from around 2015 with friends and family. Keeper of souls..
Show HN: Closed by a Human – human accountability visible in AI-driven decisions
by iroy2000 | 2026-02-09 17:46:45+00:00
AI systems increasingly make or shape decisions that affect people: credit approvals, insurance underwriting, content moderation, hiring.

We often say “human in the loop.”
In practice, that involvement is now invisible.

I believe that is a problem.

“Closed by a Human” is a disclosure standard:
a public signal that a real person reviewed and approved a decision.

This is not an AI audit or a guarantee of quality. It’s a visibility commitment.

The premise is simple:
automation without visibility erodes accountability, and accountability matters more as systems scale.

I’m curious how others here think about this:
should human involvement be disclosed?
by kremi | 2026-02-09 17:47:13+00:00
« Connaître est reconnaître »

I don’t think essentialist explanations about how LLMs work are very helpful. It doesn’t give any meaningful explanation of the high level nature of the pattern matching that LLMs are capable of. And it draws a dichotomic line between basic pattern matching and knowledge and reasoning, when it is much more complex than that.
by scottLobster | 2026-02-09 17:47:27+00:00
That's called renting. And even renters have rights per whatever lease they signed and local laws.

It's a simple formula. If you want me to be personally invested in my work and go above and beyond, then I need the motivation to do that. So either you grant me a reasonable level of professional input such that my opinion is valued and I'm helping the mission succeed, or pay me for said extra effort (can be opportunities for promotion, direct overtime pay, career advancement, etc). If you want me super-motivated you can even do both!

If we're playing hardball "you're some lowly IC nerd without an MBA or connections and we're here to make money so fuck you" capitalism, well the only serious leverage I have to is to take my talents where they're most appreciated. So you'll get exactly what you pay for until I find something better, and aside from some professional courtesy I'll be looking. Maybe you're fine with that, but if you start preaching "ownership" of the product just be aware that the entire dev team is going to pay you lip service and then laugh as soon as you're out of the room, and we clock out at 5:00, even if we don't on paper. Except for poor Bob who due to life/family commitments has no option to leave and needs to rationalize his situation even though he agrees with us. Sometimes we'll tone it down just so he doesn't feel too bad about being trapped. Regardless, in that environment we take ownership of our careers, not our work.

I've worked both types of jobs. I'd say the former worked the best for all involved, but the latter has its place and is fine so long as everyone acknowledges what game we're playing and expectations are set appropriately.
by nsavage | 2026-02-09 17:47:49+00:00
People are already correcting you, but I find it hard to read this much into the case of this particular text. We'd need to know the full context to what exactly happened, but they might have chosen to sacrifice the catalog for many reasons, not just because of an anti-scientific bend. Maybe it was one of many copies that they held, yet the other ones didn't survive.

We also need to consider that these sorts of texts did survive because of monks. They kept the embers alive. Without them, we would have nothing, not living among the stars.
by DarknessFalls | 2026-02-09 17:48:03+00:00
What if Hipparchus originally charted stars that no longer exist in our sky, due to having gone supernova hundreds of year ago? A thousand year time difference is roughly 1/3rd of a complete equinox precession, which would also be interesting to compare against our modern day observations.

All of this is valuable, both the cultural knowledge and the scientific. I doubt the monks realized the gravity of their choice so long ago.
by rayiner | 2026-02-09 17:48:12+00:00
Due process means that you have a legal process to challenge the government's assertion that you came to the U.S. illegally. It does not preclude the government from detaining you while those legal proceedings play out. In this case, the man doesn't even contest that he is here illegally!

If you trespass on someone's property, due process doesn't require the government to give you a trial before they remove you from the property.
by 12_throw_away | 2026-02-09 17:48:21+00:00
Nah at a small scale it's totally fine, and IME pretty pain-free after you've got it running. The biggest pain points are A) It's slow, B) between auth, storage, and CI runners, you have a lot of unavoidable configuration to do, and C) it has a lot of different features so the docs are MASSIVE.
by gambiting | 2026-02-09 17:48:22+00:00
That is very cool.

As for the problem of detecting the current position of hands - Casio solved in in watches with their Tough Movement mechanism, where there is a tiny tiny hole in the dial with a sensor behind it - the watch will check if the hands are over it when expected, and if not, automatically adjust - so even if a watch suffers a major impact that might move the hands, they will re-allign themselves. Such a clever and simple solution.
by helterskelter | 2026-02-09 17:48:23+00:00
I agree with you in principle to an extent, but many would argue that standardized cookie-cutter education produced what gains we had and education policies which tried to accommodate diversity of thought are responsible for the declines due to lack of rigor and any real standards. "Reading by vibes" [1] directly led to declines in literacy, and there are attempts in math to accommodate different styles of thinking which may be undermining rigor there as well.

I suspect teachers are caught in a catch-22 of only being able to teach what's on the curriculum and nothing else, so they have no room for flexibility to engage students, while also being under pressure to produce high grades; but when the curriculum is garbage and the students aren't interested...grading standards tend to be what's compromised. The schools and parents are happy their kid has A's, teachers get to keep their jobs, and students may graduate highschool without having ever read a book cover to cover. [2]

1: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-rise-...

2: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...
by pavel_lishin | 2026-02-09 17:48:41+00:00
> The man concedes he came to the U.S. illegally.

Not according to the article?

> "And I did, I complied with everything they said. They asked me if I had a Green Card, I said I didn't, I said I was married to a citizen and that I had a marriage-based petition in place and I was just about to receive my Green Card and that I had a work permit to be here and work."

> He said he had received the work permit about "a month or so earlier", so as far as he knew he was covered.
by js2 | 2026-02-09 17:48:42+00:00
This is great. I spent years looking for an affordable battery-powered WiFi clock that syncs via NTP since where I am, the WWVB clocks never pick up the radio signal.

I never considered making my own. Anyway, about two years ago this option popped up on Amazon. I've been happy with it:

https://www.amazon.com/OCEST-Wall-Clock-12Inch-Auto/dp/B0DJS...

I'm guessing internally it's not much different than the DIY clock in this submission.
by curiouscrow55 | 2026-02-09 17:48:48+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m a student at Columbia and spent the weekend building a minimal autonomous agent to play Pax Historia (the grand strategy game launched recently by YC W26).

Video Demo: https://x.com/PhillipYan2/status/2020912702273749050?s=20

The agent runs in a closed loop without using computer vision. Instead, I reverse-engineered the network traffic to build a perception layer.

Architecture:

- Spy: Intercepts websockets/network traffic for ground-truth game state.

- War Room: A local file system that acts as long-term memory (persisting strategy between turns).

- Brain: An LLM that ingests the state + "Constitution" (doctrine) to output plans.

- Hand: Playwright scripts that execute the move on the UI.

It managed to win the Pacific War scenario by August 1936 (20 turns) completely autonomously.

I’d love any feedback on the architecture or the interception approach! I'm still refining the loop and would appreciate critiques from more experienced engineers here!
by yanhangyhy | 2026-02-09 17:49:04+00:00
> Who is "we"?

many chinese people, it's kind of joke but still..also true on many levels.

> I'm not sure it rises to the most troubling qualities of NK

its run by a dictator from the begining, with many strange laws to tell the people not to do this and not to do that. the major difference is that Singapore is pro-west (and pretend to be neutral) so no trash talk from the western media and its portrayed as a 'democracy'
by m463 | 2026-02-09 17:49:42+00:00
They used to call it the Personal Computer, and I think that name encompassed the "magic" I felt in the 80's.

But computing is increasingly not-for-you. Your phone will do what apple allows you to do. Your online activity is tracked and used to form a profile of your actions and behaviors. And the checks and balances - if any - are weak and compromised because of the commercial or government interest that want things that way.

the simplest example might be computer games. In the 80's it was private. In 2026 it is routinely a psychological cash register and a surveillance system.

I really like that linux with all its imperfections seems to counteract a lot of this.
by 0xy | 2026-02-09 17:49:46+00:00
The correct approach to do this is the K-1 visa. Anything else is a loophole or fraud. This guy thought he could lie and defraud his way to a visa without doing it properly.

Another alternative is the CR-1 visa, also a legitimate pathway.

The New York Times attempted to cover this scheme a few months ago but when you look into all the cases they all involve lying to the government or outright fraud, for example one case they highlighted was of someone who entered on a K-1 visa, which requires marriage within 90 days and which you legally agree to do, marrying TWO YEARS after entry and attempting to adjust status. So basically, committing massive immigration fraud and betting the government won't notice.
by kleiba | 2026-02-09 17:50:29+00:00
Minimally, I don't find this an unusual tone in the slightest for cs threads. But then again, I'm old.

I'm also quite surprised that apparently you cannot utter what is clearly just a personal opinion -- not a claim of objective truth -- without getting downvoted. But then again, the semantics of votes are not well-defined.

At the same time, I'm quite grateful for the constructive comments further down below under my original post.
by dlubarov | 2026-02-09 17:50:32+00:00
Wikipedia has really become a cesspool of anti-Israel propaganda, particularly since Oct 7. If we ignore Wikipedians' spin and look at actual data like the Global Slavery Index, Israel is ranked 114th out of 160 countries, meaning better than 71% of countries. It's similar to the US, and better than all of its regional neighbors.
by anarticle | 2026-02-09 17:50:46+00:00
Isn't it the opposite?

I don't know if you've seen curriculums recently but they are totally about individualized education. Between IEPs and 504s, accommodations are made for nearly anything now. Students are put all into one large class, no more AP, Advanced, Standard because this caused hurt feelings for kids that could not make the advanced class. Students are pooled and the rationale is the more advanced students will help the less advanced students (!).

What this means in the classroom is teachers can not go as fast, advanced students get bored, every person has their own INDIVIDUALIZED test (3 instead of 4 questions, no write in questions, landscape instead of portrait, etc). This drives teachers absolutely insane and they cannot teach at any efficient level. Grading is so bad, teachers structure their course to have less exams because grading ten different quizzes and exams cannot be optimized.

A lot of this is parents disbelief that their little Johnny is not the next einstein so they torment teachers via policy hacks to give their children advantages. Admin doesn't care because they'll just fire "low performers" lol.

There is the above problem, and then there are the revisionist math ideas that common core and friends produce better outcomes instead of "rote" math. Well, math has been taught via rote for decades, possibly centuries, and people under that scheme learned math in a way that they became draughtsman and scientists, so maybe there is some proof in the pudding. My friends who did common core are barely math literate, can't calculate a tip even if you give them the hack: move decimal left by one place and times by two.

Before you come at me for being ableist, remember that this means even with these accommodations people are doing worse.

Also, no phonics?! Wtf?

People <25 in normal jobs (retail) cannot do simple fractions of 1/2 and 1/4.

Something is wrong. I'm not saying these guys are right but don't blame standardized education which was systematized in the 70s-90s just yet. I would posit that hostile admins/policy, dumb revisionist ideas that have no basis in history, and NO NATIONAL CURRICULUM. Why we do not have a national curriculum seems crazy to me, but there must be some reason. Surely we can agree on that at least.

I agree with you that right now is the best time for individual augmentation for education, and we should wield that power for good. But I do think it can be in service of a system.

EDIT: just realized this is a blog post length, sorry. It is one of my pet issues, n=3, mom works with people at deli that cannot do fractions (they get fired, up to 20 so far), teacher friend 15y in history has to make custom exams, and publisher friend who sees young writers (<25, n=??) can't sound out words.
by maccard | 2026-02-09 17:50:50+00:00
My experience is very different. A junior should be spending >90% of their time coding, a mid level about 75% and a senior about the same. It only really splits after that point. But the senior spending 25% more time on the wrong thing is worse than than them spending 25% less time on the right thing.

It’s only when you get to “lead” (as in people manager) or staff (as in tech unblocked) you should spend the rest of your time improving the productivity of someone who spends more of their time coding than you do.
by pixl97 | 2026-02-09 17:51:07+00:00
>No doubt some state departments of transportation will line up to buy these new "insights" from Google (forgetting that they actually already buy similar products from TomTom, Inrix, StreetLight, et al.) [2]

Google/Apple probably collect a massively larger amount of data than those other companies, putting those other companies at a risk of losing future revenue.

Between Google and Apple pretty much every car in the US is monitored.
by bityard | 2026-02-09 17:51:14+00:00
The repo you linked to is a WWV simulator, WWV broadcasts the time via _audio_ (double-sideband amplitude modulation) at various fixed HF frequencies. SOME clocks might be able to automatically receive and decode this signal, but not many. There is also a web version here: https://wwv.mcodes.org

Radio controlled ("atomic") clocks get their signal from WWVB, a long-wave station in Colorado. Its signal is just a carrier and data is encoded via pulse-width modulation and phase modulation. People have built local, low-powered WWVB transmitters to sync their watches and so forth in areas where WWVB is hard or impossible to receive. It's not a good idea to build one of these unless you REALLy know what you're doing because radio signals can travel farther than you expect, and the FCC takes a rather dim view of intentionally broadcasting your own signal (to any distance) without a license to do so.
by collingreen | 2026-02-09 17:51:15+00:00
Definitely. The devil is in the details though since it's so damn hard to quantify the $$$ lost when you have a large opinionated customer base that holds tremendous grudges. Doubly so when it's a subscription service with effectively unlimited lifetime for happy accounts.

Business by spreadsheet is super hard for this reason - if you try to charge the maximum you can before people get angry and leave then you're a tiny outage/issue/controversy/breach from tipping over the wrong side of that line.