MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bhouston | 2026-02-11 21:24:43+00:00
I bet Garry Tan will find that going after him for the wealth tax won’t poll well so he will find a different angle. Thus it won’t be a debate about a wealth tax, it will just be the standard make your opponent look bad in order to unseat him.

For example: https://nypost.com/2026/02/01/us-news/stunning-number-of-cal...
by alphazard | 2026-02-11 21:24:50+00:00
> Voila: you've re-invented product management.

This is a names vs. structure thing. For a moment, taboo the term product manager.

What I'm suggesting is a low risk way to see if an engineer has an aptitude for aligning the roadmap with what the users want.
If they aren't great at it, they can go back to engineering.
We also know for sure that they are technically competent since they are currently working as an engineer, no risk there.

The conventional wisdom (bad meme) is going to the labor market with a search term for people who claim to know what the users want, any user, any problem, doesn't matter. These people are usually incompetent and have never written software. Then hiring 1 and potentially more of the people that respond to the shibboleth.

If you want the first case, then you can't say "product manager" because people will automatically do the second case.
by SirensOfTitan | 2026-02-11 21:24:52+00:00
To me, tech entrepreneurship looks more like some form of "lemon socialism." It feels more centrally planned than ever, and a company's success has much more to do with your relationships with capital than anything else. It's why we're seeing so much money invested into a bunch of similar takes on AI. Founders with a real vision of the future aren't really accepted into VC that has almost wholly accepted the FOMO strategy of investment.

I used to hold a lot of respect for Paul Graham and his essays, but I've realized his stances on things are pretty elementary, and largely come back to his ego or wealth management. People like Graham and Tan don't seem to really care about human flourishing, and they certainly don't seem to have any coherent vision of the future. Graham, like Andreessen, was technically good enough during a veritable tech gold rush, and Graham's lieutenants like Tan and Altman were lucky more than anything--just in the right place at the right time versus having started anything of value.

I am *absolutely* cynical and jaded when it comes to tech nowadays, so no need to call me out there. These people remind me of the high modernists, that tech will solve all problems, and we don't have to care too much as to how we solve those problems. Just handwave, and AI will solve all problems. But I think how we solve problems matters, and the entrepreneurship meritocracy that Tan and Graham allude to does not exist, and it never did.

I just find it abhorrent that while 15% of American households are food insecure, a company like Anthropic spent millions on a superbowl ad just lamenting OpenAI's ad strategy. Or that the Trump administration dropped a FTC case against Pepsi and Walmart for colluding to price out grocery competition. Or that Facebook and Google have been shown to have pushed for apps to addict people to their slop content. Or that tech capex this year alone rivals the Louisiana Purchase or the amount America spent on building out the railroads[1].

We're not solving the right problems because capital is entirely disconnected from the every day reality of Americans in this country. But by all means, let's aim to replace 50% of white collar workers with AI and handwave that prices will come down.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compa...
by 8note | 2026-02-11 21:24:56+00:00
a lot of the why is encoded elsewhere in mechanical engineering at least - the tables, the formulas, textbook problems, engineering reports.

one of the challenges to making a good data set might be around bad designs and why they failed. if we get to a mechanical agent, its going to need to understand that brass was a mistake and redesign a part as steel and change the design for the new contraints

unlike code, that kind of train of experiment i think will be a lot more expensive to make, since you might actually want to create those parts along the way and not just pretend
by short_sells_poo | 2026-02-11 21:25:59+00:00
For a long time to come. The energy density of fossil fuels is very high (about 50x higher than that of lithium ion batteries), there's a ton of infrastructure for handling and transporting them and a ton of infrastructure for using them.

They get turned into plastics and energy, two things which civilization feeds on voraciously.

It's not just inertia that keeps them going.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2026-02-11 21:26:34+00:00
> Calling taxation theft

From reading their comments here, it seems to me that they are saying the theft occurs when labor is sold for a pittance in foreign markets so that things produced by said labor can be sold at a lower price (as compared to when more expensive labor is hired) in domestic markets. ("Basic income" = other people work as slaves in a factory somewhere so you can sit at home and "discover yourself.") The UBI would logically be an extension of that whereby the UBI program itself can only be funded by this disparity and therefore any beneficiary of such a program must be participating, however indirectly, in that theft. (Perhaps especially if one is a loud proponent of such a program.)

Ostensibly, from this perspective, one might consider whether the laborers should benefit more from their labor, rather than the consumers of products which are produced by said labor. It doesn't seem a particularly disagreeable or irrational perspective, at least on its face, though the seemingly disparaging mention of Marxism looks out of place given this perspective is rather Marxist.

Of course, whether one refers to that as "theft" is up to them; I'm just offering this alternate perspective since I didn't read it the way the parent did.
by russellbeattie | 2026-02-11 21:27:13+00:00
Amazon marketing broke a fundamental rule about consumer tech: Don't remind users about how much Big Tech knows about you.

Your various devices track everywhere you go, who you communicate with, what you search for, what you buy, what audio you listen to, what videos you watch, what games you play, who your family is, all your pictures and video you take, who comes and goes from your house, when you sleep, your health data, and much more.

And as a fundamental part of Big Tech's business they accumulate, aggregate and analyze all that information in various ways to increase profits. They don't keep this a secret, but wisely they normally don't brag about it to the general public.

Consumers have shown that are totally willing to give up privacy for convenience. Just don't remind them of it.
by sowbug | 2026-02-11 21:27:17+00:00
> What?

> Hashing is not encrypting.

> You can learn more about the topic here, https://www.okta.com/identity-101/hashing-vs-encryption/

Thank you for that link. Your original comment implied that Signal's threat model should have included an attacker-controlled end. A hash function is an excellent solution to such a threat.

Edit: I'll stop teasing you now. The only way to make E2E resistant to attacker-controlled ends is to make decryption impossible by anyone, including the intended recipient. A labyrinthine way to do that would be to substitute the symmetric-encryption algorithm with a hash algorithm, which of course destroys the plaintext, but does accomplish the goal of obfuscating it in transit, at rest, and forever.
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-02-11 21:27:41+00:00
I think it usually doesn’t come up because Singapore is a very complicated country, perhaps the most “outlier” country on the planet. Most people in the US (even well-educated ones) don’t know nearly enough about the social, cultural, and historical dynamics to speak on it intelligently, let alone compare and contrast it to a country like the United States.

Might as well talk about drug policy in South Sudan to be honest.

Edit: I will say I do have one Singaporean expat friend who finds capital punishment for drug possession vile, and cites it as one of the reasons she no longer lives there. Along with the crushing wealth disparity between the servant class and the working class. Not that it adds much to the conversation except personal flavor.
by jll29 | 2026-02-11 21:27:44+00:00
This reminds me: when people insist on having a real phone call in an email, it could be something that they don't like to put in writing. So it's a good practice to ask what the topic of the phone call will be so that you can join it prepared.

If it indeed is something that you feel might be fishy, I further recommend the following: write a summary of what was discussed and send your summary to the people on the call as "meeting minutes -- 2026-02-11" (make this a habit, and always say "I do this routinely to remember what was agreed"). This can easily avoid you being trapped by dubious propsals or being unwittingly on the wrong side of the law.
by bradfa | 2026-02-11 21:28:01+00:00
You don't need to understand how the model works internally to make an agentic coding tool. You just need to understand how the APIs work to interface with the model and then comprehend how the model behaves given different prompts so you can use it effectively to get things done. No Machine Learning previous experience necessary.

Start small, hit issues, fix them, add features, iterate, just like any other software.

There's also a handful of smaller open source agentic tools out there which you can start from, or just join their community, rather than writing your own.
by bandie91 | 2026-02-11 21:28:02+00:00
i'm working on something similar: instead of web-based ssh client, it's a web-based git client UI - you can "checkout" repos, browse commits, tree, read individual files, etc. with no server-side code at all; git objects are fetched and parsed on client-side. first target is the dumb-http git protocol, so people can host git repos on static websites, and visitors don´t need to clone by a local git client to peek in.

https://bandie91.github.io/dumb-http-git-browser-js-app/ui.h...
by ryanyu | 2026-02-11 21:28:38+00:00
I’d argue that many new AI startups are simply agents built on top of existing, established workflows. With today’s agent SDKs and AI coding tools, building them is incredibly easy.

But as people ship faster, often without understanding scalable system design, we’re heading toward an era of slow, fragile, and unscalable Saas. I believe that eventually products built on solid infra early will outlast the wave of slop--like how facebook outlived friendster. That's why I built Calfkit.
by bonoboTP | 2026-02-11 21:28:55+00:00
Do you think this is a fundamentally unbridge-able limitation of LLMs? Do you know where we were just a year ago? Can you imagine that this will get better with upcoming releases? It's like when Gary Marcus was confidently stating that AI (at least current paradigm) will never be able to generate an image of a horse riding an astronaut. (Or full wineglasses or arbitrary clocks).
by throw101010 | 2026-02-11 21:29:07+00:00
Who could have predicted that cooperation with decades old allies would be more fruitful than spitting in their faces and threatening them on a weekly basis both economically and militarily... really nobody /s

And yes, the consequence is strengthening the actual enemies of the USA, their AI progress is just one symptom of this disastrous US administration and the incompetence of Donald Trump. He really is the worst President of the USA ever, even if you were to just judge him on his leadership regarding technology... and I'm saying this while he is giving a speech about his "clean beautiful coal" right now in the White House.
by kieranmaine | 2026-02-11 21:29:49+00:00
The bull case is solar and batteries are only going to get cheaper so the speed of the transition will increase.

* Australia's renewables generation increased from 13.7% in 2015 to 42.9% in 2025 [1]

* EIA: 99%+ of new US capacity in 2026 will be solar, wind + storage [2]

* Wind and solar overtake fossil power in the EU for the first time in 2025 [3]

1. https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?range=all...

2. https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/eia-99-of-new-us-capacity-in-...

3. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/european-electricit...
by marginalia_nu | 2026-02-11 21:29:51+00:00
Problem is that we if we all stand in a circle and point fingers at the next guy who is to blame, that doesn't really move us toward any sort of solutions.

In fact the reason it's so easy to find others to blame is that the responsibility is a shared one. Holding consumers responsible doesn't absolve producers, or governments for their participation. All have to be held responsible for their actions. That's the only way forward.
Show HN: Speech Brief – neutral summaries of public statements
by Sinfected | 2026-02-11 21:30:08+00:00
I built Speech Brief after listening to a long government speech and realizing that it often contained only a few high-signal claims.

It generates short, neutral briefs of public statements: 1–3 key points plus a TL;DR, based only on what is explicitly stated in the source text. Each brief links back to the original source.

There’s no commentary, opinion, or fact-checking—just a faster way to read what was said.

It’s intentionally minimal and still early. I’d love feedback on whether you’d use this, whether the format works, and what one change would make it more useful.
by butvacuum | 2026-02-11 21:30:15+00:00
EDIT: Oh lord, bad typo in my previous comment- it should have been aliexpress SHIPPING not Shopping.

It's not the same, what you described is Direct Entry (somewhere around page 25, linked below). Apparently the Terminal Dues system has been massively changed in the 5 years since I last looked- but it still appears unfavorable to USPS and US sellers, while favoring high volume foreign shippers.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-112.pdf

As for how aliexpress delivers stuff, since the tarrifs: 1) no-name last mile. 2) USPS last mile, and USPS the entire way.

I don't know if any are associated with "Choice", Paid store shipping, and/or free store shipping.

Since I normally buy from aliexpress to avoid the insane 200-800% markups amazon/ebay/walmart/etc dropshippers demand the $5-$10 in shipping doesnt factor in.
by hamdingers | 2026-02-11 21:30:17+00:00
Basic does not mean "no software" it means "no cellular modem" and "no 15 inch tablet" and "no subscription based features"

There is functionally no difference between the powertrain of an electric road car and a brushless drill. How much software is there in your brushless drill? More than zero, far less than an electric road car.
by toephu2 | 2026-02-11 21:30:18+00:00
I'm not going to refute your points, but Flock does do some good.

By the end of 2025, San Francisco reported significant declines across nearly all major crime categories, in particular: Homicides are down 20% (2025 vs 2024), and in 2025 were at their lowest level since 1954.

SFPD reported a 125% homicide clearance rate in 2025 (solving more cases than occurred that year), citing license plate readers (read: Flock) and drones as key factors in providing digital evidence.

So the reduction in crime is not solely due to Flock, but is has definitely helped.
by spicymaki | 2026-02-11 21:30:37+00:00
Well on the bright side it's a complete mask off moment for the tech community. I think it is good for these people to expose themselves to the public. They will show you who they really are if you let them.

“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects”. -- Louis Brandeis
by dasil003 | 2026-02-11 21:30:43+00:00
Putting on a PM hat is something I've been doing regularly in my engineering career over the last quarter century. Even as a junior (still in college!) at my first job I was thinking about product, in no small part because there were no PMs in sight. As I grew through multiple startups and eventually bigger brand name tech companies, I realized that understanding how the details work combined with some sense of what users actually want and how they behave is a super power. With AI this skillset has never been more relevant.

I agree your assessment about the value of good PMs. The issue, in my experience, is that only about 20% (at most) are actually good. 60% are fine and can be successful with the right Design and Engingeering partners. And 20% should just be replaced by AI now so we can put the proper guardrails around their opinions and not be misled by their charisma or whatever other human traits enabled them to get hired into a job they are utterly unqualified for.
by rezonant | 2026-02-11 21:30:48+00:00
I don't know but is there a maximum compression weight on fiber, because in some of these broadcast centers they've got cable trays of SDI that are so heavy and packed that removing a dead line is a fire hazard (because the friction of pulling the line could cause a fire).

They'd obviously need a lot less and the lines are a lot lighter but maybe folks figured if they could avoid repeating that scenario in their design, it might be a good idea :-P
by mattmanser | 2026-02-11 21:30:49+00:00
I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?

The ultra-rich are taking too great a share of every nations wealth. And they keep taking more.

Taxes are the only option to redistribute wealth.

Or are you talking about enabling strong unions and anti-monopoly laws with teeth to reverse the growth?

As I doubt Garry's in favour of that either.
by 2III7 | 2026-02-11 21:31:18+00:00
WDYM personal decisions don't matter? Industrial and agricultural sectors, which both in sum contribute 50% of total greenhouse gas emissions, produce what is in demand from consumers. Another 15% of emissions is from personal vehicles. Changing personal habits is the only way we can ever reach some utopian climate targets. Utopian because old habits die hard.
by tetha | 2026-02-11 21:31:24+00:00
We are currently extremely blessed on the companies new product, because they have placed a curious and open-minded product manager and a curious and open-minded ux-designer in charge of the administrative interface. Over half a year, those two have gained the trust of several admins within the company, all of them with experience of more than 10 years.

We have by now taught them about good information density.

Like, the permission pages, if you look at them just once, kinda look like bad 90s UIs. They throw a crapton of information at you.

But they contain a lot of smart things you only realize when actually using it from an admin perspective. Easy comparison of group permissions by keeping sorting orders and colors stable, so you can toggle between groups and just visually match what's different, because colors change. Highlights of edge cases here and there. SSO information around there as well. Loads of frontloaded necessary info with optional information behind various places.

You can move seriously fast in that interface once you understand it.

Parts of the company hate it for not being user friendly. I just got a mail that a customer admin was able to setup SSO in 15 minutes and debug 2 mapping issues in another 10 and now they are production ready.
by RupertSalt | 2026-02-11 21:31:38+00:00
Well that's unique!

It is a horse of a different color when user logins are handled by telnetd itself. I would imagine that access could also be provided by ssh. I know of no MUD that supports MFA, public/private keys, and host certificates!

At any rate, as of January 2026, Mooix users are gonna have a tough time connecting on port 23/tcp. I won't say they've been wrong for using it until now, but they may find themselves forced to switch to ssh, or at least a 4-digit port number. And patch that GNU telnetd ASAP, man.

EDIT: Sad to say, please do not visit the website cited in this linked article. It is, how you say, squatted by purveyors of smut. It may be the case that Mooix is abandonware.
by spwa4 | 2026-02-11 21:31:57+00:00
There's also the inescapable truth about what purpose pensions served. They effectively create a massive amount of debt, "owned by" retirees, owed by regular people, managed by bank bosses and politicians. Surprisingly, they changed the social contract enormously: nobody got a choice. Everyone had to pay the new debt, MASSIVE debt, to take care of the elderly. The then barely existing elderly.

Which brings the question ... WHY did they do this?

Politicians: to spend the money (and not on retirees, on their own projects), in other words: when it comes to money, ideally you do not own, but do decide what money is spent on.

Banks (and the rich in general): to redirect a percentage of the money to themselves in 1000 different ways. They can't really get money unless there is large amounts of socially accepted debt in society, it doesn't work: can't get blood from a stone.

Now, when this leads to the problem that either the money disappears, or the social contract behind the debt disappears (ie. either pensions drop to almost nothing, and the spending/social contract (ie. if pensions aren't paid out/aren't livable the willingness of people to pay for pensions disappears, and the debt ... oh dear god the horror ... disappears, and with it the lifeblood of banks and the rich). Then of course panic sets in, and suddenly when THEY get in trouble any law change imaginable is suddenly on the table.

The scary part is the obvious solution, the only solution really. You know what would solve the pension crisis without destroying the social contract? If the elderly were to die (a lot) faster. That is the only way the politicians can keep spending and banks can keep their profits. Which is exactly what Trump's doing with the enormous increase in medical costs. For the elderly it's simple: pay ... or die. That's the new social contract here. In other words: in what I'm sure will come as a total surprise to everyone, when democrats get control again, they will see how much it costs, how much of their projects it would kill ... and then will not refund Obamacare to anywhere near the level before Trump and they will in fact vote to keep this new social contract in place.

Of course reality is simple: politicians and the rich are promising pensions to everyone, and the really obvious truth is starting to become glaringly fucking obvious: they're lying. One way or another, you're not getting the pension you paid for, you're not getting the medical care you're paying for. You paid the money, and ... you're NOT getting it back! Obviously, they don't want to be called to account for that one.

Kill the elderly: it's either that ... or take the money from the rich. Easy choice, no?
by mystraline | 2026-02-11 21:32:00+00:00
Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political
advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote".

And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.)

Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases.

When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA.
by angiolillo | 2026-02-11 21:32:12+00:00
> It depends on the area, but a nanny is typically nowhere near $6k/month.

Agreed that it depends on the area. In high cost-of-living areas, both nanny and childcare can be (significantly) higher than $6k/mo, and in lower cost-of-living areas they're typically a bit less. In my experience having lived in different areas the price ranges for infant/toddler daycares and (legal) nannies are closely correlated.

> I'm not even entirely sure a "good" nanny is required.

Having employed a couple of bad nannies, I strongly disagree with this statement.