MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hungryhobbit | 2026-02-10 18:32:47+00:00
I feel like what got lost here was a pro/con evaluation.

Pro: Your drawers are neater now.

Con: You just spent maybe 100x of the time and effort you would have spent if you had just left your drawer messy, and had to search through it.

My back of the napkin math is that you go into an average drawer once a week, and mess makes it take five seconds longer to find something than in a clean drawer. Assuming you live 20 years before the drawer falls apart, you move, etc. that's roughly 20 * 50 * 5 = 5,000 seconds.

Now, read the article and tell me what multiple of 5,000 seconds the OP put into all that custom foam.
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-02-10 18:32:50+00:00
My company makes custom software for small and mid sized companies.

I have a little bit of dread, but I tell myself my niche is automating (real/physical) engineering, which is different from 100% software/data.

If we can automate for 1/100th the cost, that just means we get harder problems. Right?
by horsawlarway | 2026-02-10 18:33:08+00:00
Yeah, the folks in here recommending Debian as a solution to this problem are insane.

I love Debian, it's a great distro. It's NOT the distro I'd pick to drive things like my laptop or personal development machine. At least not if you have even a passing interest in:

- Using team communication apps (slack/teams/discord)

- Using software built for windows (Wine/Proton)

- Gaming (of any form)

- Wayland support (or any other large project delivering new features relatively quickly)

- Hardware support (modern linux kernels)

I'd recommend it immediately as a replacement for Ubuntu as a server, but I won't run it for daily drivers.

Again - Arch (or it's derivatives) are basically the best you can get in that space.
by QuercusMax | 2026-02-10 18:33:25+00:00
Here's an example from my recent experience: I've been building a bunch of mostly throwaway TUIs using AI (using Python and Rich), and a lot of the stuff just works trivially.

But there are some things where the AI just does not understand how to do proper boundary check to prevent busted layouts, and so I can either argue with it for an hour while it goes back and forth breaking the code in the process of trying to fix my layout issues - or I can just go in and fix it myself.
by gusgus01 | 2026-02-10 18:33:37+00:00
Not necessarily, if Discord has more than 200 million Daily Active Users, and there are a few million-user servers. Those million-user servers could mostly be made up of the same million users (or only a small percentage still actively engage but they never left because there's no disincentive to leave servers instead of just muting them) meaning it's used by less than 1/200th of the total users of Discord.

Realistically, that's probably not the case, but it's impossible to know the true popularity without more statistics.
by Atlas667 | 2026-02-10 18:33:41+00:00
Nah, you're trying to misconstrue people.

Corporatism is not a thing. Capitalists hold fundamental power over society, they collectively are the state.

They own the things the rest of the people need to survive. Assuming you are a worker/proletariat: Can you survive right now, today, without interacting with a capitalist entity?

Can you make your living as in food, money, housing, etc, right now, solely from your own property? Statistically not. Capitalists own most of what you require.

"Corporatism" is just capitalism. Capitalists use their media platforms to say the government oppresses them equally to us. When it is proven time and time and time again that they have almost total control and influence over the government.

And you buy the narrative.

There is no "pure capitalism", bro. Capitalism will ALWAYS evolve into this. It's baked into the rules. This is very plain to see.

Go to any main news platform, of any country, on the side of any political wing, of any other capitalist nation on earth and type "corruption" in the corresponding language. You'll be met with a flood of articles.

I am against private property of production, because I know the people who need said production can also democratically run it.
by Suhas_08 | 2026-02-10 18:33:55+00:00
Congrats on open-sourcing — the direction toward reliable agents really resonates.

One thing that stood out while contributing is how critical durability becomes once agents move from demos to long-running production workflows. Mutation loops, retries, or multi-step plans can be token-heavy and fragile if a process crashes midway.

I recently worked on adding optional crash-safe runtime state persistence (atomic temp+replace logic with restore on restart) so agents can resume from the last completed step instead of starting over. It’s fully opt-in, but feels like an important primitive as you build toward self-improving systems.

Excited to see where Hive goes — happy to help more on reliability and production hardening.
by olalonde | 2026-02-10 18:33:55+00:00
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.

Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to credit card payment system in the West is largely a historical aberration that needs correcting.

Also, I'm a bit biased since I live in China, but WeChat Pay and Alipay are so far superior to the credit card system that I can hardly find a single redeeming quality in the latter. China was lucky in that it leapfrogged the traditional credit card system since it didn't have that historical baggage.
by zarzavat | 2026-02-10 18:33:56+00:00
The way I think of complex numbers is as linear transformations. Not points but functions on points that rotate and scale. The complex numbers are a particular set of 2x2 matrices, where complex multiplication is matrix multiplication, i.e. function composition. Complex conjugation is matrix transposition. When you think of things this way all the complex matrices and hermitian matrices in physics make a lot more sense. Which group do I fall into?
by lowercased | 2026-02-10 18:34:07+00:00
I've got a tracker and it keeps showing "sharp turn" right in my neighborhood. It's counting the turn in to my driveway - a 90 degree turn - as a "sharp turn". It doesn't seem to matter how slow I go - I'm not racing in to the driveway - generally slowed to walking speed by that point - and I'm still getting 'dinged' every day for this.
by pjmlp | 2026-02-10 18:34:30+00:00
I did not do such claim.

WebGPU on Android runs on top of Vulkan.

If you knew about 3D programming on Android, you would know that there are ongoing efforts to have only Vulkan, with OpenGL ES on top.

However Java and Kotlin devs refuse to bother with the NDK for Vulkan, and keep reaching for OpenGL ES instead.

Please refer to Google talks on Vulkanised conferences.
by vagrantstreet | 2026-02-10 18:35:11+00:00
Was expecting some mention of Universal Approximation Theorem

I really don't care much if this is semi-satire as someone else pointed out, the idea that AI will ever get "sentient" or explode into a singularity has to die out pretty please. Just make some nice Titanfall style robots or something, a pure tool with one purpose. No more parasocial sycophantic nonsense please
by m-schuetz | 2026-02-10 18:35:27+00:00
> Except it didn't. In the GL programming model it's trivial to accidentially leak the wrong granular render state into the next draw call

This is where I think Vulkan and WebGPU are chasing the wrong goal: To make draw calls faster. What's even faster, however, is making fewer draw calls and that's something graphics devs can easily do when you provide them with tools like multi-draw. Preferably multi-draw that allows multiple different buffers. Doing so will naturally reduce costly state changes with little effort.
by noncentral | 2026-02-10 18:35:29+00:00
We treat “the average human” as if it were a real, measurable entity —
a statistical center, a bell-shaped curve, a stable point around which everything clusters.

But this assumption comes from our models, not from the world itself.

Nearly all real-world systems — biological, cognitive, economic, technological, and computational — follow heavy-tailed distributions, not Gaussian ones.
Variance doesn’t contract toward the middle; it expands outward.
Outliers are not “rare exceptions.”
They are the structure.

The belief in an “average human” emerged because Gaussian models are mathematically convenient, politically comfortable, and easy to teach —
not because they describe reality.

When a system is embedded inside a larger uncontrolled environment, collapse and extreme dispersion are required, not accidental.
This is the foundation of RCC:
a geometric explanation for why long-range planning fails,
why drift accumulates,
and why human and model behavior doesn’t converge toward a center.

If someone knows an actually embedded system that maintains stability without external scaffolding, I’m interested.
by ericmay | 2026-02-10 18:35:49+00:00
Thanks for the information, reminds me of CashApp or something like that in the US. But just to be clear the context was, at least as I understood, moving to using an app instead of using existing credit card rails via Visa and Mastercard and that's just not going to happen because it's a worse experience (in Europe).

If you don't have the ability to accept a card at all, that's a different use case.
by yethiel | 2026-02-10 18:36:05+00:00
Good points! paperboat.website is very simple and focuses on friends sharing their blog posts which each other, which helps limit regular users' exposure to potential malicious activity.

I expect it's going to be tricky if the user base grows but I'm not planning to compete with larger social networks. It's primarily a space to create personal sites and blogs and my plan is to keep it around as long as possible. If users decide to purchase memberships, I'll have even more time to make sure it stays secure and up to date. If not, I'll still run this for me and my friends which is a huge motivation for me already.
by ignoramous | 2026-02-10 18:36:05+00:00
> It's funny that the EU uses all this mobile attestation BS more than the US does

Attestation in on itself isn't unwarranted which (to me) is an important security measure. Attestation as commonly implemented on Android via Play Integrity (the way banking apps are known to do) is restrictive, sure: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... / https://archive.is/snGEu
by munificent | 2026-02-10 18:36:17+00:00
> You'd naturally gravitate towards parsing/transforming raw data into typed data structures that have guaranteed properties instead to avoid writing defensive code everywhere e.g.

There's nothing natural about this. It's not like we're born knowing good object-oriented design. It's a pattern that has to be learned, and the linked article is one of the well-known pieces that helped a lot of people understand this idea.
by TheAmazingRace | 2026-02-10 18:36:22+00:00
Hi tabbott. Thanks kindly for offering to answer questions. :)

I signed up on your site just a bit ago, but I'm a bit concerned with the paid upgrade. Unlike Discord, I need to pay per user, which I find onerous and would get out of control fast for the group I run with around 100 members. Is there any plans for a flat fee model? I'm even happy to pay twice what I pay for Discord Nitro, but yeah, $8/mo per user is too expensive.

If it helps at all, it's for retro computing community group, and not for profit.
by stego-tech | 2026-02-10 18:36:30+00:00
Oh, not only do they not care about the plebs and riff-raff now, but they’ve spent the past ten years building bunkers and compounds to try and save their own asses for when it happens.

It’s willful negligence on a societal scale. Any billionaire with a bunker is effectively saying they expect everyone to die and refuse to do anything to stop it.
by phkahler | 2026-02-10 18:36:30+00:00
There are 2 square roots of 9, they are 3 and -3. Likewise there are two square roots of -1 which are i and -i. How are people trying to argue that there are two different things called i? We don't ask which 3 right? My argument is that there is only 1 value of i, and the distinction between -i and i is the same as (-1)i and (1)i, which is the same as -3 vs 3. There is only one i. If there are in fact two i's then there are 4 square roots of -1.
by rudasn | 2026-02-10 18:36:37+00:00
Hi Philip!

We develop one or more apps that we deploy on-prem. An app for us is a git repo with a docker compose file. On-prem is either a Linux server or a Linux vm that we have ssh access to (normally via Wireguard vpn).

For app updates, we use ansible to ssh into machines, run pre-deployment scripts, pull git repo and docker images, restart containers and run post-deployment scripts.

It could be better, but it works for us.

The biggest bottleneck we have now is communication with customers, scheduling of updates, letting them know of breaking changes or new features, that kind of stuff.

The apps are provided "fully managed". They dont know and don't care about the details I just described, but they do need assurances that everything is done "properly".

What we think would help us a lot is a way to easily let them know of new releases of any apps they have installed, let them read release notes, docs, and be able to either deploy on-demand or schedule a deployment at a certain time.

Although having fewer things for us to do is nice, what is crucial is to oversee deployments and make sure they are successful (and intervene if not).

Is distr for us?
by QuercusMax | 2026-02-10 18:36:42+00:00
I like coding AIs because they're plagiarism machines. If I ask you to do some basic data manipulation operations, I want you to do it in the most obvious, standard way possible, not come up with some fancy creative solution unless it's needed for some reason.

If I'm dockerizing an app, I want the most simple, basic, standard thing - not somebody's hand-rolled "optimized" version that I can't understand.
by UtopiaPunk | 2026-02-10 18:36:47+00:00
Kind of. But the outcomes likely do not benefit the masses. People "accessing AI labor" is just a race to the bottom. Maybe some new tools get made or small businesses get off the ground, but ultimately this "AI labor" is a machine that is owned by capitalists. They dictate its use, and they will give or deny people access to the machine as it benefits them. Maybe they get the masses dependent on AI tools that are currently either free or underpriced, as alternatives to AI wither away unable to compete on cost, then the prices are raised or the product enshittified. Or maybe AI will be massively useful to the surveillance state and data brokers. Maybe AI will simply replace a large percentage of human labor in large corporations, leading to mass unemployment.

I don't fault anyone for trying to find opportunities to provide for themselves and loved ones in this moment by using AI to make a thing. But don't fool yourself into thinking that the AI labor is yours. The capitalists own it, not us.
by alt227 | 2026-02-10 18:37:02+00:00
Yes the world is overpopulated. However a lot of developed societies based their framework for budgets on permanent growth, for example the idea that the young paying tax will always pay for the benefits of the elderly. However with the population rate decreasing, suddenly there is lots of older population expecting things like healthcare and pensions to be paid for them. With less and less young people to cover the cost in tax, there is a looming defecit which is very worrying to a lot of economists.
by CoastalCoder | 2026-02-10 18:37:04+00:00
Sounds like there's some overlap with the story of the Jewish people, now that I think of it.

> Here we are. Looks like the dorks won.

I doubt it's permanent, and we all gotta eat.

But you know what? My son still tells me how much he was in awe of that game when he saw me playing it.

No matter what happens next, you gave us that sweet memory of fun and time together. Thank you.
by horsawlarway | 2026-02-10 18:37:19+00:00
I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard.

But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.
by csense | 2026-02-10 18:37:22+00:00
Whenever I hear the words "paper boat" I'm put in mind of a certain [1] vtuber [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/pYVEIX7nSEs?t=769

[2] For those unfamiliar with the vtuber scene: This video is not AI generated. She's a legitimate content creator; the views and subs on that video are real and organic. She's a real human with a video camera and face tracking that maps her real human face's expressions and movements onto an anime character model in real time, broadcast on a livestream. There's a whole ecosystem of supporting software, specialized model artists and riggers, agencies that provide all sorts of support to individual creators in exchange for a cut of ad / superchat / sub / merch / event revenue...the vtuber rabbit hole goes quite deep.
by waldopat | 2026-02-10 18:37:23+00:00
Go read The Founder's Dilemma by Wasserman. It's great and covers almost any problem a founder will run into. To really summarize, it's all about trade offs and prioritization. Patents vs trade secrets fits nicely.

Trade secrets are far cheaper and easier to maintain than patents. In short, patents are only as strong as your ability to enforce them. Also Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014) weakened software and process patents. That said, if you can’t realistically defend IP in court, you effectively don’t have it. From an early-stage founder perspective, that makes patents a questionable use of time and money and potentially what kills the company.

This may contrast from information you get from a lawyer or VC. Patents are attractive because they create an asset someone else can later buy or defend. For the founder, the incentives aren’t squarely aligned.

Neither approach is more right or wrong, but there are very real practical consequences. If you are pre-seed who is bootstrapped or done a family & friends round and are pre or early revenue, trade secrecy is by far your better option.

As an additional note, if you don't own the underlying AI models and are just a better wrapper for Claude or ChatGPT you at best have a very weak IP or patent position.
by linkregister | 2026-02-10 18:37:32+00:00
Google, among most other tech companies, deny portions of administrative warrants. Here's a story about someone who was stressed out about their notification by Google (spoiler, Google decided to deny the government's request)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/hom...

edit: It appears that this outcome is an outlier and most admin warrants are honored. It is unfortunate to see the Washington Post decline in reliability like this.
by mopsi | 2026-02-10 18:37:36+00:00
> Or soviet imperialism.

How can you call yourself a Marxist if you have apparently not bothered to read a single book on the history of the USSR? Shining examples of imperialism are unavoidable turning points in Soviet history. The invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia are the most well-known, but one must not forget OMON terrorizing Lithuanians, the infamous MVD troops cracking the skulls of Georgians with sapper shovels, and many many other examples.

Show one example of Soviet imperialism, you say? There are entire museums dedicated to the subject!
by Fogest | 2026-02-10 18:37:40+00:00
Ultimately you get these extreme issues if you ignore a problem for too long. If you are becoming constipated and let it continue for many days on end without seeking some kind of treatment I feel that you are kinda to blame. I had some constipations at one point while on it and used some over the counter style fiber products and stool softeners to deal with the problem. If I ignored the problem of course I could potentially end up in these more extreme situations.

I think if people are choosing to use such medications they should make sure they are aware of the potential complications and are vigilant with their health to ensure these extreme side effects are avoided.
by mrkeen | 2026-02-10 18:38:04+00:00
If you spend your life talking about bool having two values, and then need to act as if it has three or 256 values or whatever, that's where the weirdness lives.

In C, true doesn't necessarily equal true.

In Java (myBool != TRUE) does not imply that (myBool == FALSE).

Maybe you could do with some weirdness!

In Haskell:
Bool has two members: True & False. (If it's True, it's True. If it's not True, it's False).
Unit has one members: ()
Void has zero members.

To be fair I'm not sure why Void was raised as an example in the article, and I've never used it. I didn't turn up any useful-looking implementations on hoogle[1] either.

[1] https://hoogle.haskell.org/?hoogle=a+-%3E+Void&scope=set%3As...
by bovermyer | 2026-02-10 18:38:09+00:00
The "net" refers here to "the good that Google does" (e.g., some pretty impressive networking research) is outweighed by "the bad that Google does," such as the linked article.

Nothing is pure evil or pure good. Gauging where on the scale a person or group lies is really hard, and subjective.

So, I try and keep score on the big players, but understand that my judgement is fallible.
by dathinab | 2026-02-10 18:38:24+00:00
the only way to legally search a house, car or force companies to hand anything over is with a judge signing it off

the article isn't clear about it but it implies that this was not approved by a judge but DHS alone, this is also indicated but the fact that the supona contained a gag order but Google still informed the affected person that _some_ information was hanged over

now some level of cooperation with law enforcement even without a judge is normal to reduce friction and if you love in a proper state of law there is no problem Keith it.

Also companies are to some degree required to cooperate.

What makes this case so problematic is the amount of information shared without a judge order, that ICE tried to gag Google, that Google did delay compliance to give the affected person a chance to take legal action even through they could, and last but but least that this information seems to have been requested for retaliation against protestor which is a big no go for a state of law
by munificent | 2026-02-10 18:38:44+00:00
I wouldn't call it a good use of static typing, but I'd call it a good use of object-oriented programming.

This is one of the really key ideas behind OOP that tends to get overlooked. A constructor's job is to produce a semantically valid instance of a class. You do the validation during construction so that the rest of the codebase can safely assume that if it can get its hands on a Foo, it's a valid Foo.
by lvspiff | 2026-02-10 18:38:46+00:00
My psychiatrist is really interested in how it affects anxiety and depression as he has now seena number of improvements from a bunch of patients (including myself) who use the drug. Im on meds for both and only after i started on monjourno did i feel a signifigant change. The food cravings gone due to the nuerological effects but the stress levels lower as it seems to be impacting seratonin levels in ways as you increase dose.