MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by armchairhacker | 2026-02-23 16:15:52+00:00
It would not be solved without a culture shift. But with a culture shift, giving a kid an unlocked device would be as rare as giving them drugs.

I'm sure it will occasionally happen. But kids are terrible at keeping secrets, so they will only have the unlocked device for temporary periods, and I believe infrequent use of the modern internet is much, much less damaging than the constant use we see problems from today. A rough analogy, comparing social media to alcohol: it's as if today kids are suffering from chronic alcoholism, and in the future, kids occasionally get ahold of a six pack.
by hawk_ | 2026-02-23 16:15:57+00:00
> If there's a fundamental culture shift,

You mean this culture shift is needed for the masses but I don't think that's the case. In my widest social circle I am not aware of anyone giving alcohol to young kids (yes by the time they are 16ish yes but even that's rare). Most guardians would willingly do similar with locked devices.

The real problem is that the governments/companies won't get to spy on you if locked devices are given to children only. They want to spy on us all. That's the missing cultural shift.
by zarzavat | 2026-02-23 16:16:03+00:00
> How does a gas station keep a 21-year-old from buying beer for a bunch of high school students?

They don't? Teenagers can easily get their hands on alcohol... you just need to know the right person at school who has a cool older brother. If their older brother is really cool they can get weed too!

The police absolutely do not have the time to investigate the crime of making a discord account for someone.
by dredmorbius | 2026-02-23 16:16:10+00:00
FT can work with pretty much any source of carbon and hydrogen.

The latter might come from an existing hydrocarbon (as with so-called "blue", "grey", "black", or "brown" hydrogen), or from electrolysis, which is not carbon-neutral. If the latter is powered by a carbon-neutral source (surplus renewables, nuclear), it's "green", and carbon-neutral.

CO2 can also be obtained from numerous sources. One prospect suggested when US peak oil was a concern, in the 1960s, was limestone. More recently, the US Naval Research Lab, as well as Google's Project Foghorn, looked at separating CO2 (in the form of carbonic and carbolic acid) from seawater, which is far less energy intensive than direct removal from the atmosphere. I'd looked up the history of research and industrial applications circa 2014, noted here:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20170719101136/https://www.reddi...>

<https://web.archive.org/web/20230601122020/https://old.reddi...>

The US Navy has an interest largely for its carrier fleet. Whilst the carriers themselves are nuclear powered, their aircraft are not, and fuel provisioning for the aircraft fleets is a major logistical hurdle as well as a strategic vulnerability. No need to target the carriers themselves (heavily defended) if the supply tankers can be sunk, something present US adversaries might consider. One prospect would be to effectively recommission older carriers as fuel-synthesis platforms, capable of producing aviation fuel from seawater in situ and not having to transit between fuel depots and the fleet itself. Given the additional costs of transit and strategic significance, the economics should be somewhat more favourable than for civilian use. This was the subject of a number of papers published in the 2010s by the US Naval Research Laboratory (listed above). Earlier research based on other carbon sources was performed at MIT and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1970s and 1960s, respectively.
by parineum | 2026-02-23 16:16:13+00:00
> there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves.

Groups of people who wake up at the same time of the day often have a tendency to be from a similar place, hold similar values and consume similar media.

Just because a bunch of people came to the same conclusion and have had their opinions coalesce around some common ideas, doesn't mean it's astroturfing. There's a noticeable difference between the opinions of HN USA and HN EU as the timezones shift.
by klsdjfdlkfjsd | 2026-02-23 16:16:35+00:00
If one feels anything about it at all, it's a sign they're taking the Made-for-TV movie seriously.

Never take TV seriously.

The key mistake is even watching it in the first place.

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed." - Mark Twain
by cromka | 2026-02-23 16:16:51+00:00
They are one time use by definition. You can't know they are used by respectful owner, but the idea is you have to provide a new token every few weeks/months. Much like when using other services nowadays, I mean even Gmail will have you authorize every few months even if you didn't log out. Plus you fine/prosecute those who sell/misuse theirs. Just like you prosecute adults who buy kids alcohol or other substances.

Obvious flaws are OK. I absolutely hate the Nirvana fallacy that you people think is acceptable here, while hundreds of millions of kids suffer from serious developmental issues, as reported left and right by all kinds of organizations and governments themselves.
by threethirtytwo | 2026-02-23 16:16:51+00:00
>Calling it "obvious" someone meant something rather than what they actually typed with their own fingers is pretty nuts though.

The above is what he said in response to me defending someone and saying that they are not "nuts". I am the person who called it "obvious".

The colloquial meaning changes in context. Under normal conditions you're correct, it's a benign statement, that's slightly derogatory. But I changed the context. I emphasized the minor derogatoriness of making that statement and I said the person you said that to is not in actuality "nuts". Then he proceeded to call me (aka my statements) "nuts".

Look I don't know if you're trolling, but you're utterly wrong. It was a targeted statement. It's clear what was said, there is just something wrong with how YOU are interpreting it. I am a native english speaker.
by mulmen | 2026-02-23 16:17:08+00:00
Beware the vocal minority. Internet comment sections only tell you the sentiments of people who make comments.

HN comments sentiment seems to shift over the age of the thread and time of day.

My suspicion is that the initial comments are from people in the immediate social circle of the poster. They share IRC or Slack or Discord or some other community which is likely to be engaged and have already formed strong opinions. Then if the story gains traction and reaches the front page a more diverse and thoughtful group weighs in. Finally the story moves to EU or US and gets a whole new fresh take.

I’m not surprised that people who support something are the ones most tuned in to the discussion because for anyone opposed they also have their own unrelated thing they care about. So the supporters will be first since they’re the originators.
by aidenn0 | 2026-02-23 16:17:11+00:00
Personally, if they just went away on large screens, I'd already be much happier. So many programs I use on my 30" monitor have gone from a readily available quick-to-navigate menu-bar to a horrible hamburger menu that is so self-conscious about using space that it is 10x slower to use than before.

Gnome (and maybe GTK as well?) submenus now require a click (as opposed to the previous hover) and replace their parent menu (rather than appearing beside it), making hunting for something in a submenu an exercise in frustration. Considering that:

1. The fraction of Gnome users on a small touchscreen is approximately zero

2. You can always support the miniscule number of small-touchscreen users by having menus behave differently on small touch screens; Apple still has a menu bar on desktop applications!

It's particularly frustrating
by 2duct | 2026-02-23 16:17:26+00:00
Digital media use is easier to conceal than weapons. My parents did not protect me from it growing up because they were not responsible, and I was harmed as a result. To this day they still do not realize I was harmed, because I did not tell them and we are not on speaking terms. Trying to be honest would have resulted in further rejection from them. This was on a personality level and I had no way to deal with this as a developing human.

I could not control how my parents were going to raise me, I was only able to play with the hand I was dealt. I hate the idea that parents are sacrosanct and do not share blame in these situations. At the same time, if this is just the family situation you're given and you're handed a device unaware of the implications, who is going to protect you from yourself and others online if your parents won't? Should anyone?
by semi-extrinsic | 2026-02-23 16:17:39+00:00
> We could potentially do ID checks that only show exactly what the receiver needs to know and nothing else.

A stronger statement: we know how to build zero-knowledge proofs over government-issued identification, cf. https://zkpassport.id/

The services that use these proofs then need to implement that only one device can be logged in with a given identity at a time, plus some basic rate limiting on logins, and the problem is solved.
by drnick1 | 2026-02-23 16:17:44+00:00
> US now requires cars to report data, which was optional before (e.g. onstar) and china joined on this since the ev boom.

This isn't true, there is no federal requirement for a cellular modem in cars. Most modern cars have one, but nothing prevents you from disabling or removing it. I certainly would not tolerate such a "bug" in by car.

> In the US every store tracks and report to ad networks your Bluetooth ids.

This also isn't true, modern phones randomize Bluetooth identifiers. I personally disable Bluetooth completely.
by mbesto | 2026-02-23 16:17:45+00:00
> The list of PE-owned retail chains that have filed for bankruptcy or liquidated includes Toys “R” Us, Payless ShoeSource, Sports Authority, Gymboree, rue21, The Limited, Barneys New York, and many others.

Once again, you can't lump all PE groups into one all cohorts. All of these companies were bought out by Large-cap PE which is notoriously predatory. They may have an overwhelming amount of the drypowder, but in terms of absolutely number of PE groups, there are far more operating in the middle and lower middle market who don't do this.
by torginus | 2026-02-23 16:17:50+00:00
From the article:

> pricing below US $200. That’s less than half of typical prices now, and it’s not even the full extent of the company’s ambition.

This means there are sensors available for like $500 or more. At 4 per car, this is still just $2000, which is a very reasonable cost add even for a midrange car.

And with price comparisons like this, I'm sure Chinese competitors aren't factored in, I'm sure the Chinese have stuff for cheaper.

So Affordable Lidar is not a limitation. Despite that, self-driving doesn't really exist outside of Waymo, which people take to assume that Lidar is their killer advantage, but with other cars having Lidar, I think that might not turn out to be the deciding facotr.
by kubb | 2026-02-23 16:18:30+00:00
Complex queries in SQL can quickly get out of control.

The fact that you need to replicate the same complex expressions in multiple values that you select or multiple parts of a where clause is bad enough.

That there’s no way to pipe the result of a query into another query is just adding insult to injury. (Just create a custom view bro).

But if technology competed in quality and not in vendor lock in, we wouldn’t have to deal with C++ or JavaScript.
by juniperus | 2026-02-23 16:18:32+00:00
Have you seen a japanese newspaper? the characters alone are very information dense. and a newspaper front page can be very information dense just by the nature of the language/writing system.

otherwise, a lot of japanese webpages just seem impossible to navigate to me. Some images are clickable, some aren't, you still have to scroll to reach where you're going. It's just a bit like a maze, and a lot of what you see is kind of useless.
by VPenkov | 2026-02-23 16:18:46+00:00
> The vite plus idea is that you'll pay for visual tools.

From what I understand, Vite+ seems like an all-in-one toolchain. Instead of maintaining multiple configurations with various degrees of intercompatibility, you maintain only one.

This has the added benefit that linters and such can share information about your dependency graph, and even ASTs, so your tools doesn't have to compute them individually. Which has a very decent potential of improving your overall pre-merge pipeline. Then, on top of that, caching.

The focus here is of course enterprise customers and looks like it is supposed to compete with the likes of Nx/Moonrepo/Turborepo/Rush. Nx and Rush are big beasts and can be somewhat unwieldy and quirky. Nx lost some trust with its community by retracting some open-source features and took a very long time to (partially) address the backlash.

Vite+ has a good chance to be a contender on the market with clearer positioning if it manages to nail monorepo support.
by atonse | 2026-02-23 16:19:01+00:00
Just for the record though, Musk isn't blindly anti-LIDAR. He has said (and I think this is an objective fact) that all existing roads and driving are based on vision (which is what all humans do). So that should technically be sufficient. SpaceX uses LIDAR for their docking systems.

I would argue that yes, we do use vision but we get that "lidar depth" from our stereo vision. And that used to be why I thought cameras weren't enough.

But then look at all the work with gaussian splatting (where you can take multiple 2d samples and build a 3d world out of it). So you could probably get 80% there with just that.

The ethos of many Musk companies (you'll hear this from many engineers that work there) is simplify, simplify, simplify. If something isn't needed, take it out. Question everything that might be needed.

To me, LIDAR is just one of those things in that general pattern of "if it isn't absolutely needed, take it out" – and the fact that FSD works so well without it proves that it isn't required. It's probably a nice to have, but maybe not required.
by grvdrm | 2026-02-23 16:19:41+00:00
I've thought the same.

At least here in US: Google/Apple device controls allow app to request whether user meets age requirements. Not the actual age, just that the age is within the acceptable range. If so, let through, if not, can't proceed through door.

I know I am oversimplifying.

But I like this approach vs. uploading an ID to TikTok. Lesser of many evils?
by akersten | 2026-02-23 16:20:01+00:00
I think we totally disagree on the degree of how much this is actually a problem compared to how much we're willing to invest in it. Those anonymous solutions are fairly idealistic and Nirvana-esque themselves, I don't think they'd see wide adoption. Beyond that I'm firmly in the camp that age verification for the kids is a complete smokescreen for the actual intent of these efforts, which is more surveillance, so on principal I'm opposed to any movement in this direction and doubt we'll find common ground.
by miroljub | 2026-02-23 16:20:14+00:00
> Please, O wise one, explain "freedom" to the political scientist and lawyer you're talking to. Let me get my popcorn first.

If you think only "political scientists and lawyers" have to decide what a freedom is, you have quite a totalitarian mindset.

If you have some arguments, pray tell. "I'm the smartest guy here" is not an argument. It's just something an NPC would say when they run out of arguments.

PS: This is not ad hominem. It's a dismissal of your claim of authority.
by rbbydotdev | 2026-02-23 16:20:21+00:00
I never understood why Tesla HAD to get rid of the Lidars. Expensive today sure, but can you imagine all that training data they missed out on? Technology has a way of becoming cheaper and cheaper. It seemed short sighted, even if at a loss, again, the training data.

If the pros of having a camera are monumental, then couldn't the video and lidar be combined to be even greater?
by 1718627440 | 2026-02-23 16:20:23+00:00
> literally hallucinate that crackers and wine are flesh and blood in spite of what your eyes, nose, taste buds, and all scientific instruments and measurements tell you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharistic_miracle#Scientific...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12491371/

You might not agree with it, but it is not as simple as it defying all sensory input and data.
by peternehl | 2026-02-23 16:20:49+00:00
Quarex is a free, nonpartisan knowledge platform built on "Living Books" — structured, question-driven explorations where every answer comes with citations and follow-up questions. There are 831 books across politics, science, history, philosophy, and culture in 13 languages.

I'm a retired broadcast engineer (military SIGINT systems, then commercial tech at Grass Valley Group). I built the entire platform solo using Claude as my development partner — no team, no funding, no investors.

What makes it different from ChatGPT or Perplexity:
- Structure over chaos: questions are organized into libraries, shelves, books, and chapters
- The "iceberg method": recursive follow-up questions let you go as deep as you want
- No free-form prompting — the structure maintains quality control
- Everything is citation-backed and transparent

I also built PublicStudies.org — free open curricula for academic programs being banned at US universities (Women's Studies, Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, etc.).

No login, no paywall, no ads. CC BY 4.0.

GitHub: https://github.com/peternehl/quarex-website

Happy to answer questions about building a 831-book platform as a solo developer with AI.
by jonathaneunice | 2026-02-23 16:21:19+00:00
This times a thousand!

In the years before VMs, containers, and locked dependency manifests, it was essentially impossible to get repeatable builds. There are still a lot of hurdles and gotchas, but we can at least get a rough approximation. The idea that some other pre-2010 dev team was going to be able reliably build your thing from just raw source code, and have it closely resemble the thing you built—it was a delightful fantasy. Escrow was a sales and legal "don't worry we have that eventuality covered!" CYA and emotional de-risking move, not a practical expectation of ability to build from scratch.
by horsawlarway | 2026-02-23 16:21:20+00:00
I don't understand how this is any better.

It's my job as a parent (and I have several kids...) to monitor the things they consume and talk with them about it.

I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate", because I don't approve that content being banned. (honestly - the idea of "age appropriate" is insulting in the first place)

Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't see why it's appropriate to enforce what content I allow them to see.

And I have absolutely all of the same tools you just discussed today. I can lock devices down just fine.

Age verification is a scam to increase corporate/governmental control. Period.
by anthk | 2026-02-23 16:21:22+00:00
If C++ died for services under Unix and medium sized indie games (such as I2PD, or Cataclysm DDA and its forks) and these where rewritten in Go the maintenance would be far greater in these projects. A GC, a much better cross compatibility and your code for sure could probably be compiled in 10 years.

Also CDDA:Bn wouldn't damn need a > 40h long build using 1.5 GB of RAM under an n270 netbook. Ditto with Nchat, FFS, which is worse. A Golang counterpart for nchat as a TG client (and tdlib rewritten in Go) would weight far less while compiling and maybe even the binary itself, and performance wise it would be similar.

I still remember tons of C++ projects from 2005-2009 impossible to compile today but with GCC 4.3 or GCC 4.9, can't remember. Not because of the size, but because C++ incompatible changes over the years. At least tons of C code will compile it today as is modulo some POSIX changes from C code pre 1996. C++ it's something that should died long ago, among stuff like locales under Unix. UTF8 everywhere, use your own currency and the like.

Yeah, I know, game engines, and tons of physics engines and libraries even FLOSS ones such as OGRE, gdal and the like are C++ domain. Still, most of these could be ported to C.
by nozzlegear | 2026-02-23 16:21:41+00:00
I'm not particularly tied to Hetzner as an American using their Ashburn servers, so I figured maybe this price increase puts them a little closer to DigitalOcean's pricing. The pricing is still pretty heavily in Hetzner's favor though: the CCX23s that I use will be $39.99 USD after April 1, but the closest DO equivalent is $126 USD with a third of the disk space.
by julianozen | 2026-02-23 16:21:57+00:00
There is missing a solution.

Give our personal devices have the ability to verify our age and identity securely and store on device like they do our fingerprint or face data.

Services that need access only verify it cryptographically. So my iPhone can confirm I’m over 21 for my DoorDash app in the same way it stores my biometric data.

The challenge here is the adoption of these encryption services and whether companies can rely on devices for that for compliance without having to cut off service for those without it set up.
by comrade1234 | 2026-02-23 16:21:57+00:00
I've been hosting my own email server since 1999. It started in San Francisco, moved to a colo in socal for awhile and is currently in my cellar here in Zurich on a fixed residential ip.

Thinks have definitely gotten stricter over the years, with things like dkim and a few other acronyms I can't remember. But if you follow the rules and keep your server secure I've never had a problem sending to Google, Microsoft, etc.

I'd rather not host my own mail but I like having it close by where if someone wants to subpoena me they factually have to go through me. Also I have so much historical email (27 years) it is GBs and so costly.
by SunshineTheCat | 2026-02-23 16:22:44+00:00
I've had a similar experience with the Best Buy in my area. They also seem to be really good about keeping things in stock that people actually buy (seems like a basic concept, but you would be surprised).

Also they're typically right on par with Amazon's pricing and no need to wait for it to ship, just a quick trip there and back (although they usually get me buying something I didn't go there for) >:(
by nutjob2 | 2026-02-23 16:22:46+00:00
The problem is that OpenAI has cornered the market. Maybe they haven't crossed the legal line or more to the point no one in this corrupt and incompetent administration is going to prosecute them, but buying up 40% of a market which hasn't got any additional capacity is cornering by any measure.

So yes, this is not a normal market. Your claim of a functioning market is the same as saying my laptop, having lit on fire, is a functioning computer after having 10,000 volts applied across it.
by js2 | 2026-02-23 16:22:49+00:00
> make sure it is factory sealed and not counterfeit

Hah. I bought an Apple Pencil from BB. Shrink-wrapped in the box. I get home, the battery won't charge. I figured out from the S/N that someone had bought a new pencil, put their dead one in the box, shrink-wrapped it, returned it, BB put it back into stock, and I ended up with it.

Fortunately, BB replaced it for me, but I've never had this issue with a single Amazon item I've purchased and I've done a lot more shopping from Amazon than BB.
by nkurz | 2026-02-23 16:23:03+00:00
> US speed limits are highly variables, they’re generally 55 in the north-east but on the western half they’re 65 to 70, and 75 in TX.

I fear even that is misleading. Yes, the speed limits on undivided highways are often 55 in the north-east (or even 50 in a couple), but the speed limits on divided highways are all higher, ranging from 65-75 mph. See the two maps on the top right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta.... I suspect that the majority of truck miles are on divided highways.