MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by andyhasit | 2026-03-08 22:44:06+00:00
I once had a mad idea of creating an automated documentation-driven paradigm where every directory/module/class/function has to have a DocString/JSDoc, with the higher level ones (directory/module) essentially being the documentation of features and architecture.
A ticket starts by someone opening a PR with suggested changes to the docs, the idea being that a non-technical person like a PM or tester could do it. The PR then passes to a dev who changes the code to match the doc changes.
Before merging, the tool shows the doc next to every modified piece of code and the reviewer must explicitly check a box to say it's still valid.
And docstrings would be able to link to other docstrings, so you could find out what other bits of code are connected to what you're working on (as that link doesn't always exist in code, e.g. across APIs) and read their docs to find the larger context and gotchas.
by anthk | 2026-03-08 22:45:17+00:00
kkfx it's right. Office users shoudn't need nothing more complex that WordPad and a simple spreadsheet such as Gnucalc.
Everything else should be either DTP domain, scientific notebooks instead of crappy spreadsheets with parsing bugs (genomics) and Access instead of SQLite3 and any GUI of choice to place forms in a WYSIWYG way making queries against that database.
by Jbird2k | 2026-03-08 22:45:45+00:00
I’ve been alone since about 20. I am 26 now and have been renting a room from someone who is in a similar state as myself. We mostly do our own thing but it’s nice to have others around. Something I learned was necessary when living alone was to have connections with people. I am religious and belong to a church the social connection there was critical to my survival as an individual. I had friends who were in multiple stages of life. I would try to spend time with others multiple times a week.

On Thursday’s I would spend time with my friend who’s in his 60s. I might help him fix some shelves or his furnace or whatever in exchange for a meal with him and his wife. We would play a few rounds of pickle ball or go for a bike ride in the evening and then we would sit around and talk.

I had a few other friendships like this. One family where I would spend a lot of time. The children where in their teens and I was friends with them and the parents they treated me as a bit of a son. It was good. I have since moved to a different community and have a very social job now so it’s not as crucial that I make such deliberate efforts to spend time with others.

So my advice is this make deliberate effort to spend time with people. Find people to spend time with involve yourself in their lives. Humans are social we all need some interaction and you can be an asset to others while helping yourself.

Too much time alone will absolutely destroy your mental state. Well it did mine. I have my friends to thank for taking care of me.

I should note many people rely on family for this sort of stuff. I don’t have family close geographically.
by mbreese | 2026-03-08 22:46:01+00:00
If someone is going to put that much effort into to it, let them. I think the ideas here are to try to get some low hanging fruit to see if that works “good enough”. You’ll never block all AI generated accounts, but you may not have to and still have the desired effect.

But if someone wants to plant 20 new accounts, grow them out with karma votes, so that they can game the voting, there are probably other ways to detect that.
by notepad0x90 | 2026-03-08 22:46:04+00:00
I am fine with you not taking me seriously. I understand the "free as in free beer" definition of free (gratis vs libre) FSF and others deceptively propagate, just because you call it free doesn't make it actually free. That concept would have been fine, if they didn't drag the law into it and made it a legal burden.

A person either owns or doesn't own something. A person either enters a licensing contract or they don't. When I download a piece of source code from github, I did not agree to any license, even if you include LICENSE.txt. Despite what the law says, i did not enter into any agreement of any kind with anyone. When that software is in my possession it is mine. Any attempt to deprive of my rights over my property, I'll classify it as the same scummy practice as DMCA threatening corporations. You don't get to criticize apple and microsoft for keeping things closed source, and preventing you from doing whatever you want with your own hardware and software, and then tell other people your software is free but you can do the same things that caused you to despise those corporations to begin with.

In short, I understand the distinction fine, I just happen to despise it. It is a backhanded fence-sitting litigious mindset. that was my original question though, I guess enough people like you exist, I just couldn't believe it initially.
by maplethorpe | 2026-03-08 22:47:42+00:00
In my experience, AGI always seemed to be the stand-in phrase for "human like" intelligence, after AI was co-opted to mean simpler things like markov-chain chat bots and state machines that control agent behaviour in video games.

If the definition has shifted once again to mean "a computer program that does a task pretty well for us", then what's the new term we're using to define human-level artificial intelligence?
by andrepd | 2026-03-08 22:48:02+00:00
> It sounds like you don't live in a city with an ebike delivery problem

Oh but I do. Or actually, in a city with many delivery ebikes but no "ebike problem" . Why? Because there's bike infrastructure. Meaning segregated lanes to ride a bike (and overall good urban design in general).

On a given street or road there's a place to drive a car, a place do ride a bike, a place for the bus/tram to go, and a place to walk. Is this really so difficult? Tell me if you please, in a city where there's only a place to drive and a place to walk, where exactly are bikes (delivery or not) supposed to go?

Cars kill several times more than even the most maniac ebike riders possibly can. They also emit pollution that kills swathes of people (an invisible, background death). It's just common sense.
by TacticalCoder | 2026-03-08 22:50:35+00:00
> Impressive that all that can run on one machine. Mind sharing the specs?

Not GP but I have lots of fun running VMs and lots of containers on an old HP Z440 workstation from 2014 or so. This thing has 64 GB of ECC RAM and costs next to nothing (a bit more now with RAM that went up). Thing is: it doesn't need to be on 24/7. I only power it up when I first need it during the day. 14 cores Xeon for lots of fun.

Only thing I haven't moved to it yet is Plex, which still runs on a very old HP Elitedesk NUC. Dunno if Plex (and/or Jellyfin) would work fine on an old Xeon: but I'll be trying soon.

Before that I had my VMs and containers on a core i7-6700K from 2015 IIRC. But at some point I just wanted ECC RAM so I bought a used Xeon workstation.

As someone commented: most services simply do not need that beefy of a machine. Especially not when you're strangled by a 1 Gbit/s Internet connection to the outside world anyway.

For compilation and overall raw power, my daily workstation is a more powerful machine. But for a homelab: old hardware is totally fine (especially if it's not on 24/7 and I really don't need access to my stuff when I sleep).
by hdgvhicv | 2026-03-08 22:50:43+00:00
we would never have had Linux at all

Maybe sco and similar would have managed to fight against windows, but i suspect online would be decades behind what it is without the freedom we knew in the 80s and 90s that so many HN pundits are salivating to grow away.

Maybe a minitel system would be better - we would t have the problems of social media at least.
by cadamsdotcom | 2026-03-08 22:50:53+00:00
I sympathise with the perspective - but software has always been this way, there’s always been creative destruction and the field has never stood still.

We signed up for this. YOU signed up for this. No one owes anyone a job. When the activities that create value change, move with it or get left behind.

If you prefer a vocation which has been the same for centuries that option is open to you. But to get into the software job market you’d best ask if the job you are trying to get is obsolete, and focus on fixing your skills and job search process/methodology.

The biggest question is “where is the net-new hiring?” (as opposed to backfill hiring) .. and then, if you are out of the market you have time on your hands to match skills to your answer.
by pjc50 | 2026-03-08 22:51:21+00:00
Some more background and a user report of the migration process: https://gregpak.net/2025/11/13/how-and-why-i-moved-from-a-bl...

Crucially, the purpose of Blacksky is to provide a service for the (US) black community which has its own moderation decisions while being substantially interoperable.

(Remember, the reasons people use one social network rather than another are almost always social first and technical second, where the social functions are enabled or hindered by the technology)
by looselygoosy | 2026-03-08 22:51:39+00:00
Obviously this is very distressing and a failure of the system. What I'm curious about is that she didn't call her son to ask for help. I wonder how much of that is embarrassment over her situation. Stories of bodies being found weeks after death by neighbours or relatives are all too common, though I've usually assumed it happens mostly to the elderly who have no surviving friends or family.

Also possibly a cynical take but I wonder if her son being there and calling the ambulance on her behalf would have resulted in the situation being taken more seriously.
by jordwest | 2026-03-08 22:52:00+00:00
From an article [1]:

We can build out discreet systems of brain cells and use them for the purpose we want. They're not going to have traits like consciousness, and we're able to test and assess for that, and build away from it if there is that risk.

Ah, I'm glad they've worked out what consciousness is.
/s

From their marketing website [2]:

Neural compute on demand: We continuously monitor neural health and performance, ensuring optimal conditions and continuous access to an always-on network of living neurons.

At what size of "neural compute" do we start to call it slavery?

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-03-05/cortical-labs...

[2] https://corticallabs.com/cloud
by xyzzy_plugh | 2026-03-08 22:53:00+00:00
This approach is too complex for what is provided. You're better off just making a copy of the tree and simply using sandbox-exec. macFUSE is a shitshow.

The main issue I want to solve is unexpected writes to arbitrary paths should be allowed but ultimately discarded. macOS simply doesn't offer a way to namespace the filesystem in that way.
by AussieWog93 | 2026-03-08 22:53:55+00:00
Reddit has tried this approach and, IMO, it's failed.

A new human user will spend actual time creating a thoughtful and helpful post, only to be greeted by "sorry, your post has been removed by automod because you don't meet criteria". They get disheartened and walk away forever.

The spammers, on the other hand, know how the rules work and so will just build their bots to work around this (waiting 30days, farming karma).

The net result is that these rules ensure that much greater proportion of new accounts come from bad actors - who else would jump through hoops just to participate on a web forum?
by gzoo | 2026-03-08 22:54:02+00:00
PLEASE DON'T CHANGE! I have been a diehard fan of Claude since the early days (when it would delete an entire week's worth of work lol) and you managed to make it the BEST coding AI on the planet while sticking to your VALUES. You don't see that anymore but I think THAT is why the people will support you :)
by rel0s | 2026-03-08 22:54:26+00:00
I built a tool to scratch a ux itch we have at my team - we often need to send secrets, env files for tests setups, tokens, so on between computers. The usual flow for this is to create a temporary secret in 1pass, give access to the teammate and send the link over slack.
Stringphone lives in the CLI and adopts CLI semantics - it allows to effortlessly cat your secrets on to your teammates machine - kind of a mailbox/clipboard experience. Messages are e2e encrypted and sent over a relay server in a way that the server cannot deduce who is messaging who.
by e1g | 2026-03-08 22:54:47+00:00
Love the feedback -

For handling global rules (like ~/.gitconfig and ~/.gitignore), I keep a local policy file that whitelists my "shared globals" paths, and I tell Safehouse to include that policy by default. I just updated the README with an example that might be useful[1]. I also enabled access to ~/.gitignore by default as it's a common enough default.

For process management, there is a blurry line about how much to allow without undermining the sandboxing concept. I just added new integrations[2] to allow more process control and lldb, but I don't know this area well. You can try cloning the repo, asking your agents to tweak the rules in the repo until your use-case works, and send a PR - I'll merge it!

Alternatively, using the "custom policy" feature above, you can selectively grant broad access to your tools (you can use log monitoring to see rejections, and then add more permisions into the policy file)

[1] https://github.com/eugene1g/agent-safehouse?tab=readme-ov-fi...

[2] https://github.com/eugene1g/agent-safehouse/pull/7
by lotsofpulp | 2026-03-08 22:54:53+00:00
I’m not minimizing anything. I regularly eat the stuff I listed, and it is not more than 1 hour of work per day on average, especially due to leftovers.

>Most people fall in the middle and expect their food to be boiled, baked, fried, etc. They will most likely not want to eat just salad 24/7.

> Plus people want varied diets so they need a wide range of different tasting foods, most like 10-20.

Right, so the problem is people want to eat unhealthy foods. The problem is not lack of money or time.
by ikr678 | 2026-03-08 22:54:54+00:00
I have been looking for a simple local only wysiwyg alternative to Onenote and there just.. arent any good ones? Joplin is close but everything is now markdown and I hate it, I've gone back to phyiscally writing down notes.

I'm old, these are notes for me only, I don't care that they arent 'web publishing' ready.
by razodactyl | 2026-03-08 22:55:21+00:00
@dang - HN tearing itself apart over use of AI isn't conducive to a strong cohesive community.

Nobody here is at fault, we're in very trying times - we need to adjust with patience and consideration.

Use of AI to launch rapid prototypes is like breadboarding a new product. It has a place but it's moving so fast that it's hard to lock down at the moment.

No point everyone throwing excess cortisol in this direction. <3
by robinsonb5 | 2026-03-08 22:55:24+00:00
Plenty of people have already said join a gym. I'll build on that and say try and find one that offers group classes - anything from the Les Mills line up, for instance. For several years until Covid struct, I used to do Body Combat twice a week, along with occasional Cx Works and Body Pump. A year before I started doing all of that it had never occurred to me that I might want to set foot in a gym!

In the most difficult stages of my life I've found that exercise raised my energy levels and left me more able to tackle the things I needed to face - and the friends I made through group classes helped as well.

Look for other kinds of in-person group activities (if you play an instrument, open mic nights, retro-computing meets or hackspaces), and give them a go - even if they're not the kind of thing you usually enjoy - be prepared to be surprised!
by dagmx | 2026-03-08 22:55:36+00:00
This feels like a really puritanical take on things. Fanned frets and multiscale absolutely help with the playability of an instrument. It’s physics, there’s nothing mystical or gimmicky about it.

Maybe YOU don’t want it, but it prevents strings from going flabby without needing much heavier gauges. Which does help with a wide range of playing styles and genres.
Show HN: GYML – YAML syntax, JSON semantics, zero runtime dependencies
by jeeybee | 2026-03-08 22:55:51+00:00
YAML keeps surprising people in production. The Norway Problem (`NO` parsed as `False`). Silent duplicate key overwrites. The spec has 211 grammar productions. Most of that complexity exists to support features nobody wanted in a config file.

GYML is a strict subset of YAML. Valid GYML is always valid YAML. It keeps the block indentation syntax and pairs it with JSON's type semantics: one spelling for each type, no anchors, no aliases, no tags, duplicate keys are a hard error. From-scratch parser, no runtime dependencies, fully typed Python.

https://github.com/janbjorge/gyml
by jauntywundrkind | 2026-03-08 22:56:30+00:00
Ingressing the firehose is by far the easiest part. Here's someone doing it on a $4/mo VPS. Lots of other examples, many on slightly more expensive systems. Phil here also runs a public link indexer service for all Bluesky on a raspberry pi 4 ("Constellation")!! https://bsky.app/profile/bad-example.com/post/3mfkrfvy3ok2u https://constellation.microcosm.blue/

There's no other network where anything like this is remotely even possible today, much less at such tiny costs! And it turns out it's actually computationally not hard to do so much stuff!

I ran into this really great thread from Henry Farrell on people who overly polarized themselves, who shut down being willing to hear anything else. https://bsky.app/profile/himself.bsky.social/post/3mgagtkjg7...

Imo a good time to remember the old chant: "the only war that matters is the war against imagination; all other wars are subsumed by this war." A lot of totally closed people around HN parts. Atproto is one of the new favs for the shallow hate-brigade (alongside systemd, Linux audio, k8s).
Show HN: OxiMedia – Pure Rust Reconstruction of FFmpeg and OpenCV
by kitasan | 2026-03-08 22:56:39+00:00
Author here. OxiMedia is a clean-room reconstruction of FFmpeg and OpenCV in pure Rust. v0.1.0, 92 crates, ~1.36M lines.

Key decisions: `#![forbid(unsafe_code)]` workspace-wide, patent-free codecs only (AV1/VP9/Opus/FLAC -- no H.264/H.265/AAC ever), async on Tokio, zero C/Fortran deps in default features, native WASM target.

This is v0.1.0 -- APIs are stabilized but not yet battle-tested at scale. Performance benchmarks vs FFmpeg/rav1e/dav1d coming soon.

Feedback on API design welcome, especially the filter graph and transcoding pipeline.

GitHub: https://github.com/cool-japan/oximedia
by xyzzy_plugh | 2026-03-08 22:56:57+00:00
This is just a thin wrapper over Docker. It still doesn't offer what I want. I can't run macOS apps, and if I'm doing any sort of compilation, now I need a cross-compile toolchain (and need to target two platforms??).

Just use Docker, or a VM.

The other issue is that this does not facilitate unpredictable file access -- I have to mount everything up front. Sometimes you don't know what you need. And even then copying in and out is very different from a true overlay.
by kermatt | 2026-03-08 22:57:22+00:00
When I was in early school grades, a common question in math classes was "Why do we have to learn this, when we can just use a calculator?"

The best answer was "How do you know when the calculator is wrong?", for example when a miskey was entered. Same goes for AI, except knowing enough to spot mistakes or hallucinations takes a foundation knowledge.
by iamnothere | 2026-03-08 22:59:10+00:00
I don’t oppose limited regulation of messaging regarding products that are for sale, as long as they are aimed at ensuring that buyers have full and correct information about what they’re buying.

This is in line with the commerce clause. (I also think federal regulations on this should comply with the 10th amendment and not apply to local-only products. Wickard v. Filburn was a poor decision.)

The boundary between what is speech and commerce can be fuzzy, but if something is free and provides no profit to its maker then it’s obviously not commerce.
by pinkmuffinere | 2026-03-08 22:59:23+00:00
I was thinking of setting up a system to highlight sock-posters and other consistent-rule-violating accounts, as a 'fun project' that might improve the HN experience. But it strikes me that the HN staff probably already does something like this, they may not welcome a side-loaded project of this sort, and it would require some automated crawling of HN (which again may be unwelcomed). Finally, I don't actually have experience in this area. Is this something that would be welcomed, or unwanted?

My initial thought is to set up a devoted account like "sock_puppet_detector", and using the infrastructure from https://hackersmacker.org/, add any likely sock-puppets as 'foes'.
by bombcar | 2026-03-08 22:59:48+00:00
A big part of it may be that once you fall below a certain percentage of the federal poverty level, you start getting assistance. WIC kicks in pretty early, as do ACA assistance and Medicaid/CHIP.

And percentage can be anything below 400% of the poverty level, and the poverty level goes up with each kid - 400% of the poverty level for a family of 8 is $216k. https://snapeligibilitycalculator.com/fpl-calculator/
by phatfish | 2026-03-08 23:00:09+00:00
I assumed the environmental angle was the reduction in waste going to landfill with all the extra plastic generated, by the diaper and the small bags that are usually used to reduce smell and keep things clean during changing.

The energy saving would not be as clear to me, but i wouldn't be surprised if reusable were a better choice there as well, just not as clear cut.

The amount of waste generated by disposable diapers was a concern, and we tried reusable ones. But they leaked often, the absorption material in disposable ones is way better than the cotton pads you get with reusable ones.

I would be happy with a middle ground. Reusable outer "pants" and a disposable insert designed well to work with the reusable part, as plastic free as possible.
by idk1 | 2026-03-08 23:00:27+00:00
My friend was in a similar situation, and what he did was just went on Meetup and Facebook and searched for groups for things that he was into. Two of those groups were white collar boxing and open mic nights. I had no idea he was lonely before. He was my friend. If you filled one day of your week with a social group in the evening and then another day of the week with another social group. And eventually you feel like you're doing enough things. And you'll end up being your friend. I only meet mine once a month outside of those, but it's still really nice. Also, if you do join any social groups, you'll find yourself going to the pub afterwards.
by wolvoleo | 2026-03-08 23:01:21+00:00
It's more the parts they didn't make federated that hold it back in this regard.

Maybe it's good for end users but that doesn't mean much if it can fall into the same enshittification trap as the others. Also, centralised moderation. I don't want to be dependent on an American company's moderation rules.

There was an article here recently about someone who really tried setting up their own including a did:web and they ran into many problems. I don't know if I have bookmarked it unfortunately,
by pinkmuffinere | 2026-03-08 23:01:58+00:00
I was thinking of setting up a system to highlight sock-puppeters and other consistent-rule-violating accounts, as a 'fun project' that might improve the HN experience. I've asked dang in another thread if he has any objections, but am curious to hear other input as well -- is this something people would want? Obviously it would not change the comments that are actually on HN, it would just call out 'bad' contributors more explicitly. I don't actually have experience in this area, so no promises that I'll be able to build it quickly, or take the best approach in the initial implementation.

My initial thought is to set up a devoted account like "sock_puppet_detector", use the infrastructure from https://hackersmacker.org/, and add any likely sock-puppets as 'foes'. Then anyone can install hackersmacker, and add "sock_puppet_detector" as a friend to see sock-puppets highlighted. Likewise for rules violators.