MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by toast0 | 2026-03-13 19:08:55+00:00
I'm no Carmack, but everything I've released as open source is a gift with no strings (unless it was to a project with a restrictive license). A gift with strings isn't exactly a gift.

If you take my gift and profit, it doesn't hurt me, there were no strings. Your users presumably benefit from the software I wrote, unless you're using it for evil, but I don't have enough clout to use an only IBM may use it for evil license. You benefit from the software I wrote. I've made the world a better place and I didn't have to market or support my software; win-win.

I've done plenty of software for hire too. I've used plenty of open source software for work. Ocassionally, I've been able to contribute to open source while working for hire, which is always awesome. It's great to be paid to find and fix problems my employer is having and be able to contribute upstream to fix them for lots more people.
by SlinkyOnStairs | 2026-03-13 19:09:14+00:00
> Starlink was profitable in 2024

Those are revenue figures.

> This hits everyone. And it’s not a serious cost issue.

That it affects everyone just makes the problem worse. If China or the EU does commit to a starlink competitor, there's even more crowding in orbit. Even more collision avoidance required.

> Starlinks are still being deorbited before they need to be due to obselescence

That's the point. These things are not staying up long, and they're staying up shorter and shorter.

The constellation is both expensive to build and to maintain. That makes it a lot of trouble compared to running a bunch of fiber once and having only occasional maintenance trouble when some idiot drags a backhoe through it.

> Infrastructure gets blown up and shut off. Hence the military interest.

The military interest is real, but it remains to be seen how much money they're willing to put up for it. Higher latency more conventional satellite internet will have significant cost savings in comparison.
by mmooss | 2026-03-13 19:09:21+00:00
> This is why the US didn't (and doesn't) have direct voting on war declaration

No, it's because the US doesn't have direct voting on any national issue; there is no legal provision for it afaik. US citizens only elect representatives, and they make the decisions.

> a handful of recent presidents decided that even Congress is too slow for them

What are you referring to?

No President before Trump II has entered a war without consulting Congress (and the people) and obtaining their support. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor - when the US was most in direct peril in the last two centuries - Roosevelt spoke to Congress and the American people, and Congress declared war.

Most wars, however, don't have a formal declaration of war by Congress.
by epistasis | 2026-03-13 19:09:28+00:00
Apple's latest monitor is more powerful than the NEO, it has:

* A19 Pro CPU (the NEO only has the A18 Pro)

* 12GB of RAM (the NEO only has 8GB of RAM)

* 128GB of NAND storage for iOS (ok this is less than the NEO)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studio_Display#Technical...
by gus_massa | 2026-03-13 19:09:43+00:00
I'm trying to think a good example in Spanish. Probably double negatives like:

"Hoy no comí nada." -> literally "Today [I] did not eat nothing." but should be "Today, I didn't eat anything."

May be confusing, but people may ask for clarifications.

---

Another problem is that some words have different meaning in each country, like

"I will pick an apple." -> to es-es "Voy a coger una manzana" but in es-ar it means "I will fuck an apple."

May be confusing too, but if you have a strong Spanish accent or American-that-Learned-Spanish-from-Spain accent, people will chuckle and go on.
by lambda | 2026-03-13 19:09:45+00:00
So, this is all true, but this calculation isn't that nuanced. It's trying to get you into a ballpark range, and based on my usage on my real hardware (if I put in my specs, since it's not in their hardware list), the results are fairly close to my real experience if I compensate for the issue where it's calculating based on total params instead of active.

So by doing so, this calculator is telling you that you should be running entirely dense models, and sparse MoE models that maybe both faster and perform better are not recommended.
by IshKebab | 2026-03-13 19:10:02+00:00
Uhm this article is a total lie, no?

Claim: We’ll Be “Stunned” By What the NSA Is Doing Under Section 702

Actual quote: I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, when it is eventually declassified, the American people will be stunned that it took so long and that Congress has been debating this authority with insufficient information.

He said people will be stunned that it took so long to be declassified; not that people will be stunned by what it is.
by _DeadFred_ | 2026-03-13 19:10:04+00:00
Not sure your country but the internet isn't the USA. Secularism very much touched the hearts of Americans. Talarico's words are pretty good at embodying actual American Christian belief on it.

The dixiecrats mascarading as Christian Republicans who HN treats as all American Christians don't even believe in the larger USA/Constitution/Human rights so yeah they ignore/are anti a lot of basic American beliefs. They are from a long line of loser traitors to our beliefs.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Kjah99E1fIo
by rootusrootus | 2026-03-13 19:10:18+00:00
We live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should have been a wake-up call.
by throwaway2027 | 2026-03-13 19:10:51+00:00
Personally for me I don't see it as gift, he licensed out the engine but didn't want to be in the engine business, after selling enough it feels he just put it out there so it's his stamp forever with the GPL infection. I think he already felt the diminishing returns at the time. He knew about the sharing of floppy discs and hacker scene and eventually someone would've done it and I think he felt cornered and said fuck it might as well put it out there to beat them to it.
by yostrovs | 2026-03-13 19:11:18+00:00
Europe wouldn't spend the agreed 2% of GDP on the military. Many presidents for many years tried to make them comply with the agreement, but they just ignored it. It was thought better to spend on the healthcare of the public and mock Americans for not having universal government healthcare.
Many people in countries in Europe, like Spain and Ireland, that effectively don't have militaries, are still laughing and mocking.
by allenu | 2026-03-13 19:11:30+00:00
I've noticed that too and it's not too different from political discussions. At the end of the day, I think the split is really about different values people have, their identity, and justice.

A lot of developers' identities is tied to their ability to create quality solutions as well as having control over the means of production (for lack of a better term). An employer mandating that they start using AI more and change their quality standards is naturally going to lead to a sense of injustice about it all.
by coredog64 | 2026-03-13 19:11:41+00:00
There are other mitigations though: You can pass expected owner accountId on S3 operations and you can create SCPs that restrict the ability of roles to write to buckets outside the account. Unless you have an account that does many cross-account S3 writes, the latter is a simple tool to prevent exfiltration. Well, simple assuming that you're already set up with an Organization and can manage SCPs.

[0] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/bucket...
by salawat | 2026-03-13 19:11:42+00:00
This. People don't recognize that a tech company with an algorithmic feed is indistinguishable from a public awareness filter. It allows a couple hundred to 1000's of people to set the Overton window of millions/billions. When we actually didn't go algorithmic and went off more natural filtering (geographic, chronological, scope/impact based), it was a modality that one would be hard pressed to even find a schoolchild that couldn't end up being able to meaningfully navigate the space with due training. This is, of course, exactly why monied individuals foam at owning any of the few consolidated media outlets/tech companies. Societal scale leverage on the machine of public awareness.
by johnsmith1840 | 2026-03-13 19:12:24+00:00
That's the point? I agree and roughly it's one of two.

A: you made this as a free gift to anyone including openai
B: you made this to profit yourself in some way

The argument he makes is if you did the second one don't do opensource?

It does kill a ton of opensource companies though and truth is that model of operating now is not going to work in this new age.

Also is sad because it means the whole system will collapse. The processes that made him famous can no longer be followed. Your open source code will be used by countless people and they will never know your name.

It's not called a distruptive tech for nothing. Can't un opensource all that code without lobotomizing every AI model.
by js2 | 2026-03-13 19:12:33+00:00
> Can this tool allow me to run both VMs in an Apple Silicon device in a performant way?

I use VMWare Fusion on an M1 Air to run ARM Windows. Windows is then able to run Windows x86-64 executables I believe through it's own Rosetta 2 like implementation. The main limitation is that you cannot use x86-64 drivers.

Similarly, ARM Linux VMs can use Rosetta 2 to run x86-64 binaries with excellent performance. For that I mostly use Rancher or podman which setup the Linux VM automatically and then use it to run Linux ARM containers. I don't recall if I've tried to run x86-64 Linux binaries inside an Linux ARM container. It might be a little trickier to get Rosetta 2 to work. It's been a long time since I tried to run a Linux x86-64 container.
by dtkav | 2026-03-13 19:12:34+00:00
Great work Kavin!

This is a super interesting space, and lots of fun and difficult problems to tackle.

A few trailheads of interesting complexity:

1. Concurrent machine edits - in particular handling links to renamed files across devices. This is a case where CRDTs fall over because they converge but are not idempotent. For example renaming a file [[hello 1]] to [[hello 2]] when multiple devices are online can result in [[hello 22]] because deletes merge before inserts.

2. Ingesting disk edits in the age of claude code. The intended behavior can change based on what I'm calling the "intent fidelity spectrum". I've been using that spectrum as a guide for when to apply merges in "text space" vs. "crdt space", including sometimes withholding ops based on origin (e.g. from obsidian processFile calls), cancelling them) or offline status. For example, if you made edits while offline and have a least-common-ancestor you may be able to look for conflicts via diff3 and then conditionally use diff-match-patch if there are no conflicts, or surface the conflict to the user if there's not a good merge strategy based on the low levels of intent.

3. History and memory management - how do you recover state if a user has a competing sync service which causes an infinite loop in file creation/deletion. This can be difficult with CRDTs because the tombstones just keep syncing back and forth between peers and can be difficult to clear. This is significantly worse if you use Y.PermanentUserData (do not recommend...).
by Joel_Mckay | 2026-03-13 19:12:34+00:00
John Carmack seems to think isomorphic plagiarism and piracy bleed though is good for FOSS.

This is demonstrably incorrect given how LLM are built, and he should retire instead of trolling people that still care about workmanship. =3

"A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ
by kivle | 2026-03-13 19:12:35+00:00
He is probably talking about this repo: https://github.com/navikt/DSF

Description translated:

> This system was one of the oldest IT systems in NAV, and ran in production for 51 years, from when the National Insurance Scheme was introduced in 1967. In January 2018, Presys was put into production, which together with Pesys became the successor to DSF. At that point, DSF was also shut down.
The system is written in PL/I.

It's like the Apollo 11 code, but for social services.
by mdlxxv | 2026-03-13 19:12:50+00:00
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right" (George Orwell, "1984")
by gamblor956 | 2026-03-13 19:12:54+00:00
Banks have established processes for changing signatories on business bank accounts, including in situations where a past signatory is no longer with the business.

In a nutshell: if a past signatory was a regular employee, it just takes any other signatory to remove them. If there was no other signatory, or if the past signatory was an officer, it takes a current officer (as set forth in the company's AOI or corporate minutes). Usually only the latter 2 situations of the 3 above require an in-person visit to the local branch office, and that only requires a few minutes.
by eegG0D | 2026-03-13 19:12:56+00:00
This is a massive step forward for anyone trying to move past the "AI Slop" phase and into building actual AI systems. Multi-agent orchestration is currently a chaotic mess because most people treat AI like a super-genius instead of what it really is: a "junior engineer" that needs constant oversight. I always say that leverage is a function of your skill multiplied by your clarity, and there is no clarity without an audit trail. By using append-only JSONL files, you’re creating the "ruthless clarity" needed to see exactly where an agentic loop breaks down. It’s an "unsexy, repeated advantage"—using simple, reliable tech to solve the very complex problem of agent reasoning.

I’m particularly bullish on your future idea for "replayable agent workflows." In 2026, the people who win aren't just those who can vibe code an app, but those who can scale their operations without things falling apart at 2 AM. Replayability is the ultimate "millionaire cheat code" for leverage; it allows you to debug and refine your "AI employee" without the traditional corporate overhead. You avoided the "Founder's Trap" of over-engineering by keeping this single-node and minimal for now. I’m definitely adding this to my library of free agentic resources—it removes one more excuse for why people can't build reliable, production-ready AI systems solo.
by awesome_dude | 2026-03-13 19:13:15+00:00
> Not necessarily. Unless you think a global democratic government formed overnight?

This is a distraction. Whether it's 300 million voters or 300 million iPhone users, both groups act as the ultimate arbiter of value. If a customer stops paying, the "leadership" of a company fails. If a voter stops voting for one party, or the other, the "leadership" of a state fails. The mechanical result on the "seven teams" is identical: the unsuccessful ones are defunded.

Further, this proves the detachment from reality you are bringing to the conversation - everybody in the private sector knows the golden rule - your customers ARE your employers

THEY dictate what they will pay for, and therefore what can be sold (unless you are a fan of monopolies forcing people to buy things they do not want to)

> Whatever it is you are reading in other threads has no relevance to this one.

Your dishonesty only highlights your bad faith, and as such we are done here.
by StableAlkyne | 2026-03-13 19:13:22+00:00
What's with the purism? It's just a term used to differentiate one way of making a UI from another. Who cares about what is practical when you're just trying to give a thing a name.

Even in your example, it's pretty clear cut. If the window is built with text and served in a terminal emulator, it's a TUI. If you build it with a graphical framework that now needs X11 or whatever, it's a GUI.

This is just needlessly pedantic.
by levelsofself | 2026-03-13 19:13:29+00:00
We run 13 agents on a single VPS with no orchestration framework. Instead we built a governance layer as an MCP server - 30 tools for preflight checks, hash-chained audit trails, drift detection, and security scanning. File-based, no database, works with any MCP client. The key insight: you do not need an orchestration layer if you have an enforcement layer. Open source: https://github.com/levelsofself/mcp-nervous-system
by rockskon | 2026-03-13 19:13:37+00:00
So - given the law allows the NSA to do things given legal constructs, reality be damned, then what new legal construct do you think Wyden is sounding the alarm about?

When we un-tether the possibile from tech-specific delineations, you'll find things get more and more alarming.

Whatever it is Wyden is sounding the alarm about, you can be certain the sole protection we have - the sole guiding principle and bulwark against abuse - is the agency's culture given the rampant "incidental" collection and the public claims that putting the equivalent of a removable sticky-note over the names of U.S. citizens from their personal data is sufficient to satisfy the 4th Amendment as the NSA searches through our persinal data in bulk.

And what is culture if not the people we have to promote the practices?

Boy am I glad we have an administration that lets agencies largely lead themselves and doesn't engage in efforts to replace a large part of various agency's workforce - specifically those who care about the agency's culture!
by levelsofself | 2026-03-13 19:13:47+00:00
We run 13 AI agents in production on a $24/month VPS. Key things we learned: 1) File-based memory beats databases for LLM ops (portability, readability, no ORM). 2) Preflight checks on every edit prevent 90% of incidents. 3) Hash-chained audit logs are cheap insurance. 4) Ollama for chat responses, Claude for complex tasks - saves 95% on API costs. Open sourced the governance layer: https://github.com/levelsofself/mcp-nervous-system
by levelsofself | 2026-03-13 19:13:48+00:00
We published 3 MCP servers (nervous-system, game, ops) that run a 13-agent business on a single VPS. The nervous system one does governance - 30 tools including kill switch, audit chain, drift detection. npm install mcp-nervous-system and you get preflight checks on every file edit. Battle-tested with 29 PM2 processes, 99+ violations caught. https://github.com/levelsofself/mcp-nervous-system
by dysoco | 2026-03-13 19:14:06+00:00
> AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it

Depends on how you see it.

I know many people building oss, local alternatives to enterprise software for specific industries that cost thousands of dollars all thanks to AI.

If everyone can produce software now and at a much complex and bigger scale, it's much easier to create decentralized and free alternatives to long-standing closed projects.
by throwaway2027 | 2026-03-13 19:14:26+00:00
You hit the nail on the head. It's the same with employees who work for their employer but also want to reuse that code when they go work for other people and don't want to rewrite the exact same thing again. Even though everyone else can benefit from it too, Sean "nothings" Barrett said that's the primary reason for his STB libraries.

https://github.com/nothings/stb
by fritzo | 2026-03-13 19:14:33+00:00
I feel similarly to Carmack, and have felt this way since the late 1990s when I was in college.

Open sourcing code is a form of power, power to influence, inspire, and propagate one's worldview on whomever reads that code. Thank you OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, thank you for amplifying the voices of all us open source contributors!
by AnimalMuppet | 2026-03-13 19:14:55+00:00
Physics is full of leaky abstractions. Solid? Leaky abstraction (melting). Ideal gas? Leaky abstraction (van der Walls). Molecule? Leaky abstraction (chemical reactions). Atom? Leaky abstraction (ionization, fusion, fission, alpha and beta decay). Proton? Leaky abstraction (sometimes you have to care about the quarks).
by inkysigma | 2026-03-13 19:14:57+00:00
Some of these are also just like really weak? One of them for example seems to be some random employee at FB donating ~$1k to a politician and calling that a link. The entire "Proven Findings" is all over the place and provides no coherence. I don't think it's a particular secret that Meta would prefer age verification be done at the OS level so I'm not really sure what the added claim here is.

> A Meta employee (Jake Levine, Product Manager) contributed $1,175 to ASAA sponsor Matt Ball's campaign apparatus on June 2, 2025. Source: Colorado TRACER bulk data.

> No direct Meta PAC contributions to any ASAA sponsor across Utah, Louisiana, Texas, or Colorado. Source: FollowTheMoney.org multi-state search.

While it is true that Meta has funded groups that advocate for age verification, a lot of them also appear to have other actors so it's not like this is some pure Meta thing as some of the other commenters are suggesting.
by nine_k | 2026-03-13 19:15:14+00:00
A kid looking for the best bang for the carefully saved buck would buy a used machine off eBay, for less than $599, and more capable. An M1 MBP 2021 with 16GB would cost about this much; an M1 Macbook Air, or an M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB would cost half as much. A ton of beefy, perfectly Linux-ready used laptops can be had for under $350.

So this is only for the kids who are obsessed not just with computers, but brand-new computers. Which is a different demographic.
by jhatemyjob | 2026-03-13 19:15:25+00:00
> those were to allay fears of my partners to allow me to make the gift

I respect Carmack so much more now. I always scratched my head why he made Quake GPL. It was such a waste. Now it doesn't matter anymore. I so thankful copyleft is finally losing its teeth. It served its purpose 30 years ago, we don't need it anymore.
by m463 | 2026-03-13 19:15:27+00:00
I think there's LOTS of media out there, but there doesn't seem to be easy ways to convert it.

There was probably a renaissance period when conversion equipment was being actively developed and available, but that time is probably gone. For example I think a good film scanner would be the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, but current state of the art falls far short. For film, vcr tapes and more we should be doing so much better.

I have old family super-8 films that are kind of convertible, but not the magnetic sound strip.
by icegreentea2 | 2026-03-13 19:15:36+00:00
I'd broadly agree that EU is pretty behind the curve. But I think China is probably only ~5 years max behind the curve in terms of Starlink.

But in terms of defense needs, I don't think you actually need the thousands and thousands for reasonable returns. DoD/NRO has bought maybe ~500 Starshields (https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/03/26/spacex-starshield-...) from SpaceX.

I think China is well within reach of being able to put up those numbers within a few years, even if they don't get re-use figured out (which I think they will within a 2-3 years - basically what SpaceX did from the first landing attempts to success).