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    Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

    by mittermayr · 1 day ago

    I know what you're thinking... and I still can't believe it, but...

    This morning, our database flagged a duplicate UUID (v4). I checked, thinking it may have been a double-insert bug or something, but no.

    The original UUID was from a record added in 2025 (about a year ago), and today the system inserted a new document with a fresh UUIDv4 and it came up with the exact same one:

    b6133fd6-70fe-4fe3-bed6-8ca8fc9386cd

    We're using this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/uuid

    I thought this is technically impossible, and it will never happen, and since we're not modifying the UUIDs in any way, I really wonder how that.... is possible!? We're literally only calling:

    import { v4 as uuidv4 } from "uuid";

    const document_id = uuidv4();

    ... and then insert into the database, that's it.

    Additionally, the database only has about 15.000 records, and now one collision. Statistically... impossible.

    Has that ever happened to anyone?! What in the...

    366||288 comments

    Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

    by CliffStoll · 3 days ago

    AI hallucinations are getting ambitious.

    A couple people recently emailed, asking whether the Klein bottle business was still operating after my death.

    “Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”

    After some digging, I discovered the source: an AI-generated review of The Cuckoo’s Egg circulating on Facebook. Alongside the usual synthetic praise and fabricated details, it confidently announced that I had died in May 2024.

    Apparently AI has now advanced to the point where it can kill people off before they notice.

    Mark Twain once wrote, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I never expected to field-test the quote personally.

    source: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=989939243570691&id=100076638743004

    Cheers, -Cliff

    1591||243 comments

    Reflections on NetBSD 11

    by morpheos137 · about 21 hours ago

    I have been a user of openbsd for years. recently due to hardware failure and poor support of my replacement hardware on openbsd i decided to give NetBSD a try. What a mistake. Nothing just works.

    Commands fail or hang with no visible error.

    SSH does not pass the local terminal to remote (never had experienced terminal degradation just from ssh before)

    Normal keys like backspace and arrow do not work by default.

    Select to copy from xterm to ssh xterm is broken.

    Launching certain shell commands having to do with set in xterm brings down the whole xserver.

    firefox brings down the whole xserver inexplicably

    no installurl default to add packages from.

    su keeps the user's environment.

    just an all around pile of garbage if you are looking for something you can set up and work with without hours of tinkering.

    in contrast if you set up openbsd it WORKS out of the box and what needs to be configured is logical and documented.

    I can see no benefit in an OS that is unusable for productive work by default.

    looking for specific help with a normal terminal

    ssh to remote without buggering the terminal

    select to paste between xterm windows

    normal keyboard operations

    firefox not locking or crashing x. this is another thing: firefox on openbsd does not lock x. on my netbsd system while firefox is launching all other windows in x are frozen.

    7||2 comments

    Can NPM, pnpm etc. use frontier models to check packages for malware?

    by VikRubenfeld · about 17 hours ago

    Just a thought. This seems like something that should happen

    4||4 comments

    Novel macro signals for AI-related job loss?

    by sfmz · about 17 hours ago

    Americans get health insurance through work - if many get fired b/c AI - health insurance profit decline would possibly be an interesting signal for true unemployment metrics.

    I am looking for/requesting novel signals after seeing a16z basically call ai-job loss doomerism

    4||1 comments

    Ask HN: How do we handle the rise of low quality "This is LLM" comments?

    by shantnutiwari · about 21 hours ago

    Every post that reaches the top of HN will have at least a few comments saying "This is LLM!"

    It has become a proxy for "I don't like this article, so it must be a LLM"

    To me, it feels like lazy karma farming, as these comments often do get a few upvotes.

    And of course, accuse a 100 posts if being LLM, you are guaranteed to be right at least once, then like astrologers you can claim success.

    Is there anything we can do to discourage this type of lazy and low effort posting?

    8||19 comments

    Ask HN: What is your go-to solution for a personal wiki in 2026?

    by ex-aws-dude · 1 day ago

    I've used Notion for a long time but I'm interested to hear what other alternatives exist in 2026?

    For me the main requirements are:

    * Backed up to cloud

    * Has a mobile app that is easy to make small changes (for example if I'm doing an oil change on my car I need to be able to pull out my phone and log it in the wiki easily)

    * Simple file format like markdown so that you're not locked into something proprietary (no need for crazy formatting options like MSWord)

    * Option to export data out as a backup

    * Allow uploading arbitrary files like PDFs, images, receipts etc...

    * Nice to have: support for inline tables of data with simple calculations/sorting

    14||18 comments

    Ask HN: What will happen as AI costs increase?

    by MetaWhirledPeas · 1 day ago

    We are living in the "penetration pricing" phase of AI, where costs are absorbed by seemingly endless investment. What will be the practical fallout when prices inevitably rise?

    13||20 comments

    Ask HN: How are you handling QA being bottlenecked with more AI-generated PRs?

    by softneon · 1 day ago

    At my company engineers are producing a high quantity of PRs with the help of AI agents. QA was already the bottleneck since the software involves camera flows across multiple devices, now this is more so the case.

    3||4 comments

    Ask HN: Are we gonna back less powerful local LLMs

    by omertt27 · 2 days ago

    As developers, We are using very powerful llms.But pricing are getting higher day by day.Many developers start to get mac mini for local llms.At the end of the day, are we gonna back to not very powerfull llms because of costs? What Do you think?

    9||8 comments