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I was sad to discover today that all of my Dall-E image generations are gone, along with the entire https://labs.openai.com/ site. Apparently, some users received emails earlier in the year when it was about to be taken down, but I didn't. There were quite a few images in my history that I would have liked to have saved.

Maybe worse is how much this lowers my trust in OpenAI even further than it already had been. Dall-E was not a small platform; it was a cultural phenomenon accessed by hundreds of millions of users. It's bewildering that OpenAI would so silently "take it behind the shed."

I'm searching, and it doesn't seem as if there was even an HN post about the shutdown. So, it didn't even hit this place's radar. How many of you are hearing this for the first time?

I don't understand how a company like OpenAI could be so reckless with user data integrity and access, particularly when sunsetting a product. All of the big-dog tech platforms have fairly robust protocols for notifying users and allowing them to download their data (even with hoops to jump through). How can they hope to be one while still acting like a "move fast and break things" startup? I liked the thing they broke.

Got this scam email about an opportunity to earn passive income by acting as the front for an employment fraud scheme.

How does the scammer benefit from this operation?

I can think of 2 ways:

- Personal / private data mining, but this seems quite work intensive for that purpose - Actually going through with the whole scam and disappearing after first salary payments come through

Any other ideas? Anyone have experience or insight about this?

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Full email below:

"Hi <name>, I hope you’re doing well.

My name is <sender>, and I’ve been a software developer for over 7 years — mainly full stack, with a strong focus on frontend. I’m reaching out because I’m looking for someone to collaborate with, and I think you're the best one whom I'm looking for.

I used to partner with my friend Jim, and we worked really well together. Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer about a month ago, and he advised me to find someone new to team up with. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.

Here’s the idea: I’ll handle sending proposals to companies, and you would take care of the interviews with recruiters. My English isn’t strong enough for U.S. interviews, so I’m looking for someone who is confident in English and also has strong technical knowledge. If we land a position, you’d receive a share of the monthly salary, while I would take care of the actual development work.

My initial suggestion is a 50/50 split of the salary after tax. For example, if a job pays $10K per month and taxes are 30% ($3K), the remaining $7K would be split evenly — $3.5K each.

I will manage all the proposals and keep you informed about interview schedules. If things work out and we join a team, I’ll handle the project development. Then you'll get profit every month without any work.

If this sounds interesting to you, please let me know — I’d really like the chance to work together.

Thank you, Best regards, <sender>"

Every word, sentence, and phrasing choice reveals more than just your thoughts. It can show your education, whether English is your first language, how much you’ve read, and even aspects of your intelligence.

So in a way, writing without AI on social media can be even more exposing than posting your medical records online.

What do you think?

I thought this would be a helpful thing to read what others on the site were getting for their kids, along with the age of those kids. Doesnt have to be tech-oriented.

EDIT: besides robux : D

Working on automating small business finance (bookkeeping, reconciliation, basic reporting).

One thing I keep noticing: compared to programming, accounting often looks like the more automatable problem:

It’s rule-based Double entry, charts of accounts, tax rules, materiality thresholds. For most day-to-day transactions you’re not inventing new logic, you’re applying existing rules.

It’s verifiable The books either balance or they don’t. Ledgers either reconcile or they don’t. There’s almost always a “ground truth” to compare against (bank feeds, statements, prior periods).

It’s boring and repetitive Same vendors, same categories, same patterns every month. Humans hate this work. Software loves it.

With accounting, at least at the small-business level, most of the work feels like:

normalize data from banks / cards / invoices

apply deterministic or configurable rules

surface exceptions for human review

run consistency checks and reports

The truly hard parts (tax strategy, edge cases, messy history, talking to authorities) are a smaller fraction of the total hours but require humans. The grind is in the repetitive, rule-based stuff.

Hi guys,

In middle of a stripe Shakedown and feel like I this is something to warn others of.

We rent vehicles and implemented stripe in 2017. We process a massive volume and must have spent 1B+ with stripe so far.

We love stripe, the tools the software ect. But recently they have been closer to a mob boss than a vendor as they must know their customers are highly locked in.

Over time, our deal evolved into a multi‑year minimum annual fee commitment with “enterprise” pricing. On every renewal, the pattern has been:

Stripe pushes the minimum annual fees higher.

If we don’t naturally hit that minimum, they expect us to burn the difference on add‑on products and “nice to have” features just to satisfy the commit.

We’re warned that if we don’t find a way to hit the minimum, they can just take the full amount out of revenue.

What I would think of before picking stripe.

Make your integration portable. Don't use vender form/card logic. 2. Use an invoices platform that can easily switch card provider. 3. Push back on the small yearly minimum, as they will just raise it next time instead of focusing on you making more money stripe focuses on itself.

To anyone working at stripe, you guys built an awesome product, just wish you could maintain the culture that got you to where you are.

Good luck

As various LLMs become more and more popular, so does comments with "I asked Gemini, and Gemini said ....".

While the guidelines were written (and iterated on) during a different time, it seems like it might be time to have a discussion about if those sort of comments should be welcomed on HN or not.

Some examples:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200460

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080064

Personally, I'm on HN for the human conversation, and large LLM-generated texts just get in the way of reading real text from real humans (assumed, at least).

What do you think? Should responses that basically boil down to "I asked $LLM about $X, and here is what $LLM said:" be allowed on HN, and the guidelines updated to state that people shouldn't critique it (similar to other guidelines currently), or should a new guideline be added to ask people from refrain from copy-pasting large LLM responses into the comments, or something else completely?

The future of lighting is here—and it's not just about brightness. With the rise of smart LED technology, we've seen a massive shift toward energy efficiency, customization, and even integration with home automation systems.

For instance, addressable LED strips are a game-changer, allowing precise control over each segment of light for personalized ambiance. Whether you're setting the mood with colors, syncing with music, or automating lighting schedules, the possibilities are endless. But beyond aesthetics, these LEDs are changing how we think about energy consumption. With their ultra-low power consumption and customizable features, they offer both environmental and financial savings.

The latest innovations even push the boundaries of AI and IoT. Think smart lighting systems that learn your preferences over time or adjust based on natural light conditions. Have you experimented with smart LED lighting in your home or office? What features do you think could make these technologies even smarter?

Hello,

Since 10th December, Substack introduced age verification to login to your account. Unfortunately this breaks the process of deleting an account (which requires you to login).

How can I delete my account without completing the video streamed mug shot age verification process?

support@substack.com autoreply directs you to substack.com/contact -- which also requires you to pass age verification first.

The substack AI chatbot is useless - no hope of reaching a human. The process for cancelling a deceased account doesn't work either as the chatbot can't look up my account using my email address (presumably it is frozen until age verification). Tor and VPNs don't work as my profile includes my location in Australia, and my email address is Australian.

Any ideas? I'm about to cancel my credit card as a last resort.

1. Turn Any Screenshot into a Structured Note Screenshot (meeting notes/webpage/paper/etc.): Extract key text; Summarize as clear bullet points; Create 3–5 to-dos with due dates & owners (TBD). 2. “One‑Click” Spreadsheet Analyst “upload a spreadsheet image / CSV of your data. Describe the main patterns in plain language. Suggest 3 charts that best explain the data and describe what each chart should show. Point out anomalies or data quality issues.” 3. Context‑Aware Refactor Coach for Code

“From screenshots/pasted text, infer code architecture and file roles. Suggest a step-by-step refactor plan. For Step 1 only: provide exact code changes—await your approval before Step 2.” 4. Auto‑Generate Test Cases from Real UIs

“Upload app/web screenshots → Identify interactive elements → Generate test-case table: [Element, Expected behavior, Edge cases] → Suggest automated test ideas for Playwright/Cypress/Appium (no full code).” 5. Act as a cautious research assistant:

“Given a claim, identify likely accurate, questionable, and clearly wrong parts. For questionable points, suggest source types & keywords to verify. Rewrite the claim more accurately while preserving nuance.”

I was surprised to find out only recently that some credits I bought about a year a go were unusable because they had expired. I find this a bit concerning because it seems as though I'm being forced to use the credits.

In my part of the world, that tactic is used by telcos to sell "broadband data". You buy internet bundle of about $1 and they give you expiry of about a week. This drives up the "real" price of these purchases because of the time constraint. Ultimately, if you had 1GB of data left after a week, it is all gone and you have to purchase again - further driving sales. Since this is a third world country we're talking about and telco's tend to be oligopolies and tend to also do some form of price collusion among themselves, it was generally accepted as "just how things were".

But I always found it to be unfair because people should be allowed to take their time consuming whatever product they purchased.

I wonder if this is general practice for all llm apis? Am I missing something? Is this really how things should be? I can't seem to fathom why "purchased" llm credits should have an expiry date - however generous. Especially when the same credits can be used to access any of their available models.

As we know, OpenAI is not so open.

In 2023, I was playing with transformers, RNNs and I had an understanding how it worked from top to bottom (e.g. made my own keras, could whiteboard small nets) and I can throw things together in keras or tf pretty quick

I got a job and never touched that again. Data and compute notwithstanding, how hard would it be to make a pet project foundation model using the latest techniques? I’ve heard about MoE, things like that and I figure we’re not just throwing a bunch of layers and dropout in Keras anymore.

Problem with ambiguous boundaries, messy constraints and no linear path to a solution

Throughout 2025, I've been following job boards like YC Jobs, RemoteOK, NoDesk, WeWorkRemotely, and others. Across all of them, I keep seeing a recurring pattern:

Many companies advertise "remote" roles, but hiring is limited to the US, Canada, UK, or Germany. Sometimes they add one or two more countries, but rarely anything beyond that.

Given that it's the last quarter of 2025 and remote work is more established than ever, I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind this.

A few questions I'm hoping founders, hiring managers, or people with international hiring experience can shed light on:

- Is the main blocker regulatory complexity? (employment law, compliance, local registrations, PE risk, etc.)

- Is it primarily about taxes and payroll overhead when hiring abroad?

- Are there security or liability concerns that make certain jurisdictions easier to work with?

- Is it simply the cost of maintaining compliant employment structures worldwide, or are there deeper strategic reasons?

- And finally: Is there evidence that the value produced by strong engineers abroad doesn't offset those costs, or is the issue not economic at all?

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, from the outside, it seems like a global talent pool should be an advantage, especially for remote-first companies. But the hiring restrictions persist, even as tools like Deel, Remote, Oyster, etc. mature.

I'd love to hear perspectives from people who have dealt with this firsthand.

Top 1 or top 1-3 book you read this year (2025) that you would recommend to the HN community? Note: book itself doesn't need to have been published in 2025.

I’m trying to renew my IEEE membership, but the Payment page keeps erroring out regardless of credit card.

Worse, I can’t seem to reach anyone at IEEE through email, phone calls, or the web form. Is anyone able to get through?

  Hey HN! I built console.text() - a tool that texts you when specific code paths execute in production.

  The idea came from Jason Goodison's YouTube video about micro-SaaS products. I'd been stuck in tutorial hell for months, so I decided to just ship something.

  What it does:

    npm install @holler2660/console-text

    const { init } =  require("@holler2660/console-text");
    init({ apiKey: 'ct_live_xxx' });

    console.text('Payment failed', { userId: '123' });
    // → SMS arrives in 5-10 seconds

  Try it: https://soorajdmg.github.io/Console-text/

  Why this vs Sentry/PagerDuty?

  Those are great for teams. This is for solo devs and side projects who want dead-simple alerts without the setup overhead. If you know console.log(), you already know how to use it.

When I was young we read books like Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, Neuromancer by William Gibson and So You Want to be a Mathematician by Paul Halmos. What books are popular with young technically minded people today?

Let me be clear first. I don't dislike LLMs, I query them, trigger agents to do stuff where I kind of know what the end goal is and to make analisys of small parts of an application.

That said, everytime I give it something a little more complex that do something in a single file script it fails me horribly. Either the code is really bad, or the approach is as bad a someone who doesn't really know what to do or it plains start doing things that I explicitly said not to do in the initial prompt.

I have sometimes asked my LLM fan's coworkers to come and help when that happens and they also are not able to "fix it", but somehow I am the one doing it wrong due "wrong prompt" or "lack of correct context".

I have created a lot of "Agents.md" files, drop files into the context window... Nothing.

When I need to do green field stuff, or PoCs it delivers fast, but then applying it to work inside an existent big application fails.

The only place where I feel as "productive" as I heard from other people is when I do stuff in languages or technologies I don't know at all, but then again, I also don't know if that functional code I get at the end is broken in things I am not aware of.

Are any of you guys really using LLMs to create full features in big enterprise apps?

i have a pixel 4, and it looks like i might be stuck with this phone forever if things keep going in the same direction (hopefully they don't). the pixel 4 isn't bad, but even on this i don't have the level of customization that i had back in the day with cyanogenmod etc. on my note 3 or epic 4g touch.

here are some requirements that i can think of:

    - not huge. small enough to use with 1 hand

    - able to root and install custom OS without too much difficulty/annoyance (the manufacturer doesn't actively try to stop you from modifying your own device)
    
    - able to use mint mobile

    - has a trackball (like the htc hero, that thing was fuckin awesome)

    - possibly some hardware buttons

If you run or work at a small business: cell phones, landline, VoIP, or something else?

What sucks about your current setup?

What would you like to see instead?

I was surprised to see these kind of things on Amazon at $50-$100.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=android+auto+screen&i=electronics&crid=1VL1XF920KHXS&sprefix=android+auto+screen%2Celectronics%2C109&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

I have an older car (2018 Mini Countryman), and the lack of Android Auto is problematic. When I rent a car I realize how much easier life is with a fully integrated experience, especially for maps.

Are there any HUDs that people have found success with, which also respect privacy and aren't a support nightmare. I'm worried I will buy one and find out the integration is terrible, or that it is sending my data back to a Myanmar based call center.

Has anyone tried to build one using an android tablet?

Context:

I prefer smaller phones and currently use an iPhone 13 Mini which I plan on using for another 3 years. Sadly the battery keeps on dying and I'm on my second battery. I prefer repairing myself since most of the local shops provide lower quality batteries and I'm a bit paranoid of leaving phone there. My screen is also broken and also the back glass. I'm thinking of ordering few replacement parts from Aliexpress and was wondering if there are any good resources to learn other than phone specific guides on ifixit.

I have been writing Python code for a few years now. But I feel like LLMs can write much better code than me. I used to keep myself updated with newer technology. But now I am loosing interest. I was interested in learning Rust. But I don't find any motivation now since I can just vibe code with Rust. Any thoughts in that?

The combination of the two delivers on the promise: fast and clever editing of multiple files in a codebase, with minimal human intervention.

No other model I tried in Cursor comes even close.

Question: did anyone tried Claude Codex: as good as Cursor?