MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by taurath | 2025-04-30 22:59:23+00:00
At one time recently, ChatGPT popped up a message saying I could customize the tone, I noticed they had a field "what traits should ChatGPT have?". I chose "encouraging" for a little bit, but quickly found that it did a lot of what it seems to be doing for everyone. Even when I asked for cold objective analysis it would only return "YES, of COURSE!" to all sorts of prompts - it belies the idea that there is any analysis taking place at all. ChatGPT, as the owner of the platform, should be far more careful and responsible for putting these suggestions in front of users.

I'm really tired of having to wade through breathless prognostication about this being the future, while the bullshit it outputs and the many ways in which it can get fundamental things wrong are bare to see. I'm tired of the marketing and salespeople having taken over engineering, and touting solutions with obvious compounding downsides.

As I'm not directly in the working on ML, I admit I can't possibly know which parts are real and which parts are built on sand (like this "sentiment") that can give way at any moment. Another comment says that if you use the API, it doesn't include these system prompts... right now. How the hell do you build trust in systems like this other than willful ignorance?
by ivape | 2025-04-30 22:59:31+00:00
I think it has a lot to do with who you are admitting it to. Let say you know you are wrong, but you have to admit it to your enemy. Many emotional people would rather die than do that, hah (over my dead body!). Unfortunately, this is the end-state of arousing politics. There's a whole media industry around making politics emotional now days, and quite frankly we really need it to go back to boring men and women discussing boring things on CSPAN. It was never meant for the average American (or Britain), simply because it takes too much dumbing down to make it palatable for ordinary people. It's OKAY not to know what is the right thing to do about global trade. The political-media-industrial-complex survives by making people believe they actually know what they are talking about.

It's very difficult to suggest to someone "hey, even though you invested thousands of hours ingesting this content, you actually don't know anything about it" - who wants to admit that, first to themselves, and second to your enemy?

Your Ben Shapiros, your Tuckers, Rogans, Maddows, Jon Stewarts are part of the industrial complex.

We need to find an off-ramp for people that lets them keep their dignity while accepting ignorance. I personally don't have any ideas on how to do this because here in tech, you either know your stuff or you don't, there's no ego when you don't know (you'll just look stupid).
by rainsford | 2025-04-30 23:00:20+00:00
> Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.

I'm not sure that's a correct understanding of how the approach path to the runway and the helicopter route are supposed to interact. So far as I understand, the intent was never that a helicopter and airplane were supposed to be able to happily barrel along their respective paths within worrying about running into each other. That kind of thing happens a lot in aviation, but the separation distance is much, much larger.

Instead, one was supposed to see the other and use their eyes to visually stay away (ideally by much more than 100 ft). That's what was supposed to happen here, and what the instructor pilot in the helicopter said they were doing. Visual separation is also used a lot in aviation, often in places where there are no narrowly defined paths at all, but it carries the risk of aircraft not seeing or misidentifying each other, which could be what happened here.
by ryandrake | 2025-04-30 23:00:58+00:00
Exactly... Scaling the numbers down: It's as if a person has $1.5M net worth, and their investments produce $100K per year. They are also simply being handed $40K per year from someone they disagree with, but who otherwise reliably provides that income. Are they just going to turn that money down because of this ethical disagreement? A lot of people wouldn't.
by jasonthorsness | 2025-04-30 23:01:37+00:00
Huh, apparently HTML input attributes like maxsize don't try anything fancy and just count UTF-16 code units same as JavaScript strings (I guess it makes sense...) With the prevalence of emojis this seems like it might not do the right thing.

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#attr-input...
by hombre_fatal | 2025-04-30 23:02:29+00:00
Been looking for a comment to post my own pet peeve under:

Pausing a Youtube video overlays the video with a row of more video recommendations.

So if I'm pausing the video to see something in the video, video thumbnails are in the way.

This happens in the Roku app and sometimes in the desktop browser, but for some reason I couldn't trigger it when I tested it just now. Maybe one of my extensions blocks it.
by krackers | 2025-04-30 23:02:54+00:00
Hmm a good nerd-snipe puzzle. I was never very good at physics, so hopefully someone can check my work... assuming upon mixing coffee is at Tc and milk at Tm, and simplifying to assume equivalent mass & specific temp we have (Tf - Tc) = -(Tf - Tm) => Tf = (Tc+Tm)/2 which is intuitive (upon mixing we get the average temperature).

On the assumption that the cold milk is always at a fixed temperature until it's mixed in, then the temperature of coffee at point of mixing is the main factor. Before and after, it follows newton's law of cooling. So we're comparing something like Tenv + [(Tc+Tm)/2 - Tenv]e^(-2) vs (Tenv + [Tc - Tenv]e^(-2) + Tm)/2. The latter is greater than the former only when Tm > Tenv (the milk isn't cold), or in other words it's better to let the coffee cool as much as possible before mixing assuming the milk is colder than the environment.

Another interesting twist is to consider the case where the milk isn't kept at a fixed temperature but is also subject to warming (it's taken out of the fridge). Then the former equation is unchanged but the latter becomes (Tenv + [Tc - Tenv]e^(-2) + Tenv + [Tm - Tenv]e^(-2))/2. But this is equivalent to the former equation, so in this case it doesn't matter when you mix it.

Not 100% confident in both analysis, but I wonder if there's a more intuitive way to see it. I also don't know if deviating from the assumption of equivalent mass & specific temp changes the analysis (it might lead to a small range where for the fixed case, situation 1 is better?) It's definitely not "intuitive" to me.
by sans_souse | 2025-04-30 23:02:56+00:00
Biggest gripes: 1) touch screen nav on a user profile is nearly impossible to scroll vertically, as any left/right movements will cause you to jump sections (videos→playlists, etc)

2) Windowed mini-viewer (is a total PITA)

3) The "full screen" mode never seems to lign up where I'm either cropping part of the picture out or I have some stupid white slider-looking thing in one corner of my screen.
by prinny_ | 2025-04-30 23:03:07+00:00
I don't have more than 5-6 tabs in my personal life, but in my professional life I regularly have 15-20 open. By all means a low number compared to some maniacs rocking hundreds or even thousands of open tabs. My case is like: 3-5 tabs for secretary duties: email, calendar, Jira, maybe a google doc, then 2-3 random tabs then multiple tabs for grouped tasks.

E.g if I want to review a PR I need to have the jira ticket, the figma designs, the API dashboard, the PR link and the actual app open. That's 5 tabs for a single PR review + more if I need to go over some documentation.

And since a review takes its time and I often have to context switch a lot, being able to quickly collapse 5-7 tabs under a "Foo PR review" group is super helpful.
by azemetre | 2025-04-30 23:03:15+00:00
Yes it is, VSCode is so painfully slow. Maybe I have Vim brain rot but the input latency in VSCode is extremely noticeable and there's the whole having to use a mouse for proficiency that slows you down too.

I'd pay decent money for an editor that could be faster than Neovim but until then they get my yearly donation.

There's so much that can be gained solely on speed alone. Especially for JetBrains products here too.
by bigyabai | 2025-04-30 23:03:49+00:00
I can ascertain that this is a book review, and I'm familiar with Jung, but the prose employed here makes Gravity's Rainbow feel lucid and upbeat by comparison. There were several paragraphs in this essay where I just found myself entirely lost. Am I the crazy one for expecting a grounded response to a novel where the protagonist is dissected so his semen can be extracted? Should I feel bad, waiting for my suspension of disbelief to collapse?

Ironically, this essay about how UFOs solicit the shadows of our consciousness ends up being consumed by subconscious apathy and far-too-stretched faith. Between the banal reality we can observe and the wild fantasy we can imagine exists a pretty boring, almost unbelievable story that precipitates the truth.
by ifyoubuildit | 2025-04-30 23:05:16+00:00
If Biden had made these policies I would have been pro-Biden policy guy then.

> I see you're taking a play from the right-wing playbook

Do you actually believe this is a thing?

I figured the other commenter voiced my point of view well enough. I was just curious if you were aware of how you come off. I always wonder if people who are abrasive on the internet are like that in real life.
by glaucon | 2025-04-30 23:05:31+00:00
Strange how pervasive this idea is.

Corporal punishment in Singpaore is not delivered in public, certain classes of offender are exempt, and those offenses it is imposed for are completely unrelated to public levels of cleanliness.

From Wikipedia [1] ...

Singaporean law allows caning to be ordered for over 35 offences, including hostage-taking/kidnapping, robbery, gang robbery with murder, rioting, causing grievous hurt, drug abuse, vandalism, extortion, voyeurism, sexual abuse, molestation (outrage of modesty),[16] and unlawful possession of weapons. Caning is also a mandatory punishment for certain offences such as rape, drug trafficking, illegal moneylending,[17] and for foreigners who overstay by more than 90 days – a measure designed to deter illegal immigrants

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore
by mburns | 2025-04-30 23:05:48+00:00
The OSL was transformative for my career as a budding CS student in Corvallis many years ago. I can’t say enough good things about the positive impact it has on the Open Source community and the students it employs.

In my experience, there isn’t a great on-ramp for learning to be a SysAdmin (or devop, etc) in a practical sense. Learning what it takes to support systems in “Production” with actual users, and all that entails, at some point requires a hands-on approach. Finding entry-level opportunities to do that isn’t easy until you have /some/ experience. The OSL provides that, and supports countless FOSS projects in the process. It’s really a great arrangement.

Obviously I’m biased, but the Open Source Lab should be viewed as one of the Crown Jewels of OSU.
by tzs | 2025-04-30 23:06:18+00:00
Others have explained why trade deficits are not necessarily bad.

But even if it were bad to run a trade deficit and you wanted to fix that, it would be trade as a whole that you would need to balance. In your trade with individual countries it would be OK to have deficits with some as long as you had surpluses with others as long as it was balanced as a whole.

Different countries have different goods to offer and different goods they need. It is not just realistic to expect that for every country what we have to sell that they want to buy and what they have to sell that we want to buy will end up being the same value.

There will be a lot of circular trade situations. Country A wants to sell good 1 and buy good 2. Country B wants to sell good 2 and buy good 3. Country C wants to sell good 3 and buy good 1.

If these countries all want trade to be balanced with each of their partners none can trade. But if they just all just want to balance their total trade then A can run a trade surplus with C and a trade deficit with B. Similar for B and C.
by lordleft | 2025-04-30 23:06:28+00:00
I am in favor of these changes.

At the very least, not allowing apps to MENTION the fact that you can purchase items outside an app is ridiculously anti-competitive.

The truth is that we would never accept this behavior on a traditional desktop OS, but we've tolerated it in the context of iOS. I think that's arbitrary and I hope this ruling sticks.
by kbelder | 2025-04-30 23:06:46+00:00
>In his first term, Trump learned that insiders were good at preventing him from accomplishing his goals when he ‘played by the rules’, so now he’s just ignored ‘the system’.

This seems obviously what happened, and it may be because of the unprecedented non-consecutive second term. I don't know if Trump's ideology has changed between this term and his previous one, but his tactics certainly have. He clearly came into this term with a plan to do a blitzkreig [unfortunate reference], to make changes at a rate and degree that would cut through all the bureaucratic obstacles he faced the first term.

And it seems mostly successful. The opposition, including many of the employees of the executive branch themselves, were mostly caught off guard. Over the last few weeks, it seems like they are finally starting to form a responsive strategy, and are pushing back more effectively through courts and public opinions. I expect much of this initial push to moderate, such as the tariffs, the funding cuts, but still with lasting changes. Of course, if any of the changes are found to be unlawful, they will get reversed. But that will potentially take years.
by -__---____-ZXyw | 2025-04-30 23:07:17+00:00
Ah no, I know myself that there have been headlines here and there.

I'm pretty sure there was some controvery in the linguistic blogging community even at some stage over the last couple of years, with someone writing an essay claiming the Chinese character system was in some sense less advanced and maybe on the way out, and this leading to a serious response or two, the usual fiery academic affair. I can't locate it this instant though.

I moreso meant for OP's low-effort dramatisation to not go unanswered. Framing it as "winning" some sort of language battle is particularly silly.

Your musings are interesting though, and the topic certainly is a fascinating one. Languages that use morphemes for writing are wild. Symbology is a cool word also - surely there has to be a lisp blog somewhere with that word in the title.
by GianFabien | 2025-04-30 23:08:06+00:00
You're correct. My v2 comment was brought about by the marketing, not the technical facts.

I had an Apple ][ and was excited by the Lisa, but couldn't afford one at the time. When the Macintosh came out, I found the screen far too small and I hated the the constant floppy disk shuffle. Obviously I didn't buy one. Ended up going down the IBM XT then AT path because I got to work with them and didn't have to buy anything. Back then a work perk was being a PC to work with. It wasn't until 2009 that I purchased my next Apple product, a MacBook Pro.
by glaucon | 2025-04-30 23:08:48+00:00
Going back to December it was widely believe that Trump's administration would usher in a bonanza of merge and acquisition activity, an area that has run quite cool during Biden's term. For many people M&A activity is also spelt b-o-n-u-s-e-s so I guess some of this is people spending a bonus they don't yet have and, as things have turned out, won't be getting, at least in the foreseeable.
by ecnahc515 | 2025-04-30 23:08:55+00:00
I worked at the OSL as a student years ago, and it was one of the most impactful places I've ever worked at. I learned a lot, and I wouldn't be the engineer I am today without having worked there.

Since graduating, I've also hired, and worked with multiple alumni from the OSL and they're always top notch. Anyone looking for interns or new graduates with devops/SRE or SWE experience should be looking at the OSL for talent. It's not too often you can hire a new graduate with potentially multiple years of production experience, especially in devops.

In context of HN/Y Combinator, https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/coreos was a successful container/Kubernetes focused startup founded by two OSUOSL alumni, Alex Polvi and Brandon Philips, which was eventually acquired by Red Hat.

The OSL is something special.

For a list of projects the OSL helps host, check out https://osuosl.org/communities/. You might see a project you care about in that list! As an example: they provide aarch64 and powerpc VMs for a ton of projects to do their CI/builds on.
by lanstin | 2025-04-30 23:09:12+00:00
Google's model has the same annoying attitude of some Google employees "we know" - e.g. it often finishes math questions with "is there anything else you'd like to know about Hilbert spaces" even as it refused to prove a true result; Claude is much more like a British don: "I don't want to overstep, but would you care for me to explore this approach farther?"? ChatGPT (for me of course) has been a bit superior in attitude but politer.
by egypturnash | 2025-04-30 23:09:25+00:00
On an iOS device, you literally just type a dash twice and it gets autocorrected into an emdash. You don’t have to do anything special. I’m on an iPad right now, here’s one: —

And if you type four dashes? Endash. Have one. ——

“Proper” quotes (also supposedly a hallmark of LLM text) are also a result of typing on an iOS device. It fixes that up too. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Android phones do this too. These supposed “hallmarks” of generated text are just the results of the typographical prettiness routines lurking in screen keyboards.
by anigbrowl | 2025-04-30 23:09:44+00:00
interviews Bessent or even Lutnick give - where they hedge everything because they know it could change any minute

The problem with this is they quickly realised it's easier to BS and lie than to be honest and noncommittal. In the latter case they'd have to fess up at some point and say 'well no we didn't have a plan for that/see that coming/whatever' or admit that they simply don't know the answers to relevant questions. Instead they say one thing one day, and when Trump reverses the policy they come on TV a day or two later smirking and saying 'well this was always the plan'. Once their public statements are disconnected from consequences they realize that lying is a way to wield power and of course that quickly becomes intoxicating and addictive.

Right now it might seem to them like it's just some white lies for the greater good/to assuage public anxiety, but in my view that sort of behavior is a one-way street. I think they've already shredded whatever professional credibility they had, and when things get economically bad they'll be incapable of offering leadership or reassurance that would calm markets (in contrast to, say, Lewis Powell at the Federal Reserve). If the economic situation gets sufficiently bad, Trump will throw them to the wolves and hire in some new faces to buy time. We saw this in the first administration, every time he replaced someone the meda and Congress would grant them a honeymoon period and talk about how much better and calmer things were getting, even though this was based on desire rather than outcomes.
by techpineapple | 2025-04-30 23:11:25+00:00
Reading this further, this is nonsensicle:

Andreessen described his job as a nuanced combination of “intangible” skills, including psychological analysis of the entrepreneurs he works with: “A lot of it is psychological analysis, like, ‘Who are these people?’ ‘How do they react under pressure?’ ‘How do you keep them from falling apart?’ ‘How do you keep them from going crazy?’ ‘How do you keep from going crazy yourself?’ You know, you end up being a psychologist half the time.”

“So, it is possible—I don’t want to be definitive—but it’s possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AI is doing everything else, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.”

If Venture Capitalist is the last safe job, then there are no entrepreneurs.
by LightBug1 | 2025-04-30 23:11:57+00:00
As per most things these days ... there's a core 30% of nutjobs who will not change for anything. Another 10-20% ride along with them and balance against the moderates and, together, they either shift the Overton window, or outright win.

It'll take probably 5-10 years before the 10-20% own up to "being had".

And, by then, the damage will have been done. And you'll only start to be thinking about how to repair it then ... and then that will take a generation to execute and recover from.

Source: Brexit.
by fuzztester | 2025-04-30 23:12:51+00:00
not op, but have seen the same.

this is quite bad behaviour.

they should not sneakily change our preferences behind the backs. similarly, all notifications, advertisements, et cetera, should be opt in, not opt out.

many of these cos. do this sort of thing, of course.

they excuse it under the protect of company policy.

Google the ant letter as an example.
by vednig | 2025-04-30 23:12:57+00:00
The fact that you got a new username for asking this question is awesome, you're already prepared for the next journey of life, congratulations on new career(undefined)

BTW, based on my observation it seems you're burned!(Not like spies), I'd say take a year of and stick to re-finding your passion (whatever big or small) it may be.

Based on your experience you could venture into some startup as a Angel Investor and Advisor for the moment, until then stay curious.
by karaterobot | 2025-04-30 23:12:58+00:00
I also don't think most people are complaining about his age, as much as his appointment without qualifications in writing policy, and just in general the fact that regulations are being rewritten by someone whose only qualification is the ability to use an AI program. The Apollo engineers went to school for engineering, and were hired because they were good at the jobs they were being asked to do.
by digianarchist | 2025-04-30 23:13:08+00:00
> The US government involvement in housing is gigantic as well.

Sure, from a financial perspective, particularly around mortgages.

Singapore owns the HDB, which owns the leasing rights to 80%+ of all residential property and almost all land in the country. Issuing 99 year leases to citizens and PRs.

Imagine if the US government owned all land rights, built virtually all apartments and instigated racial quotas to match the demographics of the country; then subsidized the price drastically to make it affordable for the population. That's what Singapore does.

This isn't unique either.

The other libertarian wet-dream Hong Kong has a similar land-leasing policy. The major difference there is that 999 year leases were allowed at one point (rare and no longer issued).

In fact the only freehold property in Hong Kong is St John’s Cathedral.
by jaydenmilne | 2025-04-30 23:13:31+00:00
I've done this. For example, here's some handycam HI8 footage of STS-106 and a launch tower tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq2eye32EA8

Filmed in HI8 480p, but YouTube's 480p looks like mud and doesn't do the uncompressed analog source justice. You can see this when you select 4K