MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by throwup238 | 2025-04-28 16:45:51+00:00
Yes because they have to bring it all back up in phases so that they only face the load spike* from one interconnect at a time, which can take some time and can fail if there’s unknown damage like the GP said.

It really depends on the region though because almost all large hydroelectric dams are designed to be primary black-start sources to restore interconnects and get other power plants back up quickly in phase with the dam. i.e. in the US 40% of the country has them so it’s relatively easy to do. The hardest part is usually the messy human coordination bit because none of this stuff is automated (or possible even automatable).

* the load spike from everyone’s motors and compressors booting up at the same time
by dang | 2025-04-28 16:46:12+00:00
We got complaints about your use of the word "rabid" and I think they have a point. That crosses into name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines ask you not to do.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
by philipkglass | 2025-04-28 16:46:23+00:00
Plain copper is already too expensive for power lines, and this alloy is more expensive than copper alone. Transmission and distribution lines are typically made with aluminum conductors layered over a steel core for mechanical strength:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-conductor_steel-rein...

Aluminum is a worse conductor than copper on a volumetric basis but a better conductor on a mass basis, which is important for overhead lines supporting their own weight against gravity. It also costs significantly less than copper.
by mhandley | 2025-04-28 16:46:26+00:00
With a high fraction of renewables, the reverse is probably better in the long run. The larger geographic area you connect, the less you're affected by weather systems, and the wider area you can draw dependable dispatchable power such as hydro from. But that depends on having enough grid capacity to move enough power around, which is currently a problem.

But I wonder from a reliability (or lack of cascading failures) point of view whether synchronous islands interconnected with DC interconnects is more robust than a large synchronous network?
by dang | 2025-04-28 16:46:52+00:00
> Funny how people like you never ever

> people like you always

This crosses into personal attack and you can't do that here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and edit out such swipes in the future, as the rules ask, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: this has unfortunately increasingly been a problem with your account lately:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261348 (March 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152094 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43147710 (Feb 2025)

You've made many fine contributions to HN in the past and I don't recall your account having been involved in so much ideological and political flamewar. Could you please fix this? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
by WorldMaker | 2025-04-28 16:47:46+00:00
I used to have a firehose in Newsblur (between paywalls and sites that died/disappeared altogether or just got too terrible that changed in recent years and now I don't) and its tools were simple and great, and definitely all about user control. It is basically a thumbs up/thumbs down on tags, keywords, author names, and a few other fields. Thumbs up is called "Focused" and shows up as a green indicator in "bubble counts" that there's at least one focused post in a feed. You can switch to a focused-only reading mode as well. (Newsblur also added an "Infrequently Updated Feeds" viewing mode to prioritize the small feeds when you don't have time for the full firehose of your big feeds.) Thumbs down is a dislike and those posts disappear entirely from all the main views (you can still find them in "All Posts" views as red indicated posts.)

It's a real simple algorithm. You control everything about these post organization rules and can update and change them as you wish. I thought it worked rather well back in my firehose reading days.
by avni5 | 2025-04-28 16:48:41+00:00
Raspberry Pis that have a Wi-Fi module with Access Point support are a good solution for the classroom use case.

Some good Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) testing on RPi 3 B+ & RPi 4 boards on # of Wi-Fi clients supported: https://github.com/iiab/iiab/issues/823#issuecomment-6622852..., e.g., up to 32 clients in certain scenarios.

More info here: https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#What_hardware_should_I_use? and https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/3010
by immibis | 2025-04-28 16:48:55+00:00
A cascade failure (of any system) would propagate until it runs into a part of the system that's resilient enough to not fall over.

Several people have said the amount of power transferred between France and Spain is very low compared to the amount of power consumed inside either France or Spain, which seems like as good as reason as any that it didn't affect France. The grid in France was presumably able to absorb the sudden change in power flow without itself breaking.
by conductr | 2025-04-28 16:49:00+00:00
Relying on vegetation management along millions(?) of miles of lines is the definition of thinking you're in control without even knowing what risks exist. I see this every year in Texas, they trim back trees thinking they have solved the problem - except - they are allowed to trim them back I think 6-8 feet from the lines, ignoring the fact the trees are 20-40 feet taller than the lines. Nobody seems to see the risk that they left there but it's quite obvious to me, we're not eliminating risks at all. We're minimizing them at best, and even then the labor required to trim all the branches around lines every year is impossible to keep up with from an economic feasibility standpoint.
by CrimsonCape | 2025-04-28 16:49:39+00:00
It's obviously someone a few feet from the camera tossing the hubcap into the air.

When you focus a SLR camera "to infinity", ie. the maximum settable focus for distant objects, the lens has an actual physical distance at which things will still be focused. Usually it's like 50 feet from the camera. So when the camera lens is focused to infinity, things >= 50 feet away will be in focus.

Because the trees are slightly out of focus, the lens has been set shallower than infinity, which means the UFO is closer to the camera than the physical infinity (50'). It's physically impossible for an object more distant than the trees to be in focus without the trees being in focus.
by simonw | 2025-04-28 16:49:50+00:00
I've shared a bunch of notes on MLX over the past year, many of them with snippets of code I've used to try out models: https://simonwillison.net/tags/mlx/

I mainly use MLX for LLMs (with https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx-lm and my own https://github.com/simonw/llm-mlx which wraps that), vision LLMs (via https://github.com/Blaizzy/mlx-vlm) and running Whisper (https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx-examples/tree/main/whisper)

I haven't tried mlx-audio yet (which can synthesize speech) but it looks interesting too: https://github.com/Blaizzy/mlx-audio

The two best people to follow for MLX stuff are Apple's Awni Hannun - https://twitter.com/awnihannun and https://github.com/awni - and community member Prince Canuma who's responsible for both mlx-vlm and mlx-audio: https://twitter.com/Prince_Canuma and https://github.com/Blaizzy
by wat10000 | 2025-04-28 16:49:55+00:00
I think it does. It’s not proof that this place is insignificant, but the fact that it’s just a tiny dot in an unimaginably vast universe is strongly suggestive.

Compare with a hypothetical universe consisting of a million-kilometer-diameter crystal sphere with the Earth at its center. Again not proof, but absent any further information, one would reasonably conclude that Earth is much more significant in that universe.
by ajstarks | 2025-04-28 16:50:03+00:00
FYI, I use decksh [1][2] a DSL (aka "little language") for decks, information displays and charts decksh generates deck[3] markup that is rendered as PDF, SVG, or PNG.

[1] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-a-little-language-fo...

[2] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-object-reference

[3] https://github.com/ajstarks/deck/blob/master/README.md
by mixmastamyk | 2025-04-28 16:50:15+00:00
You can get a job in times of plenty without a BS CS degree. I have many times. But, getting a job at a highly sought after company is quite difficult.

In lean times, every job is difficult to land and the coveted are ~impossible. Even getting to a phone screen.

Going back, I’d get the full BS degree. Even though they were teaching Fortran at the time.
by jonathaneunice | 2025-04-28 16:50:43+00:00
Sure. The need to organize millions (now 10s to 100s of billions) of transistors to do something useful, the economics and will to bring those to market, the need to coordinate functions baked into hardware with the faster moving and vastly more-plastic software world—oh, and Amdahl's Law.

They are the tar pit. Transistor counts skyrocket, but the principles and obstacles have not changed one iota in over 50 years.
by joecool1029 | 2025-04-28 16:51:03+00:00
One thing I've always wondered is if you need a R15 sim card for it to use SUCI or if the old cards can receive provisioning to do it. I know for a fact you can use any USIM on t-mobile (so it had to support at least 3G) and it will work in the latest 5G devices without issue on SA.
by ryao | 2025-04-28 16:52:07+00:00
It likely depends on the part of the state. There are famous parts of Virginia where the interstate is limited to 50mph and the police are some of the most productive in the country at giving tickets. These parts are connected to the parts that are 70mph, which causes people who did not notice the speed limit change to be ticketed. If they are so much as 1mph over 70mph when the speed limit changes to 50mph, it is a misdemeanor charge for reckless driving.
by heyitsguay | 2025-04-28 16:52:44+00:00
There are ways to combat it -- LLM-generated text leaves statistical fingerprints that appear to endure across big foundation model generations.

I'm working on Binoculars with some UMD and CMU folks and wanted to test it out on this. I downloaded one bot's comment history (/u/markusrorscht). 30% of the comments rated human-like, compared to 95-100% of comments from a few human users.

So, practically speaking, statistical methods are still able to provide a fingerprinting method, and one that gets better as comment history gets longer. And they can be combined with other bot detection methods. IMO bot detection will stay a cat-and-mouse game, rather than (LLM-powered) bots winning the whole thing.
by bangaladore | 2025-04-28 16:52:52+00:00
Have you considered joining the next tiny tapeout run? This is exactly the type of project I'm sure they would sponsor or try to get to asic.

In case you weren't aware, they give you 200 x 150 um tile on a shared chip. There is then some helper logic to mux between the various projects on the chip.

https://tinytapeout.com/
by matheusmoreira | 2025-04-28 16:53:19+00:00
Extreme non-related situations? Not true at all. Cars are just computers on wheels. They can even be hacked. Remotely. They've got embedded cellular network connectivity. They've got microphones. They've got cameras. They've got goddamn privacy policies these days.

Governments setting policies on cars is just the transportation version of global mass surveillance and control. It's not your car anymore, and it's not you who's driving. The computer is controlling everything, and it's not your computer, it's theirs. If they can set speed limits, they can easily do a lot more than that, it's literally one mandatory over the air software update away.

The only question is: are you gonna sacrifice your freedom for security? The so called "anti-government people" made their choice. It seems you have made yours. The consequences will be felt either way.
by vel0city | 2025-04-28 16:53:19+00:00
What are the consequences? For most drivers most of the time, they save a few hundred bucks a month. If caught, they'll issue a ticket with a fine that's about a month or two of insurance. Maybe their car will get impounded (unlikely). Maybe they'll face jail time with enough repeat offenses, but once again its unlikely they'll get pulled over in the first place. We'll just continue crushing the poor.

The consequences for those they harm are pretty severe. Having your car destroyed can be lifechangily expensive for someone who is barely scraping by. Adding healthcare costs on top of that are pretty bad. Even with health insurance injuries from a car accident could get expensive fast, and add to the fact the single most expensive thing you owned just got destroyed while you're now unable to work. Too many people forget about the costs of driving they impose on others, thinking "that won't happen to me, I just won't hit anyone".

Driving without insurance is an incredibly reckless and selfish act.

> In cities, definitely. In rural areas?

Most people don't live in these "rural areas". And even then, I'd argue those "rural areas" could do quite a bit to reduce car dependence. Once again, how can these places solve transportation issues for those who can't afford insurance?
by tetris11 | 2025-04-28 16:54:17+00:00
I was mixing methods, sorry. My initial rendition for solving the cuts would initialise a somewhat sparse network from tree to ground, and solve for non-overlapping paths.

This became convoluted and I just opted for a far easier method of solving vector intersections.

Its also not perfect since I haven't factored in rotation origin very well, and I'm now pursuing a far simpler physics-based approach
by colechristensen | 2025-04-28 16:55:23+00:00
It might be that a lot of people just aren't well enough primed to appreciate the pale blue dot as it isn't recognizable enough.

This is why, despite current controversy and how fun it is to mock Katy Perry, space tourism is so important, particularly when it gets to the point of Low Earth Orbit.

Being able to see the whole entire planet in detail right out the window apparently has quite the psychological effect.
by ryandrake | 2025-04-28 16:55:44+00:00
> The problem with the ESA is that it achieves a public good at private cost. The cost is borne by the property owner, effectively without remuneration.

You could say that about any legislation designed to correct a negative externality. The private individual or company goes from avoiding the cost of his activities to paying it. If we just compensated the property owner, society would still be paying the cost, which is what the ESA is trying to correct.
by tfourb | 2025-04-28 16:56:04+00:00
Great. Even accepting your case (I assume you mean the US revolutionary war, which, for the record, I don't think is that great of an example to begin with), you provide a n=1 in support of your argument.

On the other hand, there are literally dozens of examples of civil society organizations organizations and protest movements successfully countering government overreach or military coup d'etats with peaceful means and bringing about profound political change:

- US civil rights movement

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_Revolution

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democrac...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_transition_to_democrac...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quit_India_Movement

Just to name a few.

While armed resistance against injustice can sometimes be effective (and certainly not all peaceful movements succeed), there is well established qualitative and quantitate research that violence comes at much higher cost (in terms of life lost) and risks (to subsequent democratic and evononomic development) than peaceful resistance. Erica Chenoweth is one particular scholar worth checking out in that regard: https://www.ericachenoweth.com

It makes sense if you think about it for a second: resisting violently against tyranny requires you to build up systems of violence (duh!). Those systems have the tendency to stick around, even if you are successful in removing or fending off tyranny.

You can see this live in the US, if you are willing to look: Tens of thousands of people die every year solely because the US treats firearms differently from the entirety of the rest of humanity. At the same time, the US does not seem to be uniquely resistant to the undermining of democratic institutions, as Trumps current antics demonstrate (this should hold true no matter which side of the Trump/Democrats divide you sit on. Both sides claim that the other is (successfully) undermining democracy).
by woah | 2025-04-28 16:56:23+00:00
These long winded philosophical arguments about what LLMs can't do which are invariably proven wrong within months are about as misguided as the gloom and doom pieces about how corporations will be staffed by "teams" of "AI agents". Maybe it's best just to let them cancel each other out. Both types of article seem to be written by people with little experience actually using AI.
by SN76477 | 2025-04-28 16:56:27+00:00
I find tracking movies and series I have watched with my partner an impossible task. Spreadsheets are too fiddly for my partner, and I want to look up what is next on my phone so I have turned to Airtable and n8n for automation.

input a relevant url, it will decide if it IMDB or Youtube or a list. using an llm, it will attempt to extract the movies or series from the list and find the relevant IMDB link.

Then I have a masonry view of movies & series I have and have not watched, sortable by tags that I can rate and add notes to.
by acdha | 2025-04-28 16:57:04+00:00
> The way he worded his reply suggested some sort of intrinsic superiority that by definition could not be replicated anywhere else.

This is something you read into the comment. Given how Germany is tied with Japan for the assumption that they place a higher priority on attention to detail and safety culturally, I would suggest the more parsimonious explanation thar they were simply echoing a stereotype Americans have observed for at least a century.

While you’re apparently very proud of NYS you’re simply drawing a false equivalence. Perhaps NY is above average for the United States but having driven there many times I had to laugh at the idea that the bar is very high having seen people grossly speeding, running red lights, using the highway should or parking lanes to pass illegally, driving around with illegally tinted dark windows, double parking, or parking on the sidewalk. Even if I ignore upstate and only compare NYC to Munich, it’s not even in the same league – especially since some of the biggest scofflaws around NYC are the cops who park their personal vehicles blocking the sidewalks and are clearly more interested in hassling pedestrians and bicyclists.

On to insurance, it is simultaneously possible for NYS to have higher insurance requirements and still be lower than what’s needed. American healthcare is significantly more expensive than our peer countries so we need much higher insurance to compensate the people hit by drivers, especially because private insurance means a massive cost problem if the victim is unable to work. Studies have estimated that Americans subsidize driving by roughly a trillion dollars a year by not requiring drivers to pay for their choices, so even the most expensive states aren’t high enough.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i...
by paganel | 2025-04-28 16:57:08+00:00
You made the very wrong assumption that land possession is mostly an individual thing, and second, that the State would be happy to award “common” ownership to communities big and small, and as such that it would allow said communities (in many cases much older than the State itself) to decide who gets to use what land inside of said communities. And the main reason is that the State doesn’t like, nor want, any sort of competition in this domain.
by ryao | 2025-04-28 16:57:09+00:00
With encryption backdoors, you only need two steps, and the second step is on the honor system, which is why people resist the first step. With this, it looks like there are more than two steps, but given that all future cars will effectively support this in software and will be internet connected such that it can be enabled remotely, we really only have two steps. It only appears to be multiple steps because older cars need retrofits, but again, that is not the case for all cars, and especially is not the case for future cars. Once we are in the future, it will be clear that this first step that seems so benign is the only step where there was any difficulty and the second step can be done with ease.
by rollcat | 2025-04-28 16:57:13+00:00
What's your experience with OpenBSD on RasPi4 specifically? I've found it's pretty poor at handling unexpected power loss - the FS requires interactive fsck during next boot, which means repositioning the box near your computer, pulling out a serial dongle, figuring out the correct GPIOs, etc. Big hassle for a box that's supposed to sit unattended.
by hwpythonner | 2025-04-28 16:58:58+00:00
Thanks — appreciate it!

You're right that dynamic typing makes high-frequency execution tricky, and modern OoO cores are incredibly good at hiding latencies. But PyXL isn't trying to replace general-purpose CPUs — it's designed for efficient, predictable execution in embedded and real-time systems, where simplicity and determinism matter more than absolute throughput. Most embedded cores (like ARM Cortex-M and simple RISC-V) are in-order too — and deliver huge value by focusing on predictability and power efficiency. That said, there’s room for smart optimizations even in a simple core — like limited lookahead on types, hazard detection, and other techniques to smooth execution paths. I think embedded and real-time represent the purest core of the architecture — and once that's solid, there's a lot of room to iterate upward for higher-end acceleration later.
by eli | 2025-04-28 16:59:32+00:00
Most ransomware attacks are opportunistic. They scan basically the whole internet for vulnerabilities and attack from there. It's usually not a skilled attacker targeting a specific company.

Ransomware is a huge and growing problem. Very different than airline security, where attacks are extremely uncommon. If planes were constantly getting blown up, and if a majority of those attacks started with a shoe bomb, then checking everyone's shoes would seem a lot more reasonable, no?
by ThunderBee | 2025-04-28 16:59:44+00:00
> None of that is true! The bot invented entirely fake biographical details of half a dozen people who never existed, all to try and win an argument.

Welcome to reddit Simon! Nothing ever happens and a large percentage of posts are faked.

You can find discord groups for every major subreddit that are dedicated to making up stories to see what the most outlandish thing people will believe is.
by oersted | 2025-04-28 17:00:03+00:00
I'm seeing some reports saying that a significant frequency oscillation happened, which triggered automatic shut-downs, which cascaded. Could an event like this have that effect?

I suppose it makes sense that it was an automatic shutdown rather than infrastructure failing on such a wide area. And then once it's shut down, a black-start is a logistical challenge as other comments have explained.

I'm also seeing some reports about it being more likely that something happened on the east side, somewhere like the Ebro valley or north across the Pyrenees. Catalonia seems to have been particularly affected, and it's on the path of important lines coming from France. High heat at noon could have caused a line to fail and short against a tree, which would be similar to the 2003 nation-wide outage in Italy.