MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ethan_smith | 2025-04-22 20:07:42+00:00
The orange cat coloration (technically "red" or "ginger") is actually due to a sex-linked gene on the X chromosome, not deliberate Egyptian breeding programs. Archaeological evidence doesn't support ancient Egyptian preference for orange cats - their art depicts cats of various colors. Viking-era cat remains show diverse coat colors emerged naturally through genetic drift rather than intentional selection. The spread of orange cats likely occurred through natural genetic distribution alongside human migration patterns.
by simonw | 2025-04-22 20:07:47+00:00
From that same essay:

> If your reaction to this is “surely typing out the code is faster than typing out an English instruction of it”, all I can tell you is that it really isn’t for me any more. Code needs to be correct. English has enormous room for shortcuts, and vagaries, and typos, and saying things like “use that popular HTTP library” if you can’t remember the name off the top of your head.

Using LLMs as part of my coding work speeds me up by a significant amount.
by dang | 2025-04-22 20:07:47+00:00
Your post veered straight in the direction of generic flamewar tangents (starting with nationalistic generalizations, then contemporary partisan provocations, ending with fascism). That's the kind of thing the HN guidelines ask commenters not to do, especially when the discussion starts with a relatively* scholarly and historical article.

* (yes, I know it's jacobin, but still)
by TRiG_Ireland | 2025-04-22 20:08:14+00:00
> A lot of people don’t want to share personal updates and photos to a broad swath of friends and acquaintances.

But sometimes I do, because saying something to one person feels like I'm demanding a response from them, but saying it to a broad circle of friends allows those interested to reply, and others to leave it. Back when I used Facebook, I was more likely to gripe (or brag) on the Facebook wall than in a personal text conversation with a friend.

(Friends in person are the best option, of course.)
by mrob | 2025-04-22 20:08:25+00:00
Some more not mentioned in the article:

Filtered milk. Tastes the same as ordinary homogenized milk but double (or better) the shelf life. Very convenient if you only use small quantities at a time, e.g. for adding to tea.

Microfiber cloths. Much better cleaning than traditional cloths. In many cases all you need is water, or use them dry for dusting. Reusable too.

SSDs. In my opinion, the biggest computer upgrade in my lifetime. Access latency goes from obvious to imperceptible. A great many interactive tasks involve waiting for IO, and this is far more pleasant when you don't feel the delay.

Cheap but transparent audio DACs/amplifiers. This is essentially a solved problem at headphone power levels. Most modern designs have zero perceptible noise or distortion.
by wolrah | 2025-04-22 20:08:39+00:00
> Why there is still no project which can do this by simply installing trivial driver (in windows)

The driver has been built in to Windows for years, as it's the same tech as Thunderbolt networking. Just plug two Thunderbolt or USB4

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/co...

> and 4 line patch to enable this in linux?

Supported since kernel 4.15 in early 2018.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/admin-guide/thunderbol...

> It is even possible to have linux machine act as a display port sink to be used as a capture card, for streamers, youtubers,... with 0 dollar investment, 0 hardware...

This is not true. When a USB-C connection is being used in DisplayPort Alternate Mode two or four of the high-speed pairs in the cable are literally switched from being connected to the USB controller to being connected to the DisplayPort controller. Both the source and sink devices have to support the same alternate modes to operate, so you would still need to have actual DisplayPort sink hardware to capture a DP-on-USBC signal. DisplayPort capture hardware is rare on its own compared to HDMI capture, I don't think there's a single one out there that takes a USB-C DP Alt Mode input because there's no real reason to ever do that.
by OfficialTurkey | 2025-04-22 20:08:45+00:00
My understanding is that permits, especially quota permits in locations like the Cascades, are to protect the wilderness from too many people. In that case it sounds to me like the ranger was being a good steward of the land. In your case you may have been pack in, pack out (though there's still waste to think about), but in general that's not true and I don't see a non-blanket approach here.
by bendigedig | 2025-04-22 20:09:07+00:00
But what about what the article hints to w.r.t. the right to never be recorded?

To be recorded is to leave an immutable trail of the self which prejudices how you (and others) view yourself. To be monitored is to be categorised which is to see yourself in an imperfect and distorting mirror.

Look at your distorted historical reflection and tell me that it does not prejudice the choices that you make and so alter the person that you choose to be next.
by Lammy | 2025-04-22 20:09:11+00:00
From a corporate perspective I could see “no mods at all” being preferable to mods they can't control, especially since all the best ones come from loverslab-dot-com which is totally untouchable to corpo-kin.

Microsoft-presents-Zenimax-presents-Bethesda had a string of failed attempts to control the modding community for Skyrim:

- https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_Mod:Paid_Mods (2015–2017)

- https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Creation_Club (2017–2023)

- https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_Mod:Verified_Creator_Program (2023–)
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-22 20:09:14+00:00
> No More Coupon Scams: most people recognize rebates/coupons are scams, and the rise of discounters/warehouse stores/Internet shopping has largely obviated them

This one got much worse: now you have to install an app (fast food) and/or join a data-harvesting "loyalty program" (grocery stores, Target, others) to get what should be the normal menu prices instead of the batshit crazy list prices. This affects most of the same places that had coupons (plus, actually, there are still tons of coupons? I don't really understand this item)
by conductr | 2025-04-22 20:09:35+00:00
I have a 6 year old. I don't let him use the internet or tablets or phones, so I get it, question was out of curiosity of other people's thought process. I just lack the imagination to know what other people are actually afraid of as I often find people have what I consider far fetched boogeyman imaginations. Yet, they allow their infants to play on an iPad for hours, etc. which I find no more/less risky especially as they become older and can seek out content they prefer. My ban on it for my kid is more so based on my parenting opinion that boredom is a life skill and beneficial to young minds (probably all ages actually) and constant entertainment/screentime is unhealthy. I don't ban the devices because I'm afraid of the content he may encounter, I just want him to enjoy his childhood before it's inevitably stolen by screens.

I think my theory is kind of correct, people generally 'trust' a YouTube censor but an AI censor is currently seen as untrusted boogeyman territory.
by michaelt | 2025-04-22 20:10:50+00:00
When you're operating your robot around humans, you want to be very confident it won't injure anyone. It'd be pretty bad if a bug in your code meant instead of putting the cast iron frying pan in the dishwasher, it sent it flying across the room.

One way of doing that is to write code with no bugs or unpredictable behaviour, a nigh-impossible feat - especially once you've got ML models in the mix.

Another option is to put a guard cage around your robot so nobody can enter pan-throwing distance without deactivating the robot first. But obviously that's not practical in a home environment.

Another option is just to go slowly all the time. The pan won't fly very far if the robot only moves 6 inches per second.
by nopelynopington | 2025-04-22 20:11:10+00:00
True, I guess it would only make it more generic if you blindly followed the advice.

In your niche situation (personal writing, not commercial, very limited use) I guess it doesn't really hurt anyone. You're not depriving some editor of a fee, or selling AI generated work to strangers.

I guess I just feel the need to point out the risk because it is already detrimental, already making it tough for humans.

I'm not sure who voted me down, I didn't think anything I said was controversial. Maybe the founders of proWritingAid are on here
by jjulius | 2025-04-22 20:11:30+00:00
This comment makes assumptions and gives OP crap for said assumptions. As someone who also frequently backpacks in the same region, it's just not true. OP specified "wilderness zone" and there are numerous wilderness areas where the only requirement is to fill out a permit yourself near/at the trailhead. Otherwise, access is entirely free. It's hard to know how much of a violation OP made without knowing exactly where in the Cascades they were.
by shagie | 2025-04-22 20:12:17+00:00
> orange cats are almost exclusively male

This is also equally true for black cats as the genetics works the same for them too.

However, it's more that "female cats can be tortoiseshell" and thus the ratios will get somewhere around a 2:1 ratio of male orange cats to female orange cats.

Assume that you've got 50% tortie females, 25% orange female, and 25% black female... and 50% orange male and 50% black male. You can run Montecarlo simulations on that but it will always be the case that orange (and black) cats are predominantly male because of the smaller number of options.

There's also the increased visibility of the "trouble puffs" on a male orange cat (compared to black male) and so conformation bias of "yep, that's an orange male cat."
by selkin | 2025-04-22 20:12:25+00:00
Homebrew sure has room for improvement, as most software does, and I appreciate every effort to replace and renew what we have with something better. But my own grievances with Homebrew isn't with the codebase itself.

What discourages me from using Homebrew is the intent and the mindset of its developers and packagers, who, I think, see their goal building an "unstable" distribution, as Debian defines it: "[a distribution that] is run by developers and those who like to live on the edge".

I am not blaming the Homebrew developers for building a Sid rather than Bookworm. Some people want just that. Heck, I used to run Debian Sid myself, but have lost my patience for maintaining my own computers since: I am kept busy enough by fixing the software I write, I don't want to spend more time fixing software I did not.
by dang | 2025-04-22 20:12:35+00:00
Related:

I should have loved biology (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40103590 - April 2024 (253 comments)

I should have loved biology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32035054 - July 2022 (271 comments)

I should have loved biology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25136422 - Nov 2020 (298 comments)
by dwohnitmok | 2025-04-22 20:12:38+00:00
Yeah; students often conflate numerals with numbers and assume that if two numerals are distinct then the numbers they represent must also be distinct. It's not trivially true! You need to prove that distinct numerals lead to distinct numbers and as 0.999... vs 1.000... demonstrates it is not always true for various kinds of numerals and numbers!

I think teasing apart numerals and numbers is a good first step on one's journey in mathematical logic.
by elcritch | 2025-04-22 20:12:56+00:00
Good points, background downloads would speed it up.

And the language doesn’t have much to do with that. This project looks to be someone just toying around with Rust or their own PM. Props for that, but the headline has extra implications on HN.

I recently rewrote a big portion of Atlas [1]. It’s a Nim based dependency manager that clones Nim packages to a `deps/` folder. Initially I was worried about using reference types, etc, for performance reasons. It’s a general habit of mine. Then I remembered that stuff would be negligible compared to the download times and git overhead. Well aside from the SAT solver.

1: https://github.com/nim-lang/atlas
by parpfish | 2025-04-22 20:13:16+00:00
I know that VHS tapes aren’t great, but I’ve found that having a limited supply of physical media actually makes me more likely to watch things.

Browsing through a collection at the library or a friends house, it’s shocking how quickly you find that people will converge on “oh, let’s watch this!” rather than endlessly scrolling through thumbnails and previews on Netflix and never committing
by Manabu-eo | 2025-04-22 20:14:54+00:00
I saw the argument that the source code is the preferred base to make changes and modifications in software, but in the case of those large models, the weights themselves are the preferred way.

It's much easier and cheap to make a finetune or LoRA than to train from scratch to adapt it to your use case. So it's not quite like source vs binary in software.
by inemesitaffia | 2025-04-22 20:15:15+00:00
Apart from the fact that you have private prosecution in the UK, there's definitely a difference between private action for compensation and state action that might come with a criminal record.

The UK is the home of Cautions and ASBO's where you find out you have a criminal record just like that.

A place where you'd rather call the police than intervene to stop an ongoing crime because you might end up with a criminal record.

Canada of course is similar here.
by woodruffw | 2025-04-22 20:15:39+00:00
Sure. There's also a reason no major OSS packaging ecosystem uses these protocols: the only thing worse than a slow distribution scheme is an unreliable one. Combine that with the (reasonable) lack of a reward scheme for seeding an OSS packaging ecosystem, and you have a distribution mechanism that's significantly more brittle than the current "throw a lot of bandwidth at it" approach.

(Among other technical challenges, like updating the P2P broadcast for each new bottle.)
by thyristan | 2025-04-22 20:15:58+00:00
No, that is just plain wrong. All attenuation is exponential (except very special stuff like energy resonances at certain particle energies). You just get very different exponents for rarely vs. frequently interacting particles. The charge of an alpha particle is also only twice the charge of a beta particle with a far higher (orders of magnitude, not just a factor of 2) penetration depth. The relevant difference is actually the mass and size (i.e. cross-section) of an alpha particle that makes it far more frequently interacting.

There are some more differences that govern the cross-section like conservation of momentum and angular momentum in certain interactions where there are differences between gamma and alpha particles. Or magic number nuclei that are relevant for neutron absorption.

But in general, for a given material and particle, attenuation is always always always exponential over the penetration depth vs number of particles, until you hit a low enough energy that some other mechanism for energy transfer can come into play or become unavailable, where the exponent will change and you will see a change in slope.
by stevenAthompson | 2025-04-22 20:16:22+00:00
I'm not sure I follow. In all it's variants the ability to trace unpopular speech back to the speaker puts their life in danger and robs them of their freedom under threat of violence. Am I missing something?

The United States, for example, wouldn't exist if Thomas Payne hadn't been able to publish his pamphlets anonymously.
by mopsi | 2025-04-22 20:16:23+00:00
> it's european version of Cuba crisis - geopolitical enemy in the underbelly of nuclear power

The Cuban Missile Crisis was about nuclear missiles only minutes from Florida. After the crisis, Cuba continued to host Russian fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and tons of other weapons until the USSR finally collapsed in 1991.

Ukraine had nothing of this sort, and to this day, doesn't have.

It is a lazy comparison thrown around to justify a textbook imperial land grab by Russia.
by fuhsnn | 2025-04-22 20:16:42+00:00
It's great of programmers to aim for portability, but frankly it's kind of a stretch that an arbitrary C compiler that is limited in standard support would the same time be sophisticated enough to process these tricks as intended.

In my fork of chibicc (a small C11 compiler) there are plenty of additional logic that were implemented solely to play nice with C tricks from real world projects that could have been easier if they target later standards. The most recent being how curl's build script determines the size of primitive types: they use (sizeof(T) == N) as a case index and expect the compiler to error on case-duplication[1], I had to add a backtracking loop to check exactly that[2]. I'm not complaining as more error checks isn't a bad thing, however, I'll advise programmers willing to invest in obscure tricks to actually test them on obscure compilers (instead of just flipping -std).

[1]: https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/339464432555b9bd71a5e4a4c4...

[2]: https://github.com/fuhsnn/slimcc/blob/54563ecae8480f836a0bb2...
by StableAlkyne | 2025-04-22 20:16:51+00:00
> So... are _all_ introductions to machine learning just extremely wrong here?

It's more of a heuristic. Most people have their first experience in Excel, where you can fit a polynomial. Cranking up degree will always improve r2 (since excel doesn't do a holdout), so it's a very common mistake new students make.

It's much more understandable at the beginner level to say "you'll overfit if you crank up the degree" than it is to explain regularization and basises. Later on you can introduce it, but early on it's confusing and distracting to students who might not even know how to solve for an ordinary least squares model.
by smsm42 | 2025-04-22 20:17:16+00:00
It feels kinda ironic to find this kind of article in The Nation. I mean if it were Reason, sure. But The Nation is a leftist publication, endorsing Sanders. Of all regimes that I could find myself in, I'd expect to be the least amount of left alone in the socialist paradise they are ultimately rooting for. Nothing is left alone in a true socialist country, The Will of The People is in everything and everything is subject to it. That's kinda the point of collectivism - everything is everybody's common business.

Transparency is vital for regulation and control (see e.g. Seeing like a State) and the more opaque humans are, the harder is to control them, plan their actions, reason about their future behavior. How can you make a five-year plan for the whole country if you don't even know anything about anybody? Opacity is not going to work here. You would need a ton of very, very detailed information.

That's why China is introducing more and more measures to defy privacy - this is the only way their model can hope to work, it it impossible in the opaque-person world where no information about the person can be created. The article argues that privacy is not property, but the concept of privacy can not but lead to the concept of property - if you can have private thoughts, can you have private expressions? If you can have private expressions, can you have their material embodiment? If you can have the material embodiment, can you exercise control over it and limit the control of others over it? Oops, you just created private property.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-04-22 20:17:17+00:00
1. Cataclysmic meteor strikes ending the ice age? Aren't they more likely to prolong it?

2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?

3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
by thyristan | 2025-04-22 20:18:41+00:00
Shielding in radiation safety means attenuation to a safe level. But for detection, that is irrelevant because radiation detectors can be very sensitive, such that even very minute quantities making it through a "shielding" are still sufficient. When in doubt, you just increase integration time to almost forever and you will still get a sufficient number of particles to get a measurement.
by parpfish | 2025-04-22 20:19:52+00:00
Other food:

- Mangoes went from unknown/exotic in the US to being a standard fruit in your produce aisle.

- it’s surprising how cars in the 80s didn’t actually have cup holders. I always thought that was just a joke until I bought an 80s car and learned I’d need to buy the cup holders aftermarket

- frozen vegetables overtaking canned vegetables

- sugar free sodas
by xyproto | 2025-04-22 20:19:57+00:00
Interesting! I fully disagree, though.

If a person tortures and rapes someone to survive, I would say that they are evil, regardless of what they do after those circumstances. Regardless of they are repeating their actions or not.

I also disagree that evil people are blind people. They might be cowards and/or cold hearted and/or entitled, but not blind. They can see with their eyes. They can understand what they are doing in the moment.

Unless you are thinking of fight/flight/freeze responses, where people are doing something evil in this state? For this case, I might agree with you that they are "blind".

Doing evil requires people to have a relatively cold heart in the moment and/or be cowards enough to not stop doing it and/or entitled enough to prioritize themselves.

I agree about how the lack of resistance to evil acts gradually lets evil into the heart. Nicely put!

I also agree that hurt feelings is separate from evil. People can feel hurt over almost everything, on a scale from reasonable to unreasonable.

I do think that punishing someone else for murdering someone else is evil if it's done with a cold heart and/or with cowardice and/or entitlement, though. If it's for protecting society, that's different, and not evil.

I haven’t read any books by Ilyin, but as I gather he treats evil as an objective, metaphysical force—an absence of some universal good. That sounds neat, but it lets people off the hook, as if they were swept into cosmic darkness rather than held accountable for the cowardice, entitlement, and cold‑hearted choices they knowingly make, IMO.
by grunder_advice | 2025-04-22 20:20:33+00:00
Is this a recruiting attempt by Los Alamos? AI/ML for science as this broad field used to be known is interesting. Some five years ago there as a real craze where every STEM lab at my university was doing some form of ML project. I think by now people have learned what works and what doesn't. Climate models for example have been quite successful. Possibly the reason is that they learn directly from collected data, rather than trying to emulate the output of simulations. Attempts to build similiar models for fluid dynamics have been rather dismal. In general, big models and big data result in useful models, even if only because these models seem to be somehow interpolating based on similiar training data points. Trying to replace classical physics based models with ML models trained on simulation data does not seem to work. The model is only ever capable of emulating a physically plausible output when the input is close enough to the training data, and that too, only when the system isn't chaotic. For applications where you are generating a sample to be used in a downstream task, ML models trained on lots of data can be very useful. You only need a few lucky guesses, that you can verify downstream, to end up with some useful result. In short, there is no magic to it. It's a useful tool that can be regarded as both a search algorithm and an optimization algorithm.