MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by evanelias | 2025-04-10 15:03:09+00:00
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

Selling services like support or consulting is fine, since that's generally independent from FOSS licensing/copyright concerns. Anyone can do that though, not just the creator or contributors. For example, there are lots of third party database consultancies that offer support for major databases, both FOSS and commercial.

Customization is also fine, but the purchaser of the customization must still abide by the AGPL: the end-users of the customized software need access to the customized codebase. If the customized product is only being used internally (e.g. for employees of the company that purchased the customization) then there's no problem. But if they're offering it in an externally-facing SaaS, or embedding it in externally-distributed software, the customized code must be made available to the end-users of the software.

With FOSS often it's simpler to do this as "sponsored development" where someone pays for a new feature to be made directly upstream, rather than having a customized fork.

That all said, services and customization are generally difficult to scale as a business. Even with a fairly large userbase, the percentage of companies who are willing to pay for support or customization tends to be disappointingly low.
by smeej | 2025-04-10 15:03:18+00:00
I was expecting the blog post to be different based on the headline. It's really about an AI-powered tool that finds the links to things you want to refer to for you so you don't have to waste time looking up all your own references. It's not actually about writing the post.

I don't see how this tool takes the human out of the writing. It just saves some time looking up links. I think people are judging the post by the headline, but might actually find use for the tool itself.
by lenerdenator | 2025-04-10 15:03:33+00:00
> One wonders what Asimov would make of the world of 2025, and whether he’d still see artificial and natural intelligence as complementary, rather than in competition.

I mean, I just got done watching a presentation at Google Next where the presenter talked to an AI agent and set up a landscaping appointment with price match and a person could intervene to approve the price match.

It's cool, sure, but understand, that agent would absolutely have been a person on a phone five years ago, and if you replace them with agentic AI, that doesn't mean that person has gone away or is now free to write poetry. It means they're out of an income and benefits. And that's before you consider the effects on the pool of talent you're drawing from when you're looking for someone to intervene on behalf of these agentic AIs, like that supervisor did when they approved the price match. If you don't have the entry-level person, you don't have them five years later when you want to promote someone to manage.
by TrapLord_Rhodo | 2025-04-10 15:03:40+00:00
The problem i have with this article is they use a "Hypothetical shoe" that retails for $100, but then directly quote a $220 shoe for the "American Made" side. Then use this as the entire justification for the price disperity. People absolutely pay $220 for "Chinese made" shoes too. It's all about branding...

Rockwell is price competitive with both kuka and fanuc. If you want to talk about 'Difference in manufacturing cost', why don't we start there?
by linkregister | 2025-04-10 15:03:48+00:00
Many mathematics professors don't require homework to be turned in for grading. For example, the calculus courses at many US universities. Grades are solely determined by quizzes in the discussion section and by exams. Failure rates are above 30%, but that's accepted.

This model won't work for subjects that rely on students writing reports. But yes, universities frequently accept that failure rates for some courses will be high, especially for engineering and the sciences.
by falcrist | 2025-04-10 15:04:02+00:00
One of the interesting things about the movie was how well they conveyed the mood and atmosphere on subs.

I don't know exactly how to describe it, but the sub force just has a different temperament than the surface fleet.

Of course, all of that went out the window when people in the movie started yelling at each other. From that point on it's a fictional scenario contrived to create a dramatic story.

Same with Apollo 13. Everything I see and hear about NASA personnel indicates that these people are consummate professionals who stay cool under extreme circumstances... but that wouldn't make for a good movie.

I should probably note that this is coming from the perspective of someone who grew up with a father who was an career enlisted man (CPO/EM-N) stationed mostly on boomers.
by mapt | 2025-04-10 15:04:25+00:00
Additionally: If you want to _mass_ mass produce these things, an injection molding setup is going to be your goal. You can sort of hack one together for plastic molding using a pneumatic/hydraulic cylinder and some mold plates that are either cast metal (lost-PLA, lost-wax), cured plaster, or CNC'd. The stuff that will give you five million units a day costs as much as a house, but there is a middle ground that is competitive with FDM on quality but significantly faster for more like $300-$3000.

The limitation with injection molding is typically the cost and complexity of having mold plates made when you don't have a demand for all that many units.
by noirscape | 2025-04-10 15:05:56+00:00
I think the core issue with CalDAV (and by extension, the protocol it's build on top of, WebDAV) is one somewhat endemic with most W3 approved standards: it's way too overengineered to do too many things at the same time rather than a lean format.

The result is a protocol that's essentially become a furball of different ideas mashed together, which inevitably leads to the situation where a lot of services just... don't try to be full spec compliant since it's out of scope for what they actually want to do.

I don't think I've ever seen a W3 data format spec that didn't end up this way, it just always seems to happen. (It doesn't seem to happen with their lower level protocol specifications.)
by AlotOfReading | 2025-04-10 15:06:07+00:00
It's trying to solve a bunch of different, slightly overlapping problems. Some examples:

* provide an identity document that's hard to forge. Some states, Hawaii famously, had IDs that were ridiculously easy to forge.

* reduce expiration times so that identifying details aren't decades out of date. Some states (e.g. Arizona) issued IDs with 50+ years of validity.

* require actual verification of identity at issuance

* include SSN details. I have no idea why this was a thing and it's since been removed from the actual federal requirements, but most states require original social security documents to be provided during application.

* to establish residency at a particular address.

If it were just identity and residency, states would accept things like voter registration as sufficient. Yet many states (e.g. California) do not.
by test6554 | 2025-04-10 15:06:38+00:00
A game that is not on a computer... So they don't even calculate damage or move distance for you. And you have to buy each figurine and paint it yourself...

And people are spending all their money on this? That's why we're not mining asteroids right now?

I feel like people could just use AR glasses for this and spend nothing but their time.
by BeetleB | 2025-04-10 15:07:15+00:00
Beyond the obvious answer (looking at two files at once, or a shell, or compilation buffer, or docs), I have a much simpler reason. My monitor is wide enough that if I have only one window, then all the text will be on the left end of the monitor, which means I'm constantly turning my head to work, leading to neck strain.

So even if I'm working on one thing, I do C-x 2 and use the right window, because then the beginning of the text is aligned to the center of my screen.

Yes, this is because I insist on running Emacs maximized.
by gh0stcat | 2025-04-10 15:08:39+00:00
Another thing I have noticed with automation in general is that the more you use it, the less you understand the thing being automated. I think the reason why a lot of things today are still being manually done is because humans inherently understand that for both short AND long term success with a task, a conceptual understanding of the components of the system, whether that is partially or fully imagined in the case of complex business scenarios, is necessary, even though it lengthens time to complete in the short term. How do you modify or grow a system you do not understand? It feels like you're cutting a branch at a certain length and not allowing it to grow beyond where you've placed the automation. I will be interested to see the outcome of the increased push today for advanced automation in places where the business relies on understanding of the system to make adjacent decisions/further business operations.
Ask HN: How to Prepare for No Electricity
by BrannonKing | 2025-04-10 15:08:48+00:00
Dear HN crowd:

If there were a reasonable probability of you and your continent being without electricity for a year, how would you prepare? I'm interested in your thoughts on the things I listed below -- where to get these things and what I'm missing.

Water: I don't know if the water pressure to my house would stay or not. Assuming not, I need some mechanism for collecting rain water off the roof or off a tarp. I need some water filters that work well for pulling water from a nearby stream. I've seen water purification pills, but are there any without detergents in them? I used to have a house with a well; if I get one again, I'll get a hand-pump for the well. Hopefully the toilets will stay flushable by dumping water in them.

Food: I will keep several buckets of wheat berries and oats. I grind my own wheat regularly anyway. I need a hand-powered grinder to go with them, though. Some extra canned food would be handy. I expect the deer in the nearby forest would disappear quickly, but I might try to shoot one early.

Heat: I need a propane tank and a heater for the house. The propane needs to be used for cooking too. Without electricity, maybe a large battery with a solar charger would be helpful to run a blower? Or maybe a wood-burning stove would be sufficient? There is forest nearby.

Communications: it would be awesome if our phones could work peer-to-peer. I haven't seen that tech yet, though. (Work on it!) Maybe I and my extended family could have satellite phones that only cost when used. It would be nice if they could bring in weather and news. I need solar chargers for all these small devices.

Are there any major needs on that list I'm missing? Some things I might want: extra gasoline, a generator powered by my bicycle, a waterwheel generator, dry beans, and a large house battery (though I haven't been impressed by these yet).
by currymj | 2025-04-10 15:09:09+00:00
since late 2024/early 2025 it now is the case, especially with a reasoning model like Sonnet 3.7, DeepSeek-r1, o3, Gemini 2.5, etc., and especially if you upload the textbook, slides, etc alongside the homework to be cheated on.

most normal-difficulty undergraduate assignments are now doable reliably by AI with little to no human oversight. this includes both programming and mathematical problem sets.

for harder problem sets that require some insight, or very unstructured larger-scale programming projects, it wouldn't work so reliably.

but easier homework assignments serve a valid purpose to check understanding, and now they are no longer viable.
by OliveMate | 2025-04-10 15:09:13+00:00
Worth mentioning that despite mentioning kids in the title, the examples in the article include multiple cases of adults at the time who were also struggling . Pointing at smartphones and overly-simplified UIs is valid, but that still doesn't answer all of it – and the answers we have for ourselves won't fit with the present experience.

When I was young, the computer in the back room was monolithic and offered an infinite amount of interaction compared to all the other devices I owned, and it was natural that I'd find myself returning to it over and over again. But with the abundance of screens and connectivity in today's world, that sheer wonder & curiosity would probably be lessened for today's children.

The family PC as an institution was key as well. A broad sandbox for children to mess around in and gain an idea as to how things worked from an early age, and the cost of it [usually] being the only PC in the house meant that adults had to seriously learn how to set up & maintain it as well as teach us how to use it. But this was supplanted and atomised by cheaper laptops when Vista rolled around, then rendered non-existent in the era of smartphones.

> There are always one or two kids in every cohort that have already picked up programming or web development or can strip a computer down to the bare bones

I feel like of all things, this is mostly nurtured by PC gaming. You naturally learn about tweaking settings, installation locations, hardware, config files, troubleshooting issues, and if you're creative or have an apt for programming then you can find yourself making your own game mods. I've heard from Gen Z friends how they got their start learning to port forward so they could run a Minecraft server with their mates!
by VyseofArcadia | 2025-04-10 15:09:16+00:00
I have a self hosted calendar solution. It was $15 at Staples, and it hangs in my kitchen. It wasn't a complete out of the box solution, though, I had to do a little work to customize it. I placed a pen cup with a few pens in it on the counter near the calendar to ensure it is always easy to modify.
by pmontra | 2025-04-10 15:09:19+00:00
I keep one window (in the common OS meaning of window) per virtual desktop and I usually split it into two horizontal buffers. Sometimes I split it in two vertical buffers, for comparing lines. Sometimes even in four, two rows and two columns per row. I can fit 55 lines into my emacs, plus the minibuffer, the status line above the minibuffer and the menu and title bar on top so even split in four buffers each of them is about the same size of the terminals I grew with. And I'm using proportional fonts, that are more readable and space efficient.
by WastedCucumber | 2025-04-10 15:09:48+00:00
I was curious about this too and did some searching. Found this source

https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/882/19th-century-japan...

as well as the wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikyaku

I didn't see anything about tattoos or the eye makeup, but the loincloth definitely came up. That was their typical clothing, regardless of weather, although I find kind of hard to believe.
by Nzen | 2025-04-10 15:09:53+00:00
If your system is C based, tup [0] fulfills your request by watching the outputs of the specified commands. It isn't, however, appropriate for systems like java that create intermediate files that the developer didn't write [1].

[0] https://gittup.org/tup/ex_a_first_tupfile.html

[1] https://github.com/gittup/tup/issues/113

Back to bazel, I am of the impression that some of its complexity comes from a requirement to handle heterogeneous build systems. For example, some python development requires resolving both python dependencies and C. Being good at either is a bunch of work; but, handling both means rolling your own polyglot system or coordinating both as a second class citizen.
by qntmfred | 2025-04-10 15:10:08+00:00
my dad typically gets 3-4 hours sleep a night. when he was a kid he fractured his skull riding his bike and has a hard time getting comfortable laying on a pillow for very long. despite that he's been able to maintain a high performance lifestyle for most of his life. i've also been very interested to know how he's been able to do it.
by kogus | 2025-04-10 15:11:19+00:00
I think we need to consider what the end goal of technology is at a very broad level.

Asimov says in this that there are things computers will be good at, and things humans will be good at. By embracing that complementary relationship, we can advance as a society and be free to do the things that only humans can do.

That is definitely how I wish things were going. But it's becoming clear that within a few more years, computers will be far better at absolutely everything than human beings could ever be. We are not far even now from a prompt accepting a request such as "Write a another volume of the Foundation series, in the style of Isaac Asimov", and getting a complete novel that does not need editing, does not need review, and is equal to or better than the quality of the original novels.

When that goal is achieved, what then are humans "for"? Humans need purpose, and we are going to be in a position where we don't serve any purpose. I am worried about what will become of us after we have made ourselves obsolete.
by dahart | 2025-04-10 15:11:20+00:00
> the number of civilians in the US Federal work force has gone up fairly steadily.

The graph you provided is not Federal government, it’s all US government which includes state & city, and other types of government employees. It should be expected this grows with population size, and to get a sense of whether it’s really shrinking or growing, you should divide by population. But in any case, this chart doesn’t backup your claim that Federal government is growing.

The link to the Federal government was just underneath that graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001. US Federal government absolute size peaked in 1991 and has gone down slightly since then. If you divide this one by population, the decline would be a bit stronger and more obvious. The ~10 year spikes are census workers. Notice we can see the peak in 1991 with or without the census spikes.
by baxtr | 2025-04-10 15:11:36+00:00
The 1980 version of your comment:

>Just saw a demo of a new word processor system that lets a manager dictate straight into the machine, and it prints the memo without a secretary ever touching it. Slick stuff. But five years ago, that memo would’ve gone through a typist. Replace her with a machine, and she’s not suddenly editing novels from home. She’s unemployed, losing her paycheck and benefits.

And when that system malfunctions, who’s left who actually knows how to fix it or manage the workflow? You can’t promote experience that never existed. Strip out the entry-level roles, and you cut off the path to leadership.
by 62951413 | 2025-04-10 15:12:33+00:00
In a galaxy far far away so called "J2EE application servers" used to be the reason JDK upgrades were not allowed. And that would probably be a real major update Java project.

When I joined my current team (in a big honkin' corporation with a history of layoffs and outsourcing) I inherited a dozen microservices, all on JDK8 and a couple written in Scala. So among the first things I did was an upgrade to JDK17 of every single repository. And it was mostly uneventful. More or less use a different Docker base image and bump up the Spring Boot version from 1.x to 3.4. Not running the latest LTS release is professional negligence in my book.
by s1artibartfast | 2025-04-10 15:12:35+00:00
Yeah, I guess that is the problem.

I do care about other people, I just dont think that some exhaust discharged into the water from a fishing boat on the ocean is really harming people's lungs.

My understanding is the issue was NOx emissions as they relate to climate, but I think there is a lot more meaningful and low hanging fruit than banning a few dozen vessels.

> If you don't care about others they won't care about you. That's what society is.

Society is others not caring about you, no matter what you do. Society doesn't tailor its treatment to individuals based on their thoughts or actions. They are invisible.
by empath75 | 2025-04-10 15:13:05+00:00
Not sure that I agree with that. People have been imagining human-like AI since before computers were even a thing. The Star Trek computer from TNG is basically an LLM, really.

AI _researchers_ had a different idea of what AI would be like, as they were working on symbolic AI, but in the popular imagination, "AI" was a computer that acted and thought like a human.
by bananapub | 2025-04-10 15:13:08+00:00
it would almost be funny that the US Government, after having been taken over by racist and antisemitic lunatics are now using this as cover for cracking down on free speech, if it hadn't been so obviously coming down the pipeline ever since the US Elites decided that suppressing college protests about Israeli foreign policy was a good thing since it was kind of annoying.

so many parts of the in-progress Fall of the US are just so so stupid and this is amongst them.
by wyager | 2025-04-10 15:13:42+00:00
I tried googling to find an article, and I found some stuff explaining it, but this seems to be deeper lore than I thought it was.

Basically, a monadic parser combinator can have code that "inspects" a previously parsed value (context-sensitivity) but an applicative parser cannot.

Imagine an input like "3 alice bob dave", with a number and then that many names.

We want to parse

data Parsed = Parsed {count :: Int, names :: [Name]}

Example: monadic parser:

count <- parseInt names <- parseN count name return (Parsed count names)

You need to know the value of count before you keep parsing. Context-sensitive.

Applicative parsers don't let you "inspect" the parsed values. You can do stuff like

Parsed <$> parseInt <*> many name

But if it's not clear where in the input the list of name ends without looking at the output of `parseInt`, you're hosed. There's no way to inspect the output of "parseInt" while you are parsing with an applicative parser.

You could do something like:

Parsed <$> literal "1" <*> replicateM 1 name <|> Parsed <$> literal "2" <*> replicateM 2 name <|> ...

where you have an alternative case for each possible number, but obviously this does not generalize to parse realistic inputs.

Technically, you can use Haskell's laziness to parse this particular grammar efficiently enough using applicatives+alternatives to construct an infinite parse tree, but that's kind of an advanced edge case that won't work in most languages.
by zamadatix | 2025-04-10 15:14:03+00:00
The "share which expires after one use" part requires the password either be visible to the server or encoded in the URL (also visible to to the server) unless you also want to share a password/key to access the password or, in which case the site doesn't make sense, or you want to require both folks are online at the same time to make a brokered WebRTC connection and share via that channel.

I think the intent is you have some crap messaging platform like email or SMS without and want to send a one time access link to the password. I'm not really sure how large the intersection of people who care enough about security to want that but not enough to want to avoid a 3rd party server and hoping first access of the link contents is by the intended target is though.
by jeroenhd | 2025-04-10 15:14:04+00:00
Technically speaking you could use DANE with mDNS. Nobody does it, browser don't implemented it, but you can follow the spec if you'd like.

Practically speaking, HTTPS on LAN is essentially useless, so I don't see the benefits. If anything, the current situation allows the user to apply TOFU to local devices by adding their unsigned certs to the trust store.
by WhyNotHugo | 2025-04-10 15:14:28+00:00
Any subdomain of .localhost works out-of-the-box on Linux, OpenBSD and plenty of other platforms.

Of note, it doesn't work on macOS. I recall having delivered a coding assignment for a job interview long ago, and the reviewer said it didn't work for them, although the code all seemed correct to them.

It turned out on macOS, you need to explicitly add any subdomains of .localhost to /etc/hosts.

I'm still surprised by this; I always thought that localhost was a highly standard thing covered in the RFC long long ago… apparently it isn't, and macOS still doesn't handle this TLD.