MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-04-15 21:50:36+00:00
There are numerous errors in this.

The most obvious is that social security money somehow disappears into a black hole. Of course it doesn't. All of that money is spent on something - usually useful things produced and sold by businesses.

The subtext with complaints about government spending is usually that this money is being handed out to the morally undeserving, and this - by some bizarre alchemy - is the direct cause of a weaker dollar.

In reality the deficit is the difference between money collected in taxes and money spent. Failing to close that gap by raising taxation on those who hoard wealth offshore, spend it on unproductive toys, and buy up key assets like property is an ideological choice, not an economic necessity.

The deficit is a direct result of unproductive wealth hoarding facilitated by unnecessary tax cuts, not of public spending.

But it's hard to get this point across in a country where "Why should I pay taxes to subsidise my neghbour's health care?" is taken seriously as a talking point, but "Why are corporations bankrupting half a million people year instead of paying out for health insurance as contracted?" is considered ideological extremism.

As for the rest - the US was clearly at its strongest and most innovative and productive when taxes were high and the government was funding original R&D before handing it over to the private sector for marketing and commercial development.

The funding part including training generations of PhDs.

That's literally how the computer industry started.

The idea that an ideologically pure private sector can do this on its own without getting stuck in the usual tar pits of quarterly short-termism, cranky narcissistic mismanagement, and toxic oligopoly is a pipe dream.

US corporate culture can't do long-term strategy. It's always going to aim for the nearest short-term maximum while missing bigger rewards that are years or even decades out.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-04-15 21:51:06+00:00
> if you want to sell a product based on the idea that AI can handle complex tasks, you should probably have AI doing what should be simple, frontline support.

That would only be true if you were correct that your AI can handle complex tasks. If you want to sell dowsing rods, you probably don't want to structure your own company to rely on the rods.
by elif | 2025-04-15 21:51:17+00:00
I'm lucky enough that I get to take my tyke to the zoo 5 days a week and while I agree with your take, I also have seen enough of the parents making the mistake outlined in the original post to know that it was actually talking about toddlers.

You would be shocked to see how many supposed adults engage in one sided arguments with crying children, usually centered on the parents feelings.
by arp242 | 2025-04-15 21:51:34+00:00
> There are also many ficticious names for 64-bit x86, which you should avoid unless you want the younger generation to make fun of you. amd64 refers to AMD’s original implementation of long mode in their K8 microarchitecture, first shipped in their Athlon 64 product. Calling it amd64 is silly and also looks a lot like arm64, and I am honestly kinda annoyed at how much Go code I’ve seen with files named fast_arm64.s and fast_amd64.s. Debian also uses amd64/arm64, which makes browsing packages kind of annoying.

I prefer amd64 as it's so much easier to type and scans so much easier. x86_64 is so awkward.

Bikeshed I guess and in the abstract I can see how x86_64 is better, but pragmatism > purity and you'll take my amd64 from my cold dead hands.

As for Go, you can get the GOARCH/GOOS combinations from "go tool dist list". Can be useful at times if you want to ensure your code cross-compiles in CI.
by amluto | 2025-04-15 21:51:54+00:00
> The problem, as it were, is that most of these "problems" are invented by "news" agencies and then repeated over and over until people believe them.

I disagree. I think they’re heavily exaggerated, and a whole pile of outright lies have been added on top, but more than enough of the “problems” seem to be generally rooted in real issues. For example:

I know a law professor who cannot teach basic topics in family law without dealing with trigger warnings.

Here’s some “DEI”:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944203

Ever applied for anything from the NSF? You get to write about “broader impacts”. Everyone seems to know it’s BS, but it’s been there for decades.

Watching Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard from the sidelines, I found it rather difficult to agree with Harvard.

The ~75% indirect / F&A grant allocation to universities was indeed a real mess. Not necessarily the 75% number, but the structure of the allocation. I’ve experienced this from the research group side at two different universities, and I’ve even submitted formal feedback to a university suggesting that they voluntarily waive a portion in order to reduce the outrageously degree to which the allocation incentivizes grantees to do silly and wasteful things with their grant money. Now, obviously, the administration should not solve this problem by arbitrarily and illegally refusing to pay this money, but the executive branch may be able to legally improve the situation by improving the cost structure (IIRC the current structure is in the CFR), and they could certainly encourage Congress to adjust the statutes if needed.

> For example, in this conversation, there is literally no fact I could mention, no study I could cite, that would convince you that any one of these things might not actually be a real problem because you didn't use facts and science to develop them in the first place.

Let’s be clear: I do not, and never have, supported Trump or MAGA. But I’m perfectly happy to try to dig up real examples of actual issues, and I’m kind of tired of the tendency of, say, the more liberal media to avoid acknowledging problems. If there are real issues, engage with them! Don’t tell me that they don’t exist without giving some evidence!
by xp84 | 2025-04-15 21:52:13+00:00
I'd expect no better quality of operations from the only car rental company which will accept reservations for any class of car at any time, then upon the customer's arrival demands that they pay to 'upgrade' to a higher class that they have in stock. Let this be another reason to avoid them.

(For context, at least in the US, reputable firms will reflect their current inventory for a last-minute reservation, or attempt to project inventory for a longer-term one, and if they mess up and don't have 'your' car, they will rent you a bigger car for the rate promised.)
by tokioyoyo | 2025-04-15 21:52:17+00:00
People value freedom in different ways. Personally, I would ally myself with tomorrow’s bully, rather than today’s. I understand the implications, but it looks like most of nations are shifting in the same manner.

One note, some of the things you’ve listed has been proven as “mostly on paper, once people get their way, mental gymnastics will overcome the reason” in the past month. For a bastion of “freedom and democracy”, it’s really not looking like one from outside.
by JohnFen | 2025-04-15 21:52:36+00:00
I don't doubt that sometimes this is the case. However, I don't think it's always the case. However there's a ton of nuance here, and some of the nuance is around what sort of stuff is being written.

For creative works outside of commercial art, I don't want it to be AI generated because a ton of the value of those works is directly because they're made by people. The exact same work made by a machine is not as valuable to me.

With commercial art and non-creative works, being AI generated is less of an issue, as long as the output was actually reviewed and corrected before publication. Judging by a lot of what I've been seeing, this is often a thing that just doesn't happen. When it doesn't, it devalues the work because of the increased number of errors.

Neither of those objections have anything to do with the use of AI being an "easy button" or cheating in some way.
by theGeatZhopa | 2025-04-15 21:52:46+00:00
Haters gonna hate. I think it's because of bezos' finance participated causing the backlash. If it was Kate perry and her bouncers or some other famous people than it would be different.

With me, too, this only caught my attention because of bezos wife's name.

But cool. All girls crew! Hope they had a good time.
by dang | 2025-04-15 21:52:47+00:00
These stories aren't being deleted—there was quite a large thread (in fact maybe two large threads?) about precisely that, within the last couple weeks. I'll see if I can dig up the links, or maybe someone else remembers?

The problem isn't that the major stories are deleted; it's that even if a story spends hours on the front page, the set of users who actually see it still has measure zero [1]. Then inevitably a few of the rest assume that they didn't see it because it was sinisterly suppressed, whether by mods or user flags.

Where this ends up getting us is the 'nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded' theory of HN threads! [2] It's always been like this—it's baked into the fundamentals of how HN works (the limited frontpage space, the dynamics of the internet, the fact that most people don't use HN Search). It's just showing up more intensely these days because the times are more intense and we've been in a tsunami phase for a few months now.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

---

Edit: I found these ones. Admittedly most weren't on the frontpage for all that long:

EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones over spying fears - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43680556 - April 2025 (46 comments)

How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43630624 - April 2025 (338 comments)

Cell Phone OPSEC for Border Crossings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43555597 - April 2025 (36 comments)

How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43480730 - March 2025 (98 comments)

Is it safe to travel to the United States with your phone? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452474 - March 2025 (164 comments)

EFF Border Search Pocket Guide - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43441895 - March 2025 (32 comments)

Ask HN: Are you afraid to travel to US to tech conferences? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43422350 - March 2025 (198 comments)
by arghwhat | 2025-04-15 21:52:55+00:00
This is not a "punishment", and what clients to differs greatly.

The original spec for the original client allocated a portion of its bandwidth to random peers instead of known-good/preferred peers, so if you had no chunks you were basically bandwidth and/or peer restricted.

If you take the arch linux ISO right now and put it into aria2c to be a new, unknown client with no data to offer, you'll find that while it takes a few seconds to join the network, fetch metadata and connect to peers, you'll quickly saturate your connection completely without ever uploading a single byte.

If you wanted, a streaming network could use direct access or low-hop access as seeding incentive - seed to get slightly lower content latency. When the streaming client is controlled by the content provider, seeding is easily forced and topology could be controlled centrally.
by piva00 | 2025-04-15 21:53:07+00:00
I don't believe it was well designed, it felt clunky to use, concepts weren't intuitive enough to understand after a few uses.

I tried to use it for a few months after release, always got frustrated to the point I didn't feel like reaching out to friends to be part of it.

The absurd annoyance of its marketing, pushing it into every nook and cranny of Google's products was the nail in the coffin. I'm starting to feel as annoyed by the push with Gemini, it just keeps popping up at annoying times when I want to do my work.
by feverzsj | 2025-04-15 21:53:30+00:00
You should try "AV-8500 Special" from 90s' Japan.

[0] https://groups.google.com/g/alt.video.laserdisc/c/Ws6h9uiumF...

[1] https://x.com/nabetora164/status/1660981662006775809
by ipsento606 | 2025-04-15 21:54:00+00:00
> If someone logs into their bank and notices that changing the account number in the URL lets them withdraw from other people’s accounts, no court is going to shrug it off and say that it’s the bank’s fault for not being more secure

When you open a bank account, there is an actual contract and regulatory framework that governs how you use the account. A URL parameter is an implementation detail that no more alters the contract than a broken lock on a vault would alter the contract.

But when you interact with a smart contract, the smart contract is the contract. What you are allowed to do is defined by what the smart contract lets you do. You don't need to open an account, agree to T&Cs or sign any other sort of contract to interact with the smart contract.

If the smart contract is not the contract, how would you propose we can determine what the real contract is?
by theonething | 2025-04-15 21:54:48+00:00
> don't really care how polite they go about it.

Does that apply to everybody or just customer service people?

How about your coworker, boss, teacher, spouse, children, parents? Say you make a mistake and they correct you by saying "Not like that, you fuckhead". That's no different to you than "Oh, oops, I think it's this way."?

Even a customer service person, if they correct you the first way, you don't mind?
by krapp | 2025-04-15 21:55:02+00:00
No, not really. The "groomer" panic took place during the Biden years, with plenty of states passing anti-trans legislation and banning pro-trans books from libraries. The Biden administration did not reverse the widespread cultural hatred, discrimination and violence against trans people in the US in any meaningful sense. And it's honestly weird that you would think it even could have, given where we are now politically.
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-15 21:55:11+00:00
Early Internet is before the Web was its main thing.

Early Web is before most netizens (remember that?) had ever heard or seen the term "blog", and much of the web was folks' "home pages" on whatever weird topic they were interested in (some were effectively "blogging", but that wasn't a term yet—"web log" might see limited use). This was the Nerd Web.

Mid-period is from the rise of "blog" to the rise of the smartphone, Google capitulating in the never-ending war on spammers and ruining itself instead, and Facebook coming about. Roughly '08 would be the end of this period. Call this the Macromedia Flash Web, perhaps.

Everything since that is the Late, or Hellscape, Web, an age dominated to an extreme degree by spam, scams, ads, astroturfing, and absolute insanity becoming normalized and spilling over into real life. This is the part that made it clear we'd have been better off never inventing any of this.
by duxup | 2025-04-15 21:55:15+00:00
>It says the warning also particularly applies to people "whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current U.S. administration," or who identify as transgender.

That's not an unreasonable note. ICE seems intent on filtering "ideas".

https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/0...

Yes that tweet is real, and yes they deleted it.
by nostrademons | 2025-04-15 21:56:15+00:00
Fertility rates are below replacement on every continent except Africa, and they're dropping quickly there. Immigration isn't going to save us, at least not long-term.

I think what'll happen is that areas that still have a vibrant age pyramid will put up borders (either geographic or economic or both) with ones that don't, and say "Sorry, you're on your own" to the latter. They protect their children at the expense of their elders, basically. It won't be national borders either: the fertility issue cuts across most major nations, but there are certain regions where people still raise children.
by blululu | 2025-04-15 21:56:35+00:00
A simple Google search would reveal: GDP: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp... GPD Per Capita: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334256/wwii-pre-war-gdp...

US: 6134 UK: 5983 GER: 5544

The US would be even higher were it not for the South bringing down the average. Not really a surprise: America has always been a highly educated and highly skilled country.
by quantadev | 2025-04-15 21:56:54+00:00
The mainstream media in America has turned half the country into proverbial "Unthinking Brainwashed Toddlers". I think the key problem about "Toddlers" is that they think with emotions rather than with logic and reason. They're old enough to know they're mad about something, but too unwise to reason about root causes and potential solutions, often unaware that THEY are the CAUSE of their problems.

If you think you might be in the political party that's thinking in this way, then congratulations, you're probably right, and you should start using reason. To the other half, don't worry it's not you. The people I'm talking to know exactly who they are, and I don't even need to say which side it is, because at this point, in 2025, it has finally become utterly obvious to most.
Finding Academic Research Roles
by suvan | 2025-04-15 21:56:59+00:00
I unfortunately did not get into my top schools for MS/PhD applications so I'm looking for pre-doc equivalents (similar to how things work in economics) for computer science. I've cold emailed a good amount of professors that I am interested in working with, but most seem to lack funding or don't reply to cold emails. Any better ideas on how to go about this?
by pedalpete | 2025-04-15 21:58:00+00:00
This looks really interesting, I always thought Linktree (and all the copycats) were just too simplistic.

However, I don't see anywhere on the homepage where you have an example. I think it would be really helpful if the example images you posted actually went to those pages. Or even better, can your homepage just be a demonstration of your product?

ATM, it seems quite distracting, rather than just being clear about the benefit.
by int_19h | 2025-04-15 21:58:53+00:00
Given that Trump has already been heavily meme'd as the Emperor of Mankind from WH40k, who's to say he doesn't get the same ultimate treatment? ~

On a more serious note, suppose the next president is JD Vance instead; do you think things would be any better? I suspect they would rather get worse when someone with similar beliefs but more intellectual capacity to implement them is in charge.
by arghwhat | 2025-04-15 21:58:57+00:00
Yes that's the intended behavior of HLS - the content provider advertises which streams are available and at what bitrates, and the client picks which to use based on the current stream performance and its own capability.

The server can control the stream by advertising a customized manifest to individual clients, although it's a bit silly. HLS is designed to be extremely easy to load distribute and throw CDN/cache proxies in front, and it's a bad sad that content providers are this bad at load management. :/

Either way, the assumption here is that you would swap out the client doing HLS with a client designed to use a P2P protocol, including the seeding portion and network health management.
by PaulHoule | 2025-04-15 21:59:22+00:00
Take-off is murder for high performance aircraft. It was a huge problem for the Concorde. In principle an airliner could have achieved better economics (both in terms of fuel efficiency and capital costs) if it flew a bit faster, around the speed of the SR-71, but then the takeoff problem becomes close to impossible. The SR-71, like the Black Horse, took off with a minimal fuel load and refueled in air. It seems that a civil airliner can't do that but maybe a spaceplane can.
by babypuncher | 2025-04-15 21:59:25+00:00
Given how incredibly stingy tech companies are about spending any money on support, I would not be surprised if the story about it being a rogue AI support agent is 100% true.

It also seems like a weird thing to lie about, since it's just another very public example of AI fucking up something royally, coming from a company whose whole business model is selling AI.
by imgabe | 2025-04-15 21:59:33+00:00
They are the ones asking to live in a different country. The burden is on them to demonstrate why they should be allowed to live here, not on us to prove why they shouldn’t.

Let’s say I want to come live in your house. Do you need to prove to me why I shouldn’t be allowed to do that, or do I need to prove to you why I should? If I make speeches and write articles about how you’re an evil person and we should burn your house down, does that make you think it’s a good idea for me to live with you?
by Gunax | 2025-04-15 21:59:53+00:00
There definitely some hypocrisy, but it might work differently in the law.

As devs, we might claim that 'code is the law' but my guess is that the law does not care. That is, one cannot overwrite property laws by a few lines of code.

Consider how disclaimers work--we are increasingly putting limitations on what rights you can contractually forfeit.

This will be interting to watch.
by qingcharles | 2025-04-15 21:59:56+00:00
This is such a common hole. One of my early hacks was a forum that allowed you to upload a pfp but didn't check it was actually an image. Just upload an ASP file which is coded to provide an explorer-like interface. Found the administrator password in a text file. It was "internet" just like that. RDP was open. This was a hosting provider for 4000+ companies. Sent them an email. No thank you for that one.

Always check what is getting uploaded.
by eftychis | 2025-04-15 21:59:58+00:00
Thank you. I tried to keep my comment short, but your expansion was necessary on second thought. For better or for worse, I expect this to be relitigated. (Unless all outgoing presidents start the tradition of pardoning themselves from now on.)

The reason is that what constitutes an official act is up in the air, and let us be honest, the incumbent president is not known for staying inside the Executive branch's lane.

But the sheer unwillingness of the DOJ to prosecute, creates a catch-22: you need indictments to change or clarify Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, and right now there are two options:

Somehow revive the private right to criminal prosecution (and of the president at that)(See Linda R.S. v. Richard D., (1973) 410 U.S. 614 (citations omitted)) or a Federal Court to appoint counsel to investigate a former or incumbent president. (Young v. U.S. ex re. Vuitton et Fils, (1987) 481 U.S. 787.) And I am not sure which one is less likely to happen. (Or for Congress to take that role beyond impeachment, which is even less likely.)
by TrapLord_Rhodo | 2025-04-15 22:00:12+00:00
“The silver lining to all of this is that Trump promised to stop the persecution of crypto people,” Mr. Medjedovic wrote on Signal. “Like, half of the people involved in this resigned/stepped down recently.”

Very interesting that he gives praise to trump after all this hassle from the US government. Why is the US even involved in this? It's a canadian dude and a canadian exchange.
by jFriedensreich | 2025-04-15 22:00:33+00:00
The beta setting of stacked PRs seems to have no effect for me. Reading the mention of a cli in the docs for PR stacks gives me shivers. Please don't say you are implement it like graphite, which is the absolute worst way to do it and makes graphite useless for every sapling and jujutsu user that would need it most. You can also reach me at mrge@ntr.io would be happy to chat!
by memhole | 2025-04-15 22:00:38+00:00
I’ve seen papers that show they can do math. There was one recent-ish one HN that showed an understanding of addition. I’m not convinced myself. At least the open weight models don’t seem to grasp integers. Doing conversions are typically a flop as well. My doubt really comes from how abstract mathematics really is. It’s entirely its own kind of terse language and symbolism. Maybe if there was the kind of focus on it like coding there would be better results?