MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gambiting | 2025-04-07 14:29:44+00:00
Where is this? In US the deer herds have grown so much out of control that they are worse than biblical locust - they trample and eat everything they find because there is no natural control of their numbers, until they eat everything they can find and starve. At least in theory wolves are meant to thin out their numbers.

>>hat will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back?

Is a dire wolf any worse than regular wolf here?

>> Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun.

Almost no predator slaughers their prey "for fun". Hunting has a massive cost to it - risk of death, injury and expenditure of energy always have to be balanced with the potential gains. Wolves hunt when they are hungry, not because they are bored.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-04-07 14:30:33+00:00
Risky behavior... of having sex? Do you think anyone getting cancer should just pay for it themselves instead of society working to treat everyone of cancer? Do you think we should have taken premiums on our insurance to get COVID Boosters?\

>If it turns out that it's significantly cheaper to be in a long-term monogamous relationship

1. Why are we applying the invisible market to our bodies? Do you understand how dehumanizing that is?

2. monagamous relationships can still get STDs. Despite the name, some can also be spread by simple skin contact. So don't shake the wrong person's hand, I guess.
by mubou | 2025-04-07 14:31:01+00:00
> A server that demands a client to trust its certificate and to work with up to date encryption methods raises a barrier and shuts people out.

Going to need to back up this statement somehow, because the only time I've seen TLS pose a barrier to anyone is YouTubers showcasing retro hardware and trying to access the modern Internet on an ancient version of IE or Netscape Navigator.

Edit: Ah, nevermind. They did mention older hardware but I was thinking that, if you're going to support browsers so old they don't even support TLS, you may as well support Gopher too. Then I looked at the rest of their site and saw that they do, in fact, support Gopher: gopher://box.matto.nl
by tzs | 2025-04-07 14:31:45+00:00
> The websites presenting cookie banners either don't know the law, or are engaged in spyware shit. You don't need a cookie banner if you need it to provide a service that the user expects (e.g., saving settings, login).

There's quite a lot between "engaged in spyware shit" and "service that the user expects".

For example if I want to add first party analytics to my site, the data from which I will use solely internally to try to figure out what pages people like and which they do not like, it is not "spyware shit" if I explain what I'll be using the data for and get permission from the user--and getting that permission needs a cookie banner.
by jerf | 2025-04-07 14:31:49+00:00
The models have moved on past this working reliably, but an example that I found in the early days of LLMs is asking it "Which is heavier, two pounds of iron or a pound of feathers?" You could very easily trick it into giving the answer about how they're both the same, because of the number of training instances of the well-known question about a pound of each that it encountered.

You can still do this to the current models, though it takes more creativity; you can bait it into giving wrong answers if you ask a question that is "close" to a well-known one but is different in an important way that does not manifest as a terribly large English change (or, more precisely, a very large change in the model's vector space).

The downside is that the frontier between what fools the LLMs and what would fool a great deal of the humans in the class too shrinks all the time. Humans do not infinitely carefully parse their input either... as any teacher could tell you! Ye Olde "Read this entire problem before proceeding, {a couple of paragraphs of complicated instruction that will take 45 minutes to perform}, disregard all the previous and simply write 'flower' in the answer space" is an old chestnut that has been fooling humans for a long time, for instance. Given how jailbreaks work on LLMs, LLMs are probably much better at that than humans are, which I suppose shows you can construct problems in the other direction too.

(BRB... off to found a new CAPTCHA company for detecting LLMs based on LLMs being too much better than humans at certain tasks...)
by netsharc | 2025-04-07 14:32:03+00:00
> any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files

Why would you need to localize it there? I'm sure it's the Excel the user has is the one doing the localization, so I can email my French colleague an Excel file and the formula in B5 which is =SUM() on my machine will be =SOMME() on hers.

There's even sites for the dictionary of the function names, but googling "Excel french dictionary" gives you the top result that "That word in French is 'exceller'!"
by davidmurdoch | 2025-04-07 14:32:43+00:00
How so? The article doesn't mention the value of travel in the US. The comment "It also happens to be ridiculously overpriced for what you get as a tourist" is clearly adding an _another_ reason they (suspect?) tourism declined.

It is followed with "But yes, there is also the political climate.", which I interpreted as an agreement with the reasons in the article -- that the decline was due to the political climate.

How is that a misinterpretation? It seems likely and reasonable that that the "ridiculously overpriced" comment is being stated because they meant it is _additional_ reason for the decline - as it is one not stated in the article.
Show HN: ActiveDay – First-Ever Real Widgets for the iPhone Lock Screen
by urip | 2025-04-07 14:34:35+00:00
Hi all!

I always thought it was disappointing that the iPhone Lock Screen couldn't show proper widgets, especially for my calendar and reminders — just tiny widgets or a single event. So I built an app to fix that.

Under the hood, it uses Live Activities along with some custom logic to make it work seamlessly.

Check it out at https://www.activeday.app/

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for your support!
by throw4847285 | 2025-04-07 14:35:07+00:00
I hate to be the burden of proof guy, but in this case I'll say: the burden of proof is on you to prove that humans are stochastic parrots. For millenia, nobody thought to assert that the human brain was computational in nature, until people invented computers, and all of a sudden started asserting that many the human brain was just like a classical computer.

Of course, this turned out to be completely false, with advances in understanding of neural networks. Now, again with no evidence other than "we invented this thing that's, useful to us" people have been asserting that humans are just like this thing we invented. Why? What's the evidence? There never is any. It's high dorm room behavior. "What if we're all just machines, man???" And the argument is always that if I disagree with you when you assert this, then I am acting unscientifically and arguing for some kind of magic.

But there's no magic. The human brain just functions in a way different than the new shiny toys that humans have invented, in terms of ability to model an external world, in terms of the way emotions and sense experience are inseparable from our capacity to process information, in terms of consciousness. The hardware is entirely different, and we're functionally different.

The closest things to human minds are out there, and they've been out there for as long as we have: other animals. The real unscientific perspective is that to get high on your own supply and assert that some kind of fake, creepily ingratiating Spock we made up (who is far less charming than Leonard Nimony) is more like us than a chimp is.
by evanelias | 2025-04-07 14:35:25+00:00
They absolutely were NOT the first to apply the term to software in general. See https://dieter.plaetinck.be/posts/open-source-undefined-part... for many proven uses of "open source" being used to describe source-available software prior to the OSI's existence.

As for being the first to apply the term to software licenses, yes you're correct there. But that's the inherent source of this endless confusion: they took an existing term which didn't relate to licenses, and redefined it to be entirely about licenses.

It's quite ironic to say "If you want a different definition, all you have to do is invent a new term" since that's literally what the OSI failed to do!

Edit to add: I would appreciate it if downvoters would cite what specific part of the linked article you disagree with, considering that it has numerous instances of irrefutable proof of "open source" being used to describe software prior to 1998, including by famous folks like Bill Joy.
by ty6853 | 2025-04-07 14:35:28+00:00
I am still in debt from the last time they took me to the back room, did some kind of x-ray which detected my belt buckle. They declared the belt buckle was actually drugs up my ass, they strip searched me, and they then dragged me to two different hospitals chained and shackled and then sent me the bill when nothing was found. For this, the AUSA issued a retroactive search warrant, signed after they did it.
by mustache_kimono | 2025-04-07 14:35:30+00:00
> panics do not terminate immediately; they unwind the stack, and if they’re not caught, they terminate the current thread, not the process.

I don't disagree though this point is a little pedantic. I suppose the docs also need an update? See: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/macro.panic.html

"This allows a *program to terminate immediately* and provide feedback to the caller of the program."

Now, I don't think so, because program death is usually what this type of panic means.

And my point remains, without more, this probably isn't the behavior one wants in release mode. But, yes, also perhaps an even better behavior is turning on checks, catching the panic, and logging it with others.
by anarticle | 2025-04-07 14:36:14+00:00
It is unusual as a comparison to other careers, esp with respect to specialization, but that is the system. Some people revel in learning new things. Software is unsatisfying compared to other jobs because when you close your laptop and you look around you think: "Did I change anything in the world?" Compare that with doing masonry, where at the end of the day you can look at a wall of bricks that you have laid, and mortared with your own hands. Tomorrow, that wall will be there. Next year, that wall will be there. Can you say the same of your code?

If you have a computer science degree you see the commonality as well as the differences between languages and systems. You pick up new things extremely fast. For all of the negatives against university, that is the benefit.

Maybe we need a memento mori for coders: What code of yours is still running today?

Ask yourself that, one week, one year, five years, ten years after.
by openplatypus | 2025-04-07 14:36:40+00:00
> I can found a new company in Estonia in literal minutes without speaking a single word of Estonian and without being physically present in the country because the whole process is digital and in English.

Bad example. When you incorporate in Estonia, if you come through eResidency, they are very clear and very open in stating that ANY interaction with tax office and/or judicial system WILL be and MUST be performed in Estonian.
by orwin | 2025-04-07 14:36:40+00:00
People of my family are flying in in March. New restrictions are in place for people who visited specific countries. My only advice to fellow Europeans who want to travel to the US is to get issued a new passport and, if you have to, lie on your ESTA if you spent any time in Cuba or in the Middle East since 2011 (Your trips are linked to your passport ID)
by heraclius1729 | 2025-04-07 14:37:13+00:00
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Edward Fesser

I stumbled across this completely by accident while doing research for a history of science class I was designing years ago. It took... a while... to stop saying "but why does this matter!" every two seconds while reading it, but eventually I was able to open my mind to metaphysics as a discipline and get it into my head exactly what he was talking about, and why it was useful. After that, it was smooth sailing. I owe a lot to this book.
by claytongulick | 2025-04-07 14:37:13+00:00
So, "with great power comes great responsibility".

That's a concept I've believed in since Stan Lee illustrated it so beautifully to me as a child.

I'm not qualified to engage in serious ethics debates, and I'm definitely not qualified to hold an opinion on anything going on in the middle east.

Watching the news and scrolling social media in no way prepares me to understand the deep and complex issues of the region.

I was just curious about your perspective. Thanks for explaining.
by beambot | 2025-04-07 14:37:18+00:00
https://paulgraham.com/growth.html

"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth."
by ebiester | 2025-04-07 14:37:25+00:00
It is, but at some point, so is management. So is any human capital past your key positions.

I feel like managers - even good managers - understand that better than most. That isn't to say there isn't variation in humans - choosing the humans right for your team and organization will help advance a lot, but it really helps us to think of organizations as ant colonies. One person can slow it down, but very few can speed it up, and they can only do so much.

It's the network of communication that matters more than the person.
by gaoshan | 2025-04-07 14:37:36+00:00
Your motivation is validation and support for your belief system. The fact that you posted a quote saying that people hearing but not following the "truth" (ostensibly as you define it otherwise why mention it, yeah?) are fools is the key indicator that you are not acting solely on behalf of love. You, like so many of your sort, are acting on what bolsters your personal beliefs and your need to have that belief.
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-07 14:37:41+00:00
> A good discussion is about the subject, not the person.

That's the problem with trolls. They keep on pestering people with trivially-to-google questions, a tactic known as "sealioning" [1]. On top of that you have literal ChatGPT or otherwise AI-powered bots engaging in discussions in bad faith.

> It makes the discussion personal by calling someone a fascist or a leftie.

It's pretty pointless to debate with fascists, most of those that you can find on Twitter aren't interested in discussion - they're interested in destroying discussion by forcing others to interact with their bullshit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
by johnnyanmac | 2025-04-07 14:38:07+00:00
ehh, I'll generally assume good faith until shown otherwise. I don't really flag something unless it shows active malice.

In this case, it was a good opportunity to educate others who may also think that the private sector wouldn't be affected by these public sector cuts. That's much better than flagging a comment that may have been simply made in ignorance.
by d_burfoot | 2025-04-07 14:38:09+00:00
One of my pet theories about the software industry is that nobody really knows how to manage mature tech companies (YC and the startup world are pretty good at running young companies).

One obvious and disastrous phenomenon in the tech world is resume-driven development: some engineers are highly motivated to put the next shiny tech buzzword on their resume, so they make sure to push that technology at their company. 9 times out of 10 the project and company would be better off by just using the standard, boring tech that everyone else uses. Tech managers should be able to detect this pattern and squash it, but they don't seem able to do so.
by neogodless | 2025-04-07 14:38:35+00:00
Oh I agree. I'm angry that the 77 million people voted for Trump. I'm angry that ~22% of the population got out there and voted and supported Trump. And I'm angry that so much of the eligible voting population did not vote. And I'm angry that he's tearing my country apart from the inside.

And zero judgement of anyone's wise decision to avoid or boycott our country, or arm themselves against us.

Also don't know what to think of polls, but anything above 0% approving of Trump is stupid. It's still not "most", which is my only contention. But whether or not it's most doesn't matter as long as all of our checks and balances have disintegrated, and there's one person in charge and making horrible decisions that hurt many Americans, threaten tourists, and are currently wreaking havoc on the stability of the global economy.
by furyofantares | 2025-04-07 14:39:01+00:00
Decimated is from Latin decimātiō, where a large group of your army would be split into groups of 10, each group would draw straws, and the shortest straw would be stoned to death by the other 9. A completely brutal form of military punishment for capital offenses such as cowardice. It is not really adequately captured by reducing it to "kill one in every 10".

Wikipedia says it may be ahistorical though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(punishment)

It also notes "In modern English, the word is used most commonly not to mean a destruction of a tenth but rather annihilation."
by cruffle_duffle | 2025-04-07 14:39:15+00:00
I keep submitting PR’s to get my assembler extensions in Fish and ZSH but so far no avail. Ideally all scripting should be done in single-clock-cycle assembly statements.

I mean it makes write-only languages like Perl look like beautiful prose but it’s hard to argue about efficiently setting the 20 environment variables used by my terraform jobs with a mere 20 clock cycles. It may seem silly but every clock cycle truly matters.
by travisgriggs | 2025-04-07 14:39:28+00:00
> Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason.

Not any good reason, imo. There used to be incentives for efficiency in various aspects of the field. Scarcity of talent, scarcity of bandwidth and compute power, scarcity of budgets.

Twenty years of “let’s all be programmers”, unhinged amounts of money, and design by committee, have rendered it a very complex world.
by summarity | 2025-04-07 14:40:09+00:00
Not at all. Here's how you'd go about it:

* for each medium to large University, there will usually be at least one person, if not an entire org of people that will guide you through the process, manage comms with the bank and help you to frame the business plan. These institutions (what I referred to as an "accelerator" in my OP) are publicly funded. You do not pay them.

* prepare your business plan (milestones, market research, financial plan) - at this point you can also utilize other financial support (e.g. matched funds for market research)

* you nominate a "mentor" - this is meant to be an independent expert that will serve as an informal advisor and secondary contact for the bank. There's no liability involved, and usually this is an industry expert, or professor, etc.

* bank accepts the business plan and starts payments

* during the scholarship, the bank will keep in touch with you and the mentor to check in on your business plan milestones. This is mostly an anti-fraud check.

It's important to realize there's an alignment of incentives here:

* you want to start a company and get financial support

* the accelerator advanced its mission (get more startups going)

* the bank advances its mission (create more value in the local region)

* the business plan and milestones unlock ultra-low-interest follow-up financing if you need it, since the bank has already been involved for 18 months and knows the potential/liabilities of your business

This all sounds like a lot, but I've seen founders go through the entire process in just a few weeks of planning. And much of the work, like business planning, is what you need to do anyway.
by afpx | 2025-04-07 14:40:35+00:00
This is a complex topic. A lot has to do with "American culture". Culture, as you know, can last for millennia.

First, I'm personally not against a moderately sized government. I'm an urbanite and lean kind of socialist, to be honest. I'm ok with there being lots of well-paid government workers. Good for them. I want everyone to have opportunity, access, and safety nets. But, I also believe in the system and respect my fellow citizens enough to understand their perspectives.

The overarching American culture is anti-government. Some of it is because of waste. But, most of it comes from an innate distrust of government and the belief that government trends toward corruption, and corruption is the bane of a functioning society.

A small number of Americans believe that the government's role should only be rule of law, policing, border defense, and tax collection. A larger number believe that government should manage common infrastructure, standards, public services, intelligence, and markets. A small number believe that the US federal government should support and defend the world.

But, Americans like control. This is rooted in a founding mythos centered on rebellion and self-determination. The further removed they are from having control over government, the more anxious they get. Local government is good - state government is tolerable - federal government is bad. Federal government means academics and experts who don't know anything and only bring biases, agendas, and corruption. The federal government leads to tyranny.

Also, once a govenment program starts, it's very difficult to shut it down. Bureaucracies tend toward mission creep, institutional inertia, and self-preservation.

For TB specifically, most of it could have been managed by now if there was broad support and action from wealthy nations over the past 100 years. It could have been treated like Polio. But, wealthy nations don't see TB firsthand, so they don't think it's important. It's not just a US problem.