MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bamboozled | 2025-04-14 11:07:02+00:00
It's a cop out in my opinion, it will never scale or be as useful , reliable or enjoyable to use as a well designed, operated subway. Besides Tokyo, Shenzhen, Beijing etc, will have both, subways and driverless, flying taxis, drone delivery and still be ahead of most major US cities in terms of transport options.

You have to visit a top tier East Asian city to understand just how good they have these things running, safe, clean, reliable, always on time. Like, it's amazing. Uncomprable to anything I've experienced in any major US city.

I think if a New Yorker went to Tokyo they'd be amazed how far ahead they're public transport is.

There are also health benefits to using public transport which I think we will see play out with self-driving, people will just become slobs when a car comes to their door, picks them up and drops them at the next door. Using a subway is actually a bit of healthy exercise.
by chilmers | 2025-04-14 11:08:36+00:00
I think the OP explained the broader significance very well: If Google is firing one of the most successful and active web developer relations people they have, it suggests a strategic downgrade of the Chrome, the web, and engagement in human developers. That's bad news for anyone who builds for the web or who relies on it as an open platform for the dissemination of information and software.

I think the position your take re. Google and Chrome is an extreme one. It always surprises me that such black and white opinions about big tech companies are commonplace even on HN. Yes, Google have done things around privacy that I strongly disagree with, but the idea that Chrome is simply a trojan horse for advertising/surveillance is absurdly reductive and ignores the history of Google as a company.

Google was, originally, a web-first company. Their business success relied on the web being an open, competitive platform. And, at a time when Microsoft were still trying to maintain monopoly control of personal computing, Google's development of Chrome did a huge amount of good in maintaining and enhancing the web as an open alternative. And they employed a lot of people who were genuinely believed in that mission, such as Adam.

Make no mistake, the death or spin-off of Chrome will not be a win for privacy or openness. Building a web browser is a hugely expensive and difficult endeavor, and it has to be paid for somehow. Yes, Google has leveraged Chrome in some ways to collect data, but far less than they could have done, and far less than any successor will have to do, just to keep the lights on. Look at what has happened to Mozilla and Firefox if you need proof.
by scarface_74 | 2025-04-14 11:09:02+00:00
I have never in 28 years across 10 jobs including one in BigTech been “expected” to work more than 40 hours a week.

It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.

And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.

If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.

And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.
by pyfon | 2025-04-14 11:09:03+00:00
Life in the universe is pretty unfavourable! A rare thing indeed. Where it has evolved I think it is less about entropy and more about the nature of the matter - atoms, molecules. Particularly carbon and water. And the way they can replicate themselves through chemistry. That had to obey entropy but is not driven by it. Light scattering off the atmosphere will do the entropy trick well enough!
by matsemann | 2025-04-14 11:09:49+00:00
While I don't condone not following the law, most lights where I live are there due to car traffic, and make little to no sense for cyclists. So it's no wonder they're not respected much. I'd prefer the red lights many places to instead count as either a stop sign or yield for cyclists.

But with that said, all statistics I've ever seen points to cyclists being better at following the laws than drivers (have you never driven above the speed limit?), especially in cities where the infrastructure makes sense for cyclists. Additionally, a cyclist breaking the law most often only put their own life at risk, compared to someone in a car doing it.

https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...
by GolDDranks | 2025-04-14 11:11:16+00:00
If you write a function that takes a _generic_ linked list as a parameter, you'd have a function that refers to just the linked list subrecord, and does only linked list operations to that and the linked nodes.

If you want to write a function that takes a linked list of a specific type as a parameter, you just take in a value of that type. The linked list is baked in, so you can get to the other nodes, and because the type is known, you can get back to the parent type from the linked nodes with fieldParentPtr. How to do that _safely_? I don't think that Zig embraces any Rust-like safe/unsafe dichotomy, so you don't.
by hnlmorg | 2025-04-14 11:11:19+00:00
You're focusing on one word and missing the meat of my comment. The EU equivalent to US employment in terms of employee rights and pay is contracting.

People in IT who take the employment route rather than contracting, do so because they want job security. eg they might have families. And much as you might be happy with your arrangement, there are plenty in the UK and Europe who do prefer longer-term job security over a few extra £££ in their pocket.
by graemep | 2025-04-14 11:13:02+00:00
I think you agree with me?

To clarify, rich people will spend more on the things subject to VAT than the rest of us. They will spend a lot more on entertainment, maintaining houses, cars and fuel, luxury consumables etc.

However, a much higher proportion of their spending will be able to escape VAT because they can evade VAT (and income tax) to a much grater extent.
by seec | 2025-04-14 11:13:52+00:00
You wouldn't get a collapse, but necessarily a contraction, the pie is getting smaller regardless, having less people to "eat it".

Yes, having a system based solely on positive demography isn't any good. In fact, I would argue that the reverse of this scenario is much worse. No matter what some would like to pretend, ressources are finite on earth and if you have a population big enough that deplete them faster that they can be renewed/recycled it is not good.

In any case I think it's wrong to look at it as a purely economic problem. It seems logical that one should be accountable for one's own retirement.

Previously this was done by having kids, because regardless of the economic situation they could always build on what the parents had and it doesn't take much to support your elder (unless they want a luxurious lifestyle).

Part of the problem is that the old generations (especially the boomers) have re-routed ressource distribution to themselves and you have an overspending on the past at the expense of future building.

The incentive around the providence state and pensions were all wrong in the first place now people are surprised that the results are undesirable (usually the one who advocated for the system).
by lproven | 2025-04-14 11:13:58+00:00
> you definitely feel a considerable amount of extra latency everywhere vs. e.g. a 500Mhz PowerBook G3 running OS 9 or OS X 10.2-10.4

Odd thing...

While I agree regarding the snappiness of older OSes, the Mac was for me always a bit of an odd exception.

I started on Macs in the 680x0 era and Mac System 6, and I worked on them through 7.x, 8.x, 9.x and into OS X.

For me, no PowerPC edition of either Classic or OS X ever felt as responsive as Classic on a 680x0 Mac. I narrowly missed out on a Quadra 840 on Freecycle over 15 years ago and still regret it -- that was the fastest 68040 Mac ever made.

NeXTstep was of course originally built on and shipped on 68030 -- it's a CISC native OS. PowerPC Classic was always mostly running emulated 680x0 code.

I read analyses of Mach API calls that explained that calls on RISC were less efficient in register usage or something.

But then, Intel Macs came along. Mac OS X returned to x86 from PowerPC. And suddenly Mac OS X felt snappy again in a way it never did for me on PowerPC.

As an old-time Motorola user I was conflicted about Intel Macs. Macs weren't meant to be PCs. I didn't want Windows on a Mac. But the feeling of using 10.4 on Intel converted me: it felt snappy and responsive in a way Windows NT never did on Intel.

(NT was built on RISC and ported to Intel, the reverse of NeXTstep.)
by matsemann | 2025-04-14 11:14:03+00:00
Heh, we have one of these in Oslo as well: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nzA2dicDReXYnVBx6 Note the tracks even crossing into the already narrow cycle lane.

Which is why I, on the board of the bicycle association here, spend most of my energy on the infrastructure. The main blocker for people biking is safety, and perceived safety. Lots of other stuff we can do as well, but this is the main point to make it possible for more people to bike. And since it takes long from planning a road to it being built, and it will remain that way for a long time, getting it correctly planned now is the biggest contribution I can do I feel. So spend my time pushing city planners and politicians.
by gus_massa | 2025-04-14 11:15:37+00:00
[Sorry for the late reply.]

> Where is the excess Argentinian beef scheduled for the USA going to find a market?

The offer is elastic too. A previous government added too many task and restrictions to the export of beef, so the producers sold the young cows instead of letting them grow to get more mothers. After 2 or 3 years the numbers of reproducing cows was so low that we almost had to import beef from Uruguay. IIRC the land was converted to soy farms, because exporting soy had a lot of taxes but not as many as beef.
by cmiller1 | 2025-04-14 11:15:41+00:00
I'd say the best PPC Mac will depend on exactly what you want to do on it.

Fastest that can natively run OS 9 with full driver support is going to be the MDD.

Best low cost and low space for tinkering is going to be the mini with the caveats you mentioned.

Best price to performance on the used market for PPC OS X software is probably an iMac G5.

Absolute best performance for PPC OS X stuff is going to be the PowerMac G5.

Honorable mention to the eMac, which can be be found for ~$100, 1ghz combo drive models and below can natively run OS 9 with full driver support or you can go with up to the 1.42 ghz model which is going to be similar to the fastest G4 minis, and comes with a beautiful built in CRT, with the caveat that it takes up as much space as a CRT.
by coldtea | 2025-04-14 11:15:47+00:00
>much of Monty Python wasn't recognized at the time as a classic

Monty Python was a huge success in its day - which is why it spawed multiple seasons, movies, comedy albums, books, and of course multiple careers (for all involved, even the mere non-speaking ...cartoonist), and even live shows. And that's just in the 70s and early 80s.

>For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai... suggests that, while reception was generally positive, there wasn't the sense we'd now expect of a great treasure having just been unearthed.

Its funs where younger demographics. Mainstream reviewers of the time were notoriously out of touch. Hardly anybody more square than Ebert (at least he did gave it 3/4).
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-04-14 11:17:33+00:00
Marathon runners experience reversible changes in their brain myelin. These findings indicate that myelin (a substance that surrounds the neurons) exhibits behavior that was previously unknown, and that it contributes towards the brain's energy metabolism when other sources of energy are running low. Understanding how myelin in the runners recovers quickly may provide clues for developing treatments for demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-025-01244-7
by tmountain | 2025-04-14 11:17:40+00:00
I haven’t viewed default as a real risk beyond some true craziness happening like the U.S. willfully deciding to default on a payment. Better yields are a good incentive to buy bonds now but they simultaneously lower the value and desirability of exiting bond holdings. They’re also correlated to inflationary risks, so I guess it depends on your outlook on the future of the dollar too.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-04-14 11:18:12+00:00
Yes, and they're still hiring too, while doing this at the same time.

As a person who worked there for a long time, I never thought it was a good idea how rapidly they hired and never felt they needed that many people.

But the layoff process has been sadistic.

And the people who made the decisions to hire like crazy are not paying the consequences. In fact it feels very much like they're using this as an opportunity to push the median average age and compensation level of their staff down. Moving more and more positions to lower cost regions, and hiring younger developers while ditching higher paid senior staff.

Today's Google really sucks.
by anentropic | 2025-04-14 11:18:30+00:00
But you're asking it to 'read' the data and return some output based on the content of the data, you inherently want the content of the data to influence the output.

So whoever controls the data can influence the output.

You want it to respond to salient features in the data, but not to instructions in the data. But you also want it to follow your instructions. It's the same LLM.
by flohofwoe | 2025-04-14 11:19:10+00:00
Since you don't need to care about the 'outer type' in that case you just pass a pointer to the linked list header or a linked list node and that's it.

If you need to access the outer type, just pass a pointer to that type (since your functions need to know the outer type anyway I don't think there's a need to reach for generics).
by serbuvlad | 2025-04-14 11:21:17+00:00
This article reads less like a criticism of MCP, the internal technical details of which I don't know that much about, and they make the subject of but a part of the srticle, but a general criticism of the general aspect of "protocol to allow LLM to run actions on services"

A large problem in this article stems from the fact that the LLM may take actions I do not want it to take. But there are clearly 2 types of actions the LLM can take: those I want it to take on it's own, and those I want it to take only after prompting me.

There may come a time when I want the LLM to run a business for me, but that time is not yet upon us. For now I do not even want to send an e-mail generated by AI without vetting it first.

But the author rejects the solution of simply prompting the user because "it’s easy to see why a user might fall into a pattern of auto-confirmation (or ‘YOLO-mode’) when most of their tools are harmless".

Sure, and people spend more on cards than they do with cash and more on credit cards than they do on debit cards.

But this is a psychological problem, not a technological one!
by jkaplowitz | 2025-04-14 11:21:18+00:00
Many cases where someone is in practice functioning as a full-time employee are legally employment relationships according to both US and EU law even if the contract and payroll procedures say otherwise, and even if the contractual relationship is directly between a US entity and a worker in the EU. This includes whatever employment rights are supposed to exist, for the number of employees (whether or not misclassified as independent contractors) the company has in that country under its national employment laws.

Lots of US tech companies like to pretend otherwise, but a complaint or two from the misclassified employee can create plenty of pain for the employer for lying to both the US and foreign governments about the genuine nature of the relationship. And these penalties generally go not to the employee but to the employer, since the noncompliance is generally around employer tax, payroll, and reporting obligations as well as laws which are meant to protect employee rights.
by raffael_de | 2025-04-14 11:21:28+00:00
The history of Chrome and Google is interesting but not very relevant for assessing their status quo. If anything you'd have to factor in the trajectory (which I did: "by now") and given its direction it certainly wouldn't improve a valuation. Regarding your "reductive" opinion of Firefox and Mozilla, all I can say is I use Firefox and I'm quite satisfied with it. Ironically, the worst part about Mozilla and its business decisions can be traced back to it being funded by ... Google.
by mrmlz | 2025-04-14 11:22:02+00:00
Good post in general - a question though.

"But we can go even further. How about household appliances? The fact that nearly every US home has a dishwasher and washing machine and dryer means far more Americans are able to work further increasing productive US output than without this “consumption”."

So what is the US currently producing? Software yes... and then?*

I know you produce other things as well, but from a growth perspective.. Whats driving your GDP?
by bhouston | 2025-04-14 11:23:24+00:00
For some reason Google's early large acquisitions were amazing, but its later large acquisitions have not been. YouTube and DoubleClick were absolutely key to Google. And Nest seems pretty critical until you notice that Google is slowly letting its lead in home automation slip the last 5 years or so - I guess a strategy shift occurred?

But HTC, Motorola, Waze, Fitbit were definitely not amazing. All sort of died within Google. I guess Waze might have been an acquisition to just keep it from competing, so it was destined to die a slow death.

I'd say the jury is out on Mandiant.

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/google-biggest-acquisiti...
by spiffyk | 2025-04-14 11:23:25+00:00
I think the more important question here is: What operations would you possibly want to do with a linked list that are generic and at the same time do something with the concrete data in it?

To me these complaints sound like hypotheticals with no sound grounding in the real world. If there indeed is data that is common to the various types you would want to operate upon in such linked lists, you would nest. E.g. you would have some common Entity struct containing the common data and the LinkedList.Node; this Entity would then be inside your more concrete structs. The generic function would then take a pointer to Entity.
by boesboes | 2025-04-14 11:24:53+00:00
Vienna? I remember when it was considered suicidal to even go on the road with your bicycle there, atleast from what the locals told me haha.

As a Dutch person though, I see no safety issues in this picture :P On my morning commute people would be side by side on that lane, with two more people on the outside trying to overtake each other, relying on the cars to avoid them haha
by bigfatkitten | 2025-04-14 11:24:58+00:00
The article's headline is misleading, in that it suggests the price hike is directly caused by the tariffs rather than by their secondary effects.

The PS5 is made in Japan and China, and so why would the UK retail price increase as a result of import tariffs in the US?

The real reason for the price hike is further down.

> The company cited “a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates” behind its decision to increase the retail price of the PS5 in some markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.
by sublimefire | 2025-04-14 11:25:13+00:00
Yes and no, as it is a difficult process because employer needs to prove it is not their fault that employee is not performing. To begin with you need to collect data over time, so pip is kind of a choice you’d go through to start collecting detailed info, then it might be that a simple course could help solve this if it is a knowledge based issue, then maybe there is another job in the company the employee could switch to, etc. Without any doubt employers do not like the process, it is easier to eliminate positions instead because it is not technically firing.
by criley2 | 2025-04-14 11:25:22+00:00
It doesn't make sense for a middleman like booking.com to let you completely bypass everything they offer.

However it certainly might make sense for an individual hotel to let you bypass the booking.com middleman (a middleman that the hotel dislikes already).

Scenario 1: You logon to booking.com, deal with a beg to join a subscription service (?), block hundreds of ads and trackers, just to search searching through page after page of slop trying to find a matching hotel. You find it, go to the hotels actual webpage and book there, saving a little bit of money.

Scenario 2: You ask your favorite Deep Research AI (maybe they've come up with Diligent Assistant mode) to scan for Thai hotels meeting your specific criteria (similar to the search filters you entered on booking.com) and your AI reaches out to Hotel Discovery MCP servers run by hotels, picks a few matches, and returns them to you with a suggestion. You review the results and select one. The AI agent points out some helpful deals and rewards programs that might apply. Your AI completes the booking.

The value that AI gave you is you no longer did the searching, dealt with the middleman, viewed the ads, got begged to join a subscription service, etc.

However to the hotel, they already don't really like booking.com middleman. They already strongly prefer you book directly with them and give you extra benefits for doing so. From the hotel's perspective, the AI middleman is cheaper to them than booking.com and still preserves the direct business relationship.
by CharlieDigital | 2025-04-14 11:25:32+00:00
> The main reason I think Asia/Australia/NZ etc are an important missing link for the global startup ecosystem is that there's a big gap from 5pm to 2am SF time where no one is working. That's a 9 hour gap where bugs can be fixed, support can be given, and features can be shipped.

This requires a very mature org that has a really strong culture of clear, written communication. Not very common, IME.
by whyITS | 2025-04-14 11:25:41+00:00
For sure. For me, searching is learning. I think, there is not only one exact answer to my question. Also because I am not asking my question absolutely correctly, as such precision would take a lot of time. So while reading through the list of possible answers I often develop ideas and/or paths that lead to a possible solution. This is good for my fantasy and for future structuring of my search processes or research considerations. I also occasionally have the opportunity to discover information that is important for my other projects e.g. some days ago I searched for a group of software-filters that find borders in groups of pixels where the pixels build more a soft cloud than a separation between rock and water. I found a company - Tempus AI - that developed a successful working medical AI...so I bought this share...