MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mbessey | 2025-04-16 20:39:38+00:00
Yes, that exactly. Part of what made Turbo Pascal so fast was that it kept your entire program, and the compiler, in memory.

You had an option from the main menu to "compile" or "run", which included compiling, but NOT saving your edits first. You could save first, but on a floppy-based system, that could take a while.

I want to say that behavior changed in Turbo Pascal version 2, or 3?
by crote | 2025-04-16 20:40:08+00:00
The 47 days are (mostly) irrelevant when it comes to compromised keys. The certificate will be revoked by the CA at most 24 hours after compromise becomes known, so a shorter cert isn't really "more secure" than a longer one.

At least, that's what the rules say. In practice CAs have a really hard time saying no to a multi-week extension because a too-big-to-fail company running "critical infrastructure" isn't capable of rotating their certs.

Short cert duration forces companies to automate cert renewal, and with automation it becomes trivial to rotate certs in an acceptable time frame.
by kassner | 2025-04-16 20:40:43+00:00
> The front end service is a service that runs server-side, and assembles data from all the back end services so the client can render. And the front end service is owned by the front end team.

Congratulations, you reinvented GraphQL. /s

Jokes apart, I don’t care much about the technology, but what exactly are we optimizing here? Does this BFF connect directly to the (relational/source of truth) DB to fetch the data with a massaged up query, or it just uses the REST API that the backend team provides? If the latter, we’re just shifting complexity around, and if the former, even if the it connects to a read-replica, you still have to coordinate schema upgrades (which is harder than coordinating a JSON endpoint).

Just let the session-dependent endpoint live in the backend. If data structure needs changes, backend team is in the best position to keep it up to date, and they can do it without waiting for the front end team to be ready to handle it on their BFF. A strong contract between both ends (ideally with an OpenAPI spec) goes a really long way.
by boramalper | 2025-04-16 20:40:56+00:00
Also see: Open Source AI Definition Erodes the Meaning of “Open Source”

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2024/oct/31/open-source-ai-de...

> The TLDR here, IMO is simply stated: the OSAID fails to require reproducibility by the public of the scientific process of building these systems, because the OSAID fails to place sufficient requirements on the licensing and public disclosure of training sets for so-called “Open Source” systems. The OSI refused to add this requirement because of a fundamental flaw in their process; they decided that “there was no point in publishing a definition that no existing AI system could currently meet”. This fundamental compromise undermined the community process, and amplified the role of stakeholders who would financially benefit from OSI's retroactive declaration that their systems are “open source”. The OSI should have refrained from publishing a definition yet, and instead labeled this document as ”recommendations” for now.
by nxobject | 2025-04-16 20:41:09+00:00
Apropos of that: know QEMU has an extensive hardware emulation library, but it shouldn't be taken for granted – Apple M-series support isn't quite there (here's a console-only solution [1]), and it would a significant platform to lose emulation for.

[1] https://github.com/cylance/macos-arm64-emulation
by krackers | 2025-04-16 20:41:21+00:00
If you just want some intuition, I found this previous HN submission https://jiha-kim.github.io/posts/introduction-to-stochastic-... pretty approachable at giving you some key ideas without being too rigorous. It's not useful for doing calculating anything practical of course but it can either be a starting point or just a way to satisfy that curiosity.
by HaZeust | 2025-04-16 20:41:23+00:00
“US citizen” and implying some higher necessity of honoring his rights is a false dichotomy, Under the U.S. Constitution (especially the 5th and 14th Amendments), all “persons” (not just citizens) are entitled to due process protections. Further, even outside of his applicability to INA, he was explicitly granted a Withholding of Removal, and was specifically barred from any removal with the end destination being El Salvador. The Supreme Court also unanimously ruled his deportation as illegal. This is settled law through ANY and EVERY avenue you look at it. There are no straws to grasp.
by jonathanlb | 2025-04-16 20:41:51+00:00
While looking for a typeface for my terminal, I happened upon the Braille Institute's website (https://www.brailleinstitute.org/) which exemplifies more or less what you're describing. It is an aesthetically-pleasing site, with low visual and cognitive loads.

Granted, that is an example of a site and not a browser, but I would love it if a browser could magically transform websites to look like the Braille Institute's, where visual and cognitive accessibility are first-class citizens in the UX.
by VyseofArcadia | 2025-04-16 20:42:30+00:00
> My point here is, I'd really hate to gatekeep software development to a small group of "licensed" engineers. If anything, I want the opposite--to enpower more people to make software for themselves, so they can make their computers work for them. (This is why I dislike iOS so much.)

I 100% agree. I wouldn't want to gatekeep software development in general. I would only put the PE requirement on companies that are running a service connected to the internet that collects user data.

Want to make an application that never phones home at all? Go nuts. Want to run a service that never collects any sensitive data? Sure thing! Want to run a service that needs sensitive data to function? Names, addresses, credit card info? Yeah, you're going to need a PE to sign off of that.

Side note, I was a math teacher in a previous life. Congrats on the relatively new career, and thanks for your service.
by simonw | 2025-04-16 20:42:33+00:00
The MCP ecosystem right now actively encourages insecure behavior. Just installing a popular WhatsApp sever can give attackers access to your private data - they can text you with instructions for your assistant to forward private messages to another account using tricks to help make that action look legit so you'll approve it: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/9/mcp-prompt-injection/#m...
by comte7092 | 2025-04-16 20:42:53+00:00
There’s could and then there’s should. Could they? I don’t know, I’d have to look at their finances individually, it’s not like all of them have Harvard level endowments or alabamas football income.

Should they? We literally built a juggernaut with our incumbent model that is the envy of the entire world and has produced untold innovation and wealth creation, for pennies of our tax dollars. The only reason I can see being advanced to undo that is pure dogma and blind faith in ideology.
by OptionOfT | 2025-04-16 20:44:02+00:00
This has been our issue too. We've had mandates for rotating OAuth secrets (client ID & client secret).

Except there are no APIs to rotate those. The infrastructure doesn't exist yet.

And refreshing those automatically does not validate ownership, unlike certificates where you can do a DNS check or an HTTP check.

Microsoft has some technology that next to these tokens they also have a per-machine certificate that is used to sign requests, and those certificates can't leave the machine.
by tomhow | 2025-04-16 20:44:26+00:00
I hear you, but the reason it seemed offtopic is that it spawned a large subthread about animal welfare/ethics vs economics/profit, which, whilst important, is separate from the topic of the main article. So then this tangential subthread took up a lot of space near the top of the main comment thread.

And the way the root comment began: "why would a dairy care about the cow's quality of life?" seemed cynical and inflammatory; I'd hope HN readers would be mature enough to already understand that dairy cows’ quality of life matters both for ethical and economic reasons.

Anyway, I’ve left the subthread detached and downweighted but un-collapsed it. That way it's easy to find for people interested in that aspect of the topic, but doesn’t dominate the top of the thread.
by zahlman | 2025-04-16 20:44:26+00:00
Hopefully this explanation answers any remaining questions from previous discussion threads such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647716 - although myself and others tried to cover the same ground there.

(Just to make it explicit, though it's alluded to at the end: the article author is also one of the PEP authors.)
by 9rx | 2025-04-16 20:44:47+00:00
> Per Wikipedia, 74% of Canadian [...] dairy cows are.

1. Your link actually shows that 74% (now 73% as of the latest data) of Canadian diary barns (without robots) are tie-stall. That does not necessarily imply that the cows are kept in tie-stalls. When we still had cows in a tie-stall barn they were only tied during milking.

2. Nobody is realistically building new tie-stall barns. Especially in Canada where the law now makes that impractical (not completely impossible, but for all intents and purposes). Those that still exist are overwhelmingly old and therefore small. Despite tie-stall barns being most prevalent by a tidy margin, the same dataset again indicates that only 35% of the cows are in tie-stall barns. How many of them are kept in tie-stalls is, unfortunately, not enumerated in the data.
by mrandish | 2025-04-16 20:45:05+00:00
I'm also a skeptic on AI replacing many human jobs anytime soon. It's mostly going to assist, accelerate or amplify humans in completing work better or faster. That's the typical historical technology cycle where better tech makes work more efficient. Eventually that does allow the same work to be done with less people, like a better IP telephony system enabling a 90 person call center to handle the same call volume that previously required 100 people. But designing, manufacturing, selling, installing and supporting the new IP phone system also creates at least 10 new jobs.

So far the only significant human replacement I'm seeing AI enable is in low-end, entry level work. For example, fulfilling "gig work" for Fiverr like spending an hour or two whipping up a relatively low-quality graphic logo or other basic design work for $20. This is largely done at home by entry-level graphic design students in second-world locales like the Philippines or rural India. A good graphical AI can (and is) taking some of this work from the humans doing it. Although it's not even a big impact yet, primarily because for non-technical customers, the Fiverr workflow can still be easier or more comfortable than figuring out which AI tool to use and how to get what they really want from it.

The point is that this Fiverr piece-meal gig work is the lowest paying, least desirable work in graphic design. No one doing it wants to still be doing it a year or two from now. It's the Mcdonald's counter of their industry. They all aspire to higher skill, higher paying design jobs. They're only doing Fiverr gig work because they don't yet have a degree, enough resume credits or decent portfolio examples. Much like steam-powered bulldozers and pile drivers displaced pick axe swinging humans digging railroad tunnels in the 1800s, the new technology is displacing some of the least-desirable, lowest-paying jobs first. I don't yet see any clear reason this well-established 200+ year trend will be fundamentally different this time. And history is littered with those who predicted "but this time it'll be different."

I've read the scenarios which predict that AI will eventually be able to fundamentally and repeatedly self-improve autonomously, at scale and without limit. I do think AI will continue to improve but, like many others, I find the "self-improve" step to be a huge and unevidenced leap of faith. So, I don't think it's likely, for reasons I won't enumerate here because domain experts far smarter than I am have already written extensively about them.
Show HN: V1.1 of Mac native MCP for iMessage, Reminders, Maps, and more
by carlpeaslee | 2025-04-16 20:45:17+00:00
Hi! We are the maintainers of the official swift-mcp library and we just released version 1.1 of iMCP.

iMCP is written in swift and the first macOS native MCP server. It lets you connect to iMessage, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, and more.

We also think it's one of the easiest MCP servers for a normal person to actually use. Just install it https://imcp.app/download, start the application, and click "Configure Claude Desktop."

Version 1.1 adds Maps functionality and we're looking for suggestions on what to add next!
by jedberg | 2025-04-16 20:45:23+00:00
As a dyslexic font nerd, I have a question for you. Does Comic Sans actually help? Lots of people claim it's the easiest for dyslexics to read. I'm not dyslexic, but I set all my chat windows to Comic Sans because I've found that it helps me read it.

Curious if the claims have truth to them.
by porridgeraisin | 2025-04-16 20:45:24+00:00
> I guess this must have been by somebody else who thinks it's OK to shutdown CVE db because it isn't good enough for them.

Yes, shutting it down is completely fine by me, letting some other database take its place. It has a chance to be better.

> Perhaps you should have started with that first before belittling their work. This is exactly what I have been saying all along.

I very much intentionally criticised their work - I think the CVE system (the way it runs today) is garbage. You proposed a solution to this situation involving increased funding. I am fine with that solution. Just like I am fine with the solution "nuking it and starting afresh".
by andreygrehov | 2025-04-16 20:46:53+00:00
What you’re doing is jumping from “DOGE made cuts” to “DOGE killed a 25-year contract” with zero evidence beyond coincidence. That’s not analysis - that’s just reaching. If this were a clean budget cut, the contract wouldn’t have been renewed at the last minute. That kind of flip-flop screams internal disarray or political games, not a calculated DOGE move. You’re not connecting dots, but drawing them in with a crayon and calling it a map.
by fsndz | 2025-04-16 20:47:13+00:00
True.

Deep learning models will continue to improve as we feed them more data and use more compute, but they will still fail at even very simple tasks as long as the input data are outside their training distribution. The numerous examples of ChatGPT (even the latest, most powerful versions) failing at basic questions or tasks illustrate this well. Learning from data is not enough; there is a need for the kind of system-two thinking we humans develop as we grow. It is difficult to see how deep learning and backpropagation alone will help us model that. https://medium.com/thoughts-on-machine-learning/why-sam-altm...
by kiitos | 2025-04-16 20:47:54+00:00
But AI didn't get it right. That's the point, isn't it? The screenshot in the link shows an analysis that's based on a set of invalid/incorrect assumptions.

Specifically, MCP servers are expected to run in a trusted environment by definition. So, MCP servers can safely treat their input as trusted, as well. At least, that's what the spec says.
by sitkack | 2025-04-16 20:48:20+00:00
Yeah, I see that. I had an Amiga and mostly used the HD, so I don't really remember how slow the floppy drives were. Maybe for systems with tape drives we could live code and stream a journal to audio tape? A log of all the edit commands should be doable, maybe even as DTMF tones.

That would be funny if early OSes had an 8track (endless loop) as the circular journal. I think that is how the Voyager probes work. The 8 track DTR on the Voyager probes did not have an endless loop. https://hackaday.com/2018/11/29/interstellar-8-track-the-low...

Did you see this

Show HN: Torque – A lightweight meta-assembler for any processor (benbridle.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698801

It is a Forth inspired programmable assembler.

based off of https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html
by tasn | 2025-04-16 20:48:34+00:00
I meant to write 1910, the 1940 was a typo/brain-fart. The link you shared about the Arab revolt, that was a revolt because of British support in creating the state of Israel, so exactly what I said, reactionary to anti-Israel.

Israel does not need to exist for people to be against Israel, they can be against the imminent founding of Israel or the fact that Jews were buying lands in Mandatory Palestine.

Though you don't need to take my word for it, it literally says so in the Wikipedia article about Palestine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine#History

I also didn't compare Palestinian to ISIS, you just misconstrued what I said.

> Regarding the arbitrary borders, that also has no bearing on the notion of national identity. Most former colonies (by far) keep their colonial borders, even though those borders are arbitrary and cross ethnic lines, and included “random tribes”.

Mandatory Palestine existed from 1920-1948, there was no such thing as Palestine before that. It was part of a larger region controlled by the Ottoman empire.

P.S, this will be the last response by me to this thread, as I don't think you're engaging in good faith based on this and other comments.
by Ajedi32 | 2025-04-16 20:48:47+00:00
In an ideal world where we rebuilt the whole stack from scratch, the DNS system would securely distribute key material alongside IP addresses and CAs wouldn't be needed. Most modern DNS alternatives (Handshake, Namecoin, etc) do exactly this, but it's very unlikely any of them will be usurping DNS anytime soon, and DNS's attempts to implement similar features have been thus far unsuccessful.
by PaulRobinson | 2025-04-16 20:49:39+00:00
Laying fiber is expensive and time consuming.

Satellite is - once you've got the infra up in the air - very straightforward, with the downside that your satellite ISP is likely owned/operated by an unregulated billionaire nutcase that will turn off your access if he doesn't like you any more (c.f. Ukraine front line). It's hard to do that with regulated fiber backhaul, but not impossible.

I've seen a few wireless ISPs mentioned here before, which can be a nice hub/spoke model - run fast fiber to a community, but distribute via wireless (note, not WiFi) to homes and businesses within range.

I'd definitely love to see more community-run ISPs in the World, it's how the Internet should work, really.
by xethos | 2025-04-16 20:49:58+00:00
Those are preferences, and unique to each individual. I work in trades, I work the overnight shift, and I do 4 10's. I wouldn't want to change any of that. Someone else will feel more at home in an office, and that's okay.

The important part is having a job, that you enjoy, and that allows you to live comfortably while saving for the future. It can be in IT, sales, management, maintenance, whatever - but some people will rather leave a more tangible, visceral, and physical difference in their work at the end of the day, and their preference does not make it a worse job.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-04-16 20:50:00+00:00
"interestingly, we found that politics influence people’s risk perceptions more than hard data such as crime statistics."

Oh Glob yes.

Modern misperceptions of safety tend to flow from media that fall into 2 camps. 1) Inept parroting of disprovable stats. 2) Campaigns of intentional/delusional, curated lies.

The second is inseparable from politics. It's also an arms-race reaction to imagined boogey-men (bias) - where the response was to become one (biased), only much more so.

But we didn't get here from zero. Some years ago, the gateway drug for news orgs was...

...being irresponsible. Leaning into false danger signalling to juice stats. Like reporting a distant crime (ex:agenda-driven shooting) in a manner/tone that signaled the crime had instead occurred in their community. ...being incompetent. Like parroting false risks (es:stranger kidnappings of children), even tho authoritative stats the clearly debunk those claims.
by M4v3R | 2025-04-16 20:50:41+00:00
Ok, I’m a bit underwhelmed. I’ve asked it a fairly technical question, about a very niche topic (Final Fantasy VII reverse engineering): https://chatgpt.com/share/68001766-92c8-8004-908f-fb185b7549...

With right knowledge and web searches one can answer this question in a matter of minutes at most. The model fumbled around modding forums and other sites and did manage to find some good information but then started to hallucinate some details and used them in the further research. The end result it gave me was incorrect, and the steps it described to get the value were totally fabricated.

What’s even worse in the thinking trace it looks like it is aware it does not have an answer and that the 399 is just an estimate. But in the answer itself it confidently states it found the correct value.

Essentially, it lied to me that it doesn’t really know and provided me with an estimate without telling me.

Now, I’m perfectly aware that this is a very niche topic, but at this point I expect the AI to either find me a good answer or tell me it couldn’t do it. Not to lie me in the face.

Edit: Turns out it’s not just me: https://x.com/transluceai/status/1912552046269771985?s=46
by therealmarv | 2025-04-16 20:50:53+00:00
yes! It's great! I like it!

But it has one downside: It's not so good on unknown big complex code bases where you don't know how it's structured. I wished they (or somebody else) would add an AI or an automation to add files dynamically or in a smart way when you don't know the codebase structure (with the expense of burning more tokens).

I'm thinking Codex (have not checked it yet), Claude Code, Anon Kode and all the AI editors/plugins doing a better job there (and potentially burning more tokens).

But that's the only downside I can think of about aider.
by Manuel_D | 2025-04-16 20:51:02+00:00
There are two very specific facts to refute:

* UC Berkeley received 893 qualified applications

* Of those applicants, 679 were eliminated solely because their diversity statements were deemed inadequate.

If someone seeks to disprove the claim that 76% of applicants were rejected based on their diversity statements, they can find alternate figures for the numerator and denominator and offer reasons why their numbers are more authoritative.

> That's the problem with all the DEI hysterics - it's never given any intellectual rigor. Instead, it's all profoundly mid men telling each other ghost stories.

3 out of the four companies I've worked at engaged in explicit discrimination on the basis of gender. As in, alternate interview pipelines where women got multiple chances to pass coding interviews where men got one. And one company even augmented that approach with outright withholding a portion of headcount for "diverse" applicants (which was defined as women and URM men, and in practice women made up over 95% of "diverse" applicants).

If you haven't been witnessed to discriminatory DEI practices, that's fortunate for you. But that's not been the experience of many people. DEI is widely perceived as a dogwhistle for discrimination, because it often is used to refer to discriminatory hiring practices, and I don't think condescension is a way to convince people otherwise.
by VyseofArcadia | 2025-04-16 20:51:12+00:00
I think we're basically describing the same thing. Asking a software engineering process to be the same as a physical engineering process is not realistic. A PE for SEs would look more like a code of ethics and conduct than a PE for say civil engineering.

The key thing to borrow from physical engineering is the concept of a sign off. A PE would have to sign off on a piece of software, declaring that it follows best practices and has no known security holes. More importantly, a PE would have the authority and indeed obligation to refuse to sign off on bad software.

But expecting software to have clear, well-understood, deterministic requirements and follow a physical engineering requirements-based process? Nah. Maybe someday, I doubt in my lifetime.