MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by richforman | 2025-04-07 13:47:46+00:00
I was a developer for about forty years, retired last year. First seven years or so I worked in MUMPS on mostly DEC VAX midframes. Then in the early 90s I learned Visual Basic to break into the Windows world, worked in that for almost a decade until .NET came out in about 2000; I learned VB.NET, programmed in that for about six or seven years. Then I taught myself C# which is what I used for the next 13 years or so. I did lots of SQL Server programming account the way, but outside of that, those were really the only languages/frameworks that I needed to have a consistent career for almost four decades.
by Arubis | 2025-04-07 13:48:49+00:00
There's a pretty sizable proportion of USians that have a hard time accepting that other countries exist.

For what it's worth, we're also starting to have similar (though so far less pronounced) reactions to domestic travel. There's a number of states that are unsafe to travel to if you or someone in your family has a gender identity that's not on the approved list--and that has an outsize effect. I won't go to those places since they don't deserve my tax dollars, and am just jumping on a bandwagon of plenty of other people in making that decision.
by FlyingAvatar | 2025-04-07 13:49:27+00:00
I don't know if you're familiar with the company AllAdvantage but in 1999 they tried to pay people by the hour to have a banner ad displayed on their computer, up to some number of hours per week.

One of their problems was that paying ad viewers directly incentivizes fraud. There were many apps to make it 'look' like you were engaged, while you actually weren't.

Similarly, in Bill Gates' book "The Road Ahead", he proposed the idea of emails that come with money attached to them. (i.e. You are paid to open and read advertisement e-mails.) I don't know if this was realistically tried anywhere.

Fraud aside, I think it's hard to avoid falling into one of two boxes in paying people to watch ads:

1. They pay so little that it's not really worth anyone's time. 2. They pay enough to be interesting, but it means people will view ads for products just for the money and the effectiveness of the ads will be very low.

I think the industry has found that the ad "tax" (i.e. ads in the middle of content) is the model that actually works. And in this model the bulk of the ads' cost is paid to the content creator who is in theory providing a good enough audience for that particular advertiser, which is the actual value to the advertiser.
by benterix | 2025-04-07 13:49:38+00:00
> How is it that Meta can regular break the law, with 7 of the 10 highest fines (or probably around a third of all fines) going against them [3] with seemingly no action taken to prevent this from continuing onwards.

Because until now we've been treating American companies very leniently, with an occasional slap on the wrist. For example, when Poland wanted to regulate Uber, the American ambassador warned the Polish government that if they do that, they will regret it.[0] And because at that time the USA was in the business of of protecting the East NATO flank, the Polish government turned turned a blind eye on Uber.

Now that the USA turned away from Europe, nobody cares about the interest of American companies. When Trumps ambassador (Tom Rose) threatened the current government in the same way recently regarding planned "digital tax", the minister answered "We're nobody's fief".

[0] https://phys.org/news/2019-04-hundreds-cab-drivers-protest-u...
by pmags | 2025-04-07 13:50:21+00:00
Yes, species/lineage/population distinctions are quite fuzzy at the level of divergence under consideration here (dire wolves vs gray wolves).

Here's what was actually have done according to the New Yorker article, starting with a gray wolf genome as the baseline:

After almost a year of computational genetic analysis, Colossal researchers used Crispr to make twenty edits on fourteen genes. Fifteen edits were derived from Colossal’s study of the dire-wolf genome and five tweaks were derived from scrutiny of the gray-wolf genome.

20 edits and 14 genes -- clearly some related to coat color, however:

But the genes that guided coat color presented a problem: they carried with them a risk of blindness and deafness. (In humans, variations of these genes can lead to Waardenburg syndrome, which causes pigmentation deficiencies, among other problems.) So the group decided to edit a different gene that, when expressed in dogs, also codes for a lighter coat.

So the coat color alleles are NOT the dire wolf alleles.
by jeroenhd | 2025-04-07 13:50:31+00:00
It's mostly a footnote in the form of "contact the embassy if you're trans/non-binary". The implication seems to be that those people will need to alter their passports (again) to gain access.

Germany also added a warning that minor criminal history can be a reason for imprisonment and deportation, as well as a reminder that an American visa or ESTA document are meaningless against an unwilling border patrol agent:

Weder eine gültige ESTA-Genehmigung noch ein gültiges US-Visum begründen einen Anspruch auf Einreise in die USA. Die endgültige Entscheidung über die Einreise trifft der US-Grenzbeamte. Es empfiehlt sich, Nachweise über die Rückreise (z.B. Flugbuchung) bei der Einreise mitzuführen. Gegen dessen Entscheidung gibt es keinen Rechtsbehelf. Den deutschen Auslandsvertretungen ist es nicht möglich, auf die Rückgängigmachung einer Einreiseverweigerung hinzuwirken. Reisende sollten ausschließlich mit einem gültigen ESTA oder Visum in die USA reisen, das dem geplanten Aufenthaltszweck entspricht. Vorstrafen in den USA, falsche Angaben zum Aufenthaltszweck oder eine auch nur geringfügige Überschreitung der Aufenthaltsdauer bei Reisen können bei Ein- bzw. Ausreise zu Festnahme, Abschiebehaft und Abschiebung führen.

Denmark has added this to their VISA page:

Når du skal søge om ESTA eller visum til USA, er der to kønsbetegnelser at vælge imellem: mand eller kvinde. Hvis du har kønsbetegnelsen X i dit pas, eller du har skiftet køn, anbefales det at kontakte den amerikanske ambassade forud for rejsen for vejledning om, hvordan du skal forholde dig.

Germany added this:

Die ESTA-Beantragung ist gebührenpflichtig (21 USD). Reisende in die USA müssen bei ESTA- oder Visumanträgen entweder das Geschlecht „männlich“ oder „weiblich“ angeben; relevant ist hierbei der Geschlechtseintrag der antragstellenden Person zum Zeitpunkt der Geburt. Reisende, die den Geschlechtseintrag „X“ innehaben oder deren aktueller Geschlechtseintrag von ihrem Geschlechtseintrag bei Geburt abweicht, sollten vor Einreise die zuständige Auslandsvertretung der USA in Deutschland kontaktieren und die geltenden Einreisevoraussetzungen in Erfahrung zu bringen.

The Finnish travel advice has something similar:

Yhdysvallat on myös antanut 24.2.2025 toimeenpanomääräyksen (25 STATE 11402), jonka mukaan Yhdysvaltojen ESTA:a tai viisumia hakevan on jatkossa ilmoitettava sukupuolekseen joko ”mies” tai ”nainen”. Määräyksen mukaan hakijan on hakemuksessa ilmoitettava syntymähetkellä vahvistettu sukupuolensa. Jos hakijan nykyinen passiin merkitty sukupuoli poikkeaa hänen syntymässä vahvistetusta sukupuolestaan, Yhdysvaltojen viranomaiset voivat evätä luvan maahantuloon. Maahantulon edellytykset on suositeltavaa varmistaa etukäteen Yhdysvaltain viranomaisilta. Suomen passissa ei ole sukupuolimerkintää X. Jos esim. kaksoiskansalaisella on passi, jossa X-merkintä on, voi maahantulon edellytykset tarkistaa etukäteen Yhdysvaltain viranomaisilta.
by t43562 | 2025-04-07 13:50:48+00:00
Sometimes they're looking for the next big product that will make millions but IMO they never really stack the odds of that working against the chance of losing current business through not updating, improving their current offering to make it e.g. more sticky.

Hence you work on "huge priorities" and then they turn out to attract 2-3 tiny customers....Meanwhile you have horrendous problems with things that do sell that make them inconvenient for your customers such that they will be delighted to go elsewhere the moment they find out that your competition does it better.
by Teever | 2025-04-07 13:51:14+00:00
You gotta understand, the rest of the world doesn't see you as woke/Maga or red/blue or rural/urban -- they just see you as American.

It doesn't matter if you didn't vote for this guy. You collectively didn't do enough to stop him from getting reelected and now you're not doing enough to stop him from hurting former allies.

Fix your domestic problems and then we can look towards starting up a dialogue of reconciliation.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-07 13:51:18+00:00
Successfully? We blew 3.1% of our GDP on debt service alone in 2024. This is insane, irresponsible, and unnecessary. We are mortgaging our children and grandchildren’s futures. Just like young folks like me correctly complain that old people are leeches sucking America dry - social security, medicare, housing price subsidies, decade after decade, despite a what, $1.7mm average net worth - my generation shows no signs of doing anything differently. “Screw them kids. Boomers got theirs, I’ll get mine.” If our interest burden keeps growing from 20% of federal revenues we could end up spiraling into more and more debt. Or worse we could get to a place where the fed can’t feasibly raise rates to level out the economy and moderate inflation because that would balloon interest payments to a ridiculous degree.

Where Trump is fundamentally correct is that a trade imbalance means selling pieces of your country off to compensate. Equities, bonds, land. All a claim against future money that sucks those returns out to go to foreigners. America has been lucky in the past, in that the huge market for dollars helped us avoid some of this, but that’s not a limitless solution.

Obviously the answer is not that we must make Nikes here. It’s also not that we must have zero trade deficit with any single nation. But we probably should focus on exporting more advanced goods and more services to bring our overall trade deficit down, focusing on a net zero or overall trade surplus outcome.
by bumby | 2025-04-07 13:51:19+00:00
We absolutely should expect safety critical software to mitigate risk. The idea of “welp, the software is confused so just toss it back to a human” is a cop-out in risk mitigation. At the most generous, it constitutes an “administrative” control, which is the least preferred option, tantamount to giving directions in the users manual. The general control hierarchy is: remove the hazard, engineering control, PPE, administrative control.
Ask HN: What books have been worth your time?
by jimsojim | 2025-04-07 13:51:30+00:00
Curious to know which books you've read that genuinely felt worth the time and attention you gave them. Can be fiction, non-fiction, self-help, technical, philosophical, or anything else.

The only criteria: the book helped you in some meaningful way—changed your perspective, taught you something valuable, or simply stayed with you long after finishing it.
by somenameforme | 2025-04-07 13:51:42+00:00
Basically nobody believes the world is flat. The reason the media, and some people, seem to believe this is because of a simple aspect of large numbers. If 0.01% of people believe the world is flat then in a world of billions that'd be millions of people. It still doesn't change the fact that 0.01% is reasonably called "basically nobody."

In this case they've cut tens of billions of dollars in spending and an immense amount of waste. Even if they were 99.9% accurate by this metric or that, there's going to be many mistakes. And I don't really think people are losing patience. His poll numbers are slightly down but not much more than that and I think that's probably more attributable to his failures to end the Ukraine War, continuing support for Israel, and other such unpopular things.

It's mostly the same people raging. Even the "protests" have been largely farcical rent-a-protest type events.
by ironmanszombie | 2025-04-07 13:52:06+00:00
Isn't that some form of "accidental learning"? All you wanted was to get the audio working not to pick up troubleshooting. Maybe you're meant to be a musician and perhaps we all missed out on the next Mozart / Kanye. IMHO, if one wanted to know how computers work, they should take them apart and build them back up, modifying them here and there. Just my 2 cents.
by throaway1989 | 2025-04-07 13:53:11+00:00
As a Canadian, it's not even that. Im not holding someone responsible for what their political opposites do. It's just not safe or smart to be close to America right now. And it may never be again. And that's fine. This is not the beginning of resentment towards America. It has been there for a very long time, because America has been the global hegemon and has been ruthless in keeping its position.
by squiggleblaz | 2025-04-07 13:53:21+00:00
I think it's your responsibility to control the LLM. Sometimes, I worry that I'm beginning to code myself into a corner, and I ask if this is the dumbest idea it's ever heard and it says there might be a better way to do it. Sometimes I'm totally sceptical and ask that question first thing. (Usually it hallucinates when I'm being really obtuse though, and in a bad case that's the first time I notice it.)
by yolovoe | 2025-04-07 13:53:34+00:00
I know your comment is mostly in good faith, but I wish people considered whether it's worth it to use terms like "right wing commentators" instead of the simpler "commentators".

The "right wing" label will just shun around half of Americans from taking your comment in good faith. Is the point to snark or to convince people to change their minds?
by sbuk | 2025-04-07 13:53:40+00:00
It seems to me that it has actually been harmful to F/LOSS in the longer term. Where before, there were companies that were contributing to and using F/LOSS, GPLv3 put a stop to that virtually overnight. Now we see comments like "$MEGACORP should stop leaching" or "$MEGACORP should sponsor/ contribute more" - which of course they did, with time and people before the GPLv3 was released.
by oblio | 2025-04-07 13:53:52+00:00
Trump was elected twice.

The fact that that happened shows something is deeply wrong in the US.

The US government, (mostly) democratically elected, has decided to harm the rest of the world.

Even if there are good people in the US, they can't seem to win. So one could argue, what use are the good people in the US, for everyone else?

So the reaction is kind of expected and natural.
by Symbiote | 2025-04-07 13:53:52+00:00
I think a good part of it is 'wealth' profiling.

I'm white, male. I travel to some lower-income countries for work. I can dress like a neat, well-paid software developer with the €2000 laptop and €1000 camera in my bag. I'll sail through security in Europe and at the destination, then have a horde of people hassling me for a taxi, sometimes pretty aggressively, and I feel I stand out as an easy target for robbery.

Instead, I wear some old, faded clothes for the journey. Then I get the "random" drug swab check in Europe, border control at the destination might ask to see my hotel booking, but the taxi drivers and street kids will ignore me as another cheakskate backpacker.
by chimeracoder | 2025-04-07 13:53:58+00:00
> It depends. Most countries do have certain kinds of extra policies for passports of certain countries

That's not relevant when, as I said, they detain you without knowing what passport you even hold.

> You're a citizen, though. Unless they think you're importing something you shouldn't, you're far less likely to be hassled as you have more rights than others.

Being a citizen does not, in fact, exempt you from being profiles and detained at border crossings, either in the US or in Europe.
by jfengel | 2025-04-07 13:54:10+00:00
Well, the foundation according to mainstream economists.

But that's not the belief of those who elected this administration. The US is the richest large country in the world, and it has achieved that through hard work, intelligence, conscientiousness, and efficiency. It is our national character, and we will be the most productive as long as we don't allow outside influences to dilute it.

If any nation appears to have an advantage, it must be through cheating, due to their lack of national virtue. We have also allowed ourselves to be unduly influenced by various inefficiencies, contrary to our national character, which are now being reversed.

I've tried to steelman that as best I can. I, personally, disagree. But I suppose we're going to find out. If I'm wrong, I'll say that I'm wrong.

(There are so many possible outcomes that I don't know how to set a date or criteria for that. Any change needs time to work; I'd set a deadline no earlier than inauguration day 2029. Metrics are fraught, but I'd say that if the GDP, deficit, and Dow Jones Industrial average are all better than their long-term trends, then clearly I'm wrong.)
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-04-07 13:54:29+00:00
Sane-washing like this is already dangerous even before you figure in that a surprising amount of it seems to be predicated on starting a war with China in the near future.

I guess that's the only plausible scenario they can think of that somewhat eclipses this self-inflicted disaster and makes it seem like a mere bump in the road by rhetorical comparison.
by Aurornis | 2025-04-07 13:54:38+00:00
The tariff situation is so undeniably faulty that even the staunch defenders are waking up to the reality that they can’t spin this one into positivity.

It is interesting to see who’s pulling back and who’s trying to lean in even further. I expect the latter group will be pivoting to the “it was just a negotiation tactic!” defenses when this all gets rolled back.
by stephen_g | 2025-04-07 13:54:46+00:00
Good advice, but as an Australian looking on, I feel like it needs to be added as number one - 1. Reconsider your need to travel to the US if possible.

The company I work for has a small branch office in DC, the VP of our US option was out here in just back in December and we were chatting at the Christmas party how I was keen to head over at some point if it would be useful for a project we’re doing for a US customer.

Today I would probably politely decline and just continue meeting remotely if they asked me if I could travel over for a week or two.
by ta1243 | 2025-04-07 13:55:20+00:00
We'll see how quickly the rhetoric turns concrete.

Last time Europe tried to do something to reduce reliance on America in 2019, America threatened Europe with sanctions

https://www.dw.com/en/us-warns-eu-over-13-billion-defense-sp...

> The United States has decried "poison pills" embedded in proposed rules which could shut third country allies such as the United States out of European defense projects.

> US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland emphasized the point in a letter and warned of possible US sanctions: "I hope we can avoid contemplating similar courses of action," he said. The EU has been asked to respond to the letter by June 10.

This is of course despite the fact most EU defence spending has always gone straight into the US economy.

> "The EU is actually at the moment much more open than the US procurement market is for the European Union companies and equipment," Mogherini said in Brussels. "In the EU there is no 'buy European' act and around 81% of international contracts go to the US firms in Europe today."
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-04-07 13:55:29+00:00
A reasonable definition of "primary qualification" is that feature which most significantly narrows the set of candidates under consideration.

There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people with a similar or greater military record.

There are probably less than a dozen who have a clearer record of being a yes-man (by virtue of very few people being on TV to begin with, and even fewer willing to rhetorically fellate POTUS unconditionally)

You intersect the two and you get Hegseth, but the criterion that did the heavy lifting is absolutely the yes-man one.
by ceejayoz | 2025-04-07 13:55:48+00:00
> Nobody is surprised that a Republican or Democratic nominee might have a strong take regarding Roe v Wade, because it's practically a litmus test for nomination.

The point is they'll openly say "settled law" and then immediately unsettle it. "Corporations get free speech" is a concept granted over time (and fairly recently) by the courts, not explicitly laid out in the Constitution. (Doubly so at the state level; it wasn't until the 1920s that SCOTUS even said the First Amendment applied to states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitlow_v._New_York)

> It's been 50 years…

Right about the same amount of time Roe v. Wade stuck around.

Look, this current Court certainly isn't gonna ban advertising; if anything, it's more likely to permit government-required advertisements right into our Neuralink headsets… but a future Court could easily say fast food advertising or social media for minors is just as bad as cigarette advertising was.
by virtualritz | 2025-04-07 13:55:52+00:00
It all depends what part of the EU and how you look.

For some EU perspective: last summer we traveled with a group of social dancers from Berlin to Pula in Croatia, going to an event at the coast.

Croatia joined Schengen in January 2023.

We had one couple in the group that where not "white". She is German but her parents are Vietnamese and he is from Syria. They're married, they have German citizenship.

They were the only ones from our group of ~20 people who got singled out and had their papers and luggage (!) checked. She looks Asian, he looks Middle-Eastern (oh, and he has a beard!).

That said, they just took 10mins longer to make it through the arrivals hall. They didn't get incarcerated.

However, the year before they were traveling to a dance event in Belgrade. That was was before they got married so he didn't have a German passport yet. He only had a Syrian passport and a residence permit for Germany/Schengen.

Serbia is not part of the EU. Usually such a mistake means they just send you back on the next flight. Happened to two friends of mine, both "white US citizens, who didn't also know this and were traveling to Belgrade from Switzerland two years before.

My Syrian friend however spent three days in a jail in cell with a dozen criminals before they let him fly back to Germany. Mind you, the event they went to was four days and he had a return ticket that could have been easily changed to the arrival day.

Racial profiling is everywhere. Also in the EU. And some EU countries are more "famous" for it, the Balkans e.g.
by t43562 | 2025-04-07 13:55:53+00:00
Is that on the things that make money now or the speculative things you might make money on later?

Almost everyone is resource constrained in that the ambition of non-dev management is always 10x what they have the money to pay for. I take that back a bit - I haven't worked for FAANG so perhaps they do have more people than real work.
by loxs | 2025-04-07 13:56:12+00:00
While I see where you are coming from... It's not about your personal autonomy, it's about perception. You can be completely honest and people still perceive you as dishonest. In fact, absolute honesty is often perceived as rudeness by skilled negotiators. It took me a long time to grasp this - it's much better to deliver a message than be honest, although being honest AND delivering a message is even better (and the article talks exactly about that). And the message being delivered is often not the bare meaning of the words. Unskilled negotiators often deliver the wrong message (I have been there so many times...), although they used the most precise words while doing it.