MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bglazer | 2025-04-30 15:28:05+00:00
The problem with private R&D is that it's quite difficult for any individual company to fully capture the benefits of research. There are lots of ways this happens. Company does innovative research then gets copied by other firms. Or, they don't recognize an idea's potential but another company does. Or, the research is useful twenty or fifty years in the future. Or, the research is very useful both for them and for many, many other fields and they're only able to capture a tiny sliver of the total value.

For a couple concrete examples: Xerox-PARC did incredibly innovative computing research that turned Apple into a trillion dollar company. For a more modern take: DeepSeek literally used ChatGPT to build their own cheaper competitor.

So, R&D is incredibly societally useful and it's in the collective interest of companies to have access to research results to keep them innovative and competitive. But, it doesn't make sense for any one company to actually do R&D. It really only works as a public good.
by Uehreka | 2025-04-30 15:28:11+00:00
> Yes, there were tons of jobs that required you to have a smartphone, and still do. I remember my second job, they'd give out Blackberries - debatably not smartphones, but still - to the managers and require work communication on them.

Anil is referring specifically to the way that people who were told to use a Blackberry would bring an iPhone to work anyway and demand that IT support it because it was so much better. In the late 2000s Blackberries were a top-down mandate that failed because iPhones were a bottom-up revolution that was too successful to ban.

So look for situations where employees are using their personal AI subscriptions for work and are starting to demand that IT budget for it so they don’t have to pay out of pocket. I’m seeing this right now at my job with GitHub Copilot.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-04-30 15:28:24+00:00
> Many people disagree with the Covid response.

I think that's fair, Covid was completely insane. Personally the part of the US response I disliked the most was the closing of schools. Like, in Ireland the pubs were closed for basically 2 years, but we kept the schools open for most of it, which I think was the right call. Difficult situation though, and the vaccine mandates were crazy (particularly given how ineffective they were in preventing transmission).

> Many people look at the Bidens’ relationship with Ukraine and wonder whether the war could have been avoided,

I really don't see that. Like, Russia basically invaded as soon as (like that week) Nordstream 2 was finished (which unlike Nordstream 1 didn't pass through Ukraine). I think it's arguable that the US didn't need to be as involved (although if they hadn't been, then the EU-US break would have happened much, much sooner).

> which could have been spent here,

Like, for the avoidance of doubt, sending old weapons to Ukraine doesn't actually cost the US as much as they claimed. Ye'd have had to decommission them anyway. (This is a surprisingly large pattern in US aid to other countries).

> A big part of the problem is that many are only to see the other side’s corruption

Yeah, that's fair.
by rotexo | 2025-04-30 15:28:29+00:00
> There are of course quite a few large US businesses being affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term elections get closer.

Maybe. It is possible, though, that we are now in a situation like in the third Nolan Batman movie where Tom hardy puts his hand on the rich guy’s neck and says “do you feel in charge?”
by bitbasher | 2025-04-30 15:29:02+00:00
Here's one I got today trying to scare me.

Hi Team,

We are following up regarding the critical vulnerabilities we had previously reported — we are still awaiting your acknowledgment and decision on appropriate compensation.

Clear communication is vital in responsible vulnerability disclosure programs, and it’s important for both sides to remain engaged to ensure vulnerabilities are properly handled and rewarded fairly.We have also discovered additional high-risk issues that could impact your user security and overall platform integrity.

However, we are waiting for closure on the earlier reports before moving forward with new disclosures.Please let us know the status update at your earliest convenience so we can proceed accordingly.Thank you for your attention to this matter.
by Capricorn2481 | 2025-04-30 15:29:14+00:00
That's all well and good, but that money would never be spent here. That's not how our budget works. It's our defense budget, determined ahead of time, and America's defense budget is huge

The idea that Biden was taking food out of our mouths to send to Ukraine was pushed by the very people that approved that budget because it was easy to do. And Americans know this, they really do, they just forget it because they've had this narrative yelled at them so many times.

And even given that, we were very shrewd. We sent old weapons that were going to be decommissioned, so I would hardly say we sent a bunch of money to Ukraine. More like we goosed our weapon production.
by andy99 | 2025-04-30 15:29:19+00:00
did your boss ever have to send you a memo demanding that you use a smartphone? Was there a performance review requiring you to use Slack?

I see this is already a favorite quote amongst commentors. It's mine too: I had a job ~15 years ago where the company had introduced an internal social network, that was obviously trying to ride on the coattails of Facebook et al without understanding why people liked social networks.

Nobody used it because it was useless, but management evidently was invested in it because your profile and use of that internal site did in fact factor in to performance reviews.

This didn't last long, maybe only one review cycle before everyone realized it was irretrievably lost. The parallel with the article is very apt thought. The stick instead of the carrot is basically an indication that a dumb management idea is in its death throes.
by csomar | 2025-04-30 15:29:27+00:00
> The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components

In a sane world, that's what targeted tariffs are. You don't want to tariffs across the whole board because you might affect exporting manufactures whose prices will go through the roof and might experience disruption. It is kind of what is happening with auto tariffs now that there is a huge blow back but one wonder how many industries out there can't voice their concerns or are not aware of this.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-04-30 15:29:45+00:00
A lot of packaging is sourced from China.

Things that wouldn't otherwise be a problem will become a problem. Potentially that includes bottles, tins, plastic food packaging, niche carboard boxes.

Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports. Even a 10% drop would be difficult, and at current levels it's going to be more than that.
by davidw | 2025-04-30 15:29:51+00:00
I disagree: I think it's a decent summary and it's convenient to be able to read it inline with the rest of the discussion without having to go fiddle with some LLM.

And I don't think everyone has an LLM just sitting around that can summarize a video from a link.

Having wasted 10 minutes of my life watching the video, it's also an accurate summary - "no, shipping has not stopped completely". I would not be happy if they'd just pasted it in without checking that.

Videos that take forever to get to the point are something I find incredibly annoying. Maybe you all have a lot more time on your hands to listen to people spend 5 minutes explaining simple charts.
by lucianbr | 2025-04-30 15:29:56+00:00
> My brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost every game they played

Are you sure? People often claim this, but don't follow through. There's even an expression, "fair weather fan".

It's true some people seem to support some political parties beyond all reason. But to keep the support through personal hardship is different, and hasn't been tested as often. Worldwide, nothing particular to US.
by trilobyte | 2025-04-30 15:30:33+00:00
I see you speak from experience. I feel like I'm watching the same cycle play out over and over again, which is that a new, transformative technology lands, people with a vested interest spend a lot of time denouncing it (your examples mostly land for me), the new technology gets over-hyped and fails to meet some bar and the haters all start crowing about how it's just B.S. and won't ever be useful, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, people are quietly poking around figuring out the boundaries of what the technology really can do and pushing it a little further along.

With the A.I. hype I've been keeping my message pretty consistent for all of the people who work for me: "There's a lot of promise, and there are likely a lot of changes that could come if things keep going the way they are with A.I., but even if the technology hits a wall right now that stops it from advancing things have already changed and it's important to embrace where we are and adapt".
by chaosprint | 2025-04-30 15:30:43+00:00
have you considered using webtransport?

When I was developing Glicol (https://glicol.org/) sync, the main challenge is network jitter. Had to give it up eventually.

Furthermore, have you factored in the synchronization as perceived by the listener?

Also, it seems system-level differences, particularly in audio output latency across various OS and hardware setups, would need to be considered.

What I mean is, the variation in inherent audio output latency between different systems (e.g., Mac vs. Windows, different hardware) could easily exceed 10ms in itself.
by kspacewalk2 | 2025-04-30 15:30:50+00:00
>But my concern is that actions like these teach students an additional lesson: That it's okay to coerce people into specific actions or forfeitures if it serves your purposes.

Well, of course it is. Organized society largely rests upon this principle. In the oppressive ones coercion is exercised arbitrarily or by a select few, and in societies based on rule of law it is exercised, well, using law.

>The ultimate problem with education (at least in the US, can't speak for other countries) is that students are given very little motivation to participate in the educational process. Their participation is demanded and their disengagement is punished. There's little about the system that actually motivates and rewards their participation. If we really want students to spend less time on smartphones at schools, we should be looking at how we can restructure our approach to education so that students would actually feel encouraged to participate and ignore their smartphones.

Maybe. Or maybe the pesky slot machines and gossip aggregators are impossible to compete with, if you leave the adolescent attention economy in the hands of the almighty free market. Either way, banning cell phones certainly won't hurt efforts to engage students, if any.
by foxyv | 2025-04-30 15:30:55+00:00
I use mine as a light cargo van. The room when you fold the seats down is amazing. Adding a rear hitch bike rack also lets me cart around 3-4 bikes if I want to. I usually drive slower when I have a bunch of stuff though to keep the transmission from overheating. I just make sure to do a transmission service every 30-50k miles and oil changes every 5k. The dang thing is bomb proof.
by praptak | 2025-04-30 15:31:08+00:00
Peter Navarro on CNBC reacts to the shrinking GDP number by insisting it's actually good news because if you strip out the effect of tariffs "you have 3 percent growth. So we really like where we're at now."

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/trump-trade-navarro-us-gdp-d...
by ryandrake | 2025-04-30 15:31:16+00:00
Yea, the point is, if a product or technology is useful, people will want to use it. They'll bang down your door to be allowed to use it. They'll even surreptitiously use it if you don't allow it. If you have to mandate that they use it, what does that really say about the tool?

A better example is probably source control. It might not have been true in the past, but these days, nobody has to mandate that you use source control. We all know the benefits, and if we're starting a new software business, we're going to use source control by default from day one.
by tonyarkles | 2025-04-30 15:31:41+00:00
I'm not angry and I totally get your point of view. I don't think you're wrong.

My belief is that the underlying issue is that most companies and their drive for quarterly results means that they won't front a bunch of the "we're not sure if this will result in anything but it's an interesting thing to look into" style of research on their own. The Bell Labs of the olden days are gone and publicly-funded R&D has essentially replaced it.

It's not all bad though, having all of that research published instead of tucked away in a private research facility can be beneficial.
by thenthenthen | 2025-04-30 15:31:46+00:00
Input is so interesting in China, basically a sorta t9 but just single letters and picking the right characters, with common/frequently used characters first, using pinyin. For example to say “ How are you?” You just type “nhm” (Ni Hao Ma) and 你好吗 shows up as suggestion/autofill. You can make surprisingly long sentences using this method.
by philipkglass | 2025-04-30 15:32:11+00:00
You're thinking of the Chip Scale Atomic Clock, first demonstrated by NIST in 2003 and commercialized in 2011:

https://www.nist.gov/noac/technology/time-and-frequency/chip...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/chipscale-atomic-clock

Microchip launched their latest version earlier this year:

https://www.electronicspecifier.com/products/frequency-contr...
by giraffe_lady | 2025-04-30 15:32:15+00:00
I like ocaml for the things other people like go for. It's a grimy roughneck language. Not a lot of fun to play around with or explore ideas but in my experience codebases written in it are stable and age well, easy to maintain.

Elixir vs ocaml I use both languages but for such completely different things I don't even think about a comparison. Elixir is for when the problem I have suits beam's strengths.
by Herring | 2025-04-30 15:32:30+00:00
It doesn’t work for Democrats. They were punished hard for that healthcare bill

> According to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Democratic Party has lost a net total of 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats since President Obama entered office, the most of any president since Dwight Eisenhower.

https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/under-obama-democ...

Kamala had a good platform - voters still think she “didnt promise anything” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx924r4d5yno
by thro1 | 2025-04-30 15:32:39+00:00
Warning. This thread spread misinformation.

And most of comments here (unknowingly?) validate some fake reality, with HN reputation.

What Memex is indeed (not fake): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex .

Moreover, what's presented here with the same name is the opposite of the memex idea and is it's pollution.

Dang: I don't see it fit HN being used in such way - with the submission title saying something that's not true left just like that.
by amiga386 | 2025-04-30 15:32:45+00:00
Since 1973 there have been 9 changes to EU borders (in 1973, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2020)

Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or altered! That's not even counting states that have had multiple changes to their territory in that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_da... -> sort by date of latest territorial change
by ethbr1 | 2025-04-30 15:33:13+00:00
> Because nobody (that I see) says it's needed; they said it's worth it.

Oh, "need" is definitely the first-reach in these discussions. You should see Florida school parents go apeshit at the prospect of not being tethered to their little angels 24x7.

Granted, on HN, it does trend towards worth.

But imho that's looking at smartphones with rose-colored glasses. As people in the industry, you think we'd have more realpolitik perspectives about what modern smartphones are designed to do -- grab, hold, and monetize attention.
by probably_wrong | 2025-04-30 15:33:18+00:00
(Disclaimer: Teams is in my "red flag" list when evaluating a company - I hate it that much)

Teams is not popular because it does something that no other app does. It is popular (IMO) because it does everything (calendar, chat, videoconference, and wiki - all of it badly) and, if you're a Windows user, you're paying for it one way or another.

All that Microsoft had to do during the pandemic (which is when they unleashed Teams) was to approach a higher-up and pitch "why would you pay for Slack and Zoom when our product does the same? And since it's already included in your Office license you're already paying for it, so really, you're throwing money away". I know me and my friends complained about it, but so what? The company saved on licensing costs and IT people are always complaining anyway. And while the bundling of Teams got Microsoft in trouble in the EU [1] they still haven't paid any fines for it (I think) so it's hard to argue that they shouldn't have done that.

</rant>

[1] https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-teams-eu-european-union...
by nine_k | 2025-04-30 15:33:39+00:00
This is a fair question, but it's being asked a lot already.

Let's imagine that completely legitimate circumstances lead to the US Government stopping the stream of grants to the Ivy League universities. How would they cope, given their enormous endowments that generate significant interest? This question is asked much less, and the answer is much less obvious. Hence the value of TFA.
by techpineapple | 2025-04-30 15:33:41+00:00
I would imagine the reaction from the white house will be to attack businesses for failing to order product for political reasons, traitors trying to help China avoid paying Tarrifs.

And I imagine this strategy will be more effective than one would first think, since it's nuts. I imagine it will change business behavior, maybe even to the point that business act against their own economic interests, the question is how much? The crazy thing is that will the Trump effect last long enough to negatively impact the next president or the Democratic congress assuming they win in 2026? The presidents numbers wouldn't suggest that it could go that long, but the world is upside down right now.
by parineum | 2025-04-30 15:34:09+00:00
China is selling goods to the US because it's good for China. China not selling goods to the US is, therefore, bad for China. China doesn't care about how it affects the US but it does effect them negatively. They are "holding all the cards" except the one that says "The US must buy things from China" which is the one they care about.

> Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made goods through Vietnam)

Sure. 15% of their economy either just disappears, gets dramatically more expensive (laundering goods cost money too) or they have to reduce the prices so they can sell their extra 15% of goods to the people that are already buying them.

Keep in mind that China is also only around 15% of US imports too so if 15% is negligible, it's negligible for the US too.

> or the Chinese goods are so low cost that the tariffs will be paid (eg a milk carton represents a small percentage of the cost of a carton of milk).

The tariffs are a percent. Just because the cost of a single item is low doesn't mean the cost of the tariffs paid by the company is going to be low. Low cost goods are profitable because they sell in bulk. It's going to hit their bottom line in the same way it hits everyone else. You've obviously not given much thought into that point.

> Third, the US will feel the inflationary effects. China will not.

China isn't immune to 15% of their economy disappearing. Selling of an extra 15% of the goods in your warehouse at discounted rates while you scale down your factory production 15% is bad.

> Fourth, if China needs to raise funds they can and will sell US treasuries, spiking yields, hitting the ability of the US to issue further debt as well as borrowing costs for homeowners and businesses.

That's a good way to permanently remove 15% of their economy.

> Lastly, the rest of the world is on China's side. This whole tariff fiasco may be the largest self-own in American history. Additionally, it's undoing generations of American soft power globally.

That's not relevant at all. What's relevant is who the American people are on the side of. I'm not saying Trump has unanimous support or anything but he doesn't care at all what Switzerland thinks of tariffs on the Chinese.

Your #4 doomsday scenario is bad for the EU given the role that the US plays in their defense and as trade partners. WTO countries will be urging both sides to come to an agreement.
by j_walter | 2025-04-30 15:34:10+00:00
Government waste has been known for decades and people want it cleaned up. However the same people we have trusted to clean it up are part of the very system that has allowed it to continue. Take a close look at something like funding for the homeless in big cities like LA or Portland and you will find the $ amount per homeless person to be way higher than it should be. You have companies that insert themselves into the government system that do nothing but drain the money that should be going to help the people it's suppose to serve, like the homeless, and every year the problem gets worse and they need more money. People are tired of the lack of accountability for results and ever constant requests for more money.
by laughingcurve | 2025-04-30 15:34:14+00:00
Respectfully, have you confused 'trade deficit' and 'budget deficit' similar to Trump? Being a net importer is not the same as having the governments outlays exceed it's inlays.

Conservatives rightly used to be concerned about budget deficits -- but trade deficits are entirely different. Just because they share the same word does not necessarily mean they are the same indicator.

I would be happy to see America as a net exporter, but I genuinely have to ask ... what is it that America - the richest country in the world - is going to make that other people want regularly aside from mass agriculture, specialized services, and advanced manufacturing??

Our domestic manufacturing base is thankfully not geared to produce a bunch of plastic crap to try to compete with China. And if you want to onshore critical supply chains -- great -- but again that has nothing to do with the idea of a trade deficit.

Genuinely looking for a thoughtful engagement here
by axus | 2025-04-30 15:34:21+00:00
If we're indulging in conspiracy theories, I can say those elites are Russian oligarchs. Anyone know if Trump watches RT International?

I'd rather use the scientific method: make predictions, let the experiment run, and compare to the results. Predicting that the national debt ceiling will be raised or removed, taxes cut, labor unions attacked, and "elites" not correcting anything or being heroes.
by ooterness | 2025-04-30 15:34:41+00:00
You're probably thinking of chip-scale atomic clocks (CSAC). There's at least two companies that make them [1][2].

[1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/co...

[2] https://www.teledyne-si.com/en-us/Products-and-Services_/Pag...
by mandmandam | 2025-04-30 15:35:00+00:00
Not a selling point.

The Ivies do a hell of a lot more for 'The Club' than for the people not in it.

(To be clear, I don't think giving Trump the authority to pull hundreds of millions in funding if they teach things he doesn't like, or allow anti-genocide protests etc, is in any way a solution to the above issue.)