MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aredox | 2025-04-10 12:01:37+00:00
Public prisons's use of forced labor is not better than private ones.

And people in prisons (private or public) count towards total population in counties, giving them more weight in elections, despite none of the prisoners having chosen to be there voluntarily nor having the right to vote. https://www.vera.org/news/how-mass-incarceration-shapes-our-...
by tjpnz | 2025-04-10 12:04:49+00:00
>Tech companies need to know they will be held accountable, and that means they must respect the rules and laws in the places they operate.

Meta allowed a terrorist to livestream a killing spree in the town I grew up. They didn't act when people began mass reporting the stream and were reluctant to take action when people reuploaded it or posted content glorifying the gunman. This literally went on for months, and months - that much of the surrounding content had been classified locally as objectionable didn't seem to matter. Time countries held Meta et el legally liable for the content posted to their platforms.
by aredox | 2025-04-10 12:04:51+00:00
When I go through border security at an international airport, I usually can see what is happening at almost all the control gates... So even as a white man I have ample time to see the behavior of border security guards with others.

And yeah, the cliche of AMericans being haughty gung-ho cowboys is true. They bark at people and clearly play the bully.
by johnisgood | 2025-04-10 12:04:56+00:00
I know how to do arithmetic, but I still use my PC or a calculator because I am not entirely sure that I am accurate. I use "units" as well extensively, it can be used for much more than just unit conversion. You can do complex calculations with it.

You can solve stuff like:

> If you walk 1 mile in 7 minutes, how fast are you walking in kilometers per hour?

$ units -t "1 mile / 7 minutes" "kilometers per hour" 13.7943771428571

You need some basic knowledge to even come up with "1 mile / 7 minutes" and "kilometers per hour".

There are examples where you need much more advanced knowledge, too, meaning it is not enough to just have a calculator, for example in thermodynamics, when dealing with gas laws, you cannot simply convert pressure, volume, and temperature from one unit to another without taking into account the specific context of the law you’re applying (e.g., the ideal gas law or real gas behavior)", or for example you want to convert 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) to watts (W). This is a case of energy (in kilowatt-hours) over time (in hours), and we need to convert it to power (in watts), which is energy per unit time.

You cannot do:

$ units -t "1 kWh" "W" conformability error 3600000 kg m^2 / s^2 1 kg m^2 / s^3

You have to have some knowledge, so you could do:

$ units -t "1 kWh" "J" 1 kWh = 3600000 J $ units -t "3600000 joules / 3600 seconds" "W" 3600000 joules / 3600 seconds = 1000 W

To sum it up: in many cases, without the right knowledge, even the most accurate tool will only get you part of the way there.

It applies to LLMs and programming, too, thus, I am not worried. We will still have copy-paste "programmers", and actually knowledgeable ones, as we have always had. The difference is that you can use LLMs to learn, quite a lot, but you cannot use a calculator alone to learn how to convert 1 kWh to W.
by virgilp | 2025-04-10 12:05:11+00:00
Parser combinators will eventually generate a push-down automaton. Regex would eventually generate a deterministic finite-state automaton. There's no contest, CPU-wise the DFA will parse the string faster (just have to do one transition for each char/ it's one lookup). In some cases it might take more memory for the automaton though. (also this assumes you don't go into library-specific extensions that allow backtracking, but keep within the original regex scope)

It's fine and fair to suggest that parser combinators are better for many usecases (first of all, they're clearly more powerful! they can parse any context-free language). But it's misleading to suggest they "beat" regex (they don't - not on the regex turf).
by ignoramous | 2025-04-10 12:05:31+00:00
> feel like Anthropic has an incentive to minimize how much students use LLMs to write their papers for them

You're right.

Quite incredibly, they also do the opposite, in that they hype-up / inflate the capability of their LLMs. For instance, they've categorised "summarisation" as "high-order thinking" ("Create", per Bloom's Taxonomy). It patently isn't. Comical they'd not only think so, but also publicly blog about it.
Show HN: An Open-Source Time Management Tool with No A.I in the A.I Era
by pvhieu | 2025-04-10 12:05:34+00:00
At the end of 2024, me and my friend decided to say goodbye to time tracking tools because they are slowly losing the "time tracking" by constantly adding additional, unnecessary A.I things. So, we decided to take it back to the original time by making a pure time tracking tool for individuals.

Also, we came up with the idea of making it open-source and everyone can self-host, so that privacy will not be a concern anymore. We just released a month ago and luckily it gained some support.

Lastly, You might think that how we are different from Activity Watch? Well, probably we have nicer UI/UX with some additional features like distraction blocker, KanBan board for productivity and work.

Thank you and hope you like it. Feel free to make a version for yourself!
by xenophonf | 2025-04-10 12:06:46+00:00
> you shouldn't expect government services to be in a foreign language

But that's the thing about America. We don't have ein Volk. Or to put it another way, what does foreign mean to a nation like America? Lots of languages are spoken natively in America. That most people speak English is an accident of history and a matter of convention reinforced by bigots trying to "other" their neighbors. Americans could have just as easily ended up mostly speaking German.
by gioazzi | 2025-04-10 12:06:52+00:00
I love the approach: keep the creative, human part intact - and in fact free up time for it, by letting AI take care of the menial tasks. And to all naysayers, yes, research is a menial task... if you think a True Writer[1] would always do it themselves on Google, keep in mind that just a few years ago a "true writer" would have to go scavenge in some abandoned archives to find reference material, so it's just a matter of perspective.

We built UnitText[2] with the same idea in mind, although we started from the "proofreading/copy-editing" part. Arguably, that's something most don't do at all... but asking someone to read your content, give you feedback, and iterate on it is an extremely valuable part of the process. Having AI do it means you can do it almost for free, and often. Again, freeing up more time for the actual writing.

Doesn't mean a human copy-editor shouldn't review your content before you hit publish, or a writer shouldn't read their references, but AI can help a lot with all those steps.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[2]: https://unittext.com
by haron1100 | 2025-04-10 12:08:48+00:00
I was tired of spending hours trying to remember which YC video had that one insight I needed - so I built a tool that watches all of them for you.

It has transcribed every video from the Y Combinator YouTube channe and lets you ask questions. The AI returns direct answers with timestamped references so you can jump straight to the source.

Try it here: https://www.askluminary.com

Example:

“What does Paul Graham say about finding startup ideas?” → Answer with timestamps + direct link to the quote in video

Built it for myself, but figured others might find it useful too. Happy to answer any technical questions!
by guizmo | 2025-04-10 12:09:54+00:00
It would need to be a tax on money transfer to the American counterpart. Cash repatriation or payment for IP rights comes to mind.

Of course, the multinational could also use the funds to invest in Europe, build warehouse or commercial real estate or acquire European startups. I think they already do this to some extent to avoid US tax.

Using these to fund free credits to European cloud providers could be a good way to build up a local alternative. I think we underestimate the importance of free credits in the reliance on the 3 US hyperscalers, especially for startups.
by csdreamer7 | 2025-04-10 12:10:29+00:00
> Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade.

The US did this because of the free trade treaties between west European states after WW2. This eventually led to the EU. The US, not wanting to be isolated, pushed for their own treaties.
Are .NET 4.x and JDK 8.x the "zombie" runtimes of enterprise software?
by pyeri | 2025-04-10 12:10:29+00:00
I've noticed a strong parallel between Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.x and Oracle's JDK 8.x series. Even though newer versions keep rolling out — .NET Core, .NET 6/7/8, JDK 11/17/21 — these older versions just won’t die.

A few reasons:

- Heavy enterprise usage, especially in midcaps and MSMEs.

- Industry inertia — teams hesitate to rewrite working systems without a compelling business reason.

- In some cases, older stacks are more stable and “battle-tested”, especially for use cases like WinForms or thick-client apps.

It's kind of ironic that even today, the default .NET version baked into fresh Windows installs is 4.6 (or nearby), not the shiny new .NET 8/9. Meanwhile, Oracle still offers JDK 8 — albeit behind a paid support wall — much like Microsoft continues to patch .NET 4.x via Windows Update.

Eventually, these older branches will be sunset. But given their stability and widespread industrial use, I feel like that day might be decades away rather than years.

Curious to hear — how do you see this transition unfolding? And are there any good examples where teams actually migrated away from 4.x or 8.x successfully?
by kreetx | 2025-04-10 12:11:05+00:00
As a counterpoint, I pretty much always split into 2+ windows. A 2-window setup is a code + terminal setup with shortcuts to run commands on the terminal(s). On more complex projects there are typically more than one terminal windows.

My org-mode emacs instance for note taking is split into quite a few windows: ongoing work task(s), generic "today's scratch pad", various topical notes files, etc.

On the posted topic: I don't know whether the transposition would be useful for me though - as the layout is set up by screen orientation then only a 180 degree turn would make sense.
by vemv | 2025-04-10 12:11:25+00:00
The internet would be such a great way to connect all the peaceful people around the world and boicott the elites that are wreaking havoc.

I don't think a significant amount of Americans, Europeans, Russians, Chinese, etc genuinely wish the decline of any of the other countries. It's just their leaders that create these situations and force us to pick a side.
by noelwelsh | 2025-04-10 12:11:37+00:00
I usually have a vertical split, because it is useful to be able to refer to something else (e.g. other code, docs) while I work on my main task. I'll often have a pop up with a terminal or similar than I can bring up or dismiss with Doom shortcuts. That usually lives at the bottom. Occasionally three windows side by side is useful.

I cannot imagine using the features discussed in TFA though. They don't seem to solve anything for me.
by jarek-foksa | 2025-04-10 12:13:38+00:00
For me the biggest missing block is the text search API. It's ridiculous that you can't add a basic search input to your Firebase-based website unless you use TypeSense, Algolia or some other additional database that you have to manage and keep in sync.

Despite all the recent enshitification, I can't think of any alternative solution that would come even close to what Firebase has to offer. Authentication API is especially hard to beat (cheap and very easy to integrate).
by n4r9 | 2025-04-10 12:13:42+00:00
It must depend on the cities and how far in advance you can book.

I just checked on Amtrak and you can get a train from Seattle to Spokane for $37 in July. This website suggests a comparable cost for driving: https://www.travelmath.com/cost-of-driving/from/Seattle,+WA/... . That seems to be based purely on fuel costs, not counting the marginal costs of insurance and maintenance.

Using the same method, I can get Amtrak from Seattle to Chicago at $169, vs $300 drivings costs.
by pjc50 | 2025-04-10 12:14:18+00:00
> all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet.

"Phoenix" bankruptcies are a real problem among small businesses. It defrauds their creditors, and sometimes the public (taxman) as well. All the way up to things like Rangers (Sevco) football club.

The excellent book on the history of fraud, Lying for Money, has a chapter on this. It concludes that almost every middle class person could probably get away with a fake business bankruptcy at least once, because it's difficult to tell from the outside versus a real (extremely common) small business failure.
by slillibri | 2025-04-10 12:15:21+00:00
True, but there is this mythology that all prisons in the USA are private prisons controlled solely by corporations, which is wildly untrue. Public prisons aren't much better than private prisons, due to the fact that they are just punishment and not rehabilitation. On your second point, undocumented immigrants also count in the census and give more weight in representation and elections, even though they cannot vote. In a perfect world, we would expect elected officials to represent all of their constituents, not just those who voted for them, but we are far from that.
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-04-10 12:15:23+00:00
Oh, I didn't even mention the dinners:

> https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

Or the "speaking fees," the insider trading, etc. I could go on all day.

You think that sort of thing isn't corruption? The US has elevated official corruption into high art.
by skydhash | 2025-04-10 12:15:32+00:00
For those that don’t know. Emacs was there before windows managers was the norm (I think), so after splitting the emacs view, each part was called a window.

The whole view is called a frame and store the window layout. You can create as many frames as you, each with its own layout and in terminal mode, they would swap like i3 workspaces. But in graphic mode (GUI) they are what we call window today, what emacs users refer as windows would be panes.
by wyager | 2025-04-10 12:15:45+00:00
The evaluation model of most of these parser combinator libraries is simple enough that you can just think directly about the call tree. It's difficult to get "surprised" like you can with PCREs. E.g. (x+x+)+y as a regex may blow up, but "many1 (many1 x >> many1 x) >> y" will just evaluate forwards a single time, greedily, and fail, at least with any haskell parser combinator library I can think of.
by hmmm-i-wonder | 2025-04-10 12:16:01+00:00
>Look at how the US is being seen by the international community. The reputation we had as a strong ally and worthwhile partner has been badly damaged. Why would other nations want to help us now? How are we stronger alone, instead of having their eager support?

As a Canadian, you just made the argument for strategic value for us. The economic damage caused at the whims of a single person in control of our supposed closest ally is exactly why. The argument for economic "MAD" assumes one country wont be self destructive enough to cut its leg off to spite everyone else and "win" in a way that leaves it worse off.
by DanielHB | 2025-04-10 12:16:18+00:00
Because low-experienced professionals are a net-negative to projects these days because of the increased complexity of modern development and training went away alongside company loyalty.

Heck it is even hard to get companies to onboard experienced developers with no experience in the stack already used in the company.

Most companies don't expect young people to work for free, they just don't hire them. What you are left is companies who expect young people to work for free, which obviously are not good companies.
by itfourall | 2025-04-10 12:16:31+00:00
How to Set Up Password Authentication with Apache2 You can protect a specific directory on your Apache web server by requiring users to log in with a username and password. This is useful for restricting access to internal tools like MapStruct, admin panels, private pages, or staging environments.

Prerequisites Apache2 is installed and running

You have terminal (SSH) access to the server

The directory you want to protect already exists (e.g., /var/www/html/map)
by ListeningPie | 2025-04-10 12:17:42+00:00
What a difference presentation makes. On Ops link I could enjoy scrolling through the photos, to see them on the Smithsonian site ,I had to find the "See all digital content in FSA.A1999.35" link then 4 clicks for each photo from a harsh index page.

Thank you to makers for putting the sites together, one for storage and the other for consumption.
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-04-10 12:18:43+00:00
No. Even if it does nothing else, it signals politeness, affability, and adherence to accepted custom. If done well, it also makes your interlocutor more favorably inclined towards you -- in any case, it at least gives you the opportunity to make them more favorably inclined towards you.

Besides, you could make a friend.
by tymscar | 2025-04-10 12:18:45+00:00
The ai part of the app is basically useless. After 2 hours of “vibe coding” a chess clock flutter app I got basically nothing in the end.

It broke more and more each message. I tried fixing stuff myself but it would mess it up again. Would not recommend anyone to use it.

Now for the non ai part: super cool. I love the nix environment. Its fascinating how they handle the previews for example. I got geekbench up and running an the cpu is a bit worse than an iphone 15 pro max, but it has 32 gigs of ram!
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-04-10 12:19:19+00:00
Interesting question and I don't know how you'd do that - maybe using some statically linked binaries for fdisk and mkfs. However, why would you ever want to do that? If you want to remove data from the disk, then just running a suitable "dd" command would wipe the disk. I can't think of any other use case that wouldn't subsequently involve booting from a live iso which would let you format the disk anyway.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-04-10 12:19:41+00:00
It looks like the consensus response is other countries embracing more multilateralism. This is a huge opportunity for proponents and governments that promote multilateralism to take charge and make it happen. Ex: China has restricted trade with Aus since 2020 because they, essentially, insulted China/didn't restrict their speech in ways that China wanted. This provides an opportunity for this to be rolled back, which is economically win-win (as most free trade is). Expect to see this sort of thing many times over between many countries in the world. Of course this is rooted in the fact that having ex-US trading partners is no significantly more valuable.

There is the second point to mention too though, which is that China is not exactly an exemplar of open markets and free trade, which is why you are not seeing many countries ally with China and form a united front against the US's trade rampage. Looking beyond the deranged policies, there are some truths in saying that China is a currency manipulator, has imbalanced trade to such a degree it causes problems in other economies, and even the somewhat more "far fetched" points about the unsustainability of a permanent trade deficit do have some truth on some level.

That is why, yes, you are seeing the EU normalize trade relations with China, but there are important caveats, like discussions about China having an expert quota and even internally capping production numbers within their own economy are on the table front and center. This would have never happened before, because China's strategy was to peg a low currency, export, and extinguish industries ex-China. Wish to some level is part of free trade, but it is underpinned in China with state sponsorship to a higher degrees in most trading partners are comfortable with (which is of course countered by the allure of cheap goods).

So another view would be that parties like the EU have new leverage against China that they can use to cut trade deals that strip out some of the abusive practices that made them uncomfortable in the past. If China is then willing to move on a bit from these approaches then the net outcome should be beneficial for the world of course.

I think that many players see the dangers of taking binary sides now more than ever. And indeed, skilled negotiators should see the advantages of playing these forces against each other to get what is best for them. In the face of the recent outrageous events, I would expect a sudden outburst of pragmatism elsewhere.
by AvAn12 | 2025-04-10 12:19:50+00:00
Cute but why? Human-based rankings rarely align and for good reason. In ranking, you are reducing multiple quantitative and qualitative attributes (and their combinations) to a single dimension. You will lose information.

To illustrate further, I picked “electric guitars”. The top two were obvious and boring and the rest was a weird hodgepodge. Significantly, there is no consideration given for whether the person wanting the rank likes to play jazz or metal or country or has small hands or requires active electronics or likes trems or whatever. So it’s a fine exercise in showing llms doing a thing, but adds little/no value over just doing a web search. Or, more appropriately, having a conversation with an experienced guitar player about what I want in a guitar.
by Gracana | 2025-04-10 12:19:54+00:00
That's my experience as well. If you feed your summary + outline + guidance and prompt a one-shot output, it'll rush through it. If you prompt it for longer length, it'll extend it for little benefit. To get good output, you have to work in chunks, like a paragraph or a scene at a time, adjusting your prompt as you work through the outline.

That said, the resulting quality usually isn't so great that I want to put in the effort to do that, so I tend to interact with it in more of a choose-your-own-adventure way.
by lordnacho | 2025-04-10 12:20:02+00:00
I suspect schools spend a lot less time on arithmetic than they used to, however.

You used to _actually_ need to do the arithmetic, now you just need to understand when a calculator is not giving you what you expected. (Not that this is being taught either, lol)

You can get to the higher order thinking sooner than if you spent years grinding multiplication tables.
by simfoo | 2025-04-10 12:23:25+00:00
>On the other hand, we need a tiny build system that does all of the work locally and that can be used by the myriad of open-source projects that the industry relies on. This system has to be written in Rust (oops, I said it) with minimal dependencies and be kept lean and fast so that IDEs can communicate with it quickly. This is a niche that is not fulfilled by anyone right now and that my mind keeps coming to;

Yes please!