MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bilbo0s | 2025-04-30 13:49:18+00:00
The mandarin language models obviously exist, but what would you do with them if they provided access to them? And what knowledge would be in them? What is the body of knowledge encoded in Mandarin? What does that look like?

Sad reality is that not many outside of China have the facility with Mandarin to use those models. Even non-native Mandarin speakers who claim to be "fluent", are often messing up intended meaning in text. Or making literal translations that wind up making no sense.

Inside of China, llm use will be Mandarin based. Outside, it seems to me English is the natural choice.

Irony of Irony, probably the best way for a non Mandarin speaking layman to test a Mandarin based model would be to use another LLM to translate prompts to Mandarin.

It's a sad future we're looking at.

Or a brilliant one.

Time will tell.
by WorldMaker | 2025-04-30 13:49:25+00:00
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 [1], where a Republican majority enacted extreme tariffs against President Hoover's almost veto, is sometimes considered one of the smoking guns for how the Great Depression got so bad. That's quite a precedent to be concerned about here.

(Though this version is dumber with the President trying to do it through EOs, which is probably illegal and Congress should probably be much more upset their powers to be stupid are being usurped before their eyes.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Ac...
by twixfel | 2025-04-30 13:49:30+00:00
Right, and a constitution that allows that to even happen has also failed. The American system was supposed to be somewhat elitist and prevent wild populism. So it didn't do that. It failed. Perhaps related to the overly permissive definition of speech in the US and subsequent extreme partisanship. Or perhaps presidential systems actually are quite shit in comparison to parliamentary ones. Anyway, obviously the country is very, very sick at the moment.
by Tadpole9181 | 2025-04-30 13:49:54+00:00
We're making nobody want to immigrate to the US. We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it. We're not reforming to a post-scarcity, low replenishment economy here.

How does losing a compensatory supply of labor across both low and high skill markets, cutting off ourselves from backup, discouraging fertility rates, and kneecapping any incentive to invest in manufacturing domestically AT ALL help the situation?
by SR2Z | 2025-04-30 13:50:01+00:00
Democrats have instituted independent redistricting commissions, finance transparency laws, the popular vote compact, and many others.

Do not imply that both parties are the same on this. That is factually incorrect and Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated an interest in improving democracy.

The GOP, on the other hand, is cheering Trump on as he arrests judges and ignores due process.
by nine_k | 2025-04-30 13:50:11+00:00
> factory worker is never going to be paid $30/hour plus pension/retirement contributions, good medical, etc. to make regular, el cheapo consumer goods

Well, this is possible, but it will take very few workers to produce the huge amount of goods to make it profitable. Case in point: e.g. a Novo Nordisk factory that produces like half of the EU supply of insulin employs like 15 workers per shift, who mostly oversee automation at work, handle incoming / outgoing trucks, and ensure physical security of the plant.

It's the same thing that happened to the US agriculture: in 1800, it used to employ like 80% of the population, in 2000, 2% to 3%. Machines replaced human labor almost fully.
by dgimla20 | 2025-04-30 13:50:18+00:00
The process of making decks and the SRS features Anki provides are some of the most effective ways to learn language (particularly vocab) behind learning (grammar) from books and language exchange with a teacher/native speaker.

Duolingo is incredibly limited. If you are serious about learning a language, you should look elsewhere. Duolingo is only a good investment of money if you want to pay for a video game with minute levels of learning in the background. It's sort of like playing Sid Meirs Civilization to learn history.
by Bender | 2025-04-30 13:50:40+00:00
I'm with you and I like the way Alpine Linux does it.

Alpine Linux 3.19

Alpine Linux 3.20

Alpine Linux 3.21

Those are recent major releases. Minor releases will look like 3.21.1, 3.21.2. [1] It's even used in their news and feature enhancements, updates. People can control their major releases with one file. Going from 3.20 to 3.21 was straight forward and I knew my machines would go from the 6.6 LTS kernel to the 6.12 LTS kernel. Edge is for the latest testing bleeding edge packages. I use Alpine on all my physical and virtual machines in the cloud, home router/firewall, NAS, etc... Everything is consistent, simple and clean. Boring, the way I like it.

cat /etc/apk/repositories #/media/sdb/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.21/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.21/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community #http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing bender [~]# apk update && apk upgrade --available

[1] - https://alpinelinux.org/
by isitsafeyet | 2025-04-30 13:50:58+00:00
I got my quarterly report from my RIA. I pay them 1% annually of my holdings which is about 50k. They basically said expect a lot more major portfolio strategy change if the tariffs aren’t lifted. Every paragraph said the current policy is dangerous, in a different way, without attacking trump directly. Been with them 15 years and they’ve never sounded this worried.
by bell-cot | 2025-04-30 13:51:10+00:00
If your company is big enough to attract journalists, or gossip could have unhappy consequences, then codenames are obviously useful internally. Dev's in a bar talking about problems with "Armstrong" are leaking less info than if they were talking about problems with "Pride'N'Joy v4.2".

But of course, it ain't just the dev's who learn and use the codenames. Later in the cycle, Marketing and Sales do too. And since their job is to convince the wider world that v4.2 is the greatest thing ever seen - well, to 99.9% of the world, "Armstrong" sounds far cooler than "v4.2". So obviously they'll want to talk it up that way...
by timerol | 2025-04-30 13:51:12+00:00
Good news! The average worker has gone from spending about 25% of their paycheck on food in 1930[1] to about 11% today[2]. This is during a time period where the average worker has decreased their total hours[3]. This is confounded by more people entering the workforce, but the earliest data I can find suggests that we've gone from 58% of the population in the workforce in 1950 to 63% today[4].

[1] https://flatworldknowledge.lardbucket.org/books/beginning-ec... (Note that "Food" is "food as a percentage of income", and "eating out" is "eating out as a percentage of food" which makes the chart look weird. This means that the 11% number below includes the cost of the private taxi for your burrito.)

[2] https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/price-food-us-inflation-dat...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=18H2H

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
by mechmuna | 2025-04-30 13:51:18+00:00
I’m working on LngBrdg, a Chrome extension that helps professionals write and translate emails in 100+ languages — right inside their browser.

Built it solo with no coding background after struggling with existing translation tools that couldn’t handle tone or clarity well. Now live on the Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dhbmdjoebgmgcjedejb...

Would love feedback!
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-30 13:51:27+00:00
> What's the problem? Money is just debt. Having confidence that you can call the debt at a later date is the only property that is of true concern with currency. As long as you have the confidence, it theoretically doesn't really matter which currency you use as your IOU.

The problem is the wild disparity in purchasing power. Like, with the same amount of money at your disposal, you're able to live like a king in the poorer parts of the country - but literally struggle to survive in the richer parts (i.e. urban/megalopolises). Currencies have two functions - long term value storage (which is what you're referring to with required confidence) and short-term value aka ad-hoc expenses, and that's what the wide masses use currency for mostly as they don't have much to save.

That's something that was seen as a serious problem here in the EU when the Eastern European nations were introduced in the Euro, and the predictions materialized as expected: Eastern European countries suddenly had merchants demanding Central European prices of goods (alone to prevent Central Europeans emptying the shelves and doing arbitrage trading), while pensions and wages didn't keep up with the price increases as the economy's productivity wasn't anywhere near enough. Hell, even the industrial heavyweight that is Germany struggled with that issue (the Euro was called "Teuro", from "teuer"="expensive"), the Eastern Europeans got hit orders of magnitude harder.

> You are right that a primary objective of a central bank is to keep the currency stable so that people remain confident in it, so it may seem like it disproportionately focuses on the value of the currency, but that's kind of its job.

Yeah, the infamous "the economy should be at 2% inflation" target where everyone dances around while conveniently ignoring the effects of that on the wide masses that don't have collective wage agreements.

> Thing is, the national economy doesn't really matter that much to your every day life, does it?

Media and politicians only focus about the national economy though! You won't ever hear a national news anchor talk about some random paper mill or whatever in a flyover state. But people see that the local economy is going to the gutter while politicians and media act like everything is fine. It's literally the "everything is fine" meme [1], and that's why public distrust in politicians, media and democracy itself is at rock bottom at the moment.

> Hence the old adage of the municipal government being the most important. And municipal governments should be looking at things like cost of living indices for their region.

They can't. They lack the legal authority and the tax income to do anything meaningful, and most issues are caused on a national level.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-fine/
by throwawaymaths | 2025-04-30 13:51:35+00:00
> It is the reason the US $ is the global reserve

That may have been the design case, but the reason it is now is just TINA. No other currency can absorb the volumes necessary. Let's go over the alternatives:

- Euro - has less than half the volume of the US. A possible contender, but remember each member state does get to dictate its own printing rules, so the

- Yen - one tenth the reserve volume, but pegged to a country that has been in several "lost" decades.

- Yuan - country has massive capital controls and you could get completely fucked if the government fears revolt and lets people move their money out of china. And yet, international reserves are LESS than the CAD.

> it's worth contemplating why that is. Is it US exceptionalism? No, it's that the US came out relative untouched from two world wars that seriously harmed most of the world, so it become basically the central hub.

I think you've got the causal arrow wrong on this. The US is geographically well situated. It touches both oceans, and has a huge gap between it and most of the rest of the world. It's ~energy independent, and has robust agricultural center. That's why it was untouched from both world wars and that's why it became the central hub of commerce in the postwar era. The US can afford to fuck up a lot of domestic and international policy and still generally speaking not worry about existential threats.
by Sparkle-san | 2025-04-30 13:51:59+00:00
The ROI isn't 5 years, it's more that it won't generate any returns for 5 years and those returns might not pan out depending on policy change. If you build an American factory and right as it's getting up and running, the next administration rolls back all tariffs, you're left with massive debt and everyone undercutting your prices.
by ceejayoz | 2025-04-30 13:52:05+00:00
> A bacterial infection is an objectively verifiable condition. You can see the bacteria under a strong enough microscope.

Not until 1676! (And they weren't re-observed for another hundred years after that.)

But they existed and made people sick before that date.

We may discover a diagnostic test for autism in the future. People are certainly working on it.

Similarly, autism existed long before the name autism was assigned to it. But the case count of autism was zero until the 1900s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autism

"The term autism was first introduced by Eugen Bleuler in his description of schizophrenia in 1911. The diagnosis of schizophrenia was broader than its modern equivalent; autistic children were often diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia."
by ethbr1 | 2025-04-30 13:52:56+00:00
One has to be careful, with faced with opposition that ignores facts, not to succumb to the same debasement.

We all have speculation about what might have happened behind the scenes -- but it's just that, speculation.

Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as factual reality.

Hyperbolic phrasing for effect errodes respect for reality, regardless of which side it comes from.

(I realize there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to get a whataboutism spiel in response to this, focusing on your fascism phrasing, and how you believe it is supported. I'd encourage you to take a beat and instead consider places you were reaching past what facts supported in your original phrasing.)
by throwawaymaths | 2025-04-30 13:53:03+00:00
> We're also not at all addressing the reason people aren't having kids anymore and taking rights away from women that's further scaring them away from it

I'm on your side on the political issue, but the data do not agree with you: The states with the most restrictive reproductive laws have higher fertility rates. I'm not claiming there is a correlation -- but rather fertility is not at all governed by reproductive laws (or even motherhood support, because those states also have shit motherhood support systems).

To answer your question: Surviving into an non-population-driven-growth regime requires primarily two factors:

- reducing reliance on financialization

- reducing reliance on pure consumption

I'm not saying the US is good at either of those two (it's not) but it's better than it was, say, in 2019. I would even look at your retort -- it used the word invest. That suggests a heavily financialization-dependent mindset. If you are looking through those lenses, it is difficult to imagine what the future needs to look like.
by thehoff | 2025-04-30 13:53:24+00:00
FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for.

“I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on the additional costs in place. And for that one blue shirt that’s still left, you’ll see a price hike,” Seroka said.
by palmotea | 2025-04-30 13:53:35+00:00
> For example, the space-race of the 1950's and 60's, was driven by a spirit of optimism and excitement for humanity breaking free of the Earth to explore the solar system and beyond.

That was the era of better living through heavy industry. We were optimistic because we didn't understand the consequences of what we were doing. It's a lot easier to sell optimism when people aren't familiar with the cons of the kinds of things you're doing.
Ask HN: Alternatives to Deploys per Million Metric?
by giantg2 | 2025-04-30 13:53:41+00:00
Are there any good alternatives to this performance metric? My company wants to increase this by 10% year over year. My team is actually slipping from last year, but we have explainable reasons, such as mire feature work and fewer production incidents. The prod incidents are usually quick fixes that result in a faster deployment turnaround. Often times the regular storied get deployed in groups instead of individually just due to the timing of their completion. It also seems this number doesn't account for inflation. So the denominator will grow by about 3% each year with the cost of living adjustments.

The best option would be to evaluate actual value delivered, but that's too complex and my company doesn't want to go that route.

It seems a better formula would be something like: stories or points completed / inflation adjusted cost
by potato3732842 | 2025-04-30 13:53:50+00:00
>The difference between on- and near-shoring is pretty important,

Of course. I don't think many saw coming that we wouldn't be on friendly trade terms with Mexico and Canada.

> and I'm going to bet the trillion dollars in incentives played a far, far bigger role than the delta in people's resilience estimations

Which have you seen companies respond more swiftly to, opportunities to make money, or disruptions in their existing ways of making money? Which gets the CEO on the phone faster, a potential business deal or a prod outage?

Just about everyone experienced the latter during Covid. "Yeah we'd love to do all the electrical for your covid construction boom fueled McMansion development but switchgear is back ordered 18mo, sorry", and so on and so on across many industries. And they're all real salty about it.

I'm sure the incentives added fuel to the fire, but the way the Chinese economy stayed disrupted for longer really pained a lot of people in the US who depend on stuff from there to make money here.
by myself248 | 2025-04-30 13:53:56+00:00
Are you aware of a school that proactively declares that they accept such donations?

Speaking in my volunteer post as the coordinator of a makerspace electronics lab, we were buried in e-waste "abandonations" (someone literally unloaded a pickup truck full of mouse-eaten boxes of plastic junk outside our door one morning, and it took us a week of volunteer hours to dispose of it all properly) until we got very aggressive about requiring advance approval by the appropriate coordinator.
Last month 10k apps were built on our platform – here's what we learned
by jonathanhar | 2025-04-30 13:54:01+00:00
Hey all, Jonathan here, cofounder of Fine.dev

Over the last month alone, we've seen more than 10,000 apps built on our product, an AI-powered app creation platform. That gave us a pretty unique vantage point to understand how people actually use AI to build software. We thought we had it pretty much figured out, but what we learned changed our thinking completely.

Here are the three biggest things we learned:

1. Reducing the agent's scope of action improves outcomes (significantly)

At first, we thought “the more the AI can do, the better.” Turns out… not really. When the agent had too much freedom, users got vague, bloated, or irrelevant results. But when we narrowed the scope the results got shockingly better. We even stopped using tool calls almost all together. We never expected this to happen, but here we are. Bottom line - small, focused prompts → cleaner, more useful apps.

2. The first prompt matters. A lot.

We’ve seen prompt quality vary wildly. The difference between "make me a productivity tool" and "give me a morning checklist with 3 fields I can check off and reset each day" is everything. In fact, the success of the app often came down to just how detailed was that first prompt. If it was good enough - users could easily make iterations on top of it until they got their perfect result. If it wasn't good enough, the iterations weren't really useful. Bottom line - make sure to invest in your first request, it will set the tone for the rest of the process.

3. Most apps were small + personal + temporary.

Here’s what really blew our minds: People weren't building startups / businesses. They were building tools for themselves. For this week. For this moment. A gift tracker just for this year's holidays, a group trip planner for the weekend, a quick dashboard to help their kid with morning routines, a way to RSVP for a one-time event. Most of these apps weren’t meant to last. And that's what made them valuable.

This led us to a big shift in our thinking:

We’ve always thought of software as product or infrastructure. But after watching 10,000 apps come to life, we’re convinced it’s also becoming content: fast to create, easy to discard, and deeply personal. In fact, we even released a Feed where every post is a working app you can remix, rebuild, or discard.

We think we're entering the age of disposable software, and AI app builders is where that shift comes to life.

Also happy to answer questions about what we learned from the first 10K apps AMA style.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-30 13:54:05+00:00
Sorry, to clarify: by "factory worker" I'm referring to the pre-offshoring state of your typical American factory job. A skilled employee who's closer to a plant operator and troubleshooter than an assembly-line drone is, of course, another case and can make very good wages.

Your parallel to ag is a good one: it's something we need to be here, and we wisely embraced automation to ensure 1. we could do it even in wartime, when our male population is needed elsewhere, and 2. that we could produce in a way that cost little for the average consumer and the export market. We need the same thing to happen here.

I mentioned the "factory jobs aren't coming back" point more because Trump is playing hard to a rust-belt base that wants those jobs back, doing this in some ways as a hand-out.
by YetAnotherNick | 2025-04-30 13:54:14+00:00
The warrant officer was the instructor and was training her. Few times doesn't make someone qualified. I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain.

Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.
by mdaniel | 2025-04-30 13:54:26+00:00
You may want to do your own Show HN about it, so folks don't have to be "MCP curious" to find out that it exists

That said, given https://github.com/runsecret/rsec#aws-secrets-manager presumably in order to keep AWS credentials off disk one would then have to have this?

"vantage-mcp-server": { "command": "/opt/homebrew/bin/aws-vault", "args": [ "exec", "--region=us-east-1", "my-awesome-profile", "--", "/opt/homebrew/bin/rsec", "run", "--", "/opt/homebrew/bin/vantage-mcp-server" ], "env": {"VANTAGE_BEARER_TOKEN": "rsec://012345678912/sm.aws/VantageBearerToken?region=us-east-1"} }

in contrast to the op binary that is just one level of indirection, since they already handshake with the desktop app for $(op login) purposes