MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wubrr | 2025-04-23 23:19:38+00:00
> Very few system fonts are any good.

An obviously false statement which you can't possibly back up.

> Would you use Arial instead of Helvetica Neue? I certainly wouldn't. Put two posters side-by-side and you'd notice the Helvetica one as looking more professional, even without any design background.

First of all that's just completely your own subjective opinion. Second, there are many other free sans-serif fonts out there to choose from (examples[1]).

> Good design creates a reaction, such as causing you to buy something or interacting more with something or whatever

'Design' can encompass many things, but can you show me some data that backs up your claim that slight differences in fonts will make a difference in product quality/performance/revenue/etc? Because I have seen a loooot of data that says it's almost always completely irrelevant.

[1] https://fonts.google.com/?categoryFilters=Sans+Serif:%2FSans...
by xvector | 2025-04-23 23:19:59+00:00
> The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic ... It's anti-American ... I do understand the "new" American perspective.

"American" means being able to make your own decisions without government overreach in every aspect of your life.

"American" means being able to decide if you want to engage with a business or not, without getting the government involved.

"American" means being able to reach the highest highs or risk the lowest lows on the power of your tenacity and skill alone, without having the government shoot you down when you succeed, or put meaningless performative roadblocks in your way.

"American" means understanding that the government is not your friend and it doesn't need to replace your own decision making capability or ability to make choices.

From your dismissive sneering tone you do not understand the American perspective. Honestly, I am not sure the typical European even could. You have not grown up in our culture, so ideas like personal responsibility, self-reliance, and the American spirit are foreign to you - or at least heavily deprioritized.

You simply sneer and scoff at these concepts. You do you - this is why the EU is three decades behind and totally, utterly dependent on foreign tech - yet still somehow convinced it could catch up "if it really wanted to."
by ang_cire | 2025-04-23 23:20:02+00:00
This ruling is correct, and good.

> If a company develops a web-based business for the purpose of conducting online transactions in all 50 States, it should not be surprised that it may be sued in any State for unlawful transactions that may occur within that State.

Obviously. But the author calls this "chilling". Without this, companies could circumvent state laws, to conduct actions that are illegal in that state within that state, simply by headquartering or hosting in another. That would be absurd.

It would create a race-to-the-bottom of consumer rights, where states wanting business tax revenue are incentivized to make their states surveillance/ data harvesting/ consumer exploitation havens, whose businesses could then operate across all other states freely.
Ask HN: Is politeness towards LLMs good training data, or just expensive noise?
by scottfalconer | 2025-04-23 23:21:23+00:00
Sam Altman recently said user politeness towards ChatGPT costs OpenAI "tens of millions" but is "money well spent."

The standard view is that RLHF relies on explicit feedback (thumbs up/down), and polite tokens are just noise adding compute cost.

But could natural replies like "thanks!" or "no, that's wrong" be a richer, more frequent implicit feedback signal than button clicks? People likely give that sort of feedback more often (at least I do.) It also mirrors how we naturally provide feedback as humans.

Could model providers be mining these chat logs for genuine user sentiment to guide future RLHF, justifying the cost? And might this "socialization" be crucial for future agentic AI needing conversational nuance?

Questions for HN:

Do you know of anyone using this implicit sentiment as a core alignment signal?

How valuable is noisy text sentiment vs. clean button clicks for training?

Does potential training value offset the compute cost mentioned?

Are we underestimating the value of 'socializing' LLMs this way?

What do you think Altman meant by "well spent"? Is it purely about user experience, valuable training data, something else entirely?
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-23 23:21:54+00:00
Regardless of what you think about the issue directly, the whiplash and chaos of back and forth news is not a good way to nurture businesses or allow them to make plans, nor is it conducive to foreign businesses doing business with American ones.

Everyone of these news articles represent hours of meetings for the senior leadership of every company in America, what is the opportunity cost of that alone?

A foreign business considering working with America would rationally choose a more stable actor even if we offered a better deal. How much will factoring in our instability literally cost American businesses. How uncomfrotable would you be as a foreign business thinking of depending on us.

This administration exists to harm America. We are experiencing a decapitation strike. Timothy Snyder -- Decapitation Strike https://archive.is/1xkxK -- https://snyder.substack.com/p/decapitation-strike
by timewizard | 2025-04-23 23:22:32+00:00
To be fair the code actually creates a new API gateway server that acts as a proxy on to an already existing server and you're possibly meant to use this header with your own gateway service.

So, it's set as a header, sent to a user owned proxy, then to the actual external endpoint.

On the other hand I think the receiving API Gateway will be able to see and log your AWS account identifier when you do this. So your IP may not be the only identifying information that needs to be obscured for this to actually work.
by makeitdouble | 2025-04-23 23:22:35+00:00
It could look performative if you only look at citizens.

From other businesses POV though

- this becomes the final decision on this given behavior under the DMA. A precedent is set, that will guide any further enforcement.

- it also sets a stake in the ground for other back and forth litigations: the EU will actually fine the companies. We can argue whether this amount is too low, but on any further fines the question will never be whether the EU will actually do it (compare to the current US tariffs situation and you see why this matters)

- it's easier to expand to DMA adjacent companies as needed. If Bluesky ever had to be scrutinized, this would be a reference point.
by mrguyorama | 2025-04-23 23:22:58+00:00
The R-7 was never a practical weapon but interceptors were never a practical counter to bombers, and that got even more true when nuclear weapons stopped being gravity bombs.

Notably, the US Navy ran into the exact same problem. The USSR invented a bomber launched cruise missile to take out carriers, and there was no interceptor capable of getting into the air and into engagement range after the bomber showed up on radar but before it was able to launch it's missiles.

They spent like 15-20 years going down different paths (starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer) that were sometimes silly and usually a bad project. The eventual and actual solution was: Better airborne early warning doctrine and systems, better picket and CAP doctrine, better ISR, and most importantly of all; enough advancement on missile systems that they actually COULD hit the bomber you selected reliably and reach out and touch them at fifty miles, and now basically any fast multirole fighter you have is a "bomber interceptor".

The dedicated interceptor plane was a interim role that was dying when the Arrow was cancelled. Average fighter plane speed was increasing enough to make dedicated hypersonic interceptors a poor plan, and missiles fly at Mach 4-8 anyway.

Bomber speeds also did not go as high as predicted. The bulk of the threat was bombers, but the investment into the kind of super duper fast bombers that the XB-70 represented ended for about the same reason: Missiles and radar got good. The US did build the B-1b, but that doesn't break Mach 2. The TU-160M does hit Mach 2.3, but that's as fast as we went.

Bombers moved on to low level flying to attempt to survive, which limited speeds anyway, so that's another strike against dedicated "Put a wing on a huge engine" interceptors.
by Grimblewald | 2025-04-23 23:23:01+00:00
Hey folks, the house is gettig hot. Maybe can we stop mining bitcoin for a few moments?

no >:( but lets explore drilling holes in the roof?

absolute madness. The MBA's might be a stain on my time on earth but they'll surely wipe our species off the planet with their single-minded drive to make "good number go big"

dont pin this on scientists either - most chemists knew the dangers of and openly called out against leaded petroleum, but all big oil needed was a single dimwit they could pay to make it happen anyway. Getting laws introduced to ban a thing is hard. Really hard. Usually taking a generation or so of meticulous work. By then the companies have made bank on their investment in the one idiot scientist who finally said yes to the task.

I have no doubts this will go the path of CFC's (threat to ozone suspected from the start), asbestos (silicosis risk known from the start), leaded petrol (lead dangers known from the start), etc. And now trying to tune a delicate watch with a sledgehammer - dangers known from the start.
by Spivak | 2025-04-23 23:24:06+00:00
Well yeah they're junior developers. By all account from good schools but literally everyone here has dealt with junior developer brain.

I would say that Elmo picked a bunch of junior devs because they don't have enough maturity to talk back and will do anything they're asked but I think that's too charitable. I think he actually went this route because Elmo is a sad man in his 50s who is desperately trying to pretend that he is, and has not matured beyond, his 20s.
by jhatemyjob | 2025-04-23 23:24:18+00:00
After finishing the article I immediately did ctrl+f "rust" and was disappointed to not see any of the results I wanted, but actually this comment is more hilarious than anyone saying "why didnt rockstar use rust in 2004!!!1111!!???" it's a bit more of a sophisticated joke since there's an IYKYK factor but it is no less hilarious. Bravo sir, bravo.
by wubrr | 2025-04-23 23:24:55+00:00
> There are many free fonts out there, yes, but there's a reason they're free.

Go on and tell me what that reason is then. Are you also going to tell me free open-source software, like Linux is low-quality because its free?

> The quality for a majority of them is significantly lower

Again, a completely baseless, unprovable assertion.

> You don't have to agree, but I'm not being absurd or lacking sincerity.

What do you call your example of using Calibri for everything in response to someone suggesting the use of free fonts?

You are lacking sincerity and making absurd claims. Almost everything else you say is literally baseless rhetoric that you are unable to back up with data or any objective argument.

> there's thousands of books about the importance of typography if you're curious to learn more.

It's amazing that you apparently know of thousands of such books, but are unable to make one coherent, objective argument to back up your claims.... did you read them?
by ziddoap | 2025-04-23 23:25:28+00:00
Like two lines up from your quote:

"He specifically was told that there were to be no logs or records made of the accounts created for DOGE employees"

That sure sounds like no logs.

If you don't believe the whistleblower, just say that, and skip the insulting me part (and I'll know to skip the replying to you part).
by jacamera | 2025-04-23 23:25:46+00:00
I blame the experts. It's their responsibility to explain things to the public and engage in forums that the public is paying attention to (e.g. podcasts). They don't have to bloviate about everything under the sub, but they do have to be able to break down and communicate their ideas to the non-expert public. Failure to do so creates a vacuum that is filled by the Marc Andreesens and Peter Thiels of the world.
by tim-- | 2025-04-23 23:25:58+00:00
Despite the name, the GPTK isn't just a porting toolkit. It contains a version of Wine that is specifically patched to pass DirectX calls to Metal.

There is a relatively easy way for a player to use GPTK to run games from their Steam library on Mac.

Here is how to use Apple's Game Porting Toolkit to install Wine & Steam.

1. Go to https://github.com/installaware/AGPT and download & run the installer

2. Go to https://store.steampowered.com/about/ and download the installer

3. Open a Terminal, run mkdir Games && gameportingtoolkit ~/Games Downloads/SteamSetup.exe

4. Follow the instructions at https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit#Sh...
Show HN: XCapture v3: Linux Performance Analysis with Modern eBPF and DuckDB
by tanelpoder | 2025-04-23 23:26:12+00:00
Hello, I just released the (eventually) final version of my xcapture eBPF performance tool that now uses modern eBPF (libbpf, BTF, CO-RE, passive sampling using task iterators, task-local storage, etc).

The previous BCC-based v2 version got a good discussion here last year [1], but due to BCC being less flexible and now deprecated, I decided to pull the plug and start from scratch with the latest eBPF features available. I'm targeting Linux kernels 5.14 and up. So Ubuntu 20 with HWE kernel (5.15) already works, RHEL9 works, Oracle's RHEL8 clone OEL8 with Oracle's UEK7 kernel (5.15) also works. Supporting 64-bit x86 and ARM for now (I'm tempted to try it out on RISC-V too).

How this approach and method differs from traditional eBPF tracing and systemwide metric collection tools is that xcapture "tracks (not traces) plus samples" all threads' activity in the entire system. This way you can get a systemwide summary of activity (who's spending time on what) and drill down into an individual thread if you want to. Thanks to this method, it is feasible to track+sample all activity all the time, which is not realistic with tracing and not detailed enough with systemwide utilization metrics monitoring.

I managed to explain this method in just 10 minutes at last year's eBPF Summit, the 10-minute video is the 1st one you see on 0xtools website [2].

Thanks for reading, waiting for feedback!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40869877

[2] https://0x.tools/
by api_or_ipa | 2025-04-23 23:26:14+00:00
One of the most mind bending facts I tell people, even sailors, is that sailboats are not limited to sailing at the true windspeed. Sails are wings, not bags. In fact, a boat's top speed is directly dictated by its ability to point into the wind (assuming, for example, the boat is not physically limited by it's displacement hull speed, as in the case of hydrofoils). The consequences of this simple truth are manifest.

First, consider the edge case where the sail is acting as a bag when you're sailing downwind. As the boatspeed approaches the true windspeed, the apparent windspeed falls to 0 and the sail will luff. In this specific case, the boat can not go faster than the wind.

Now consider the boat cutting across the wind at a 90 angle. When the boat starts moving, the wind comes 90 degrees off the bow. As the boat increases speed, the apparent wind shifts closer to the bow. Apparent wind is just vector addition of true wind and boat wind. If the boat achieves the same speed as the true wind, then the apparent wind is sqrt(2) ~ 1.4x faster than the true wind. More wind means more power, so with that additional wind, it can go faster. Continuing the example, as the apparent wind increases, it appears closer and closer to the bow. Eventually the sail will stall and produce less lift. This is the point where the boat will go no faster.

The slowest point of sail is directly downwind. In a race, it is often much faster to gybe back and forth rather than ever go directly downwind. When a boat goes directly downwind, their boat speed cancels out the true wind. In the strangest case, if a high performance boat going faster than the speed of wind (say, on a broadreach) goes directly downwind, the apparent wind will appear to be coming head on. They've effectively gone 'into irons', yet they're facing 180 degrees off true wind.

If you ever get the chance, you should see the SailGP boats race. Their sails are almost always hauled fully in, even downwind. The other thing is that they gybe downwind because to go directly downwind would be to stall. In effect, these boats can achieve multiple times the true wind speed, but so long as they aren't pointed directly into, nor directly away from the wind.
by timewizard | 2025-04-23 23:26:30+00:00
> Now imagine you're a DOGE bro

What does any of this data have to do with making the department more efficient? I can't imagine doing _any_ of this if that was my actual goal.

> and so do the DOGE bros.

When I believe my actions are "fully justified" then that is _precisely_ when I want logging enabled. So no one on Earth could dispute that.
by 0x_rs | 2025-04-23 23:26:58+00:00
The repository has been deleted. In addition, 26 other repos have been removed from the account. This is in line with DOGE members' quick response scrubbing data whenever put into spotlight, as previously seen with another "teen hacker". [0]

Archived repo page: https://archive.ph/LI7tt; archived previous repo count: https://archive.ph/tgkg5

0. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/i-no-longer-hack...
by frumplestlatz | 2025-04-23 23:27:19+00:00
It would convince me that whoever I was whistleblowing on was so remarkably stupid as to engage in a felonious criminal conspiracy while leaving behind physical evidence thereof.

I hope that the threatening note and photos have been turned over to the police, where they can be analyzed for fingerprints, printer microdots, et al, and the police can canvas the neighborhood for security camera footage.

As a tactical move, this kind of threat makes zero sense for anyone in the government to carry out if they are even a semi-rational actor.
by heelix | 2025-04-23 23:27:25+00:00
Ah man... back in the day I worked for a company that built out records management software. One of the big things on the side of the cereal box was that not even an admin could delete something flagged as a record within its retention plan. Fast forward to a company doing that for emails, messing up spam filters, and getting a blast of 'normal' porn that was all flagged as records. I believe they ended up creating security groups for those files that help keep those who were using it .. safe for work.
by timewizard | 2025-04-23 23:27:50+00:00
They give away the game if you pay attention and read other internal sources from other agencies. This is all about shoving AI into the loop and removing federal workers from it.

They want to prove that AI can do "just as good a job" on these data sets and arrive at "equal conclusions" with a much higher level of effiency.

This is what happens when you get high on your own supply.
by Zigurd | 2025-04-23 23:27:53+00:00
Camera apps on Android are very loosely coupled to the OS. They are intentionally left to OEMs to provide because that's the most visible aspect of hardware differentiation, and that differentiation probably depends on software support. On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image.
by ivape | 2025-04-23 23:28:18+00:00
I am sure Marc Andreesen is a very intelligent person but he built and sold a web browser. He isn’t an expert on every tech topic. Same with Peter Thiel and the rest of the PayPal mafia.

I would say it's similar to politicians. We won't really have your, I don't know, career Costco Manager in political leadership. We'll get AOC or a Vance (staying bipartisan to make the point, moving off this topic next sentence). The former knows more about basic commutes and the condition of public bathrooms than your average politician or tech mogul. Our tech leaders are not well-rounded or even representative. That's why they talk crazy shit because they are in a crazy rich insulated world. We tried some contrived way to get women and minorities to become CEOs, but I think it should start more grass roots and maybe think about stopping something like ycombinator (or Google for example) from constantly recruiting based on old boys club pedigree. Regular folks just don't get put into the mix for C-Level for whatever reason unless they are gifted at the ladder-climbing thing.

Exceptionalism dictates that we will never put them into the mix, and I think the world is probably missing out on some good practicality and humanity just based on sheer regular folk experience some people can bring.

Funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru8WeRqB0ts
by code_biologist | 2025-04-23 23:28:42+00:00
Event sourcing is an expensive solution and I don't mean from a storage perspective — it burns engineering cognitive horsepower quickly on things that don't matter. Do it if you're in finance or whatever. Having been burned by my own "let's event source" impulse on data change tracking systems, I now prefer less sophisticated solutions. Figuring out how to deal with slow projections, watching a projection rebuild go from minutes to hours to a few days as a system I expected to handle a few events/minute go to 20 events/second. Fancy caches can't save you if you want to use that vaunted ability to reconstruct from scratch. Event schema evolution also presents difficult tradeoffs: when old events stop having meaning or evolve in meaning you either end up adding on new event subtypes and variants leaving old cruft to accumulate, or you do migrations and edit history on really large tables.

I'd counsel anyone considering event sourcing to use more "low power" solutions like audit logs or soft deletes (if really necessary) first if possible.
by Dylan16807 | 2025-04-23 23:31:30+00:00
Statically proving the variables get initialized wouldn't change the performance except by making sure you check the return value of sscanf, or turning refusal to check into a couple register wipes. Either way, that's a negligible increase to a hefty function call. It wouldn't require default initializing variables in all circumstances.

When I think of the "no runtime cost" mentality of C/C++ I don't think that normally extends to ignoring errors in I/O functions.
by gkoberger | 2025-04-23 23:31:43+00:00
Then we aren't disagreeing. I never said anything about stealing or piracy; I agree with you that not being able to afford something doesn't give you the right to take it.

I think we're responding to different things. You're upset the original person mentioned piracy, whereas I took their rant to be more about licensing changes being yet another way companies are creeping up prices from one-time-purchase to rent-forever. You used to be able to pay for a font and use it in a magazine, but now you have to pay per impression.

And moreso, I'm annoyed by most of the comments saying that the free fonts on your computer should be enough.
by lupusreal | 2025-04-23 23:31:50+00:00
You are being deliberately obtuse. Investing in domestic production isn't an infinite money hack, that isn't the argument. The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware. With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry. Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets.