MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by 9d | 2025-04-17 19:03:57+00:00
> No guessing. No worrying about the order. Your code is self-documenting. Plus, TypeScript gives you full autocompletion and type safety.

1. Most of the time, arguments are not the same type, so if you're using TypeScript, you're already getting errors at this point. In your example, only first/last names might get mixed up. And if you still get those wrong while writing that code, you're just phoning it in atp and maybe should take a day off.

2. The same TypeScript that checks your types, also lets you see the signature when hovering over the function.

In real world coding, this isn't an issue, and you'll probably give up keeping this "rule" after a year or two. But good that you're at least thinking about these kinds of things.
by hwayne | 2025-04-17 19:04:02+00:00
Proving it's nonpolynomial is pretty easy: just make the goal vector `(10, 10, 10)` and the displacement vectors `{(1, 0, 0), (-10, 1, 0), (-10, -10, 1)}`. It takes ~1000 steps to reach the goal, and if we add one more dimension we need 10x more steps.

So it grows, at least, exponentially. Back in 1970ish someone found a problem that's at least double-exponential, proving it was 2-EXPTIME-hard. It was conjectured to be 2-EXPTIME-complete for the longest time, but turned out to be significantly harder.
by alew1 | 2025-04-17 19:04:22+00:00
The taxpayer funding is for Harvard's research activities, not for its undergraduate teaching. The undergraduate teaching is funded by tuition (often paid in full by international students) and by returns on the endowment (including some earmarked for financial aid).

> they could vastly grow their class size without lowering standards

The issue isn't the quality of the students they are accepting, but the resources to educate and house them, including classroom space, dorms, and staff.
by serjester | 2025-04-17 19:04:36+00:00
Point of feedback on the landing page - you guys need to a better job explaining the killer use case here. Your first video is an implementation detail not a selling point. Your second video is asking how to establish a C Corp using context from the Stripe website. Is anyone actually going to do this over asking the LLM directly?

It seems like all the videos fall in this bucket.
by dawnofdusk | 2025-04-17 19:04:56+00:00
The arxiv preprint linked in this is really good. I'm American so I got my education on e from the compound interest limit which isn't natural at all, as Loh points out. Why should it matter how many times I "split up" my compounding?

IMO exponentials should just not be taught at all without basic notions of calculus (slopes of tangent lines suffice, as Po Shen Loh does here). The geometric intuition matters more than how to algebraically manipulate derivatives. The differential equation is by far the most natural approach, and it deserves to be taught earlier to students as is done apparently in France and Russia.
by srveale | 2025-04-17 19:06:22+00:00
To be fair, the general public have been conditioned for a while now by things like blockchain and VR to be completely underwhelmed, perhaps rightfully so, by whatever's coming out of San Fran and Seattle.

So in the public consciousness it's like (NFTs, meme coins, metaverse, AI)

When I think it's more like (internet, smartphones, AI)

We'll see who's right in a few years I guess. But I'll +1 your view that plenty of people put AI in the first group, I know a few myself.
by FilosofumRex | 2025-04-17 19:06:23+00:00
Dude, read your own reference... There is no mention of information or communication theory anywhere in his 1927 paper or 1932 book. Young Von Nuemann was doing real physics extending and updating Gibb's entropy.

OTOH, old Von Neumann was wealthy, hobnobbing with politicians and glitterati musing about life, biology, econ and anything else that would amuse his social circles. "Entropy", as he's alleged to have told Shannon, was his ace in the pocket to win arguments.

Formal similarity with Shannon's entropy is superfluous and conveys no new information about any system, quantum or otherwise. But it does make for lot's PhD dissertations, for exactly the same reason Von Nuemann stated.
by orange_fritter | 2025-04-17 19:06:23+00:00
Yep it's tough to be optimistic. I like to think about a micro-meteorite falling on my head. It's possible at any moment, and yet I always ask myself why I'm not worried about it.

The best advice that anyone can give you is to stop looking at social media, or reduce it by 90+%. The kind of "depression" or "despair" you express is a symptom of doom scrolling.

My next advice is a question - If you can't enjoy today, why do you think you would enjoy tomorrow, even if everything in life were perfect? "One day at a time" is really good advice. Do something tangible to mark your successes or failures on this one single day, and then rinse and repeat tomorrow. If you are "failing" too much, then recalibrate your expectations until you can mark several points of success, no matter how small. "I read my work email" or "I did zero youtube".

My non-expert prediction is that LLMs will ruin the youth's coding skills. Anyone in a deep dev discussion will have to have instinctual knowledge that LLMs can't teach, and their value will be apparent when non-trivial tasks arise. And remember, a micro-meteorite could fall on our heads at any time!
by vel0city | 2025-04-17 19:06:27+00:00
I lightly rinse the worst dishes while loading until the water gets really hot at the sink next to the dishwasher. Having that prewash be very hot does a lot to make sure it gets it good in my experience.

US dishwashers tend to assume the incoming water is from the hot water line and is pretty hot. It takes a bit for the tub to actually get the water very hot, so you'll end up spending most of the pre-wash step with only mildly warm water if you don't get the hot water there first.
by kazinator | 2025-04-17 19:06:32+00:00
People are illegally thinking of nothing but 'google.com' when they are about to search for something, rules judge.

In so doing, they leave Google no choice but to reluctantly comply in behaving like a monopoly.

This flagrant behavior is punishable by exposure to pages and pages of spam, advertising, inauthentic content, nonsensical AI summaries (unless 'fucking' is added to the query) and malware.

Our reporter tried reaching out to a few representatives of the people to see what they have to say for themselves, but they were too busy doom-scrolling YouTube shorts or TikTok to even blink their eyes.
by praptak | 2025-04-17 19:06:45+00:00
I can imagine a system which assures one ID per actual verified meat human. The ID can be banned from communities, blocked by individuals or kicked out of the platform.

I think this would limit the supply of IDs, so a big improvement over the current situation where bot posters can just farm fake IDs. Obviously this has some assumptions - for example that most humans joining the platform do so in good faith and not to just sell their IDs to bots.
by Hizonner | 2025-04-17 19:06:45+00:00
Those businesses also have control. They just don't like the option of control they have, which is to stay out of those countries altogether.

> This is something you should send to your government that makes those rules.

My government hasn't made those rules, at least not yet. Last time they tried, I joined the crowd yelling at them about it. It's easier to do that if people aren't giving them technology they can pretend solves the fundamental problems with what they're doing.

Any more bright ideas?
by indigodaddy | 2025-04-17 19:06:49+00:00
To followup on this train of thought, I feel like it might be game over for everyone else if Google decides to release their own VS code Cursor-like clone and stays consistent with the incredible context and free tier for Gemini Pro that you currently get from online/webui Gemini and Google AI studio.

The question is do they want to go in that direction? (And also if they do, do they only allow Gemini model or do they open it up to a choice of various models (to also include models not related to Google/Gemini) and/or BYOK). I don't see why not because I believe they will slaughter Cursor, Windsurf, et al if so ...
by doublerabbit | 2025-04-17 19:07:24+00:00
That was quick. It did work, now it doesn't.

"It seems like you're asking about the method for printing in 3D, possibly related to a process that involves turning a material into something valuable or useful. Could you clarify a bit more about what you're looking for? If it's 3D printing in general or something specific about how materials are processed in this technology, I can provide a detailed explanation."
by p3rls | 2025-04-17 19:07:29+00:00
Really? Even non-technical people are waking up and seeing the 3 in web3 stands for India, OnlyFans and AI content.

As someone who runs a large platform in the music niche, every independent interesting webapp in the kpop community besides me has been killed by Google's ceaseless enshittification and I'd be thrilled if everyone who worked there had their stock options reduced to 0 to atone for what they've done to the internet.
Show HN: Availability tracker for people and projects in different timezones
by setnone | 2025-04-17 19:07:29+00:00
Hi HN,

I made this to scratch my own itch to never calculate timezone math by hand and solve it with a visual approach. World clock apps are about locations so I made this one about people and projects. The app is local-first, all data stays on your device, no sign up needed and now it's free.

Let me know what you think, any feedback is appreciated!
by jowea | 2025-04-17 19:07:30+00:00
> Is that what people are worried about? What about the economy, civil rights, wars, etc.

I meant this more like what people could be worried about. In a functioning liberal democracy, there are things people usually don't worry about, which allows some people to just ignore politics. Sure the economy is an issue, but there isn't a serious communist contender in the election or a candidate wanting to start wars of conquest.

Imagine this election. Candidate A you think will deliver GDP growth of 2+-0.5%. Candidate B you expect to deliver GDP growth of 3+-2% growth. No other big difference between them. Maybe you prefer A, maybe you don't, but in the end you'll probably be relatively fine either way.

Now imagine this other election. Candidate A hates your ethnic group and you are likely going to be fired from your government job or worse if he wins. Candidate B is from your ethnic group and will do reverse Candidate A. Now the point is that this sort of election isn't supposed to happen in a functional liberal democracy.

Consequences are rarely this extreme, and even when they are it's not a product of personal or group targeting just a general policy like "ban fracking", which means even affected people can still carry on with their lives.

And also this is one of the reasons elections "work" at all. If the losers think they will be chased by the state after losing, there's no reason to participate in the election, might as well arm up before the polls and take your chances in the battlefield and/or negotiate directly with the other side's elites.

> I'm very confused about your argument. Is it that who you vote for doesn't matter because they won't personally attack you and the policies of whatever politician won't harm you?

> Considering how the popular vote is almost always close to being split (you know like +10/-10) why would a non voter have that trust when from their view it's a coinflip

My point is that it's a coinflip between two acceptable choices. Some of those nonvoters would be literally undecided if asked who they prefer. It may matter, but not that much. And even if it does, it may matter in a way where the consequences are hard to predict or not obvious.
by 9rx | 2025-04-17 19:07:59+00:00
> There’s a big difference between growing part of your own food and buying it.

Because if you grow your own food you have to worry about storage? You are right that, while not impossible to overcome – our ancestors managed, is not the easiest problem to deal with. Especially if you like variety in your diet.

That's why I, a farmer, don't (knowingly) eat the food I grow. It is a lot easier to exchange the food for an IOU. Then, later, when I'm hungry, I can return the IOU for food. Someone who specializes in food storage can do a much better job than I can. Let them deal with it. My expertise is in growing the food.

What is even the point of growing part of your own food? I'd at least have some understanding of being fully reliant on your own food if you fear a zombie apocalypse or something, but if you remain dependent on others anyway, what have you gained? If it is that you enjoy the process of growing food like I do, you may as well become a farmer and sell the product.

> not wanting to communicate with anyone.

Want and need a very different concepts.
by AStonesThrow | 2025-04-17 19:08:36+00:00
So I went to a restaurant and I looked at the menu and then I ordered a plate of cells with a glass of fine cells. The waitress looked at me like I was insane.

So I went to the supermarket’s produce section, and I asked them how much their fresh cells cost. And they told me it depended on what kind of cells. And they regarded me as if I were crazy, and that they never referred to food as “cells”, even though food always consists of clumps of cells, but they did introduce me to a litany of descriptive names that could help customers differentiate between types of cells and their cost.

Then I went home to my mother and I asked her for dinner and she asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to eat cells. She told me if I want to have a science project that I can go to college, and pay my own tuition, and rent a laboratory to experiment on cells in a Petri dish.

[Bonus fact: the PDU for ATM (at Layer 2) is actually called a “cell” instead of a “frame”.]
by joseda-hg | 2025-04-17 19:09:38+00:00
The only place I would use physical money that doesn't take a form of digital payment, is public transportation (And that one is a matter of time)

While there are many formative opportunities about handling physical money (The sensation of exchanging physical coins is big on a kids mind or knowing they have money and having missplaced it), I can 100% see a case for a card instead, trackable, instant access to emergency money, etc
by hwpythonner | 2025-04-17 19:09:44+00:00
Not an expert in JS, but maybe this makes sense in JS where everything is passed as objects anyway and having a single param is often more readable there.

But in native languages like C/C++/etc, this pattern usually hurts performance. Separate arguments go into registers (faster but depends on number of arguments), while structs often involve indirection, and sometimes alignment/padding issues. Also, passing a const struct doesn’t guarantee the fields inside are truly const.

That said, it's context dependent. If you're passing stuff through multiple layers or want a more stable function signature, using a struct can be cleaner. Just not something I’d generalize to any language or any use case.
by zardo | 2025-04-17 19:09:53+00:00
> This all pre-supposes that evolution will lock alien organisms into a specific and static body configuration on other planets like it has done to organisms on Earth.

It's pretty normal for organisms to have drastically different body configurations through their lives. e.g moths

Though I'm not aware of any that have choices to make in the process.

Edit: actually lots of organisms can "choose" to change their sex
by feraloink | 2025-04-17 19:10:14+00:00
IANAL so I'm likely missing something, but I don't understand why the person representing Google said they had won half the case, given that:

>Google violated the Sherman Act by monopolizing and unlawfully tying two parts of the ad tech stack together, specifically DFP and AdX, and that Google is guilty of abuse of monopoly power in publisher-side adtech

AND

>In a separate antitrust case, another federal judge last year found that Google illegally monopolized the general internet search market.

Also, I think the article said that the judge for this most recent case, the Sherman Act violations, would discuss remedies on Thursday. But today is Thursday. Do you think they meant next week?
by dang | 2025-04-17 19:10:26+00:00
Related. Others?

Understanding Smallpond and 3FS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43232410 - March 2025 (47 comments)

Smallpond – A lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB and 3FS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200793 - Feb 2025 (73 comments)

Fire-Flyer File System (3FS) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200572 - Feb 2025 (101 comments)
by CalChris | 2025-04-17 19:10:29+00:00
I see that 'conservatives' and 'libertarians' are claiming her. I'm not sure she'd claim them. She was anti-ideology.

But this conservativism you speak of, it's such a squishy term. Respect for existing institutions, places and organizations fits when it fits and then doesn't when it doesn't. Right now, it doesn't.

Buckley (oh so nobly) said A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. But then he also said that he'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win. So much for standing athwart history.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-04-17 19:10:35+00:00
As a parent, I never failed to recognize it.

I just failed to be able to do anything about it.

You were a teenager once, I'm sure you can remember how little influence your parents actually had over how you actually spent your time. Or at least saw that in your friends.

This is a society wide thing. Parents are pretty much powerless.

So yes, regulation. But you'll see how discussion of any proposal for this goes down in this forum. Just imagine across the whole polis.
by CommieBobDole | 2025-04-17 19:10:37+00:00
Because everybody is replying obliquely to this: You should not have to do either of those things. If your dishwasher is working properly, you should be able to put fully-dirty dishes in it and remove fully-clean, dry dishes from it. This is how my dishwasher works and how all dishwashers I have ever owned work.

If your dishwasher does not generally work in this way, it is not working correctly.
by TheGRS | 2025-04-17 19:10:38+00:00
Right, but society changes around this stuff pretty substantially. A lot of the discourse gets spent debating whether we like the changes or not, and the solutions to the new problems are usually very pie-in-the-sky or completely unachievable. Like we can't really put the social media genie back in the bottle, its here and society has reshaped around it. But banning phones from schools is pretty tangible and I'd probably argue its for the betterment of students.
Ask HN: Looking to interview homeschoolers to improve my stack and as a piece
by jppope | 2025-04-17 19:11:02+00:00
Hi there!

I'm wondering if anyone in the HN community would be willing to have a conversation about their experiences homeschooling, their "homeschool stack", and where they see homeschool going. This is not product research or anything related to that. its purely for personal reasons. I have been talking to friends about this and there is a lot of interest. My intent is to try to publish my findings on my personal site: jonpauluritis.com.

Or if you'd just rather post about it in the comments please do!
by btown | 2025-04-17 19:11:20+00:00
I've thought of this a lot!

Lots of hospitality booking and pricing engines, for instance, require materialization of complex rules: if suppliers have rules that say "if the checkin is on these 3 days of each week add a price multiplier, which stacks with the holiday pricing event that happens every year, but only if you're a certain number of days out from check-in" you need to be able to render this for arbitrary date ranges to provide pricing calendars.

And you can use simple iteration if you want to render for a single property - but what if you want to render a queried week's pricing across a massive corpus of units, where every millisecond of latency is a lost conversion opportunity? And where any supplier could change their rules at any time? And where length-of-stay and per-guest pricing might come into play, adding more dimensions that make full materialization hard to do?

(Google, for instance, has something akin to this problem, in how it integrates with hotel suppliers using https://developers.google.com/hotels/hotel-prices/dev-guide/... .)

You might even think, in this context: how can I represent the rules on a GPU or other system with limited working memory, and be able to render search results the way I'd render tiles?

Then things like the OP's post become vital considerations, and far from just simple analogies!
by hnfong | 2025-04-17 19:11:24+00:00
If we're talking about "fantasy world" vs "real world", the "always run 42 years algorithm" surely is closer to fantasy world than most reasonable Big-O analyses...

If you need to pull an example from fantasy world to illustrate your point about Big-O notation not being useful "in the real world" you're probably committing the same alleged mistakes as computational theorists...
by _pdp_ | 2025-04-17 19:11:25+00:00
Bookmarked it. We took another approach which provides more flexibility but at the cost of slower spin up. Basically we use firecracker vm. We mount the attachments and everything else into the vm so that the agent can run tools on them (anything on the os) and we destroy the machine at the very end. It works! It is also as secure as firecracker goes.

But I like using WASM especially in a hosted environment like Deno. It feels like a more scaleable solution and probably less maintenance too with the downside that that we wont be able to run just any cmd.

I am happy to provide more details and point to the tool is anyone is interested. It is not open-source but you can play with it for free.
by alexey-salmin | 2025-04-17 19:11:42+00:00
Web ads are bearable for me most of the time, but I'm dismayed by ads in mobile games my kids play. Unskippable 30 second videos that peddle poorly made F2P games.

I manage to keep them mostly out of it by paying for worthy games and deleting the rest.

However I would in fact happily welcome _some_ ads. Ones that would simply inform me of existence of masterpieces like Tiny Bubbles or Monument Valley rather than peddle anything. This idea of a tiny ad network with curated content comes up in my head often. Sure it won't make any money it would do some good.
by haberman | 2025-04-17 19:12:06+00:00
> If you get accused of doing something you didn't do, you can file a defamation lawsuit.

Are you aware of anyone who has successfully done this and maintained their standing in life?

The example that comes to mind for me is Steven Galloway, a UBC Professor who was accused of sexual assault in 2015 and filed a defamation lawsuit about it in 2018. That lawsuit has spent the last 7 years making its way through the courts; after many attempts to have it dismissed, it will finally proceed to trial. Meanwhile Galloway's career basically ended: he went from being a celebrated and award-winning author and professor to doing manual labor like cleaning swimming pools. His publisher cancelled a three-book contract in 2018.

Even if the defamation lawsuit succeeds, how will he ever be made whole? He will never get the last 10 years of his life back.
by _mlbt | 2025-04-17 19:12:12+00:00
I’m sorry but you can’t convince me that people in this country illegally shouldn’t be deported back to their country of origin. Particularly when they are affiliated with violent gangs like MS-13 and commit acts of domestic violence that cause their wife to get a restraining order against them.

I can empathize with why people would want to immigrate to this country, but they need to do so legally.