MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by svat | 2025-04-22 19:51:17+00:00
The post is not about becoming a professional academic/researcher in biology, so it's not clear why your comments (this and the earlier deleted one) focus on competency, calling the author "not cut out for biology", etc.

The post is simply about what you call enough attention to get through the boring parts of high school biology — should biology in school be only for those who have that ability? Even if being a professional biologist requires those attributes, shouldn't the teaching of the science of life—which is full of wonder—have a bit of something for everyone else too? Even people who don't become biologists ought to love biology, surely?

That's what the post (like the earlier one by Somers) is about; it's not about “I could have become a biologist” (as you seem to be implying). You can call it pop biology, but it's missing from school where “astonishing facts were presented without astonishment”. I see nothing self-entitled about this.

It's the same in mathematics, say: even if being a professional mathematician requires (say) thinking long and hard and being willing to struggle with difficult problems, manipulating things in one's head, etc — surely there is value in exposing more students to pop mathematics / beautiful results (enjoying which is very different from actually doing mathematics, sure), so that more people could love mathematics recreationally, whether or not they become professional ones?

The other top-level thread that talks about how this happens in CS education too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43764315) seems to get the point of the post: it's the equivalent of Lockhart's A Mathematician’s Lament (https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician'... ).
by vjerancrnjak | 2025-04-22 19:51:42+00:00
It's quite amazing how a db like this shows that all of those row-based dbs are doing something wrong, they can't even approach these speeds with btree index structures. I know they like transactions more than Clickhouse, but it's just amazing to see how fast modern machines are, billions of rows per second.

I'm pretty sure they did not even bother to properly compress the dataset, with some tweaking, could have probably been much smaller than 30GBs. The speed shows that reading the data is slower than decompressing it.

Reminds me of that Cloudflare article where they had a similar idea about encryption being free (slower to read than to decrypt) and finding a bug, that when fixed, materialized this behavior.

The compute engine (chdb) is a wonder to use.
by mmooss | 2025-04-22 19:52:02+00:00
I think you're the confused one - I started this subthread by saying Hesgeth's leaks were dangerous, yet somehow you jump into a debate about Serbia - the Wikipedia articles you cited were about Serbia - and argue that same point about Hesgeth as if I disagreed.

You also wrote explicitly about Serbia, and implicitly if you look at the context: we were talking about Serbia and you jumped in to talk about takeoff/landing; it's reasonable to read that as addressing the same topic.

I didn't know you meant takeoff/landing for the Yemen operations until now.
by dmwilcox | 2025-04-22 19:52:34+00:00
Today I learned (!) What?! A .com file can have a full 64k for every segment! Amazing! All of my little experiments are .com files and I dread having to go to .exe at any point so this is great news.

The only question I have though is... How? I see DOS initialize all of the segment registers to the same address. Is this something DOS specific like special bits in _start or something? Or something I do myself?

I guess I could imagine my one mega .asm file that includes all my resources and then in _start I just set my segment registers to "further down in the file" using labels. But yeah, I'm a newb at this but love the simplicity of graphics programming like this, tips very much appreciated :)
by giantrobot | 2025-04-22 19:52:36+00:00
From looking at "vibe coding" tools their output is about the quality of bad body shop contractors. It's entirely possible for experienced devs to come in and fix it.

I think there's going to be the same problems as there are fixing bad body shop code. The companies that pushed their "vibe code" for a few dollars worth of AI tokens will expect people to work for pennies and/or have unreasonable time demands. There's also no ability to interview the original authors to figure out what they were thinking.

Meanwhile their customers are getting screwed over with data leaks if not outright hacks (depending on the app).

It's not a whole new issue, shitty contractors have existed for decades, but AI is pushing down the value of actual expertise.
by lysace | 2025-04-22 19:52:39+00:00
It was great for certain niche applications, like:

* The Roxen web server

* The Opera Mini backend service (150k CPU cores, 5k servers, 150k pageloads/s, 3 million inline fetches per second, 100+ Gbit/s - 15 years ago)

I worked on both of those projects. Now I mostly program in Python. It's perhaps like 10x slower to run on average but since it won there's a module or three for anything so building stuff is faster.

Yay progress.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-04-22 19:53:42+00:00
I don't see the numbers though. Tariffs are a compete non-starter as far as government revenue goes, "income from tariffs" on the "countries that have been robbing us" is mere theatrics (those countries only accepted what was given/pushed to them)... Ergo, borrowing remains the only option, with lots and lots of inflation. I'm not sure how popular that will be.
by foxyv | 2025-04-22 19:55:10+00:00
I've noticed that you can train yourself to not become motion sick in VR. I wonder if the process can be sped up with a specific training regimen so that new VR users can get used to it quicker. I still remember the first time I rolled a plane in VR. That sinking/spinning feeling was insane. Now it just kind of feels like watching a movie.
by bhouston | 2025-04-22 19:55:39+00:00
> FWIW: a longstanding limitation for parallel downloads within Homebrew isn't architectural (it's not too hard to add!) but structural with respect to Homebrew's download sources

I have heard that before.

Hmm.... I wonder if you can get away with not doing parallel downloads, but just keep the sequential downloads going in the background while it is installing a package? It is the pause in downloads during an install that I find is the main slow down in brew.
by jonathanlydall | 2025-04-22 19:56:12+00:00
Fair enough, I checked the app now and I see the option, although our cost here works out to about USD 0.65 after currency conversion, or maybe it’s because I ordered something cheap.

Based on my always getting hit by this, I guess almost everyone does it.

And if most people choose this, it’s probably rare they can do double deliveries, meaning it’s practically guaranteed that not choosing the priority delivery will result in the algorithm gleefully using the rare opportunity to make Uber more money on the order by making your order part of the same trip as someone paying priority.

So I naively assumed that most people don’t choose this and I would have a low chance of being penalised, but because almost everyone is not wanting their food to be delayed, they’re all paying extra to avoid that. Uber cannot put one priority user above another, so they still land up with too few drivers during peak times, meaning there is still a wait time even for priority users, but on average everyone is paying extra even if on average delivery times aren’t better on average because when near everyone is highest priority, no one is, in practice Uber has raised the base delivery fee unless you’re willing to accept a delay.

But if they’re being honest, they should rather raise the base fee and offer a “discount” if you’re willing to wait longer, which is more representative of the real experience of users.

I guess that no one wants to feel like they’re a cheapskate, hence streaming packages offering “normal” advertising subsidised packages and “premium” ad free packages, as opposed to say “lite” and “normal”.
by MarkusWandel | 2025-04-22 19:56:17+00:00
Fact: In the 1990s a reasonable capable computer was a significant expense on the order of $1K, and likely to be obsolete within 5 years. My best present laptop is 5 years old and perfectly capable and was free because its previous owner didn't want it any more because of a minor defect. That's an exception, but the fact is, being somewhat tolerant to less than state-of-the-art computers, I haven't bought a new one, or spent significant $$ on a used one, for decades.

On the other hand, the cluttered desktop does involve some nostalgia. The ergonomics of a desk phone were better than any smart phone or Teams app can provide, in terms of quickly making or answering a call. And long into the paperless era, I still keep pencils and scrap paper for quick sketches even though my work computer has a freakishly expensive Microsoft Visio on it and you can get adequate drawing software right in your web browser for nothing.

Simply not being reachable because you weren't near a known phone... that has its upsides and downsides. I'm not entirely sure that being on the "elecronic leash" 24/7 has made life better. Especially as I get older, I kind of miss the slower pace things used to have, where you walked over to someone's desk to ask questions, where "google" took the form of calling people or companies and asking (and they had knowledgeable people answering the phones, etc). The world functioned, and pretty well, back then too.
by ty6853 | 2025-04-22 19:57:25+00:00
I've never had this feeling more poignantly than one day, where I was deep in a wilderness zone of the Cascades, several miles from even the nearest logging road.

I was minding my own business, pack in, pack out, with not a soul in sight. And out popped a park ranger, the first person I had seen in days, asking me if I had a permit to exist in the wilderness.

No, no I did not. Sorry for the terrible intrusion of existing. Then he went up to write an order that I had 2 days to get off the public land, with it being a 2 day hike out. Before handing it, he wanted an address I had none. Apparently this somehow broke his brain. The dude would literally not let me go until I came up with an address, even though I legitimately had none.
by windowshopping | 2025-04-22 19:57:44+00:00
I had never even heard of this before this comment. I have now learned it's a very unique geological formation in the Sahara consisting of concentric rings of raised stone. It appears to be entirely natural and the scientific consensus is that no city has ever existed on the site nor did human artifice have anything to do with its creation.

For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiously deceptive and misleading that the comment should be flagged. It's tantamount to posting "I thought everyone knew area 51 recovered aliens from Roswell." It's a conspiracy theory masquerading as an ordinary remark.
by dogleash | 2025-04-22 19:57:49+00:00
I too subscribe to the idea it's the collection of data that invades privacy not (just) usage. It used to be more widespread. But as software people there are traitor in our ranks. People who decided to become conman to justify abusing others and perpetuate lies that it's all benign. All in the name of maximixing data exfiltration so they could get in on the scam. Plenty of money to be made, after all. And such big servers to play with too.
by Starlevel004 | 2025-04-22 19:58:24+00:00
> The thing that struck me then, and continues to seem true, is how much they just don't really seem to care and that they singularly focus at being good at innovating where it matters: games and differentiated hardware.

Innovating on games with multiplayer and then putting in a wifi chip that gives a ping of like 100ms at best seems like orthogonal goals.
by smsm42 | 2025-04-22 19:59:20+00:00
Take the steering wheel out. Most modern cars are already networked and are capable of tracking your every movement and recording anything that happens inside and in the vicinity of the car. Not all of them do that, and not all of them preserve and forward this information, as of yet, but this is clearly a thing that will happen. Insurance companies already propose discounts for people that allow them to track their "driving habits", how long before it flips and you'd end up forced to let them record everything or be forced into the "dangerous and reckless driver" bucket where the insurance would be plain unaffordable? And that's not mentioning car manufacturers, which will record everything - for QA and performance monitoring purposes, of course - and then somehow this data end up on the market? I think if you need privacy, driving is no longer an option, better go for a walk in the forest.
by johncolanduoni | 2025-04-22 20:00:03+00:00
I wonder if the WASM runtimes still clear pages that were just requested from the OS. These should be already filled with zeroes, and at least on Linux you could even let the pages be lazy loaded (all WASM runtimes I know of on 64-bit Linux use an ~8GB virtual memory guard region, so all the fresh WASM pages will always be fresh OS pages as well).
by woodruffw | 2025-04-22 20:00:16+00:00
> I wonder if you can get away with not doing parallel downloads, but just keep the sequential downloads going in the background while it is installing a package?

I could be wrong, but I believe multiple people, including maintainers, have looked into exactly that :-)

(I also need to correct myself: there is some work ongoing into concurrent downloads[1]. That work hasn't hit `brew install` yet, where I imagine the question of concurrent traffic volume will become more pressing.)

[1]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/18278
by BrandoElFollito | 2025-04-22 20:00:36+00:00
If my card is lost, I notify the bank and all transactions are cancelled, involved the ones before the notice.

I may need to pay 150 or 250€ (cannot remember) max, and that's the limit of my liability. I would like to see the bank that will try to make me pay that, it happens once and they backtracked immediately when I told them I am closing my account then.

We do not have the US credit thing, so no repairs to watch.

This said, I am 100% with you on the security of phones vs cards.
Exploring High-Tech Fabrics in Cyberpunk-Inspired Clothing (Think Deus Ex)
by Kamil_Metov | 2025-04-22 20:00:58+00:00
A few years ago, I started working on a clothing line that blends futuristic design with high-tech functionality. I’ve always been fascinated by the aesthetics of cyberpunk worlds - especially the one crafted in the Deus Ex series - and how these settings integrate technology into everyday life. I wanted to create something that reflects this: a clothing line not just focused on fashion, but on real-world utility and adaptability, while pushing the boundaries of what clothing can be.

The pieces I’ve designed aren’t just about looking different - they’re about preparing for a future where tech and functionality merge. Using advanced fabrics and incorporating adaptable features, each item in this line serves a purpose. From jackets that can adjust to environmental factors to pants built for high mobility and comfort, it’s all about blending style with utility for the modern world.

I’ve been experimenting with tech-driven design, drawing inspiration from the Deus Ex universe, and creating items that reflect the future of fashion. For me, it’s not about just following trends; it’s about crafting a vision that combines both the digital and physical worlds in a meaningful way.

I’m curious: as someone who works at the intersection of tech and design, I’m always interested in how others see the evolution of fashion in a high-tech context. Do you think there’s a place for more functionality-driven, futuristic clothing in today’s fashion scene, or is it too niche?
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-04-22 20:01:28+00:00
A lot of experimental and applied physics operates this way. If you are synthesizing material, for example, it takes a lot of time and effort to get high yields of what you want. Before that your processes can be very probabilistic.

In fact, just finished listening to a talk where a experimentalist was talking about how to get the fabrication yields of superconducting qubits from currently low double digit to 99.99+.
by ahofmann | 2025-04-22 20:01:41+00:00
Even if this were true (and I don't think it is), it misses the point. Two decades ago, it was perfectly normal for people to be untraceable or unavailable in most ways when they were away from home. Today, it is normal for some people to send their location to loved ones in real time. And we all carry one or more devices that record tons of data about us and our surroundings every second.
by giantrobot | 2025-04-22 20:02:15+00:00
> I'm not entirely sure that being on the "elecronic leash" 24/7 has made life better.

My phone is always on silent and I have almost zero notifications allowed. It has built in CallerID so I know exactly who is calling. Unless it's from a very small list of people it goes to voicemail and maybe I return the call later. Also many things that used to be calls are now a couple texts back and forth, again something I can ignore and deal with later.

I like being available but I have no need to be constantly interrupted by my phone. I much prefer my smartphone to landlines because the features are so much more useful to me.
by dgellow | 2025-04-22 20:02:56+00:00
I’m sorry but in 2025 that type of thinking feels extremely naive. There is an education issue, but that’s such a detail compared to the level of propaganda, misinformation. People have been groomed by entire networks of misinformation for such a long time. It’s a complete take over of the democratic system, by nefarious actors, to their own benefit. Doing so fully in the open
by dang | 2025-04-22 20:03:29+00:00
> it can never be discussed again on HN

For sure it can, if and when significant new information arises. That's the main point of the principles outlined at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

But yes, I hear you and I know it's frustrating. There's no important topic that HN really does justice to.
by PaulHoule | 2025-04-22 20:04:47+00:00
I don't believe in any of it [1] but being schizotypal I experience it anyway. [2]

Dowsing rods just jump out of my hands. I can ask questions to a pendulum and get answers. Any exercise I've tried from an occult book works. I used the I Ching and cast it 20+ times when I was in grad school and always got 23. [3] Like Tom Brokaw I got married in secret from my family while living in a foreign country to extend my wife's visa, but in my case I had the incredible coincidence that my mother died the day after I got married.

I decided to take up channeling because, even if I don't believe in it, I seem to have some talent for it. I make a lot of offerings, sometimes get answers, have been doing physical training so my entity doesn't hurt me but it still isn't satisfied.

[1] trained as an arch-reductionist, physics PhD, professional computer programmer and simulationist

[2] one reason it took me so long to realize I was schizotypal was that I didn't believe in the "unusual experiences" that are one of the diagnostic criteria.

[3] https://www.cafeausoul.com/oracles/iching/po-split-apart/ but anything I can find on the web interprets 23 much more positively than the I Ching translations available in the 1990s, when anything Chinese was more exotic and less filtered for Western tastes. At the time the interpretation was something like "The enterprise you are involved in is fruitless, you are going to have to wait for the situation to end before you can move on to something profitable"
by varjag | 2025-04-22 20:05:15+00:00
Some of the improvements on the list are non-issues best described as cultural differences. Consider:

…not making a dozen phone calls playing Phone Tag, to set up something as simple as a play date

Well this is why hardly anyone was bothering with setting up play dates back in the day† and were letting kids roam. Different culture facilitated by poor connectivity and scarcity of content.

† The title says the 90s but many references in the text go back to 1980s.
by eutropia | 2025-04-22 20:05:51+00:00
thank you for working on a tvOS version!!!

the official twitch app for apple tv is... not so great.

If you're keen on taking feature requests, here's a difficult one:

- OLED TVs are incredible, but my previous 2017 vintage LG eventually suffered burn-in from long-running streams with static imagery (streamer logo)

- I doubt you have any way to really mess with the actual video content at all, but some form of mitigation for static imagery would be a dream come true for us oled owners.
by mrweasel | 2025-04-22 20:06:08+00:00
> since it won there's a module or three for anything.

I was just browsing the "Module tree reference" for Pike. There seems to be a crazy amount of modules for the language. Weirdly enough for web there's only CGI (and WebSockets for some reason), and the CGI module isn't really documented. Under protocols there seems to be everything I ever need.
by MrBuddyCasino | 2025-04-22 20:06:18+00:00
> If this tool supports parallel downloads, it will be 10x faster than Homebrew, but it won't have anything to do with the language.

If this is true, why are the Rust tools, on average, so much faster than the JS (or whatever) tools they replace?

Hint: the answer hasn't just to do with the theoretical technical merits of the underlying platform, but also what type of developer they attract.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-04-22 20:06:34+00:00
The history of earthquakes in New England is valuable because the long-term risks are more poorly understood than other parts of the US. We know there are a lot 5.x earthquakes, which do a lot of damage to the old European-style masonry construction which is still common there, but there is some evidence that suggests rare earthquakes are up into the 7.x range. If a 7.x earthquake occurred in New England, it would be devastating given the construction style of older buildings.

Much of the US builds to very high seismic standards by global standards due to lessons paid in blood but there are still unknowns in regions like New England and a lot of construction that is not particularly seismic resistant.
by vicioussquid | 2025-04-22 20:06:39+00:00
What if a Tamagotchi had a neural network and could learn stuff?

A digital pet squid that also teaches how neural networks and hebbian learning work. Behaviours are driven by the neural network according to his needs:

https://github.com/ViciousSquid/Dosidicus

I spent AGES on this and would love feedback. I think it's just the right balance of educational and fun. I did all the graphics myself and am currently working on multiplayer - squids will be able top enter other tanks and steal things, bring them home
by bombela | 2025-04-22 20:07:16+00:00
I agree with not placing the computer at the center. After all it's a tool.

But I struggle with the idea that we can ignore the technical details. After all, even the highest abstraction comes from the physicality of the universe.

But maybe you are saying that the limitations of a tool shouldn't forbid you from thinking at the higher language level.

Or maybe I am just not enlightened enough to understand your point, to which I can only apologize.
by Izkata | 2025-04-22 20:07:31+00:00
Merriam-Webster uses historical order, not how common the meanings are [0], which makes more sense to me - I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard the "reflective" meaning for "reflexive". The "unthinking" meaning is definitely more common.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/explanatory-notes/dict-... (See "Order of Senses")
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-22 20:07:42+00:00
> maybe the US could use them for all public lands

We have this for some public lands. It doesn't work for all of them. Our National Parks would fail at their conservation mission if everyone were allowed to break trail, for instance. (You'll also see rampant poaching if refusing to provide ID or an address for a citation turns into a get-out-of-jail-free card.)