MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by addicted | 2025-04-03 12:24:10+00:00
This is a gross misunderstanding of what a currency actually is.

A currency is a social construct. It has no inherent value beyond what people who trade in it place on the currency.

As a result people don’t want a currency whose rules of trade are defined once and it’s unable to respond to actual world events.

If you have a currency that is indeed responsive to changes in the world then there needs to be someone who you entrust with making those changes.

At that point it doesn’t matter whether that currency is digital or cash based. I mean, in actuality even the USD digital trade is order of magnitudes greater than its physical trade.

The U.S.’s monetary institutions and its role as a trade promoting superpower is what makes the dollar stronger. Now that those institutions are not as reliable anymore and the U.S. is clearly not a trade promoter anymore, the dollar is definitely at risk.
by nurettin | 2025-04-03 12:24:10+00:00
Yeah go supports AIX. In fact I remember it having bash, and a package manager so it felt like home. AS400 was an interesting platform. I was fascinated with their almost assembly like programs, alien UIs and decades old hardware. Almost got nerd sniped. Unfortunately, I was told to use java. The jar I tested on linux worked perfectly the first time, so I couldn't even learn anything.
by arghwhat | 2025-04-03 12:24:10+00:00
The funny thing is that we actually have a quite big commercial market for such utility vehicles, currently met by dropside vans: vehicles built on a van frame with a flatbed or other custom equipment on the back.

This is not really that different from how the F-series works either, providing a frame where the rear can be built up dependent on needs.

It's just that the F-150 is a terrible fit. Our dropside vans are small with a very large footprint-to-bed ratio, is light and have low fuel consumption, is almost always custom, and has zero luxury or otherwise private appeal. There is no demand for e.g. engine performance, as the light vehicle class has load and towing limits that are easily met.

The F-150 is too bulky for casual city use and without a need to optimize have a low footprint-to-bed ratio, is heavy with and thirsty, is often just used "as is" with the stock bed, and is often used privately with a significant "muscle" appeal. In order to be driven with a regular license and not be affected by truck speed limits, tracking requirements and driving/rest time limits, it would still be registered as a light vehicle, making any additional load bearing/towing capacity unusuable.

There's nothing wrong with models being extremely optimized for specific markets and unfit for others. I imagine there aren't many EU-style dropside vans in the US, not to mention EU-style trucks. Japanese Kei cars are an even more extreme case of such market optimization.
by jqpabc123 | 2025-04-03 12:24:11+00:00
I use Authenticator Pro on Android. It offers backup and it's own encryption password --- not the same as the Android phone access key. Every authenticator app should do this in my opinion.

https://github.com/ispwd/AuthenticatorPro

In addition to this app, I keep all my passwords in a text file encrypted with AES256. And yes, my secret tokens used for 2FA are included in this file --- not the best but very convenient as I only have one file to backup.

I wrote my own simple Windows command line utility to decrypt this file in memory, search for an identifying string, retrieve the secret token and generate 2FA time based codes as needed.

As a backup to my phone, I keep this small utility and my password file (along with other crucial documents) on a micro-SD card which is further encrypted by BitLocker. This is attached to my watch strap which goes everywhere with me --- even the shower. The data is as safe as I am, if not safer.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6784665
by sebastianz | 2025-04-03 12:24:31+00:00
> If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. [...] There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

While this might be in a theoretical and pedantic way true, sometimes you do not have the economic context to provide those larger wages, so there will technically be no "shortage" - but just because the jobs themselves will disappear.

If you look at poor countries or regions, there is garbage, dirt and dilapidation everywhere. Clearly there is - in a practical way - a need for cleaners, but by your definition there is no "shortage" - because they cannot afford to pay anything for those jobs.
by mppm | 2025-04-03 12:24:55+00:00
Orbital space tourism and space manufacturing could potentially make a significant market in terms of launch mass (that is, if you launch 1000-ton facilities instead of 1-ton satellites without necessarily occupying a large number of new orbits). But this is kinda speculative at the moment.

I think the real motivation for Starlink is precisely this -- there is otherwise no near-term market for greatly increased launch capacity. Starlink actually doesn't make too much sense from a purely technical perspective: in wireless point-to-point communications, distance is your enemy squared, both in terms of signal power and density. And it only gets worse when you have to punch through a cloud layer. But it is also the only near-term application that could absorb the launch volume offered by the Starship, so the two kind of feed off each other. This is not unlike the past ISS - Space Shuttle relationship, but at least the public is not paying for it this time.
by galangalalgol | 2025-04-03 12:24:58+00:00
That is because both were manipulated and ashamed of it. Russia is too sophisticated to play just one side. They have centuries of experience playing various ethnicities within russia against each other to maintain control. In the 2016 US election, Russia would have had a strong plan either way, what the alternative would have been and if would have succeeded, who knows, but it is note worthy how many members of the US administration, including its head, were formerly democrats.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-03 12:25:11+00:00
Obviously it depends.

A room always full of people might not need much decoration.

In a private office, you might want to hang a colorful painting and have some colorful knick-knacks, or a colorful sofa.

You figure out the right amount of color accents for you. But without overwhelming the senses by painting the whole room bright orange, you know?
by rafaelmn | 2025-04-03 12:25:23+00:00
Probably to give Russia concessions in the Ukraine negotiations.

In my opinion Trump is trying to do everything he said he would in his campaign, he is trying to get the war in Ukraine over ASAP and be the peace bringer.

Even in the leaked Vance messages you saw his view on Europe, which I have to agree with in that case. They feel like they are getting screwed in the EU-US relations and they are looking to pull support, ignoring what the OP said about them being the reserve currency/global police. I guess they see that as a bad deal.

I think big picture Trump sees Russia as a regional player and China as US main rival so he doesn't really care about pushing Russia or "winning" in Ukraine. The minerals deal looks like he wants to show he got something for the money spent compared to Biden.
by alkonaut | 2025-04-03 12:26:50+00:00
That Democrats have held both the white house and congress several times over the last decades, and didn't try to put in place some reasonable voter ID laws is really sick.

Basically the law they would need is "states can do whatever voter ID they want, if it's free and easy to get ID and 9X% of voters not just _can get it, but actually actually have it, otherwise they can't". Or they could have made a federal ID and ensured everyone gets it.

But Democrats always felt that even going ner voter id laws were a bit dangerous. It always rang like "voter suppression" to them (and in many ways it probably was). But they missed the chance to make it impossible for Republicans to abuse it as voter suppression - and here we are now, worrying that there will be voter ID laws despite many lacking ID. It's infuriating.

Why the idea of "we'll just make sure people have ID" is so unimaginable is just completely impossible to understand. It doesn't matter that there is no actual in-person voter fraud. Voter ID laws are a good thing anyway - if everyone actually has ID. It adds trust to the process and god knows the US needs a process where people actually believe it's secure, not just one that IS secure.
by AlexandrB | 2025-04-03 12:27:48+00:00
Yes, extreme reactionaries like the United Auto Workers union who showed up in some quantity at the tariff show last night.

The reality is "left wing" parties have completely abandoned their traditional working class demographic - both through encouraging manufacturing to be offshored and allowing in mass unskilled labor to compete with them. During the Bush era I thought working class folks were voting against their self interest when they voted Republican. That's not the case anymore.

It's convenient to try to play this off as some kind of foreign influence thing, but the Democrats did this to themselves.
by indigoabstract | 2025-04-03 12:28:10+00:00
Using natural language to specify and build an application is not unlike having a game design document before you actually start prototyping your game. But once you have implemented the bulk of what you wanted, the implementation becomes the reference and you usually end up throwing away the GDD since it's now out of sync with the actual game.

Insisting that for every change one should go read the GDD, implement the feature and then sync back the GDD is cumbersome and doesn't work well in practice. I've never seen that happen.

But if there ever comes a time when some AI/LLM can code the next version of Linux or Windows from scratch based on some series of prompts, then all bets are off. Right now it's clearly not there yet, if ever.
by jcattle | 2025-04-03 12:28:15+00:00
In this particular case for me I see a certain kind of artistic beauty in the recital. The fact, that we as a society try to keep something going for 639 years, just a sliver of a thread connecting all those different lives together. Not knowing if it will work, how it will end up, if it will fail spectacularly or just fizzle out into obscurity.

I wouldn't say that people who do not see this as art are wrong, that's the beauty of art isn't it? It's in the eye of the beholder. To me this recital sparks some hope or in any case makes me stop for a second and wonder about greater things than just my day to day.
by semi-extrinsic | 2025-04-03 12:28:18+00:00
What you are describing is fairly easy to get, at least in Europe, e.g. from https://www.whittard.com/tea/tea-type/green-tea/dragon-well-...

They also have some of GPs favorite: https://www.whittard.com/all/ceylon-orange-pekoe-loose-tea-p...
by tgv | 2025-04-03 12:28:19+00:00
> What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision.

I'm afraid it is. An unholy coalition of capitalist-anarchists and ultra-conservatives is the driving force behind it. They both want to reduce the influence of the government to a level as small as possible. That can only be done by dismantling the current federal government.
by caspper69 | 2025-04-03 12:28:28+00:00
Having reviewed the proposal (of course no guarantee that's what discriminated unions (aka product types aka algebraic data types) will look like), and it appears that it very much integrates nicely with the language.

I don't suspect they'll make too many changes (if any) to the existing standard library itself, but rather will put functions into their own sub-namespace moving forward like they did with concurrent containers and the like.

Given their penchant for backwards compatibility, I think old code is safe. Will it create a schism? In some codebases, sure. Folks always want to eat the freshest meat. But if they do it in a non-obtrusive way, it could integrate nicely. It reminds me of tuples, which had a similar expansion of capabilities, but the integration went pretty well.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-03 12:28:43+00:00
No I'm not deducing anything, I'm speaking from my experience in television.

Yes, the type of drama does include the range you're describing. Movies are mixes of genres, tones, categories.

And no, modern comedies are not desaturated "more often than not". I don't know what comedies you're watching, but it's not the case.
by DemocracyFTW2 | 2025-04-03 12:29:19+00:00
> The future was never really "ours" if American businesses can't afford American labor

This is worth hanging on the wall in big letters. There was a time when in the West governments and even a good number of enterprises big and small cared for their people. This responsibility has by and large been replaced by a view of the world where profit is the only aspect that counts.
by VexorLoophole | 2025-04-03 12:29:33+00:00
The custom keyboard bubble is really deep and filled with many, many different kind of setups which makes research not really easy.

To get you started:

- QMK is probably the most mature firmware for non-wireless devices and widely used. Probably the best starting point to get in touch with all the different concepts of keymap layers, one-shot modifiers, hold-tap-mechanics, ... - Via/Vial is based on QMK and simply tries to provide a GUI for instant and live configuration of the keyboard, instead of doing it by code. - ZMK is also very stable and designed for wireless usage (battery consumption) but also REALLY complex because of the toolchain (at least in my opinion) - RMK, KMK, ... are all different kind of firmwares trying to do something different or better or just in a different language like rust or python. Most of the time these kind of firmware expect some kind of "basic knowledge". So I would start with the classics QMK or ZMK.
by masswerk | 2025-04-03 12:30:05+00:00
That said, I've a MacPro 3.1 in production (also 17 years now – always up), which is from Apple's era of easily (or even hot) swappable parts. Apart from failing 3rd party RAM, no issues ever. – And I'm probably going to upgrade the drives to SSD (still HDD) this year, since you can still get new upgrade parts for its ancient busses.

(And for the failing RAM: open the hood, a LED tells you which strip is failing, swap it, close, go on… The build quality is quite amazing, BTW.)
by roenxi | 2025-04-03 12:30:31+00:00
An interesting blog post that would probably do well to look into something like Rob Kegan's theories of adult development [0] and looking up some stats on how many people fit into each category. People actually categorise fairly well into a model where ~66% of the population simply don't understand the concept of independent thought and rely heavily on social signalling to work out what is true.

That model explains an absurd number of social dynamics and a big chunk of politics - which is mostly people with a high level of adult development socially signalling to the masses what they are meant to be doing.

The important observation is that it isn't intellectual honesty that is the problem or truth-seeking the solution. It is actually whether someone is capable of identifying that truth != popular opinion. People who form their opinions by social osmosis can still be intellectually honest if they land in the right sort of community, but they fall apart under social pressure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self
by mikesickler | 2025-04-03 12:30:52+00:00
Foreign held debt is less than 30% of outstanding, and less than that is sovereign-owned, so I don't think devaluing or attempting to restructure foreign debt via "century bonds" will have much effect on US debt obligations.

I seriously doubt this administration understands any of this. I agree that they don't care, but I don't think they know what's going to happen. No one does.
by weatherlite | 2025-04-03 12:31:06+00:00
> Are you aware that living standards are higher in many European countries than the US, right?

If we measure the total pie then its much smaller in Europe than in the U.S (I mean total wealth/gdp per capita). Only small countries like Norway or Switzerland have high gdp, in France or Germany its almost 50% lower than in the U.S.

Now the pie does not distribute equally in the U.S that's true, but still, there are tons of millionaires in the U.S and I mean pretty regular people (doctors, finance, software devs etc) that had they lived in Europe they would have been comfortable and nothing more. think something like 100k Euro a year (at best) instead of 3-5 times as much which is what they make in the U.S. If the U.S loses reserve status there just won't be enough money to go around for those salaries, or if there will there will be a horrible inflation, either way it just wont be sustainable.

P.S - lots of middle class people in the so called rich European countries like Germany or the Netherlands cannot afford heating anymore. So no, it is definitely not third world but its also not particulalrly rich. The main advantage though is Europe has mostly free healthcare and the U.S is an absolute mismanaged mess in that regard.
by ninalanyon | 2025-04-03 12:31:17+00:00
My refrigerator doesn't use anything like 300 W average. An IKEA 310 l fridge is rated at less than 100 kWh per year.

Even if you add a 210 l upright freezer to it is is still less than 300 kWh per year. That's 300 kWh / (365 * 24 h) = 34 W
by aa-jv | 2025-04-03 12:31:17+00:00
Anyone who has been paying attention to the body count since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 can tell you that the rest of the world has a long, long way to go to catch up with the atrocities committed by the American people across the globe, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria and Libya, Pakistan and Somalia and Yemen (which the USA and its partners were mass-murdering for 15 years already before the current conflict), and now .. Gaza .. for which the American people are very definitely responsible as major funders and supporters of that particularly vile act of mass murder.

But if you want to inform yourself, follow https://airwars.org/ and look for reports on the matter by trusted sources, such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility, which has produced casualty reports for all of America's illegal, heinously irresponsible wars.

This report for example, from 2015, demonstrated the magnitude and extent of the crimes committed by the American people in Iraq alone - and things have gotten a lot, lot worse since then:

https://psr.org/resources/body-count/
by pc86 | 2025-04-03 12:31:41+00:00
I can fully understand how people on both the left and the right could have ideological differences with Trump, how they can hate the way he interacts with people, think he's picking unqualified cronies for high level jobs, etc. I disagree with the last one but I can at least see how a reasonable person would get to that conclusion.

"Trump is committing treason because he is instituting tariffs" or "Trump is a Russian asset" is not a position any reasonably intelligent person can come to without being blinded by partisanship. It's simply not a serious position to have.
by lolinder | 2025-04-03 12:31:54+00:00
The demographics of the parties have shifted quite a bit with Trump's second term. The Republicans lost much of their educated elite but made up for it by gaining a lot of the poor folks that have hitherto been the Democratic backbone and who are most hurt by voter ID.

Trump lost the $30k–$50k democraphic by 9 points in 2016, but turned around and won it by 6 points in 2024—a 15-point swing! Meanwhile he won the $100k–$200k and $200k+ demographics by ~2 percentage points in 2016, but lost it by 5+ points in 2024 even while winning the popular vote.

It's possible that this was a one-off and not a major permanent realignment, but it's definitely not as clear cut as it used to be.
by czzr | 2025-04-03 12:32:04+00:00
No, you are simply incorrect, a VAT system does not make it harder for US companies to compete. It's explained well here: https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/stop-saying-a-value-added-t...

For those who don't follow the link, here's an extract from the article explaining the core situation:

Imagine a car that costs $30,000 to produce before tax. Now compare four scenarios:

1) BMW sells the car in Germany (domestic sale): Germany’s VAT (let’s say 20% for simplicity) is added on the final sale. The German consumer pays 20% VAT, i.e., an extra $6,000, for a total price of $36,000. BMW forwards that $6,000 to the German government as VAT.

2) BMW exports the car to the U.S.: Since the car is exported, BMW does not charge German VAT. Any VAT BMW paid on parts or inputs is refunded by the German tax authority. The U.S. buyer pays the $30,000 price, and since the U.S. has no federal VAT, there’s no equivalent federal tax on that sale. (A state sales tax might apply at the point of sale, but we’ll come back to that.) The key point: the German government collects no VAT on an item consumed in the U.S.. This makes complete sense because that car’s being enjoyed by an American buyer, not a German resident.

3) GM sells the car in the U.S. (domestic sale): The U.S. has no VAT, so the American consumer pays $30,000 (ignoring any state sales tax). No federal consumption tax is collected. (In states with a sales tax, the consumer might pay, say, 7% extra to the state government, but again, the federal treatment is no tax.)

4) GM exports the car to Germany: When the car arrives in Germany, it faces the same 20% VAT as any car sold in Germany. So a German customer buying the American-made car pays $30,000 + $6,000 VAT = $36,000. That $6,000 goes to the German government. From GM’s perspective, it doesn’t owe U.S. tax on that export sale (since the U.S. doesn’t tax exports of goods), but its product will bear German VAT when consumed in Germany.

What outcome do we have here? In Germany, both the BMW and the GM car cost the same $36,000 after tax, and the German government collects VAT on both. In the U.S., both cars cost $30,000 before any state sales taxes, and the U.S. government collects no federal consumption tax on either. Each country taxes consumption within its borders—no matter where the product came from—and does not tax consumption outside its borders. This is precisely the goal of destination-based taxation: neutrality. Consumers in each country face the same tax on a given product, whether it’s domestically produced or imported. And neither country’s producers carry their home consumption tax as a “ball and chain” when they go compete in foreign markets.
by dudefeliciano | 2025-04-03 12:32:21+00:00
lately in conversations with people who have always openly hated the US hegemony and the "western system" (and I can myself see the many issues with that system) I see a certain glee at the current state of affairs, as if they are happy that finally the pain inflicted by "the west" on third-world countries is finally coming back to haunt the US and Europe. They don't seem to think two or three steps ahead, what is the alternative they are cheering for? A russian style oligarchy? A chinese style one party dictatorship?
by wtcactus | 2025-04-03 12:32:40+00:00
Erudite music (i.e. what we call classical Music)?

I think it managed to hold off a bit more, we still have Bizet, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, even Stravinsky and others composing great (fantastic, in some cases) pieces in the first half of the 20th century.

But then, a bunch of Jonh Cages came along...
by lifeinthevoid | 2025-04-03 12:32:43+00:00
So the US has been, more or less, the best place in the world to do business. Stocks historically soaring, yadda yadda yadda ... and somehow this guy sells the story that the US has been taking advantage of by all the other evil countries in the world. It does not, in any way, make sense. What a clown. A totalitorian clown unfortunately.