MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tialaramex | 2025-04-16 13:07:04+00:00
Oh wow, yeah, that's not a fixed point type, it's a bad decimal type, code which uses this type is more likely to be faulty. If you can afford 64-bit integers, just work in pennies (cents, whatever) everywhere and don't sweat it.

The growable array type ("vector" following C++ parlance) lacks the bifurcated reservation API meaning it has the same problem as Bjarne's std::vector - but it's 2025 people, just because C++ made this mistake last century doesn't mean you need to copy them.

And finally yes you want a really good general purpose hash table, this is one of the places where generics shine most brightly, don't "spend the next few months researching" pick a language which does a decent job of this out of the box, but since you're in C, your utility library should likewise provide a decent hash table out of the box.

Swiss Tables are literally just a single growable allocation, this idea that you've somehow made your thing cheaper than a hash table by using the growable array type underneath it means you're at best four decades behind the state of the art, which is a bad sign.

This is a Young Discipline. David Musser's "Introspective sorting" paper was written after I learned sorting at University. Literally the class where they taught me about sorting was held before that paper was even written, let alone widely disseminated. The whole terminology of "Lock free" versus "Wait free" again, that's newer than my undergraduate final project on distributed systems. Because this is a Young Discipline it's crucial to go check, hey, the stuff I learned in class years ago, is that actually still correct, and does my understanding match reality - or am I about to recite a known falsehood because I forgot how time works and/or I didn't pay attention in class?
by 9rx | 2025-04-16 13:07:13+00:00
> It is possible for things to be real without us being able to express their truth accurately.

Of course you might not need to make up your mind for something to be real. It is very possible that there are real things that your mind is not even aware of, so if that is the case it would be impossible for things to become real only after you've made up your mind about them.

> So my question for you is: Is the best way to leave your house by walking through the wall?

I don't know and I don't care.

Even if it is theoretically possible to know what is the best way to leave my house, the evaluation required to get there is in competition with all the other things I could be doing. I can find no compelling reason for why I would want to do that. Having no clue seems like a perfectly fine state to be in, in this case.

I leave my house by way of door because someone once told me that was the way and I have blindly followed their gospel since. I've given it no further consideration and certainly haven't made up a mind about it or anything related to it. I don't know and that's fine. It could be that the door is the worst way to leave and that the wall is better, but it doesn't really matter, does it?
by nickledave | 2025-04-16 13:07:13+00:00
Yes

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

> # ChatGPT is bullshit

> Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.
by starspangled | 2025-04-16 13:07:29+00:00
Ignore politics entirely maybe, but people who are tired of hearing the exact same extremist reductive opinions over and over again everywhere aren't necessarily ignoring politics. Yes we know it's all because conservatives are fascists and corrupt and Russian agents and liberals are communists and in bed with the Chinese, etc., not caring to hear about it again is not surrendering the battle of good vs evil.

For me, ironically, the worst casualty of "politics" infiltrating everything is... politics. I mean the respectful and reasoned discussion of politics. Not that it was ever in great supply, but now it is non-existent.
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-16 13:07:44+00:00
> A non profit is independent if they don't take federal money? Like EFF, for example.

The problem is the seat of the non-profit, as long as it is in the US it remains vulnerable to stuff like gag orders (and the UK is similar, see the recent issues with Apple and E2E encryption), or just the administration plainly ignoring the law and just forcing it to shut down or whatnot.

> Maybe CVEs should be tracked by a nongovernmental agency, like how UL works.

The current administration has attacked multiple nongovernmental agencies already, or trampled over federal law.

The only thing I'd trust for now to be a safe haven would be an international organization like the WHO that's backed by diplomatic treaties - but even these aren't safe either, just look at the ICC vs Israel debate, or the constant attacks and conspiracy theories on the WHO.
by xattt | 2025-04-16 13:07:52+00:00
There’s an interesting shift in perspective that’s been happening around Nintendo over the last decade.

While the organization still presents as an odd-ball Japanese company with quirky qualities, it’s becoming more and more apparent they are commanded by MBA-types that are seeking to protect as much IP as possible, and squeeze out the last penny from fun.

Things I’ve purchased from them in the last little while are probably at my high-end of tolerance of what things should cost.
by SecretDreams | 2025-04-16 13:07:59+00:00
Respectfully, I took the word at face value and made what I thought was a fair, albeit half-jokingly correction. Certainly, I understood the context of the original post and I expected that this community would understand my follow up comment which is using correctly applied English. For whatever it's worth, I see no synonyms for indiscriminately that would fall under "without due care; thoughtlessly" on Merriam-Webster. Even if I understood what the OP was saying, it was not technically the correct verbiage to use. I would have thought I'd receive a similar level of "allowable nuance" in my comment that the OP was afforded.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/indiscriminately
by mamonster | 2025-04-16 13:08:02+00:00
It's not extremely difficult(I mean for the most important results like Yamada-Watanabe, Girsanov, etc) if you have a good grasp on measure theory. That said, without that grasp this topic is very hellish.

The main problem for people is understanding intuitively what "quadratic variation" actually is and how that factors into the difference between a normal Riemann integral and a stochastic integral.
by SkyBelow | 2025-04-16 13:08:05+00:00
Politics are also never discussed with any level of depth. At best, it each side throwing in their opening arguments and nothing more. More often you don't even get that and instead have attacking people directly, stereotyping, straw manning, and all sorts of logical fallacies. Discussion in such a situation does not happens, so either it is an ongoing war or some side wins and pushes out the rest. None of these outcomes would seem beneficial for here, and while I do think there would be some slightly longer form discussions here compared to most places, I don't think it would be enough to avoid the eventual decay.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-04-16 13:08:12+00:00
The distinction is between high- and low- skill politicians and managers, not labour.

One of the foundations of conservatism is the priority of hierarchy over effectiveness. In a conservative culture it doesn't matter how well things work as long as the right people in charge.

We're seeing the limit of this now, where it's literally more important to maintain hierarchy by denying facts and rationality than to "lose face" by admitting that power isn't absolute.

You can't run a modern country like this. You can't plan for the future, make effective decisions, govern, have a working legal system, build housing, create health care - anything at all - when all decisions are made according to the whims of a despot.

Power and resources - including wealth - have to be distributed. Or at least there has to be the illusion they're somewhat distributed. Anything else guarantees terminal contraction and decay.
by moefh | 2025-04-16 13:08:25+00:00
> Passing pointers to the middle of a data structure. For example, free takes a pointer to the start of an allocation. The management structure appears just before that in memory; computing the address of which appears to be undefined behavior to the compiler.

To clarify, the undefined behavior here is that the sanitizer sees `free` trying to access memory outside the bounds of what was returned by `malloc`.

It's perfectly valid to compute the address of a struct just before memory pointed to by a pointer you have, as long as the result points to valid memory:

void not_free(void *p) { struct header *h = (struct header *) (((char *)p) - sizeof(struct header)); // ... }

In the case of `free`, that resulting pointer is technically "invalid" because it's outside what was returned by `malloc`, even though the implementation of `malloc` presumably returned a pointer to memory just past the header.
by VyseofArcadia | 2025-04-16 13:08:27+00:00
This article ignores the fact that aside from being barred with manufacturing unlicensed NES games, Atari also failed to compete with any of its subsequent consoles after the VCS (although it did have some success with its PCs). The consoles were all flawed in some way. They were underpowered, didn't offer much over the previous iteration, or simply didn't have a strong enough library of games to compete. Atari was famously slow to realize that maybe people want more out of a game console than home ports of decade-old arcade games. On top of that, their original games that weren't home ports were mostly lackluster or were just outside of what gamers of the time were demanding.

Hard to say that Nintendo putting the kibosh on one arm of Atari's business "bled them to death" when all their other arms were bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.

EDIT: As pointed out below, I have mixed up Atari Corporation and Atari Games, so not all my criticism stands. Atari Games, publishing as Tengen, still largely put out ports of arcade games, but they were at least contemporary arcade games.
by e3bc54b2 | 2025-04-16 13:08:35+00:00
> You're not supposed to trust the tool, you're supposed to review and rework the code before submitting for external review.

The vibe coding guy said to forget the code exists and give in to vibes, letting the AI 'take care' of things. Review and rework sounds more like 'work' and less like 'vibe'.

/s
by c0wb0yc0d3r | 2025-04-16 13:08:47+00:00
For what it’s worth I think (modern) msbuild does it the best way I’ve seen so far. It operates on a “mostly” include by default. By that I mean the compilers “know” what are valid files, and everything valid in and below the project dir is included by default. You can edit the project file if you wish to include or exclude specific files or directories. Before dotnet core, you had to specify every file (ignore by default). Visual Studio would handle that for you, but adding new files often lead to version control conflicts.

Ultimately what I’m trying to say is that msbuild has a good set of default globbing rules and it’s very easy to fine tune.
by agos | 2025-04-16 13:09:25+00:00
some of the presented problems of the "good ol' REST endpoint" approach feel a tiny bit of a strawman, like "you can't add endpoints because /get/posts is taken", but having to cobble together a response from multiple calls (and all it entails, such as loading states) because is a very real and I feel very shared pain. And in my experience, too, GraphQL has been an unsatisfactory solution.

A BFF is indeed a possible solution and yeah if you have a BFF made in JS for your React app the natural conclusion is that you might as well start returning JSX.

But. BUT. "if you have a BFF made in JS" and "if your BFF is for your React app" are huge, huge ifs. Running another layer on the server just to solve this specific problem for your React app might work but it's a huge tradeoff and a non starter (or at least a very hard sale) for many teams; and this tradeoff is not stated, acknowledged, explored in any way in this writing (or in most writing pushing RSCs, in my experience).

And a minor point but worth mentioning nonetheless, writing stuff like "Directly calling REST APIs from the client layer ignores the realities of how user interfaces evolve" sounds like the author thinks people using REST APIs are naive simpletons who are so unskilled they are missing a fundamental point of software development. People directly calling REST APIs are not cavemen, they know about the reality of evolving UI, they just chose a different approach to the problem.
by miningape | 2025-04-16 13:09:48+00:00
To me it goes beyond "civil service" and becomes more like "military service" - you're directly putting yourself in harms way for the collective good. It's not reasonable to expect many users on HN have the setup required to investigate this - sure we're all interested in technology. But we're not all cybersecurity experts.

This is the equivalent of your grandma thinking you're a tech genius because you can restart the router. The skills required for this kind of work are specialised.
by throw_m239339 | 2025-04-16 13:10:28+00:00
> Except, the game designers were paid a flat salary, not royalties, unlike the rock stars in Warner’s stable. In late 1979, four defecting Atari designers and one music industry executive disrupted the video game console business model by aligning it with the recording industry’s: Hardware would be just hardware, and content would now be supplied by third-party content providers. Activision was formed, with a little business and legal help from the Sistine Chapel of Silicon Valley law firms, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

I wasn't aware of that story, a lot of irony in there...
by DrillShopper | 2025-04-16 13:11:00+00:00
> Having civil discussions with people who disagree isn't about politeness or acquiescence. Having political discussions per the same rules we use for technical debates, like steel manning, allows information to actually flow both ways.

What additional information do they need to get out there other than they want me and people like me dead? What additional information do I need to get out there other than I don't want them to do that?
Launch HN: Jasmine (YC S22) – Automating REC compliance and payouts for solar
by mmayberry | 2025-04-16 13:11:12+00:00
Hi HN — we’re Nathalie, Dalton, Vince, and Matt, and we’re launching Jasmine Energy (https://www.jasmine.energy), a tool that helps residential and commercial solar owners automatically register their systems, track energy generation, and get paid for Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

RECs are tradeable certificates for clean electricity, issued by energy markets across the US. Most people with rooftop or small commercial solar have never heard of them, let alone claimed them, but they’re real! They are typically bought by utilities or companies to meet climate targets.

The problem is, the process to claim and sell RECs is a mess—designed decades ago for utility-scale players, not individuals or small businesses.

To register a system and start claiming RECs, you usually have to: Navigate one of 10+ regional REC registries, each with its own documentation, forms, and rules; Pull generation data from your inverter or utility, format it, and submit it manually; Try to find a buyer (often through a broker or opaque exchange) and negotiate payment.

That takes weeks if not months for a single system, and most people give up. As a result, millions of solar installations leave income on the table every year. We started Jasmine Energy after seeing this firsthand: some of us worked in energy startups, and others watched our parents install solar but never claim a single REC.

Jasmine automates all of this. Our platform: Extracts metadata from your solar documents using AI and auto-registers your system in the correct registry; Connects to your inverter to submit generation data and verify REC eligibility; Lists RECs for sale through partners, tracks the sale process, and issues payouts—all through a single dashboard.

This domain is a good fit for automation and LLMs—not to generate text, but to (1) structure unstructured documents, (2) interact with legacy government websites where there’s no API, and (3) deal with repetitive bureaucratic language.

To be clear, we’re not trying to “squeeze public funding” or take unfair advantage of the system. REC sales happen in voluntary and compliance markets (usually funded by corporate buyers and utilities, not taxpayers). Jasmine doesn’t create or inflate incentives—it just helps people claim what already exists but is hard to access. We’re making the REC market more efficient.

RECs have been one of the most effective and widely adopted incentive systems to drive grid decarbonization. We’re excited to be making them easier to access.

The product is live now for solar owners in PJM, M-RETS, and ERCOT territories (more coming soon). If you already have solar, you can upload your docs and start the process at https://assets.jasmine.energy.

We’d love feedback from this community—on the product, the market, or any edge cases you think we should worry about. And of course we’ll be happy to answer any questions!
by sph | 2025-04-16 13:11:39+00:00
It's not gonna pay well for long, unless you find yourself a very tight and lucrative niche. My goal on the other hand is to buy a house in the woods by end of the year and become a woodworker before I have to be assimilated by the AI wave, maybe doing some coding by hand just for the fun of it on the side. Can't wait for "vibe coding" and "2 years of Copilot experience" to figure among the average list of job requirements.

To quote the young'uns, we are so cooked.
by ceejayoz | 2025-04-16 13:11:45+00:00
It's been pointed out, over and over again, that our system presumes innocence until convicted in a court of law. You know this. Don't pretend otherwise.

Until the government finds a different country to send him to, he's here legally. He's not breaking any law by remaining while awaiting that. Your source backs me up, in its first paragraph - "he can now safely remain in this country".

He had the required work authorization, as well.

https://wtop.com/maryland/2025/04/us-judge-to-question-trump...

> He also was given a federal permit to work in the United States, where he was a metal worker and union member, according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers.

A court has ruled that someone broke the law, though; the administration. As upheld by SCOTUS, even.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf

> The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.
by mikrl | 2025-04-16 13:11:50+00:00
Not a quant, but I have physics training and I’m very curious about stochastic calculus and finance.

Isn’t it implicit in a lot of the work? If you’re modelling volatility you’ll need the rigorous mathematics in the back of your mind while you do so to keep you on track.

Similarly, a webdev isn’t going to use fancy tree algorithms often… but they need to understand the DOM and its structure.
by goku12 | 2025-04-16 13:11:59+00:00
It's true that HN insists on and respects civil behavior. But HN doesn't always remain impartial in terms of downvotes, flagging and removal of comments when it comes to some topics that are inherently political. There was one such overtly political thread recently where some of the opposing comments were flagged and removed. Those comments were not even as inflammatory as the news article itself. It indicates that HN does have a majority political bias that they're not hesitant to impose up on the discourse.

I'm not going to go into specifics of the topic because I don't want to start another episode, though I do have the complaint that such actions distort the discourse unfairly to one side. And I also understand that political biases are human nature and that they can never be fully eliminated. But at the same time, it would be harmful to pretend that the discourse on HN is apolitical, balanced or that it shields you from that sort of censorship. Imagine making a good-faith counterargument, only to have it flagged and removed because the opposition doesn't like it. And when asked, you get cited a point in the CoC, except that it's not applied uniformly and impartially in that thread. Makes you wonder what the purpose of flagging is at all! That will just put certain groups at an undisclosed disadvantage and lets harmful stereotypes flourish without any challenge. All we can do is to be forthright about this fact and try our best to have a civil debate.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-04-16 13:12:10+00:00
> There’s a reason ambitious founders move from Europe to the US and why most billion dollar tech companies are American.

Yes, and it's because of larger, more liquid capital markets make it much easier to obtain VC funding.

> Europe is poor and to an extent I don’t think Europeans really understand.

Europe is definitely not poor in terms of either wealth or income (particularly Western Europe, which is the appropriate comparator for the US).
by DrillShopper | 2025-04-16 13:12:27+00:00
> people who literally want to control everything I say and put my good friends into reeducation camps

Then you shouldn't talk to Trump supporters as that's exactly what they want to do for anyone that disagrees with them, and last I checked, they're capitalists.

They are planning on abducting people off the street, completely ignoring the courts and denying due process, and sending them to another country where they're being deprived of their rights, again, with no due process and no (effective) judicial review.

I'd expect most right wingers would be against this, but the Orange in Charge's supporters seem to hew to the "well if you didn't do anything wrong you've got nothing to worry about" angle because it's something happening to people they think deserve it.
by voxic11 | 2025-04-16 13:12:55+00:00
Are you trying to make your kid play a superhero or a specific copyrighted superhero? I'm just asking because I would expect them to attempt to prevent copyright infringement but I'm not sure why they would prevent you from depicting superheros which don't infringe on copyright. Maybe they are attempting to prevent any depictions of children, superhero or otherwise?